Chapter 1 – Davis
CHAPTER ONE
DAVIS
Dirt scrabbled beneath her tires as she whipped her bike around a banked turn. Rising from her seat, she thrust her elbows out and pedaled hard to launch off the boulder she and her mom had designed this part of the track around. With each pedal stroke, her lungs burned, her quads screamed.
Let them scream , she thought. Let them burn. This pain is better. This pain is healthy. This pain is important.
Even though she and the men from Little Timber—the sober living home that had moved operations onto the mountain last year; the home run by Matthew Madigan, her mom’s soulmate and her new stepdad—had been working their fingers to the bone every day, the mountain biking course was still nowhere near finished. Probably wouldn’t be until next fall. But this track was almost done. Only this one stretch about halfway down that still needed refining.
“Shit,” she barked, locking her arms straight, throwing her weight back to clear the enormous tree root jutting across her path. “Shit!” again when her pedal scraped along the jagged rock she still couldn’t figure out how to avoid.
She shouldn’t be going so fast. Shouldn’t be this all-out on an unfinished track. Then again, she shouldn’t have done a lot of things.
Her back tire skidded out on a patch of dry pine needles, velocity vanishing, handlebars looming as momentum yanked her forward. Pushing herself upright with a grunt while a bead of sweat dripped down her nose, she pedaled harder. Saving herself.
This was where life felt real again, where she felt real again, bombing down a single-track, pushing herself to the limits, hunting pain, hunting fear. Hunting the moment where nothing mattered but the next jump, the next pedal stroke, the next breath. This was how she survived. This was how she lived without him.
The mid-July sun was merciless. An unrelenting dry heat baked Davis’s shoulders as she dismounted her bike at the lodge and pulled off her helmet. Yanking her water bottle out of its holder, she squeezed a stream of no longer cold water into her mouth, over her face and neck, down the back of her tank top. Then she stared at the mountain she’d just destroyed herself climbing up and riding back down.
Thanks to a change in the wind, Bluebird Basin had earned a brief reprieve from the forest fire smoke looming over the western horizon. Today, she was vibrant, green and clear and beautiful. Bought and run by her grandfather, then passed to her mother and grandmother after he died four years ago, this ski hill was her home. It was the place where she’d always felt like she belonged. Where she’d always felt safe. Where she was fighting like hell to feel safe again.
“Good ride?” a deep voice asked from the lodge deck above her.
“Heck yeah,” she answered, looking up to meet Madigan’s crystal blue eyes, taking in his silvery-black hair, his broad shoulders, his ruggedly handsome face half hidden by a thick, dark beard. Despite the shit show that was her own life, she was still unbelievably stoked her mom had found a second chance at love with the sexy pirate rockstar. A man who loved her mom so much, Davis constantly caught him staring at her, all heart-eyed and dreamy. A man who’d overcome his own addictions and now dedicated his life to helping other men overcome theirs. A man who was just a genuinely good human being. Unlike her father, who she’d always thought was good, until he showed her and everyone else how wrong they’d been.
When Murphy barked at her from Madigan’s side, snapping her out of her thoughts, she couldn’t help but smile. The giant man. The giant Saint Bernard. Best friends from the moment they met.
“That’s great,” Madigan replied with a firm nod. Then his chest expanded through a deep breath, his lips pressing into a grim, apprehensive line. And she knew. She knew it in the tightness spreading across her shoulders, pulling at the skin along the nape of her neck. She knew it in the bruise aching beneath her sternum, the pressure clamping around her ribcage. She just knew.
“When you have a chance.” He gripped the railing with his tattooed fingers, his knuckles turning white around the words HOPE on one hand, FEAR on the other. “Can we talk?”
Forcing lightness into her tone, she said, “You bet.” Because nothing was more important than making sure the people around her didn’t worry anymore. Making sure nobody had a reason to ask her if she was okay, even though they all knew she wasn’t. The same way she knew what—or who—Madigan wanted to talk to her about. And with his next nod, solemn as a priest, it was clear he knew it too. “Just let me shower first.”
“Take your time,” he said.
She would have laughed at the irony if laughing was a thing she did anymore. Since time was the one thing she was about to run out of.
The shower was so cold her skin pebbled and her teeth chattered. Cutting down trees all day, digging out trails, riding until her muscles ached, until her blisters had blisters, taking ice-cold showers afterward. Everything hurt. All the time. That was the point.
She’d never realized how healing physical pain could be, how vital. She couldn’t sleep without it now, without her body being sore and worked and so exhausted her mind had no other choice but to submit. All the work had made her hungry again too. She’d even gained back a few pounds in the last two weeks.
Staring at herself in the mirror—damp blond curls curtaining her face, blue eyes still a little hollow, still not the same, but brighter—she almost recognized the woman staring back. One day and then another, another step, another breath. She was better. She was healing. She wasn’t ready, because she’d never be ready. But she was better. It would have to be enough.
When she stepped out onto the deck ten minutes later, she paused for a moment, letting herself breathe. You can do this , she told herself. This is easy.
“Hey, Madigan,” she said, taking a seat in the big brown Adirondack chair next to him, noticing that his rocked and hers didn’t. It felt so much like her life, like she was fixed, stuck, motionless while the rest of the world moved on.
“Hey, Davis,” he replied while Murphy whined then walked over to place his big head in her lap.
“What’s up?” she asked, running her fingers over Murphy’s soft nose, wanting to get this over with. Wanting to fast-forward to the next part. The part where they’d all moved on. Where it wasn’t the Great Big Fucking Deal in her life anymore, the thing always looming over her, holding her back, keeping her stuck.
“I’m not going to beat around the bush,” Madigan said, staring out at the mountain. This must have been some skill he’d honed while working with the Little Timber men: when to make eye contact and when not to. Because he never missed. “Kev is getting out of rehab tomorrow.”
He’d been gone for a month. Thirty days. Thirty days to get clean again. Thirty days Madigan had fought for. Thirty days to avoid jail time for breaking his parole. Thirty days that had felt more like thirty years. That felt like less than thirty seconds now.
“Okay” was all she said. It was all she could say. It wasn’t like she’d circled the date in red ink on her calendar—or had needed to since it was already circled on her skin, her heart, her every thought. She knew it was tomorrow.
This moment apparently called for eye contact, because Madigan turned to face her. “I know we talked about it before. I know you said you’d be okay with him coming back here. But if you’ve changed your mind, I need to know. You need to tell me.”
“It’s fine.” It wouldn’t be enough for him, her clipped, brittle reply. So she added, “I mean, seeing him again will be hard.” Using that word, hard , felt like using the word tall to describe Mount Everest. Technically true, but such a blatant minimization it might as well have been a lie. “But he needs you. He needs to be here.” And I need to be okay with it.
By the exhale sailing slowly through Madigan’s nose, the muscles clenching tightly in his jaw, she knew she hadn’t convinced him.
“I’ll keep him busy,” he said anyway, running his knuckles roughly through his beard. “He’ll need to be busy. You might not even see him very much. Not if you don’t want to.” His throat bobbed through a swallow. “Davis, I know this situation is not good for you. It’s not what any of us would have chosen. I mean, you’ve just finally started to—” He cut himself off with a shake of his head. “You know what I mean.”
And she did. She’d just finally started to sleep, to eat, to train. To smile.
“But I believe Kev can get well again. I believe he can stay that way this time.” Looking down at his hands, he said, “I have to believe it. I have to try.”
She looked down at his hands too, HOPE and FEAR seeming almost too on the nose for the moment.
“I feel responsible,” he admitted softly.
That, at least, she understood. And there was some consolation, knowing she wasn’t the only one. The only difference being that Madigan might be absolved of his guilt someday. She never would.
“But I feel responsible for you too,” he said, the words rushed, his expression pained in a way she needed to convince him wasn’t necessary. Because if she was going to survive this conversation, if she was going to survive Kev coming back tomorrow, every day after, people couldn’t look at her with pained expressions. They couldn’t treat her like she might break at any moment.
“If you want me to find somewhere else for him to go,” Madigan said. “I will. I have friends with other homes who would probably take him. Bluebird Basin is your home first.”
This conversation had gone on long enough. “I appreciate that you’re worried about me,” she said. “But it’s fine.” And here came the lie she’d been practicing in the mirror, repeating it enough times that she could finally say the words out loud without feeling sick. Not enough times to believe it, though. Because that number, enough to erase the last eight months of loving him more than she’d thought it was possible to love someone, didn’t exist. “We were never that serious anyway,” she said, clenching her jaw against the bile rising up her throat, hoping he didn’t notice. “More like really good friends.”
Madigan’s eye twitched. And if that was the only hint he’d give her that he knew she was full of shit, she’d take it and be grateful.
“His rehab facility is a couple of hours away,” he said, even though she already knew that too.
Thanks to some snooping, she knew his facility was tucked into the Bitterroot Mountains near Hamilton. She knew it was called Willow Creek Recovery Center. Thanks to their website, she knew what his room probably looked like. That he’d gone to individual therapy once a day, group therapy twice a day, participated in activities like basketball and tennis and tai chi, even karaoke. That he might have spent time in the meditation room, the art room, the exercise gym, the pool, swimming laps or floating on his back in the quiet water.
“I should be back with him around four.” Madigan scratched his head. “If you wanted to be here…or not.”
Maybe she should be here. Maybe a strong, mature woman would stand firm in her home when the man who broke her heart came back. But she wasn’t that woman. And, luckily, her friend and Madigan’s old bandmate, Cole Sanderson, had offered to get her “outrageously caffeinated” at Glazed and Confused so she didn’t have to pretend that she was.
“I’m good,” she said. “I’m hanging with Cole and Mira tomorrow afternoon.” She felt bad about it, knowing how many promises Madigan had already heard in his lifetime that had been broken, knowing this one didn’t stand a chance. But she swiped her finger across her chest anyway, just like her grandpa used to do, and said, “I’ll be fine. Cross my heart.”
She wouldn’t be fine. They both knew it. But Madigan nodded anyway. Because promises made on broken hearts didn’t count.