GRIFFIN
Ispent the next two months adjusting to my new job with the Honeyville Fire Department. Honestly, it wasn’t hard. Twenty-four on, forty-eight off was a far easier shift than the sixteen-hour shifts I’d worked for up to three weeks straight as a hotshot.
It was the forty-eight off that were unbearable.
With my family all gone, off working their own jobs, those two days moved at a mind-numbing pace. I’d even volunteered to watch Willow while James was teaching—but my niece could not be wrangled out of Heidi’s hands during the day. So I asked my dad to give me farm work.
The jobs I used to dread—weed-eating and cutting fallen trees off fence lines, bush-hogging fields, and feeding hay—were something I looked forward to now. Otherwise, I sat around conjuring images of Jules with other men. Or Jules going into labor without me. Or a little red-haired boy laughing, running, and playing, while I never got the chance to help raise him.
So I started meeting with my online therapist again. Itdidn’t take long for Dr. Florence to convince me that, aside from the fire department and the farm, I needed a hobby.
And that’s how I ended up with James, Bowen, Cash, and Theo one night in April, in Gramps’s barn.
Bowen gripped the handle with both hands raised, the butt of the axe nearly behind his head. “This might come in handy when the zombie apocalypse happens.” He took a step forward.
“Hold up. Wrong foot,” I said. I’d taken one two-hour class, but it was more than the rest of them knew. “You’re right-handed, so you want to step forward with the opposite foot.”
I was beginning to spot a silver lining in Jules absolutely obliterating my heart. In the past month, I hadn’t snapped at Bowen, Theo, or anyone else. Not once. Probably because grief had wrung everything else out of me. Or maybe I was finally learning my lesson: I couldn’t take my family for granted anymore.
They were all I had left.
And Boone—who texted daily to check on me.
“Got it,” Bowen said, switching feet. He took aim again, stepped forward, and hurled the axe toward the slab of soft pine we’d mounted against the wall. Instead of the blade landing, the butt hit. The axe fell onto the concrete floor with a dead clank. “Well.” Bowen laughed. “I clearly have some work to do.”
“We all do,” I said with a smile. “It’s harder than it looks.”
“No cap,” Cash said. He’d missed all five of his attempts.
“Not for me.” Theo shooed Bowen aside. “I’m the weapon whisperer.” He pulled the axe back, took a step, and confidently chucked it at the target. But his throw was worse than Bowen’s. The handle bounced against the wood and dropped like it had no interest in cooperating.
“Gosh darn it, I’ll be dipped,” Theo said, like someone who’d never once left the county he was born in.
James chuckled. “Maybe it’s hard of hearing, and you should speak up.”
Theo tried twice more with the same result. He scratched his forehead and squinted at the target. “Well, slap me sideways and butter my biscuits.” He shrugged. “It’s not a real weapon anyway. Anything used to chop is basically a kitchen utensil.”
James barked out a laugh. “You’re a moron.” He grabbed another axe from the box and stepped up. He aimed, reared back, and… hit the bullseye dead center.
Theo gaped.
Bowen gasped.
Cash and I whooped.
“How’d you do that?” I asked.
His eyes turned cool. “Just pretend it’s someone’s face you’re really, really mad at.” Lately, James reserved all his anger for the one person who wasn’t here to defend herself.
I didn’t even have words for that.
Bowen pulled in a sharp breath.
Cash stared at him like he must’ve heard him wrong.
“James,” Theo said with a disapproving shake of the head.
The barn door slid open, and Liam walked in.
