“Just waltzing in the door after vanishing for a week and pretending it’s no big deal…”
I snort. “I do not waltz.”
“Mmm hmm.” She continues to watch me expectantly, ignoring the other customers filling the diner. “Well, I’m glad you’re back. What can I get you?”
Less judgment.
“My usual.”
Her lips twitch as she nods, then turns back to the kitchen window and calls it out to her son. Thankfully, she doesn’t return to start the inquisition I could feel coming but wanders out into the diner to check on the rest of the people of McBride Mountain.
My relief is short-lived, though.
The bells jingle over the door, and I glance over my shoulder and cringe at the familiar uniform and hat as Sheriff Tony Briggs saunters in.
Fuck.
His booted footsteps eat up the space between the front of the diner and the counter, and he comes to a stop beside me and slides onto another stool. He reaches up and pulls off his hat, setting it on the other side of him as he releases a long, heavy sigh. “I’m glad you’re here. Saves me from having to send out the search party I was planning on gathering today if no one heard from you…”
Another cringe.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“You weren’t really going to send a search party.”
One of his dark brows rises. “Wasn’t I?” A sardonic laugh slips from his tense mouth. “After everything that’s happened with Willow, Lucky, the attack at your homestead…then Raven telling us you stormed off with a bottle of bourbon, your axe, and a shitty attitude and no one sees you for a week?”
Well, when he puts it like that…
He absolutely was going to send out a search party—undoubtedly at my brothers’ behests.
They started out giving me time and space, but at this point, their concern has taken center stage. The longer this goes on, the more they’ve pushed me to talk, to discuss what happened and how I’m feeling about it. That fear for my well-being overtook any inclination to let me handle it on my own.
And maybe it should.
God knows I’m a fucking wreck.
I might have stayed on the mountain longer if I hadn’t run out of alcohol. The bottle in my hand when I left, along with the several I already had stashed, didn’t last nearly long enough.
Barely two days sober was enough to send me scurrying back home rather than face the demons that tear at me even worse when my head isn’t in that fog.
I scrub my hands over my face and release a groan. “I didn’t mean to make everyone worry.”
Tony squeezes my shoulder. “I know you didn’t. But you seem to forget that you have people here who love you, who want to help you. I understand what happened at the homestead?—”
My back stiffens, every muscle in my body tensing at his placating tone. “No. You don’t. You can’t.”
By the time he got up to the homestead, the blood had already been spilled. The dead—the men I killed—were already sprawled across the land that has always been my home. A refuge from all those things below that could taint the pristine perfection. I had already marred our mountain with the kind of destruction that can’t be undone. Just like I can’t ever seem to wash the blood from my hands, the memory of seeing our home defiled that way will forever stay seared in my mind. A stain that can never be removed from that land.
Tony nods, his dark brown gaze softening. “You’re right. I can’t know what you went through, but I’ve seen some shit, too.”
Guilt over the way I snapped at him creeps up because I know Tony did see a lot when he was a Marine. Those experiences stayed with him and led him into law enforcement. They’re what stokes his desire, his need to keep McBride Mountain safe from the outside world, to keep our small community insulated from all those things that could shatter our peaceful existence.
Only, I’m one of those things now.
Which is exactly why I left last week.
It’s why I had to.
