To keep everyone I love—and even those I despise—safe…from me.
Elaine appears from the kitchen with a lumberjack breakfast overflowing off the plate and slides it in front of me, but I’ve suddenly lost my appetite. She offers me a kind smile, then glances at Tony and gives him a knowing hard one before she pours him a cup of coffee. Perhaps a warning not to push me too hard this morning.
I take a sip of coffee, waiting for what I know is coming. The moment I pick up my silverware and start slicing my pancakes, Tony shifts on his stool to face me more fully and I brace myself.
“Do your brothers know you’re back?”
My grip on the fork tightens. “No.”
The moment I stepped out of the woods, I beelined for my cabin, showered off the hike, and drove down the mountain before anyone else on the homestead was even awake.
It was a cop-out, pure and simple. An avoidance of the people who were sure to call me out.
Tony knows it, too, given the look he’s directing my way. “You need to call them. Willow and Raven, too.”
Raven?
The mere mention of her name is enough to make my hackles rise.
“I’ll see my brothers at the yard today. I’ll call Willow from there.” I clench my teeth, biting out my words. “And I’m sure that viper Raven will find out I’m back through her usual gossip sources.”
Like the people sitting here in the diner.
Tony snorts and offers me a knowing grin. “I know you won’t believe it, but she’s actually worried about you.”
I shove a bite of pancakes into my mouth and chew it, along with his words. Vivid images of the way she eviscerated me with a simple look the night I left flash through my head, and by the time I swallow, that same anger I had then has returned full force.
Swallowing, I shake my head. “Bull. Shit. The only thing she missed was having me around to be fodder for her articles and someone to argue with.”
Tony smirks. “She did write an article about you.”
“Fuck.” I try to swallow the growl, but it slips out. “What did it say?”
He snags his mug and tags a long, slow drink of coffee. “That if anyone should run into you out on the mountain that they should steer clear because you were in a volatile mood.”
Hell.
She wasn’t wrong.
I was volatile.
Anyone who might have been hiking and accidentally stumbled upon me in the woods might have witnessed something very dark and very ugly. But she didn’t need to spread my shit across her gossip column disguised as a community information page.
It only confirms what I told her that night—I’m only a source of dirt for her skeezy stories. That’s why she came up to my cabin. It wasn’t an altruistic move to help Willow and Killian. It was about her and what she needed and wanted—a reason to fight with me and make it public.
Rage quickly replaces anything left of my appetite, and I toss my silverware on the plate and slide off the stool.
Tony’s brows fly up. “Where are you going?”
I scowl as my hands flex at my sides. “To deal with the bane of my existence.”
RAVEN
My fingers fly across the keys, the words flowing out as fluidly as the river runs over the falls at the bottom of the mountain and cascades into the swimming hole. Only, it’s more like a tidal wave this morning. An unstoppable, immovable current of thoughts that I couldn’t stop even if I tried at this point.
And I don’t want to curb this flow.
This is what I need.
