Page 104 of Well Aware

I hissed in a breath and said, “Beau, go help her now.”

He looked, then jerked in his seat as he let me go and headed for the parking lot at a semi-run.

Boone, seeing him take off, followed his gaze and stood as well, smoothing down his shirt as he did.

He whispered something in his grandmother’s ear that had her turning as well, then they were at Ida Bell’s side.

Ida Bell had woken up just forty-eight hours ago from her coma.

She had a lot of broken bones, and she sure as heck shouldn’t be out of the hospital. She certainly shouldn’t be walking on her own toward Koen’s casket.

Shaw, seeing me shiver, slid down to block me from the wind.

I leaned on his shoulder and whispered, “You okay?”

Katana and Shaw hadn’t had a funeral for their little girl. She’d been too small, and Katana hadn’t been up to it.

So instead, Shaw buried her in his backyard, which happened to be on a small ranch just down the road from Denver.

He hadn’t wanted anyone around.

That didn’t mean that the club brothers hadn’t shown up anyway and forced their attention on them.

In my heart, I knew that Shaw felt guilty.

He hadn’t been dealing well with what had happened, and he’d been the reason that everyone had been headed toward his house. In doing so, Koen had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Shaw blamed himself.

Which was clearly obvious by the way he answered my question. “Awful.”

I leaned further into him. “I’m sorry, Shaw. I can’t imagine what you’re feeling or going through right now. This entire situation seems grossly unfair to you.”

He took his jacket off and draped it over my legs. “Shaw…”

“Don’t really feel much of anything right now, Maggie.”

I laid my head on his shoulder. “Did you grow up in Montana?”

“Born and raised,” he answered. “Though I’m new to Sawtooth. I’m originally from the Glacier area. Blackfoot Tribe, to be specific.”

I really studied him hard for a long moment before I said, “I would’ve never thought that you were Native American.”

“Quarter.” He shrugged. “My grandfather was full-blooded. My mom came for a visit to Glacier National Park and met my dad where he lived in Browning. She went home after spending every minute of her vacation with him. Stayed home for about two months before she realized that she missed him too much to stay in California. Moved her entire life to Browning, Montana, and they got married six weeks later. My dad is half Irish. Came for the same reason, to visit Glacier. Met my mom and convinced her to go back to Ireland with them. But Mom passed away, and Dad didn’t know how to raise four kids alone. He moved back to Browning to have my grandparents help raise us. He’s been a park ranger for Glacier National Park ever since.”

“Why’d you move here?” I wondered.

“Wanted to break away from the family business,” he grumbled. “Start something on my own.”

“What was the family business?”

Just as I asked that, Beau took the seat on the other side of me, squishing me in between Shaw and himself.

“Security,” Shaw answered. “Was in the military for a long fucking time. Got out, wanted to jump into business with my Pops and Dad—they’re security consultants for black ops and the government—but they were pretty set in their ways, and didn’t want to ‘rock the boat’ with my new ideas and ‘dangerous ways.’ Fought them for a while on it, but in the end, decided that maybe it wasn’t worth the hassle.” Shaw sighed. “The final nail in the coffin was a really bad breakup. One that had the possibility of going nuclear if I stayed.”

And he’d come here, gotten that new start, and had lost a child.

How awful.