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“No, it’s not. It doesn’t matter to me if Dr. Will went off on another bender. I don’t care. If that’s what happened, then I’m finding him and getting him help.”
Ellis shook his head. He wasn’t getting through to her and didn’t know what else to say, except, “He’s not worth it.”
“How can you say that? He’s your father!”
“Would you do the same for your own father? Your mother?”
She flinched like he’d struck her. “That’s not remotely the same. I told you about my parents and fuck you for throwing it in my face.”
Later, he’d feel like shit for that, but now he was too angry. Too scared. “You don’t think what Will did to us was abuse? He cared more about his booze than he did his sons. I kept his business alive and took care of my brothers when I should’ve been worried about school and girls and football. When I joined the Army, Nate took on those responsibilities. When Nate went to school, Dad left Damian to fend for himself for almost a year.”
She broke eye contact and crossed her arms over her chest. “He’s changed.”
“You keep saying that, but I don’t believe he’s capable.”
“Okay, fine. Maybe he hasn’t. Maybe he’s the asshole you think he is and maybe he always will be, but he’s the only person who ever looked at me”— she motioned to her face— “and didn’t cringe away.”
And that did it. Broke his heart right in half. “I didn’t cringe.”
“You did. At first. Everyone does, except Dr. Will. Hesawme and he cared. He’s the first person in my life to care.”
“Bree—” He tried to reach for her, but she shrugged out of his grasp.
“Don’t. Don’t touch me right now.”
He wanted to. He wanted to gather her into his arms and hug her close and apologize for making her feel less beautiful than she was, but she’d only refuse him. After the day he’d had, he couldn’t handle her refusal, so he backed up a step and tucked his hands into his pockets. “I’m sorry.”
* * *
“Hesawme,”Bree continued, refusing to let the softness in Ellis’s expression get to her. She had to make him understand. “He saw I was struggling and, more than that, he knew my struggle. I can’t stand people. I can’t stand the looks, the whispers, the taunts. Growing up, the kids were cruel to me, but adults can be so much worse. And then my mom’s voice, always in my head…” She thumped her temple with her palm. “When I first came to Alaska, I didn’t want to just disappear. I thought about killing myself, but then Norte got hit by a snowmobile and I took him to Dr. Will. He saved my dog when every other vet in town wanted to euthanize. He introduced me to mushing. He reached out a hand and pulled me up out of the darkest year of my life. He saved me. The very least I can do is try to save him.”
Ellis said nothing for a long moment, but his throat worked like he was trying to keep his emotions in check. “Bree.” His voice was rough. “I get where you’re coming from, but have you considered the possibility that Dad is beyond saving?”
She shook her head hard. She wouldn’t believe it because, in those dark days, the same could’ve been said about her. Nobody was beyond saving. Not Norte when surgery had a slim chance of success. Not her when she thought the best thing she could do for the world was to remove herself from it. And not Dr. Will because he started drinking again.
“He’s out there. He wouldn’t leave his dog for anything, so he has to be close to where the pilot found Happy. I know it, and I’m going to keep searching. With or without you.”
Ellis opened his mouth but closed it without saying anything. He scrubbed a hand through his hair, paced away a few steps, and stopped in front of the window. As he stared out, his spine steeled with resolve and for one shining second, she thought he’d come around, that he’d looked out into the barren cold and had seen the only right answer.
But then he faced her.
A scowl etched lines into his windburned face, and his eyes were flat and hard, no spark left of the happy, playful Ellis she’d come to know.
“I’ve spent too much of my life dealing with the fallout from Dad’s decisions,” he said after several long seconds. “If you’re determined to waste your life chasing him, that’s your call. I can’t stop you, but I’m done.”
“You’re done? Just like that.”
“Yeah.” He strode to the door and glanced back as he reached for the knob. “If you’re ever in L.A., look me up.”
With that, he walked out.
“You know, you’re exactly like him,” she shouted after him. “You’re everything that you hate about him.”
He didn’t stop moving, didn’t even glance back.
She flopped down on the bed that still smelled like him. Like them and everything they’d done together last night.
Why was she surprised? Leaving when the going got tough was exactly his nature. Everyone had warned her— hell, even his brothers. But she thought she knew him better than they did. She thought she understood what made him tick. She thought…
