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“Colton?”
“He went home. He was fine. Not injured at all.”
“Thanks, Frankie,” said Sky.
Frankie felt an intense tugging at her chest.
She felt... She was still so scared from yesterday. But she needed to be calm for Walker.
Because Sky wasn’t her son.
But she felt... The idea of losing him had filled her with so much terror. And then... There was just the weight of it all.
This was the enormity of what Walker still had in his life. The fear.
She wanted him. She wanted to be in his life. She couldn’t ask him to take on more of that. If she told him how she felt he’d...he was such a good man. He would want to care for her the way she wanted it. She wanted a future. Marriage, kids. She could see how much the love he already carried cost him. How heavy it was. How could she ask him to give her babies? To start all this, all over again? To risk even more of his heart, of himself. She blinked hard.
They pulled up to the house, and Sky got out of the car and went inside. Walker got out and stood at the side of the car, leaning against it. The front door closed behind Sky, and instinctively, Frankie moved toward Walker. She wrapped her arms around his waist and he put his head against her neck.
And then his body shook.
As if everything that had been holding him together was gone now. She held him. And let her own tears fall while she let him give in to the intense wave of emotion she knew that he couldn’t show Sky.
For a hundred reasons.
Because this was years’ worth of grief crashing in on him. Grief that he would always carry with him. The knowledge that life could be cruel and unfair.
Of course it could be.
And when the storm subsided, she clung to him still.
Sky was home now.
He needed to be home. And Walker needed to be with him.
“Frankie,” Walker said slowly, his voice gruff, “Carter’s room is still available.”
“I know,” she said. “I think I’m going to go stay with Carly. It’s okay.”
Because she couldn’t stay in Carter’s bedroom. She couldn’t be there and not be with him. She’d gone through all this last night.
She’d been overwhelmed by the enormity of the day. Of seeing Walker in such a dark place. Of realizing how much he would always carry. He’d said he was going to go to the bars, have lovers, have the life he didn’t have.
And it would always be weighted with this, she’d realized.
Any part of her that had thought she could add to his weight, just maybe, had withered. She couldn’t ask him to love her, not when he would want to. Not when it would only hurt him to hurt her.
Walker was never going to say anything cruel. He was never going to be Chad. He wasn’t going to break her into pieces to get her to leave. He would never do that.
In some ways, her love for him felt old. Like the mountains around them. Something that had formed over time, layer after layer, and was now part of her. As if it had always been. And in other ways it felt brand-new. Like a spring bud. Fragile and fresh.
But the part that was old, the part that was the mountains, the part that made up the landscape of her soul, could bear this.
The new part felt crushed. And that was too bad.
But as for the rest... Mountains were patient. Because they had seen so much.
Because they had endured so much. A storm didn’t knock a mountain over. Sure, there might be landslides and shifts in that vast wilderness, but they didn’t crumble.
