“Not bad! We partnered with that little resort down in Mount Princeton, so they’ve been sending business our way. Today is a bridal party!” Thea finished in excitement.
Mom’s expression changed in a way that only I caught. It was a twinge of pain that she’d learned to camouflage quickly over the years, but it was there nonetheless.
In some ways, losing Sullivan had been harder on her than it had me. I’d lost the man I loved, the one I’d planned on spending my life with.
She’d lost her dream of holding a grandchild that she could see both herself and Lillian in. It had been like losing her best friend all over again, combined with mourning what she’d considered to be my future.
I saw it all the time around our small town—the specter of what-if. The futures parents dreamed for their children died hard around here, and laying them to rest demanded a thousand impromptu funerals over the course of a lifetime. The past could be buried and would eventually set you free. Hopes and dreams for futures that would never come to fruition? Those suckers were the real ghosts.
Mom blinked herself free of her most recent burial.
“That’s just great, Thea. I’m so proud of you. How about I walk you out? You can tell me how Jacob is doing. I just love getting to see his sweet little face around town.”
Thea agreed, then hugged me tight. “Call me. I mean it. I want to know everything.” She pulled back and gave me the same look she’d dished out around locker doors in high school.
“I promise.”
“Oh, and Willow, if you have anything you think Cam might find…useful, why don’t you take that over at the same time?” Mom hinted. “He says he’s back for good, so he might need it.”
My face flooded with warmth.
“Yep. I’ll get right on that. See you later.” I forced a smile and ushered them out my front door.
Once I shut it behind them, I leaned against the oak expanse and did my best to breathe like a normal person on a normal day.
So what if he’d jump to conclusions? So what if I’d be opening myself up to a heaping dose of ridicule and that cold, cruel stare? Mom knew damn well what I had stored in my spare bedroom, so wasn’t it better if I delivered it before she accidentally blurted out my secret to Cam? The only thing more embarrassing than what I was about to do would be him showing up and demanding it himself.
I was doing this now to save myself further humiliation…not because I stupidly wanted to see him. Right.
My bare feet crossed the sun-warmed hardwood of my little house, passing the open-concept living, dining, and kitchen area, then my office, and heading back to the two bedrooms, only one of which was occupied.
Mom and Dad built The Outpost the summer I’d decided not to go to college. The summer I’d decided to stay home and wait for Sullivan to return from deployment. Bed-and-breakfasts were huge up here, but little houses where families could vacation were even bigger. They’d rented it out for a couple of years before Mom decided that the rental business wasn’t for her, and now it was mine. Well, in another three hundred and forty-eight mortgage payments, it would be.
I opened the spare bedroom and sighed at the contents.
“Stop being a chicken,” I lectured myself.
Then I put on my shoes, tied my hair up in a messy bun, and got to work.
A half hour later, my SUV climbed the last stretch of snow-laden dirt road that led to Cal’s. Camden’s black Jeep sat parked in the driveway, the tires and lower portion of the paint caked in mud.
I put my car in park and killed the ignition, and before I was ready, I found myself knocking on his front door.
Only a minute passed before he flung said door open. He really was bigger than when he’d left; my mind hadn’t made that up yesterday. He dwarfed me in a way that would have intimidated me if I didn’t know him so well.
Camden might slice me open emotionally with a few careless words, but I was 100 percent safe with him and always had been. Oddly enough, I was probably the only person in Alba who could say that.
“What do you want, Willow? I was trying to get the Scout up and running.” His voice was rougher than the scruffy beard he’d grown.
Well, that explained the grease streaks on the white shirt that draped over his heavily muscled frame and the jeans that hung sinfully well on his hips.
Enough of that. This is Cam.
“I wanted to bring you a few things,” I said, motioning to the bag I had slung over my shoulder. “Can I come in for a minute?”
A debate flickered in those dark eyes momentarily before he nodded and stepped back, allowing me entrance.
The house was just as I’d remembered—an eclectic homage to the man who’d built it between visits home from wherever he’d been working. The entry’s smooth hardwood led to warmly painted walls that boasted exotic artwork framed between exposed beams of reclaimed wood.
A smile lifted the corners of my lips as I glanced around.
“What?” Cam asked.
Saying “nothing” would just irk him, so I was honest about my random thoughts.
“I was thinking that Cal was years ahead of the whole reclaimed-wood trend. He would have been the ultimate hipster now.”
He blinked at me, and warmth crept up my neck.
“You know, because hipsters do everything before it’s cool?” I added, hoping to ease the awkwardness of my joke.
It didn’t.
“Right.” He looked at me with expectation, and I cleared my throat.
“My mom asked me to drop this by.” When he didn’t reach for the bag, I kicked off my shoes, skirted around his enormous body, and headed for the kitchen. I’d been in this house almost as often as Cam growing up, so at least I knew my way around. When I reached the well-loved handmade table, I set the bag down and emptied the contents.
Homemade cookies began the assault on table space, followed by muffins and banana bread in quantities that suggested Mom had expected a small army.
“Guess she baked last night,” I muttered before setting his shoes on the floor.
His eyes dropped to the boots before meeting mine.
Tension strung between us so thick, I could have hung my laundry on it. I hated how he only spoke when he’d finally driven me bonkers from wondering what he was thinking. Hated how he’d always known exactly how to get under my skin. Hated that he made me wonder what was going on in his head when I so often blurted out whatever was in mine.
“So you’re staying up here?” I asked, breaking the stare to take in the familiar lines of the kitchen. It was dusty in places, especially in the cracks of the hand-laid backsplash that depicted the mountains around us in carefully chosen pieces of granite.