He couldn’t have hit the mark any closer yet been further off. I didn’t give a fuck if Alba saw me as their tourism savior. I cared that they trusted me enough to give Dad what he wanted.
He left after saying goodbye to Dad and giving me another glare as he walked out the door.
I leaned back against the doorframe to the living room and watched quietly as Dad settled in, his breathing easier now that he wasn’t moving as much.
Was this really as good as it was going to get for him? How could such a beast of a man lose himself to his own mind?
“Hey, Dad, I have to go up to the mine.”
“The mine? I know that place better than anyone.” He turned his head to reply, looking over the side of the blue recliner he loved.
“Yeah, I know, Dad. I’m getting it ready to reopen for tours, remember?”
His forehead puckered. “Right. That’s right. Dangerous place, that mine. You should take me with you. Just in case you get lost. Hate for anything to happen to you or that Bradley girl.”
The pressure was back in my chest. He knew. In this moment, he knew what was really happening. He was really here.
“We’ll be okay,” I promised him. “I won’t let anything happen to Willow.”
“I know you won’t. That girl is wild about you. You know that, right? Everyone knows. It’s all they talk about in town.” He gave me a soft smile, and that pressure eased to something light and sweet.
“And that’s okay with you?” My keys dug into my palm. Relax. His opinion has never mattered to you before. Except it always had.
“Of course. You two have been inseparable since you were kids. Figured it would come full circle one of these days. Now, be careful up there. Those train cars will still function on the rails, but you know those tracks stop dead past that first ventilation shaft.”
“Yeah, I have your old maps. Don’t worry.”
“Okay. Have fun. Love you, Sullivan.” He gave me another one of those soft smiles and turned back to the television.
There was a two-ton brick on my chest. There had to be, because the air wouldn’t come and it fucking hurt. I blinked furiously at the prickling pain in my eyes and laid my head back on the doorframe.
My first breath came in a gasp, filling my lungs but leaving the pain. That was all mine.
“Love you, too, Dad,” I responded, because it was what he’d expect.
Because it was the truth.
I walked down the hallway and tapped Sully’s picture on the wall. “That one was for you, too.”
My phone rang as I climbed into the Jeep, and Willow’s name flashed across the screen. I started the engine on the second ring.
On the third, I told myself every single reason I shouldn’t pick it up.
On the fourth, I did.
“Hey.”
“Hey, yourself. What are you up to?” I could practically see her smile as her voice filled my car, coming through the speakers.
“Just finished lunch with my dad, and I was thinking of heading to the mine. I’m meeting with the contractor tomorrow and wanted to get another look at it.” I put the car in gear and headed toward my place.
“I have a better idea,” she suggested.
“You sound like you’re up to no good.” Now my lips were curving, too.
“How about we both skip out on work and you meet me at the hot springs?”
The hot springs. There were ten thousand different reasons I should say no and only one reason why I should go. And damn if that one reason didn’t outweigh every other one.
“Cam?” she asked, her voice pitching higher. She was nervous I’d say no.
Probably because she knew I should. This was a bad idea.
“Willow Bradley, are you asking me to play hooky with you?” The Jeep rocked back and forth through a stretch of road where ice had built up in little boulders.
“Maybe. Okay, definitely. Come on. No one else will ever go with me.”
“That’s because it’s covered in snow.” I looked up through the windshield and saw brilliant blue skies. At least the weather was good for it.
“Only the outsides. The water is toasty. As you should remember.”
A couple of hours with Willow sounded like heaven. We’d had zero time alone together since…well, whatever the hell it was that had happened in the kitchen.
“Come on. Be bad with me.”
“Be bad, huh? Let me guess. You’re not actually being bad. You have all your work done for the day already.”
“Okay, fine. I do. Basically, I’m guilting you into being bad so I can blatantly use you for some fun.”
“That’s a situation I’m well acquainted with. I’ll meet you there in twenty.”
There was no way this could possibly end well. But nothing ever did.
Chapter Sixteen
Camden
Snow covered every part of the meadow between the ridges, with the exception of the hot springs and the creek that ran beside it, heavy with the beginning of spring thaw.
The contrast of undisturbed snow against the steaming turquoise mineral pool was something I’d never found an equal to. I’d traveled all over the world, seen both the breathtaking and the brutal, but there was nowhere on earth I found as beautiful, hence the tattoo on my arm.
Opening this hot springs up to tourists would have made more than a pretty penny, but our great-grandfathers had agreed to keep it for the private use of the Danielses and Bradleys only. With the exception of a few summer parties when we were in high school, this generation had honored that agreement. Relished it, really.
I parked the Jeep alongside the old bathhouse and got out, hauling my backpack with me. The snow barely gave way under my boots as I trekked above where the bathhouse perched precariously over the north end of the pool and down the other side.
The structure was still sound, as far as an 1880s piece of ruin left to time could be. Dad had reinforced it the summer Xander broke his wrist after we built a tire swing under it, and the supports still looked good.
The tire swing had not survived Xander’s misadventure.
Willow’s 4Runner crested the ridge from the west, and my stomach tensed in anticipation. A month. I’d been home a month, and I’d gone from vowing to never see her, to never touching her, to…I didn’t even know. She was Willow, and even though I knew this was a shit idea, I couldn’t stop myself. I never could when it came to her.
She was the exception to everything.