Willow. I shut that shit down in my head. Nope, not going there.
God, but the relief in her voice when she’d whispered my name and leaned closer… She didn’t hate me. I deserved her hatred, her absolute loathing, and instead she’d trusted me like the last six years had never happened.
“I think he’s pretty close to lucid right now,” Gideon said as he fell into step next to me. “You could go talk to him.”
“I think he was pretty close to lucid up by the ravine, and no, thank you. He’s doing just fine with Xander up there.” I jumped the three-foot ditch that currently housed a stream of spring runoff. How easily it all came back, muscle memory guiding me where the light failed. Now if only I’d remembered to exchange my Avs hat for one that covered my ears before heading out after Dad.
“You honestly think he would have shot—” Gideon grunted, then scrambled by the sound of it. “Jesus, hold on. Still part mountain goat, aren’t you?” He huffed, jogging to catch up.
“No, I don’t think he would have shot me if he’d recognized me in that moment,” I answered his question—and mine. “He definitely would have considered it, though. Hell, I bet he’s pictured it in his head a few times while he’s been perfectly lucid.”
“Some homecoming,” Gideon muttered as the house came into view across the clearing.
“Why do you think I stayed away so long?”
“Because you knew he’d shoot you on sight?” He rammed his shoulder into me, and I tensed for a millisecond. It was a familiar enough move from Gid, but no one got that close to me anymore without a direct invitation.
“Something like that.” My eyes drifted north, as if they could cut through the dark and forested ridge to the little grove of aspens where Sullivan lay at rest next to Mom and Uncle Cal.
“You’ll settle in. Hey, you can always come work with me at APD!” His teeth flashed in the dim lighting.
“Last time I checked, there are already five of you for our little town, and my name isn’t Hall, so the chances of me advancing are pretty much zero.”
“Dick,” Gideon muttered between fake coughs.
“Never pretended to be anything else.” Maybe I wasn’t popular. Maybe I was the unlikable son. The bad penny. The black sheep. Every fucking cliché there was when compared to Xander’s annoying perfection. I’d stopped caring about that twenty years ago and simply decided to embrace it. There was power in not giving a fuck.
The lights of the house shone from the windows as we came to what used to be the gardens Mom spent her mornings in. The once-lush plants were all but gone—surviving only as volunteers that grew from the seeds in the leftover rot of the previous year—or had been overrun by the mountain grass.
Dad had called it folly to garden this close to the tree line. Mom had rolled her eyes and done it anyway.
We rounded the side of the house, and I made note of the places where the siding had peeled back. The gutters drooped, and the drainage system was in shambles, if the small canyons that began at the drain spouts were any indication.
Dorothy met Dad on the front porch, and the two disappeared into the house while Captain Hall and Xander spoke at the base of the steps.
“That doesn’t look pleasant,” Gideon noted as we approached my Jeep.
I opened the passenger side and stripped down to my T-shirt, ignoring the bite of temperature as I threw the armored vest onto the seat. When I’d decided to keep my personal gear, it had been out of an unexplainable sense of attachment, not because I thought I’d still need to use the damn thing.
I put on my ruined coat as we headed for Xander.
“This can’t happen again,” Captain Hall lectured my brother, which immediately set me on edge.
“It won’t. I never thought he’d locate the key. You have my most sincere apology.” Xander’s mouth was set in a firm line, which was pretty much as upset as he’d ever get in front of an authority figure.
I took my place next to him as Gideon took his by his father.
“I respect what you’ve done, Alexander. I really do.” His forehead puckered in what would have been a worried expression had the porch light not thrown half his face into shadows that painted him an old-west villain.
Guy seriously needed to lose the cowboy hat.
“Thank you,” Xander replied. “Now, we’re going to go check on our—”
“But the time has come for you to put him in that assisted living facility in Buena Vista,” Captain Hall interrupted in that morally superior voice that had always led me to the opposite of what he demanded.
“That’s why I’m here.” I folded my arms over my chest.
“And it’s nice to see you, Camden. Really, it is. Been boring around here without you destroying everything. What do you know about caring for your father? How long are you here on leave? What’s going to happen when you go back to wherever it is you live?”
Gideon swallowed, his gaze darting between his dad and me, but he didn’t move or respond like he once would have. Guess some things had changed.
“I’m not on leave. I’m here for good. Xander called, and I came.” Hence my packed-to-the-hilt Jeep, jackass.
“Okay, you’ve been back all of five minutes and your father shot you. Does that sound like he should be living on his own?” His eyebrows rose, and he leaned forward a little.
That intimidation shit hadn’t worked on me in a good decade and sure as hell wasn’t doing it now. But I wasn’t going to let him taunt me into a reaction, either.
“It sounded like Xander needed me to come home, and I did. We’re going to make some changes that make it safer for Dad, and we’ll do it as a family. We appreciate the search party more than you know. Thank you for helping us bring him home. We can take it from here.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Listen here, son. You have no clue what it’s been like—”
“I’m not your son.” My voice dropped into that deadly, calm little space I reserved for moments I needed to keep my finger off the trigger. “And you’re right. I don’t know, but Xander does. So if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to head inside. Gid, are you good to catch a ride?”
“Yeah, no problem. Captain, let’s get out of here.”
Making sure Xander was with me, I started up the porch steps.
“Camden,” Captain Hall called out.
We both turned.
“Do me a favor and keep yourself out of trouble while you’re here? Hate to see anyone else get thrown through a window.”