Xander swallowed. “Look, it caught so much faster than it was supposed to.”
“You let me take the blame for it! You watched them pin it on me, and then you used it against me in Dad’s case.” Cam shook his head. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Don’t hit him. Don’t hit him. He wouldn’t get away with it, not with the crowd and the cameras.
“Like you’d understand!” Xander shouted. “You, who can’t stay out of trouble. You, who gets into fistfights defending her!” He pointed at me. “And who manages to carry her out of a mine covered in blood. And who rips apart the entire town for fun but then emerges from a burning barn with Willow in your arms. It was all so easy for you to be larger than life! And I did everything I could to be good. That’s what I was supposed to be, but it was never enough. I was never good enough. And you come home a decade later, covered in your army medals, and think you can rescue her again, rescue Dad, now rescue Rose? Hell, rescue this whole damned town!”
The realization that began that day at the courthouse came full circle. It was all about perception for him. He had been so consumed with trying to look like a hero that he forgot to be one.
Cam shook his head and took another step back. “News flash, Xander. I didn’t want any of it. I only wanted her.”
“I just wanted one medal. One moment.”
“I would trade every medal on that uniform to have Sullivan back.”
Xander’s head snapped to the side as a fist slammed into it, but it wasn’t Cam standing above him as he slid against the wall. It was my dad.
Gideon and Tim sprang into action, one cuffing Xander and one cuffing my dad.
“Alexander Daniels, you’re under arrest for arson,” Gideon growled and guided Xander by the neck down the steps.
“Gid!” I shouted, and he looked back. “You might want to take his mic off.”
Xander’s head snapped up to look out over the crowd of a thousand people who’d heard it all go down over the speakers. Gid unsnapped the tiny mic from the front of Xander’s shirt and tossed it to the reporter after nodding his thanks to me.
“I don’t want to do this, Noah,” Tim Hall said quietly. “But the damned cameras are on us.”
“The law is black and white,” Dad answered Tim while he looked at me. “And it was worth it.”
“Noah Bradley, you’re under arrest for assault.” He finished his Miranda rights as Mom trailed after him.
“I’ll get the bail money!”
Cam wrapped his arm around me, and I melted against his chest. “Take me home?”
“Gladly.” He kissed the top of my head.
“I guess we put on quite a show for the tourists,” Dorothy Powers said, her arm looped through Art’s. “Let’s get you home, Arthur.”
Art looked at Cam, and I knew the lucidity he’d had in the mine was fading fast. “The map,” he said quietly.
“It’s framed above Xander’s bed,” Cam explained.
His eyes drifted toward mine. “Balance.” Then he walked off with Dorothy, looking like he’d aged ten years in the past hour.
“Should we open the mine?” John Royal asked, gesturing out at the tourists.
Cam groaned.
“Tourists first,” I whispered, looking out over the crowd. He’d done this—made it possible for Alba to not just continue surviving but thrive. All because he’d been unafraid to stand alone and fight for what he knew was right, even if everyone else screamed that it was wrong.
“I guess we’ll open her up.” Then he kissed me in front of everyone, and the crowd roared.
“We don’t need to put on that good of a show,” Dorothy muttered.
“That was just for fun,” Cam replied, smiling down at me.
He’d never been the one to care how things looked, and I couldn’t have loved him any more for it.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Camden
The aspens’ leaves danced shadows across the gravestones as I stood and faced my little brother for the first time in six years.
“It’s not like I need to fill you in,” I told him as I brushed fallen leaves from the top of the gray marble. “I’ve always felt like you hung around. Hell, I talk to you enough. Of course, I’m hoping you don’t hang around too often, given…” Given the fact that I had Willow in my bed every night. “But I hope you’d be happy for us, and even if you aren’t, I’m just going to pretend that you are, because even you being pissed at me couldn’t keep me away from her.”
“Nikki told me you were out here.”
I glanced over my shoulder to see Dad coming up the slight incline, his nurse staying back a few dozen feet to give us some privacy.
“You look good,” I told him as he came to stand next to me, directly in front of Mom’s stone.
“It’s my mind that’s going, son, not my face.” He smirked before stepping forward to brush his hand over Mom’s name. “I’m glad she wasn’t here for this part, though. No one should have to watch the person they love disappear right in front of them.”
I looked him over, doing a quick assessment. He wore the new Rose Rowan shirt I’d dropped off for him last week, his hair was combed, and he looked, well, like him.
“Nikki also said that the last few times you’ve stopped over, I haven’t recognized you.” Dad crouched and brushed the leaves from Mom’s stone.
“But you do today?” I asked slowly.
He sighed and stood, wiping his hands off on his jeans and glancing toward Uncle Cal’s stone a little past Mom’s. “I’m enough of myself to recognize that I’m not always myself.”
“And everything that happened a couple weeks ago?” I probed.
“I know your brother is out on bail, if that’s what you’re asking,” he grumbled. “He really left Willow in the mine when you were kids?”
“Yeah.” I beat back the anger that welled up every time I thought about it.
“And he set fire to the bunkhouse?”
“He did.”
Dad turned to face me. “And you took the blame.”
“My reasons seemed sound back then.” I looked away. We’d come a long way since I’d returned home, but this was still awkward as hell.
“I swear, you always cared too little about what other people thought, and Xander cared too much.” He shook his head. “There was a girl in the mine…”