So does this town.
That’s what places like Heart’s Edge do.
Once you’re here, once you’ve put down roots, you’re family, and they’ll throw everything they have behind you when you’re in trouble.
Which only reminds me that I don’t belong here.
I know—I know there are people here who care for me just as much.
And despite the nasty things whispered behind my back, more people than I believed up until recently see me as much a part of the town as those darling kids.
I’m not so self-centered I can’t see that.
Not so tangled up in my own misery that I think there’s no one who loves me at all.
I know they exist.
And I love them, too.
Which is why I need to make sure the troubles haunting me can never touch them again. So I can make sure I’m not the reason crisis visits Heart’s Edge again.
For the moment, though, it feels wonderful to be a part of something bigger.
One with the collective happiness filling my café as people celebrate—and we’re quick to go from passing out sandwiches to passing out desserts until it’s almost a spontaneous party.
It’s almost dark before people start dispersing.
Now that the kids are safe and sound, everyone has permission to go back to their lives and their small concerns like tomorrow’s breakfast. To rest.
I wish I could join them.
But I have destiny waiting, and it definitely can’t wait.
Not when I can feel Paisley coming at me like a heat-seeking missile, and two messed-up daddy’s girls have a date to keep.
If anything, I’m more determined now that I know Eli’s safe from Paisley’s clutches.
I’m damned well going to keep him that way.
I’m already exhausted by the time I chase the last of the part-timers out and close things up, flipping the sign on the door to CLOSED and drawing the blinds. It’s just past sundown.
I’ve got a vehicle full of gold bars and only two hands.
Time to roll.
It takes me almost an hour just to drag everything inside, using a cart and the industrial-strength tarps Alaska first brought the gold up in. I haul it across the parking lot one inch at a time, then bump it over the stopper at the bottom of the door with a heave that nearly bursts my lungs.
Then, sweating, I try to glide it across the floor, off the cart, thinking the smooth surface will make it easier.
Actually, all I do is make my floor look like a tiger ran across it.
If I screw this up, I won’t be around to care.
So I leave scratches in the floor, hauling that mess of gold into the back storage room.
I can hardly feel my arms by the time I manage to let it go and stop for breath, but I’m going to need my strength for a little longer.
At least now, though, I can lift the bars—which are still heavy as hell on their own—one at a time, stacking them along the upper shelves.
Then I rearrange the empty five-gallon glass growler jugs on top of them until it looks like a pretty, glittering product display.
I hope the dazzle will be enough to distract Paisley and her goons so much they won’t even notice a few other little surprises I’ve put into place.
I want to test it, give the cord I’ve strung across the roof and down to the door a tug...but it’s a one-time deal.
Once I spring this trap, there’s no putting it back together again.
I’ll have to trust I’ve done it right.
I’ll have to trust I’m doing something right for the first time in my life and making up for my father’s wrongs.
Honestly, I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel, staring at the rows and rows of gleaming bars that have caused so much trouble.
I’ll never understand what Dad was thinking when he stole from the Lockwoods. How did he think blood money was ever going to help us?
We’d have been so much better off if he’d just...
I don’t know.
I hate how confusing it is.
I hate guessing exactly what he was thinking. A former heroin addict, clean, but all anyone saw was someone who couldn’t be trusted.
Every door slammed in his face, again and again, until the only way to survive and care for his family was to go right back to the world that destroyed him in the first place. A sick cycle.
One that killed him.
One that left my mother and me struggling with his legacy hanging over our heads, these pariahs who brought misfortune wherever we went. I’ve done my best to get Mom out from under that dark cloud, but it’s very much alive if I don’t do something decisive.
Even if Alaska and Eli are safe for now, they won’t be in the future.
Neither will this town.
I remember when a certain bad man everyone trusted had his stranglehold on this place with his drugs. I was one of the only people who knew what he really was, thanks to Paisley’s little undercover visits to keep an eye on his operation and point that little knife of hers under my chin.
I still have so many regrets that I wasn’t able to help Warren when that maniac almost killed Haley, but by the time I knew what was going on, what the stakes were, it was over.
It was all over, and I no longer had to watch a fat drug spider weaving webs around Heart’s Edge with not him, but Paisley Lockwood at its center.
Those threads were still there, all this time.
Only now they’re twisted into a noose.
I just hope I can slip the knot and keep my own neck out of it.
Leaving the storage room, I step into my office and unzip the duffel bag I’ve left there. It’s sweltering and sticky tonight, but I pull myself into thickly padded snow pants, an even thicker jacket, all fluffy down inside puffed out around me.
I’m already a sweaty mess from hauling the gold, so the heat from the insulating layers makes a bad situation worse.
I’ll deal with it because I have to.
A little flying ceramic nearly cut the ligament in Alaska’s knee, although it looked like a shallow wound on the surface.
I’m not about to risk worse from a lot more broken glass—though if things are as explosive as I hope, the padding probably won’t protect me that much.
Deep breath.
It’s okay.
I can handle pain.
I’m used to hurting.
It’s joy, happiness, pleasure, and certainty that are unfamiliar to me. For just a little while, I had them in my grasp.
For just a little while, I had him.
There’s a wax envelope on my desk. My throat closes as I flip it open with my thumb and run my fingertips over the glossy photo on the surface. A stack of Eli’s pictures he’d developed at the pharmacy, only to shyly give them to me and tell me to pick out the ones I like best so he can have them blown up into prints.
So many great shots at The Nest.
Sometimes when I hadn’t realized he’d been watching me.
Watching us.
The majority of the photos are of me and Alaska together—him perched on a barstool watching me work, me calling something over my shoulder to him with a smile I didn’t even know I knew how to make when Ms. Wilma was right.
My smiles are always sad.
But not around him.
Not when he’s teasing me, offering his warmth, his understanding, lighting my world until I forget how to be afraid.
All the hollow places that pain and loss carved inside me were filled with him, remade in his image until there was no denying how I felt.