Page 110 of Claiming Their Omega

We don’t talk, obviously, since it’s nearly impossible to carry on a conversation while riding a motorcycle together. That’s part of what makes it so intimate. You need to be in tune with your co-rider’s body so that you can share the balance on the bike.

But while it’s always silent, there’s something particular about this silence. It feels like there’s a weight that’s settled onto us. It doesn’t feel like a bad weight, exactly, but it’s something.

Finally, we get into the trees and I can’t see the valley below us anymore. Although there aren’t as many cabins up here are there are lower down the mountain, there are a few. Most of them are empty this time of year though, especially the fancy ones that are owned by people who live in the city and come out here just for the snow in the winter.

The cabin that emerges through the trees is a surprise.

It’s small and dilapidated. Neglected, honestly. Nothing fancy about it. No sign that anyone’s used it for vacations or otherwise for years.

Cade stops the bike and we get off. I look around. “What is this?”

He clears his throat, then says, quietly, “It’s where I used to live. With my father.”

I turn and stare at him. I knew that Cade’s father died before he came to town, before any of us knew him, but that’s all I knew. Like Easton, he came in when we were in high school, and he just folded into the town like he’d always been there.

“I’m sorry,” I say softly. I don’t know what else to say.

Cade nods, then takes my hand. He leads me inside.

Chapter 39

Cade

Memories flood me the instant we enter the cabin.

Everything’s familiar. Too familiar. Like I never really left.

I heard that saying once, you know, the priest or rabbi or whoever says, give me a kid for the first seven years of his life and he’ll be mine forever. I get it. This cabin is where I spent my childhood. My formative years. It still lives somewhere inside me. I worry it always will.

It’s dusty in here. Dad wouldn’t have cared, but I do.

Dad didn’t really care about much, after Mom died.

Grace looks around with a gentle curiosity. “It’s not very big.”

“No. Dad wasn’t rich. He didn’t want anything fancy, anyway.”

The cabin’s just one big room, with a bathroom, then the loft above, and a cellar below. It’s from back when people actually lived out here to work and had to keep their own food through the winter.

“I think Dad got this place off a family friend or something. It’s pretty old. I think it was a hunting cabin back in the day.” I nod at the ceiling. “There’s a loft. Originally for holding smoked meats. That’s where I slept. It was cozy, like a nest. That couch pulls out, it was Dad’s bed.”

“It’s pretty simple. But cozy.”

“Yeah. I guess. It was a shock coming here at first. We weren’t from around here, and Dad made a point to keep some distance between us and the people from the surrounding towns. He didn’t want to be near anyone who knew us—who’d known my mom.”

“Was she… a poor person? In character, I mean, not—not financially.”

“No. She was lovely. I barely remember her now. But Dad told me about her all the time. He loved her so—so fucking much. When she died he couldn’t take it. I don’t know what he was like before he lost her. Maybe he was just like me. Quiet. All that. Only happier. But uh… afterward… he left everything behind. Only cared about raising me. Hated people. Hated just about everything. Being unhappy was all he had left and he clung to it. I think he thought if he ever got happy it would be a betrayal. It would mean he’d stopped loving her.”

“Oh, Cade.” Grace takes my hand and leads me to the old, worn couch, encouraging me to sit down. “I’m so sorry. That must’ve been really hard for you, as a kid.”

She squeezes my hand. “You know that being happy isn’t a betrayal, right? I don’t want you to think that. Your mom must’ve loved you, and she’d want you to be happy. Every good parent wants that for their kid.”

I nod, a lump in my throat. It takes me a few times of clearing it to get the words out. “I know. Hard to feel it sometimes. But I know.”

“What happened to your father?”

“He died. That’s all there is to it. I couldn’t be here by myself so I came down to town, was enrolled in a proper school for the first time. It was a lot.”

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