Page 96 of Beneath the Mountain Sky
I need to fill in Connor and Liam, then call Tony on the sat phone and tell him to get up here at first daylight so we can investigate whoever was on the homestead, but all that can wait.
All that matters now is Willow.
She trembles in front of me. Her eyes remain unfocused, like she’s having trouble processing everything that’s happened tonight.
“Willow, look at me.”
Tears start to stream down her cheeks…
Shit.
“Willow…”
“I thought…I thought something was going to happen to you?—”
“I’m okay.”
She shakes her head, and I can see the second she switches from concerned to downright frantic. A sob slips from her lips, her body shaking violently. “What if it attacked you? What if?—”
“I’m fine.” I step forward and pull her toward me, knowing damn well that only a few minutes ago she wanted nothing to do with me. With one arm firmly wrapped around her waist, I tilt her face up until she’s forced to look at me. “Listen to me, Willow. I’ve lived on this mountain my entire life, and nothing has gotten me yet. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
“Do you?”
The way she asks it slices through my heart.
After what I just revealed to her, she has every right to want to push me away, to want to rail and scream against the person who hurt her the most, the person who sent her running from this place, from her home.
But she doesn’t.
Either because she doesn’t want to or because she lacks the strength to do it at this moment.
She collapses against me, and I bury my face in her hair, pressing her close. All the tension that’s permeated the air between us since what happened in the tent seems to boil over as she stares up with tear-stained cheeks. “I need to know something.”
I brush my finger across her skin softly, wiping away the tear that trickles from the corner of her eye. “Anything.”
“Do you really believe that? What you said to me that day?”
Wincing, I immediately shake my head. “Of course not.”
I’ve regretted saying those words since the moment they left my mouth, not merely because they hurt her but because they were categorically untrue.
Willow is the most caring, compassionate, loving person I’ve ever met. She’ll be an incredible mother one day—and hopefully make up for my inadequacies.
Every second of every day she was gone, I contemplated what would have happened if I hadn’t said them.
How different life would have been if I hadn’t completely lost all sense of myself and gone for the jugular because I didn’t want her to see my flaws.
Her eyes shimmer with tears as she stares up at me, clutching the front of my shirt tightly in her hands. “Do you really believe you’d be a bad father?”
Hearing those words out of her mouth feels like having my own axe driven straight through my heart.
The very few memories I have of Dad flash through my head. Him showing me how to swing an axe. Cuddling with him on the chair that still sits near the fireplace. Going to the timber yard with him and spinning in his office chair until I felt dizzy.
They’ve faded over the years, but I know deep in my gut that he was a great father.
And once he was gone, Mom did everything with us that he would have.
Took us fishing and hunting…
