Page 43 of Beneath the Mountain Sky
She continues her approach and settles on the arm of the chair, though somewhat cautiously, still holding trepidation in her gray gaze. Her slender fingers, covered in cuts and scratches, trail over the warm, worn dark leather. “I can’t believe you still have this thing.”
I can’t fight my smirk. “Did you really think I’d ever get rid of it if you couldn’t make me?”
The corners of her lips curl up slightly. “I guess not, but I understand why you still have it. I was always half-joking when I suggested it was too ugly to stay in the cabin.”
And I always knew that because she knew what it meant to me.
“It’s the only thing I really remember about my dad, other than him teaching me to swing an axe.”
Willow gives me a sad smile that darkens her eyes and pulls at that cut on her lip. “Sometimes I wish I had known mine, but I feel like maybe I didn’t miss out on all that much.” Her throat works hard, like she’s fighting emotion she doesn’t want to let out. “Mostly because of your mom.”
A knife slices through my heart at the agony in her voice for the woman who took her under her wing and gave her what her own mother couldn’t. The one who stepped up to raise Connor, Liam, and me all alone in this wild place and always kept her doors open to anyone who needed help.
Against my better judgment, I let my left hand drift down to cover hers on the chair arm. “She loved you, you know? Like you were one of her own.”
She nods, tears pooling in her eyes. “She did have a habit of taking in strays.”
“You weren’t a stray.”
A little laugh fills the night, followed by another crack of thunder that makes Willow shudder. “Yeah, I was.”
“You had your mom…”
She snorts. “Yeah, and she was Mother of the Year.”
“She had her issues, no one can deny that, but she loved you and did the best she could. My mom just”—I shrug—“was there to help pick up the pieces and fill in where your mom couldn’t step up.”
“She did that for a lot of people.”
“I know.”
More than I could possibly count.
Everyone in McBride Mountain knew they could come to her for anything they needed—money, a warm place to sleep, advice on life or love, or just a warm, motherly hug.
Willow assesses me in the firelight, her gaze roaming over my face before it connects with mine again. “You got that from her.”
“Got what?”
Her eyes soften into a look I longed for so much over the last year. “Your big heart.”
The way she says the words rips said organ in two.
If I had as big a heart as she believed, none of this would have happened.
She never would have left.
I may spend most of my free time helping people on the mountain and in town, donating my skills and money where it’s needed across this vast swath of North Carolina wilderness, but none of it could ever be enough penance or wash away the sin of what I did to Willow that day she drove away from me and this place.
No one has been able to get close.
Nothing has brought me joy since the moment she left.
I would give up anything and everything I own if I could have had her back this entire time, if I could retract those words I said to her. And the way she’s staring at me, I know I won’t be able to put off having the conversation about it much longer.
She deserves to know the truth about that as much as she does about what happened to her.
Outside the window, lightning streaks across the sky again, and another rumble of thunder rolls through the house.
