Page 26 of Little Bird
I pick up the axe and swing it casually, like I might decide to go chop something. A tree. His truck.
Him.
“And yet your dad told you to show me around. Get to know me again. Figure out what I’m up to. Take me to your shop and I just might tell you. Besides, it’s a family affair, right? And I’m part of your family. Stepsister.”
“Ex-stepsister,” he clarifies.
I grin, because this is starting to feel like an inside joke, and it turns out I like inside jokes with him. “Ex-stepsister who still wants to see the shop you never showed her. I mean at this point I’m starting to doubt you guys even cut wood or make furniture. Maybe the so-called shop is something a whole lot more questionable. A sex shop? A porn studio? Something… worse?”
I widen my eyes at that, pretending absolute horror at the possibility, and Gabe’s expression finally lightens up.
“Oh my God, fine,” he mutters, but a grin catches at the corner of his mouth and his eyes sparkle.
Just like I hoped they would.
Because this boy might think I’ve forgotten everything I ever learned about him, but I know him inside and out. His hair might have changed color, and he may have grown taller and broader. He definitely thinks he can hide his feelings better than he used to.
But in moments like these, I can still see right through him.
And I definitely know how to make him do what I want.
Now if only I could manage the same with Gunner.
We drive to the shop, which seems crazy as it’s only three blocks down and up a smaller side street off the main drag. The moment we pull up and I open the door of the truck, I can smell it. The entire neighborhood smells like fresh-cut wood and varnish, with a note of whatever lubricant they use for the electric tools underneath. It’s rich and homey in the sharp, cold air, and it smells like…
“It smells like Christmas out here,” I say without thinking.
Gabe casts me an amused side eye. “That’s awfully romantic. It just smells like wood.”
“Like Christmas,” I say firmly. “Like the Hawkes.”
“So now the Hawkes smell like Christmas? What are we, Santa Claus?”
“Maybe you are,” I say, laughing. “Gunner’s got the beard for it. And didn’t St. Nick start out as a redhead?”
Gabe’s laugh is loud and full now, and a thrill runs through me at having caused it. He doesn’t seem like he laughs much anymore, and the fact that I’ve got him doing it already feels like a victory.
“Not my dad. He would never.”
I scoff at that. The first day I moved to Wood, Gunner took me out to show me around. He loaded me into a four-wheeler with Gabe and drove us into the forest to find dead wood and take care of it. At the time I didn’t know what he was talking about, but he showed me a felled tree and told me it couldn’t stay there because it was a fire hazard and would crowd the living trees out. He brought out an enormous axe, swung it around like a toothpick, and then handed it to me, telling me to try using it on the tree.
He’d laughed like a boy when I tried and missed the tree entirely, burying the nose of the blade in the ground next to it.
I smile at the memory and receive a sharp poke in the ribs.
“What are you smiling at?” Gabe asks quietly.
I recite the memory for him, my voice full of the warmth of the past, but he shakes his head.
“That’s not who he is anymore, Taryn. He doesn’t laugh. Barely smiles. All unyielding rock. He doesn’t care what anyone else does or how they feel. I don’t even think he feels anything himself, these days.”
His voice is despondent, nearly hopeless, and for the first time, I start to see into the depths of him. Past the mask he wears and past even the flirtatious version of him that I’ve worked so hard to bring up. This is deeper and darker, more wounded. I know he and Gunner don’t get along well anymore, but this feels harsher than that.
This feels like they’ve lost each other, and only Gabe has noticed it.
Their relationship is even more damaged than I thought. And it’s killing Gabe.
God, no wonder he doesn’t smile as easily as he used to. He’s up here on the mountain with only his father, and his father has disappeared on him. He doesn’t have any family around him.
