He nods. “We built it to last, and I stop by to check on it every once in a while, to replace any boards that need repair.”
If there is one thing the McBrides know, it’s how to handle wood. They’ve built so many beautiful things, and he has never led me astray before, but it’s the rain starting to fall in earnest, soaking into our clothes, that finally forces me to grab the first rung.
“All right.”
With a grin, Liam scoops up Giz and puts him into his backpack, his head sticking out as he tries to watch what’s happening.
I heave myself up, and Liam’s hands find my ass as it reaches his eye level. He nudges me slightly—and completely unnecessarily—and I look back and grin at him.
“I appreciate the boost.”
He winks, waggling his eyebrows. “Anytime, Bluebell.”
That easy-going, playful smile and relaxed demeanor that first drew me to Liam seeps into me now the same way the rain does, helping wash away some of those lingering feelings our meeting today left me with.
I cautiously make my way up the makeshift ladder, my hands tightening around the old wood, testing each rung before I put my full weight on it. The higher I climb, the harder the rain falls, so by the time I reach the top and pull myself up through the small opening cut into the floor of the structure, it’s coming down steadily.
Liam’s head appears in the gap a moment later, and he reaches back and snags Giz out of the backpack to lift him into the treehouse, giving him room to squeeze his broad shoulders through the narrow hole.
Giz immediately begins searching and sniffing around the small space.
In here, the rain makes a different sound as it hits the wooden roof only about five feet above us.
It isn’t tall enough for us to stand up inside, though it would have been when the McBrides were children, and visions of the three of them as small boys up here draws a grin across my face.
Liam sits across from me, a smile playing at his lips. “So, what do you think?”
I scan the small space that can’t be any bigger than five by five. “How old were you when you built this?”
He looks at it wistfully. “I think Killian was twelve? And Connor would’ve been…nine? I was six or seven.”
I laugh. “And your mom let you come down here and do this?”
He nods, the affection for her glowing in his gaze. “My mom gave us a lot of leeway to be boys and to explore and really enjoy the mountain. When she had to be at the lumber yard, she’d let us come over here and mess around. Where do you think we got all the materials to build this in the first place?”
My heart aches at the longing in his voice. He clearly misses her, and after everything I’ve heard about her from literally everyone I’ve spoken to since I arrived on the mountain, I can see why.
Connie was the type of mother I always dreamed of but never got. Someone to love me unconditionally and give me a safe place where I never had to worry about what happened inside the walls, where even the world outside them wasn’t so scary because she was there.
“She sounds like a wonderful mother.”
He offers a sad smile. “She was. I wish you could have met her.” His warm gaze roams over me. “She would have loved you, the same way I do.”
My eyes start to fill with tears, and I try to blink them away but fail. For the first time in weeks, I feel like I can breathe. Like sitting up here in this treehouse, surrounded by nothing but the forest and the falling rain, my past is being washed away, wiped clean. Like maybe, everything really is changing. “Thank you for bringing me here.”
“Of course.”
Gizmo makes a snuffling sound, something in the corner making him dig at the wood slightly, and I crawl toward him and discover carvings in the walls.
I trail my fingers over several of the words and images, making my way around the entire structure, taking them all in. “Did you do all these?”
He shakes his head. “A lot of it was Killian, a little bit Connor.”
Some of them are initials, some names of people I assume were friends of theirs during childhood, but I pause at one that makes me smile, dragging my fingers over the familiar peak.
“This is McBride Mountain.”
He scoots next to me and nods, doing the same with his own calloused fingertips. “Yep. Killian did that one. He has it tattooed on his chest, too.”
