All those old feelings rush back through me.
Liam’s hand tightens on my knee. “You all right?”
I open my eyes and nod, trying to shake off the chill in my blood. “Yep. Just excited to see your place.”
He releases a tiny sigh. “Well, don’t get your hopes up too much. It’s a homestead, not the Four Seasons. We work it, and it’s very rugged.”
“I hope this doesn’t make me sound dumb, but I have no idea what that really means.”
Another light chuckle fills the cab, relieving a little of the tension. “I guess I wouldn’t expect you to. It means we live off the land, for the most part. We have two cows, horses, chickens, goats?—”
“Wow, a whole farm.”
He grins. “Not quite, but close. We only raise the animals that have some usefulness to us and that we have room for. When my mom was still alive, we were a hundred percent dependent on everything coming from our own land.”
“Not anymore?”
Even with his focus on the drive, I can see the wistful look overtake his eyes. “Things have changed a lot, even though I always say McBride Mountain never changes. As it’s gotten easier to get supplies, and as the lumber business has expanded and we’ve had to be at the yard more and out at the logging sites, I hate to say that we’ve become a little more reliant on things we can buy at the general store. But we still like to do as much of it on our own as we can.”
“Seems like a fun way to grow up.”
And having that kind of environment explains how he can be like this.
So content.
So happy.
“It was.” He grins at me briefly. “I don’t have any complaints.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” Liam takes the truck around another bend, and all the air freezes in my lungs at how narrow the road gets here. He tightens his grip on my knee again. “Don’t worry, it will fit.”
“Okay…” I release a shaky breath, not entirely sure I believe him, but the truck somehow manages to squeeze between the massive trees overarching it. “You said you were left on the doorstep…”
His body tenses slightly, and he swallows. “Yeah…”
“Up here?”
He nods.
“So, someone drove up this”—I motion to the road—“and left you.”
“Yeah.” His brow furrows. “I mean, I assume so. It would’ve taken hours to walk, and carrying a baby…”
Exactly what I was thinking.
When he briefly mentioned that tidbit of family history to me, it was apparent the entire situation weighed on him in some way.
“So…someone must have really cared about you to have gone to all that trouble, right?”
He nods again, swallowing thickly.
“Do you know who your biological mother is?”
Liam glances at me out of the corner of his eye. “I do, but that’s a very long, very sordid ordeal that I definitely don’t want to get into tonight.” His hand slides higher on my leg. “Some other time.”
“Okay…”
