Oh, my God.
“And Liam just learned all of this?”
She nods. “We all did. Earl always kept to himself. We would see him occasionally in town, maybe every couple months. No one ever put two and two together, and he never saw Liam, never suspected. None of us did. Until we saw them together that day, and there was no denying it once they were together in front of us.”
Oh, my God.
Suddenly, the way Liam reacted every time we talked about his family and his history makes sense. What he said to me last night about there being things I didn’t know, about there being secrets…
This is what he was referencing.
This is what he didn’t want to tell me—because he was scared about how I would react.
“Holy shit.”
Willow presses her lips together for a moment, thinking about something. “So, ever since then, things have been rough for him. He doesn’t want to talk about it. With any of us. Not even me. I think he feels responsible for what his father did.”
“What? But that doesn’t make any sense. He didn’t even know him.”
“That’s what we’ve all been telling him, but he’s kind of shut down. Shut all of us out. No one knows what to do about it. Honestly…” She offers me a half smile. “You’re the first person who seems to have made him laugh, or actually gotten through to him, in almost a year.”
Raven nods. “It’s been hard…watching him change like that. He’s just not himself anymore.”
“Wow…I…had no idea.”
And now that I do know, it changes everything.
LIAM
The familiar weight of the axe in my hands as it flies through the air and the reverberation up the handle when I slam the head into the tree trunk do little to relieve the tension that’s permeating my body.
If anything, my normal source of release—coming out onto the mountain and obliterating something with steel—seems to be ramping me up more. Making every muscle even tighter, especially those squeezing my chest, creating a permanent ache there.
Maybe because of where I’m doing it.
The darkest place on the mountain.
Where the worst of humanity destroyed so much—where my father did.
I work the axe head free of the wood, then throw it back and slam it in again, repeating the same movement I’ve been doing for the last thirty minutes, already onto my second massive red spruce.
Thankfully, there’s an entire forest of them up here for me to work out my frustration on because God knows I’m going to need hours at this to have any hope of getting some of these emotions out.
And it still won’t be enough.
There’s too much uncertainty.
Too much to process.
So many conflicting feelings that war inside me hard enough to tear me apart…
Footsteps crunch over twigs and leaves behind me, making me tighten my grip on the axe.
That didn’t last very long…
I knew they’d find me eventually. The sound of my afternoon activity echoes across the mountain, and it led them right to me. I would have preferred more time —to try to work through this—physically and mentally. To gather my thoughts the only way I know how to. But I can’t hide from them forever. I never could.
“You know we have machines that can do that now.” Connor’s sarcastic comment floats between the trees, laced with humor as well as an older brother’s concern. “A lot faster, too.”
