I quicken my pace toward the office, grinning like a fool.
“Damn, boss! You out here runnin’ like the hounds of hell are on your heels,” Mack calls as I pass.
I flip him the bird and don’t even slow down.
“Willow?” I call, pushing the front door open before it even finishes clicking shut.
But what I find waiting for me inside that tiny office?
It’s not her smile.
Not her bright eyes or that soft laugh I’ve come to crave.
No. Shit.
Willow is standing behind the desk, eyes rimmed red, cheeks streaked with tears, her hand clutching her phone like it just delivered a death sentence.
My stomach drops.
I turn ice cold.
All the oxygen gets sucked out of the room.
“Willow?” I rush forward. “What is it, Baby? Are you hurt? Sick?”
I run my hands up her sides, checking for injury. I cup her cheeks, and she turns her face to me, her lip trembling.
“What? Oh, Thatcher, no it’s not me. It’s my grandfather. He’s—he’s in the hospital. Mom said it’s bad. Just a few days at most.”
Fuck.My heart lurches.
“I have to go home,” she whispers, voice cracking. “I—I have to go back to New Jersey.”
And just like that, my day—hell, my whole fucking world—shatters.
CHAPTER 40
WILLOW
Idon’t know what I expected—but it sure as heck wasn’t this.
I’m stunned.
But not in a bad way.
The second I told Thatcher I needed to go back to New Jersey—to check on my grandfather, maybe to face the past—he didn’t ask questions.
He just moved.
Plans were made.
Calls were placed.
And somehow, less than two hours later, we’re standing on a tarmac outside a small, snow-dusted regional airport in Maine, about to board a goddamn private plane.
I mean, yes, I’ve seen the invoices at the mill.
I know the kind of money that moves through McCrae Lumber.
