What a shitshow.
There were better times and places, and they were only making this worse.
“You’ll get what’s coming to you.” My dad stepped back, giving me a clear view of his angry face. “And when it finally catches up to you, you’ll know that you were the reason this all happened.”
My mother and father left just as abruptly as they arrived, leaving the diner in stunned silence.
“Call Black,” Denver said quietly. “Right now.”
I assumed he was talking to me, because there was no one else at the table that could’ve known what he was talking about. But then a man I hadn’t observed at the counter stood up and reached for his phone clipped to his belt. I recognized him as Odin, the town grump and expert glarer. He’d scared the absolute crap out of me ever since he’d started showing up in town with the Dixie Wardens last year.
The first time I’d seen him he’d gotten in a bar fight with one of the workers at Paul Bunyon’s Logging. The man had been the size of a brick shit house, and looked like he could bench press a Buick. Yet, Odin had found offense when the man had tried to force his wife to drink a shot that she didn’t want to drink. After telling the man off, Odin had gone back to his business.
But the abuser had hauled his wife up by her hair and all but shoved the shot down her throat, and Odin had rightly objected to that move also and shown him the error of his ways.
From that moment on, I’d had a wary respect for him.
Now, looking at him, he looked even more scary, which should’ve been impossible. However, I was experiencing it with my own eyes, and the man looked like he could flay the skin off your bones with just a narrow-eyed glare.
“Black,” I heard Odin rumble. “Something’s happened.”
“You okay?”
I looked away from Odin to see Denver looking at me like I would break.
But that’s the thing about my parents. Their opinions of me had stopped mattering the day that I’d emancipated myself and moved out at seventeen.
“Yes,” I lied.
I might not get my feelings hurt as easily, but that didn’t mean that everyone else’s opinion of me didn’t matter.
Especially the two men standing in front of me looking quite ferocious.
They meant something to Weaver, so that meant they meant something to me.
And I liked to make good impressions when it mattered.
“What’s with that look on your face, then?” he asked bluntly.
“I can’t say that I quite like the idea of my business being aired like it has,” I admitted. “But I know that something like this wasn’t ever going to stay secret for long.”
Denver grunted and took the seat next to me again, boxing me in and blocking my view from everyone else in the diner.
“Nobody’s opinion but your own matters,” Denver said quietly. “Do you want anything else to eat?”
I was already shaking my head. “I have no room left in my stomach.”
He eyed my mostly finished plate before saying, “You eat like a rabbit.”
“She eats pretty heftily,” Nettie interjected. “Her appetite is still coming back after the bear attack.”
Denver’s eyes lit on my face. “I heard the 9-1-1 call.”
I nodded. “I’m sure everyone has at this point.”
“Wasn’t even there, and didn’t experience it with you,” he said. “But literally gave me chills.” His eyes were intense when he said, “I used to let my daughter go on trail runs by herself. Not anymore.”
I shook my head. “You should let her go. I won’t let anyone stop me from going on my own solo hikes. This was a freak accident, and it literally could’ve happened to anyone. Even a man who might’ve had a better chance at fighting it off.”
