Chapter 1
Luke
One more swing and the tree fell. The scent of dirt blasting into the air filled my lungs while the sunlight filtering through the pines cast the forest floor in spiky patterns of shadow and light. I let my senses fill, grounding myself against the regrets threatening to derail the progress I had made since returning home from Afghanistan.
I was a father.
I had a son.If I got a handle on myself, I might be able to meet him and see his mother again. My Lily was also back in Sweetbriar, our small Oregon hometown. The thought of seeing her again after everything I had done and how I had ended it all?—
I cut Lily out of my life. I had thought she deserved so much more than what I could offer. After a certain point, the things I’d seen and done in the Army had blended together into a black cloud of hurt and pain and I could no longer process what was happening to me. My grandfather tried to help but you can’t help someone who feels worthless, so I cut him out too and stayed away from Sweetbriar.
Frustrated, I wiped the back of my hand across my sweaty brow, then took swing after swing at the fallen tree, splitting itinto manageable pieces. Some of it I would use for firewood; the rest I would carve into animals, or chess pieces, or paperweights, or whatever else crossed through my thoughts the next time I needed to disconnect from the world.
My muscles burned and my still-injured back ached as I straightened but pain wasn’t enough to make me forget what I had done. Nothing ever was. I could never disconnect from Lily. She was branded on my soul. No matter how far apart we were or how many years went by, she was always there. Memories played on a loop in my mind like an old black and white movie—sometimes skipping, sometimes blurry, but never gone. Those memories pulled me through some of the worst moments of my life, even when I had wanted so badly to let go of everything and fade away.
When I found out she was coming home my life burst back into color. Everywhere I went in this town held a moment we shared. She was on my mind constantly and it was driving me to distraction. It hurt. The desperate yearning in my chest grew bigger every day, overwhelming all other facets of my world until all I could think of was how to convince her to let me back into her life again.
I wondered how she was now. My heart broke for her when I found out her husband died. Then I was sick at myself for being happy I might have a shot to get her back. And my son? I wanted him too. I wanted my life to be the way it should have been before I fucked it all up.
All these years, I had told myself I’d done the right thing. But now that I was home and finally healing, I knew letting her go was the worst mistake of my life.
After my medical discharge from the Army, I was a disaster. My grandfather Jed, or Pops as I had always called him, a Vietnam vet, convinced me to get help. I was diagnosed with PTSD, which should have been obvious to me, but it hadn’t been. Denial is a powerful tool when your only goal is to forget. Pops took me to his therapist, talked me through panicattacks, comforted me when I realized all that I had thrown away, then gave me Rocky, my sort-of emotional support dog. Rocky had failed out of Jed’s ESD program, but I fell in love with the brown and white boxer when he refused to leave my side. He woke me from nightmares, nudged me whenever I got down on myself, and provided me with the kind of love only the best, most loyal dogs could. Rocky was currently dozing off under a tree.
Pops and his employees trained service dogs of all kinds on his ranch right outside of Sweetbriar. I stayed with him for about a month before moving back to the house where I grew up. And it must be said, there is something about being surrounded by puppies and wide-open spaces that could put anyone at ease. It was the perfect way to begin settling back into a normal life.
I inherited my childhood home after my father passed. He’d made quite a few changes to the house while I was in the Army, to the point it almost felt like a different place. But the land was the same—fifty acres that backed into the Cascade Mountains in Oregon. I had since readjusted to the quiet sounds that had been so familiar in my childhood: animals rustling through the brush, the rush of the river, wind blowing through the trees. After being surrounded by people and near constant activity it was difficult at first, but I finally realized getting acclimated to peace and solitude was a blessing.
“Yo, McCabe!” My former sergeant, Liam, called to me from the trees. He was my brother, bonded irrevocably not by the blood that flowed through our veins but by the blood we had lost together over the last few years.
Rocky’s ears pricked up, but he didn’t budge; by now he knew Liam almost as well as he knew me.
“Hey.” I took another swing and left the axe in the wood. “How was work?”
“Typical. Boring. Quiet.” He grinned at me. “Small town life is exactly what I needed.”
“I grew up here. It’s not always boring and quiet, you know.” Like any small town, Sweetbriar had its fair share of gossip and low-key intrigue.
His lips tipped up in a grin. “Duly noted. How was therapy?” I was glad to see him smile. I wasn’t the only one who was a mess when we got here.
“The physical stuff is always easier. Talking about myself was never my thing.” Liam and I served together, we were both medically discharged due to the same IED attack. I convinced him to come with me to Sweetbriar and help me run my late father’s construction company.
“Swinging that axe can’t be good for your back,” he remarked.
I shrugged. “As long as I do it right, I’m fine.”
He smirked. “You’re full of shit.”
“I needed to—” I ran a hand down my face, unsure of what I was trying to say. But Liam knew.
“You needed to get it out. The way you feel about her being here... it’s real now. No moreiforwhen. They’re both in town and it’s just a matter of time before you see them.”
“I’m nervous as fuck,” I admitted.
“I can’t blame you for that. You’ve been building this up in your mind for a long time.”
“It’s everything, man. If I screw this up, what do I have?”
“Hey, look. For one, that’s not going to happen. And two, both of us know by now it’s not healthy to think that way. We have each other, and Jed, and my grandmother. Neither one of us is alone.”
