Page 88 of Beneath the Mountain Sky

Liam’s eyes drift to the cabin, where Willow hopefully continues to sleep soundly. “Is she okay, though?”

A loaded question if I ever heard one.

I shrug. “As okay as she can be, I guess. Physically exhausted, sore as hell from the hike, even though I made her take it easy and went as slow as I could.”

His gaze returns to mine. “And mentally?”

“Fuck”—I scrub a hand over my face—“I don’t know how she is.”

And given what happened in the tent last night, where she is mentally and where I am mentally are definitely not on the same page. They might not even be in the same book.

Hers seems to be some second-chance romance, while mine feels more like a tragic love story that ends in despair. She wants us to go back to how things were before she left, before I ruined everything, and that’s just not possible, no matter how much I might want it, too.

I never should have touched her.

I never should have given in.

But seeing her so desperate, so needy for something only I could give her, made it impossible for me to say no, even when I knew it was wrong.

Which made today awkward as fuck.

The way she kept looking at me. Watching me, when she should have been paying attention to where her feet were going. Like she was expecting me to say something or do something. As if she wanted me to bring up the fact that I made her come all over my hand and that she wanted so much more than that.

Willow wanted to have that conversation.

And I was nowhere near ready to delve into it.

Coward.

Liam releases a long sigh, his own frustration as thick as my own. “So, what’s the plan going forward?”

I rub the back of my neck and watch the flames again. “Sit out here and drink. That’s my current plan.”

Connor kicks up his feet on the cooler. “I can get behind that.”

Good.

Because I am done talking.

I am done thinking for a while.

For a few blissful minutes, it’s silent, only the crackle and pop of the fire and the occasional rustling of an animal in the trees break the moment of serenity.

But just like when they first arrived, it won’t last long, not with these two doofuses.

And I know who will speak up first because he always does.

He can’t help himself.

The three of us may not be brothers by blood, but since the day someone dropped him on Mom’s doorstep with a note that said, “Please take care of him,” he was ours. He was a McBride.

And he got the best of Mom.

All of her kindness, her caring, all of her ability to read people.

All the things I suck so much at, despite what Willow may think.

Liam’s voice cuts through the night. “You need to tell her.”