Page 10 of Beneath the Mountain Sky (McBride Brother Lumberjacks #1)
KILLIAN
“A re we really not going to talk about it?”
Liam’s question cuts through the peaceful silence of the forest—previously broken by our own footsteps through the brush—and I scowl at him as he walks next to me along the western bank of the river.
“Talk about what?”
He snorts and gives me an incredulous look, his green eyes narrowing the same way Mom’s used to when she was waiting for us to crack.
When she knew there was something we were hiding, something weighing on us, and it was only a matter of time before we had to get it off our chest. “I don’t know, the fact that your ex-fiancée showed up half-drowned in the fucking river and is now at your place? ”
Fucking hell.
Leave it to Liam not to know when to let something go—or not bring it up in the first damn place.
“There’s nothing to talk about…”
Absolutely nothing.
Not a fucking thing.
Certainly not the way my hands still tremble from touching her.
Not the way her scent still lives in my lungs and every breath.
Definitely not the way my heart finally started beating again the moment I saw her, even in that broken condition.
If I breathe a word of what I’m feeling, it will unleash a tidal wave I won’t be able to stop, and Willow has already almost drowned once.
I won’t put her through that again.
Sheriff Briggs and Connor motion to us from the other side of the river, indicating that they still haven’t found anything, so we keep moving, just like we have been for the last three hours, searching the banks, the rocks along the shore, the trees and branches that hang out into the rushing waters, and as far into the woods as we can go with the limited daylight we have left, trying to cover as much ground as possible.
Liam stares at me instead of focusing on the ground in front of him that he’s supposed to be searching. “Really? Nothing?”
There isn’t any point in trying to avoid his inquisition.
Not when Liam is a true master at getting under someone’s skin and making them open up, whether they want to or not.
Even as a child, when he would follow Connor and me around the mountain, trying to do everything his big brothers could, he never stopped talking.
Never stopped questioning.
Because he always cared about everything and everyone so deeply that he needed to know what made things tick.
“Look, Liam, I don’t know what you want me to say.”
His coppery brows rise. “How about that this situation is fucked up? Or that you don’t know what the fuck is happening? Or that you’re confused? I don’t know.” He throws up his hands, one clutching his axe, just like mine is. “ Any thing, something , because this not talking is really weird, Kill.”
“When have you ever known me to be a chatterbox?”
He releases an exasperated sigh. “That’s not the point.
You have to have some feelings about this.
” We keep walking, scanning the ground, the river, anywhere there might be a sign of where Willow could have come from or how she ended up in the water.
“I saw the way you looked at her yesterday when you found her…and you didn’t leave the goddamn hospital at all. ”
“Should I have?”
The thought of leaving her, of walking away like I did that morning she left me, never even crossed my mind as an option.
Liam sighs. “I’m not saying that.”
“Then what are you saying?”
He shifts his axe to his other hand, twirling it absently as we continue our way along the river. “Well, that it’s a little complicated, isn’t it?”
Understatement of the fucking century.
“Yes. It is.”
Liam looks to the other bank where Sheriff Briggs and Connor continue to scour—though, nothing has given us any clue up to this point. “She really doesn’t remember that you guys broke up?”
The annoyance and anxiety building in my body finally reaches the boiling point.
I pause and turn to face him, waiting for him to stop before I let myself go. “Are you trying to piss me off? Because you’re succeeding.”
He holds up his hands again. “No. Just trying to get you to open up a little bit, bro, because all the tension you’re holding onto? It looks like you’re about to snap.”
Snap.
That’s a much better analogy for what I’m feeling like—a rubber band pulled taut and then stretched even further until it finally lets go.
“I might.”
He offers me a genuinely concerned grimace. “I don’t want you to snap at her because you can’t process all your feelings. Isn’t that what got you into this position in the first place?”
“Fuck.” My shoulders slump. “You’re an asshole, Liam.”
I never should have told him what happened between us. Never should have told anyone. But a few too many beers and a broken heart did me in when it came to the man standing in front of me.
He always was the easiest to open up to, the easiest to talk to, unlike Connor, who’s always been emotionally shut down since the moment he came to live with us at age two.
Though, I think most people would say I’m that way, too.
At least, I am now.
It was always so easy with Willow.
To be around her.
To love her.
Then why did you let her go?
“How about we stop talking about my love life and just concentrate on figuring out what the fuck happened to Willow?”
Because that’s all that’s important right now.
Addressing the consequences of my fuck-up might be painful, but my suffering is nothing compared to what Willow endured.
Liam sighs, glancing up at the building cloud-cover. “Fair enough. For now. But don’t think I’m going to let this go forever. It’s not healthy, you know—not talking about things…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
I bump my shoulder against his as I walk past, pushing northwest along the river, searching for what would be the most obvious and easiest path. “She was barefoot.”
When I pulled her from the river, she wasn’t wearing any shoes or socks. The current could have pulled them from her feet, but given the state of them—the scrapes and cuts—it was as clear to me as it was to the hospital staff that she was making her way through the woods without them.
Running from something?
Or someone?
Liam nods, pressing his lips together into a firm line as he scans the water’s edge. “I know.”
I turn the other way, toward the dense woods, surveying every inch of the ground. “She would have looked for the path of least resistance…”
Willow isn’t familiar with this part of the mountain.
No one is.
But she’s spent her entire life in the area and enough time in the remote woods with me to know how to travel through dense foliage without getting hurt.
My gaze catches what appears to be a game trail cutting between two trees at the edge of the forest. “I found her, what, a mile downriver?”
“Yeah.” Liam moves closer. “But that doesn’t mean it’s where she went in.”
It could have happened closer to here, the current bringing her downstream until she got caught up on that tree.
“I’m going to follow the game trail. You stay along the shore and search for any signs of where she might have gone in.”
He nods. “I’ll meet up with you.”
I set off down the game trail, nothing more than a beaten path created by deer and other wildlife on their way to the river, looking for any obvious human activity that could have been Willow.
Several yards down the trail, I draw to a stop.
A bare footprint exactly the size of Willow’s feet in the soft ground makes me grit my teeth.
It rained two nights ago, which means she was cold and wet before she ever made it to the river.
Tightening my grip on my axe, I push forward until a flash of color up ahead draws my attention, the same color of red as the tattered shirt she was wearing when I pulled her from the water.
She definitely came this way…
“Liam!”
He can’t have gone far, and up here, sound carries.
It takes a few minutes before I hear his thundering footsteps, and he appears behind me. As soon as I know he can see the same thing I do, I reach out and tug the tiny scrap of cloth off the branch.
“She came this way.” Motioning toward the footprint and holding up the scrap, I incline my head back toward the river. “Signal Tony and Connor to get to this side of the river. We need to be searching over here.”
“On it.”
Liam bolts off the way he came to alert Sheriff Briggs and Connor that we need them over here as I move farther down the game trail, my heart climbing into my throat.
What the fuck was she doing up here?
I picture the McBride Mountain area on the map.
The town near the base.
Our homestead halfway up, about as far as is livable comfortably, where the land can be flattened at least somewhat for crops and structures. Any farther up and the slope gets too steep to really build anything, and the trees and temperatures start to change.
No one lives up here.
There’s nothing but wildlife.
And, apparently, the love of my life.
But why ?
The question has rattled around my brain so much in the last two days, and I still don’t have an answer. Not one logical explanation for why she would have been back on the mountain, let alone all the way up here.
None of it makes any sense.
Yet, she was here.
I push farther along the game trail, finding additional signs that this was definitely how she came through the woods. Another bare footprint pressed into the soft earth, broken sticks and branches, as if she were stumbling and grabbing them for support or they snagged her along the way.
It must have been incredibly painful.
This hike is no joke, even with the proper gear.
Doing it barefoot…
“Christ…”
I always knew she was tough.
Determined.
This proves it.
I continue to follow the trail until it finally opens into a small clearing.
All there is up here is vast green grasses and wildflowers surrounded by towering trees—with no sign of which direction she came from.
“Shit.”
My grip on my axe tightens, the familiar feel of it in my hand doing nothing to calm me like it normally might.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!