Page 5 of Beneath the Mountain Sky (McBride Brother Lumberjacks #1)

Pain stabs at my temples again, and I squeeze my eyes closed, trying to reconcile his words with anything in my memory.

We never argue.

Like… ever.

What could we possibly have fought about that was bad enough to have him acting like this?

That was bad enough to make me leave McBride Mountain?

I open my eyes again and meet his tentative gaze filled with utter anguish that I have only seen on his face once before—when his mother died. “I left?”

Raven glares at Killian, who finally moves from his imitation of a statue and turns away, scrubbing his hands over his face and through his hair, tugging on the long, blond strands like he always does when he’s frustrated.

He doesn’t seem inclined to shed any light on the situation.

He can’t even look at me.

But my best friend won’t leave me hanging.

She tightens her grip on my hand, casting a hesitant look at him before refocusing on me. “You called me to come up and help you pack. You were…borderline hysterical. Said you had to leave. That you couldn’t stay any longer.”

Killian’s shoulders tighten, back still to me.

But I don’t have to see his face to know how upset he is.

The tension practically radiates off him.

“I tried to get you to tell me what happened, but all you would say was that it was over between you and Killian, that you didn’t have a future on McBride Mountain.”

Those words ring in my ears, almost as painfully as trying to remember.

But they don’t feel right.

Not when the last memory I have of him is the love in his gaze and touch and of the future we were planning together.

“But why ?”

Killian spins to face us now, his hands fisted as if he’s fighting the urge to destroy something. “It doesn’t matter.”

Raven sneers at him. “It very much does .”

His gaze drifts to me, and the apology soaking those azure eyes tells me that whatever happened between us, he regrets it deeply. “Please, Willow, you don’t need to be worrying about this right now…” He shoves a hand through his hair roughly. “Later, when you’re feeling better. We can…we can talk.”

There’s a plea there.

To let it go for now .

Under any other circumstances, I wouldn’t.

I’ve always had to push Killian to open up, to break free from his natural inclination to shut down and keep everyone out—even those he loves the most. And I was the only one who could ever do it without getting snapped at and paying the consequences for poking the bear.

But bone-deep exhaustion threatens to drag me back under the longer this goes on.

And that incessant pounding in my head only grows.

Right now, I don’t have it in me to push, not when even breathing and thinking hurts.

I tear my gaze from his to focus on Raven and what she said earlier, which makes more sense, coupled with this revelation. “So, I went to Charleston?”

She shakes her head. “No, we loaded up your truck, and you said you were heading to Asheville, to those friends you met at that market.”

“Julie and Rob?”

“Yeah.” She nods. “You stayed with them for a while before you went to Williamsburg.”

“Williamsburg?”

Killian snarls. “What the hell, Raven? First, you said Charleston, now it’s Asheville and Williamsburg. Where the hell was she?”

Raven glares at him, then turns back to me.

“Over the last year, you’ve sent me maybe half a dozen different things.

A birthday gift, a Christmas gift, a few postcards.

It seemed like you were spending a couple of months in one place and then moving on.

Hitting up local markets and selling your candles in various shops.

You always sounded so happy when you wrote, and I didn’t think there was any reason to worry, as long as you were. ”

A shadow falls over her as Killian shifts closer to the bed, blocking out the light and looming over Raven in a way that would intimidate someone who wasn’t so used to dealing with him. “So, you don’t really know where she was before today?”

His question fills the room, along with a thousand other unspoken ones.

Raven pulls her lip under her teeth and shakes her head. “No.” Her eyes meet mine. “The last postcard I got was from Charleston a few months ago.”

Months?

Shifting his weight, Killian scowls deeper, his brow furrowing as if he’s trying to process all this information just as I am. “A lot can happen in a few months…”

And a year, apparently.

Killian issues a frustrated growl, shoving his hands into his hair again. “None of this makes any fucking sense. Why would she come back to McBride Mountain and not tell anyone?”

I suck in a long, slow breath, that same question battering my brain.

Even if I wasn’t in Charleston. Even if I had moved on to somewhere else. Even if whatever happened with Killian kept me from wanting to see him, I would have driven straight to Raven’s the moment I pulled into town. “I wouldn’t have…”

Raven seems to understand exactly what I’m saying, tears brimming in her emerald eyes as she squeezes my hand. “When are you getting out of here? When can I bring you home?”

“Tomorrow, but?—”

Killian moves again, towering over Raven, who is half his size at best—David and Goliath going head to head again in a battle I can sense in the air. “She’s not going to your place.”

His tone offers no room for argument.

Raven gapes up at him. “Excuse me?”

He thrusts an outstretched finger toward the door. “That doctor isn’t going to get me to leave her bedside, and there’s no way in Hell she’s not coming home with me.”

* * *

KILLIAN

Raven glares at me from where she sits beside Willow, clutching her hand possessively when it should be me doing it.

The woman who has been a thorn in my side since basically the day she was born appears to want to continue that placement—and fester in the wound she created by not telling me where or how to find Willow over the last year.

So many arguments.

So many times I tried desperately to get any information about how to find Willow.

Only to get nowhere because of Raven.

Her pink lips that have spewed so many horrible things about me and everyone else in McBride Mountain on her little website twist at me, her jaw tightening. “She broke up with you, Killian. She left you. She’s not going back to your place.”

Fucking hell.

Raven isn’t wrong about what went down—or the fact that Willow’s leaving me was completely warranted.

But rage boils in my blood at the thought of letting her out of my sight again.

It reignites from the simmering fury that’s been there since the moment I found Willow in that cold water and pulled her from it.

Even now, cataloging her injuries mentally and seeing them marring her still-too-pale skin makes me want to punch through a fucking wall, to burn down the world until I find whoever’s responsible for this?—

Except it’s me.

That fight…

Willow had every reason to leave and believe what she told Raven—that she didn’t have a future with me on the mountain anymore.

She had every reason to want to stay away.

But coming back and ending up in the river like that, so far into the remote area of the mountains that even Connor, Liam, and I rarely venture there, doesn’t make any sense.

And seeing her with Raven confirms for me that something else is happening beneath the surface of how things appear.

Even if she wants nothing to do with me and didn’t want to see my face again, she wouldn’t have returned without going straight to Raven. She would have run to her best friend the moment she crossed past the “Welcome to McBride Mountain” sign.

Which means there’s something bigger going on here.

Something that could be very dangerous.

Especially to the woman sitting in that hospital bed.

That means I won’t cave about bringing Willow home with me.

Not a fucking chance.

Not when we don’t know anything.

Not when she doesn’t have her memory.

Not when she’s so vulnerable.

Not when—since the moment I saw her face in that river—my heart started beating again for the first time in a fucking year.

I won’t let her out of my sight again until I know she’s safe and I’ve unraveled this mystery.

Unless that’s what she wants…

I tear my focus from Raven and redirect it to the woman in question, who watches us with wide gray eyes, one with a bandage above it where the skin over her eyebrow was split open and had to be stitched closed.

“Willow, I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to”—I swallow the emotion clogging my throat at having to even ask her this—“but would you rather come home with me tomorrow or go to Raven’s?”

The mere thought that she might not trust me, might not want to come to the home we shared, is enough to make me hold my breath in anticipation of her response.

All the agony I’ve suffered the past year, knowing I lost the greatest thing in my life because of what I did, rushes over me, washing away the relief of having her back. Because I could lose her again just as quickly.

She could say no.

She could want to go with Raven.

Some subconscious part of her might still hate me and want to stay away.

Her uncertain eyes shift to her best friend and then return to me, searching mine, though I don’t know what she’s looking for because I don’t even know what’s there.

Anger.

Fear.

Full-on hysteria.

Everything happened so fast.

This morning, I woke up thinking I was going out with Connor and Liam to fell a goddamn tree, but instead, I found the woman I thought I would spend the rest of my life with, the woman who left me and shattered my heart a year ago, practically dead in the fucking water.

And now she can’t even tell me how she got there or explain any of it.

“Please, Honeybee…”

There’s only one woman on this planet I would get on my knees and beg for, and it’s this one.

If I have to drop to this shitty linoleum in front of Raven, knowing full well it will end up on her gossip page tomorrow, I would still do it.

And using that nickname for her might have been playing dirty, but when it comes to her, I’m willing to do anything.