Page 11 of DFF: Delicate Freakin’ Flower (Family Ties #5)

Chapter Nine

Gabby

B y the second night, I was half-convinced that the cabin was trying to break me.

Between the bucket bath routine, which I now performed with the resigned grace of someone scrubbing shame off in thirty-second intervals, and the outhouse that I swore creaked menacingly when I got too close, I was one incident away from snapping and building a makeshift shower out of twigs and spite.

But Webb had suggested a walk before dinner, saying the air might help clear our heads. What he really meant was I was pacing the cabin like a caged animal, and he needed to redirect my energy before I gnawed on the furniture.

So, we went walking. Well, he walked. I tiptoed behind him like we were in a minefield.

“Gabby,” he called, glancing over his shoulder. “You don’t have to step exactly where I do.”

“You say that now,” I muttered, carefully placing my boot in the exact imprint he’d just left. “But if I step somewhere new and fall into a sinkhole or a snake orgy, you’re going to feel really bad.”

He snorted. “There are no snake orgies.”

“How do you know? Have you interviewed them?”

He didn’t respond, but I caught the tiny shake of his head, the one I'd learned he did when he was trying not to laugh.

Since the legendary standoff with the raccoon army, our wildlife run-ins had been mercifully tame.

A hawk had soared overhead earlier, majestic and uninterested.

Then there’d been the squirrels—two of them locked in a vicious territorial dispute that sounded like someone was trying to stuff a chainsaw into a lunchbox. Still, both of those were manageable.

But then came the next interaction, right as I placed my foot on the ground.

It wasn’t a croak. It wasn’t a chirp. What erupted from the bushes beside me was a sound so ungodly, so high-pitched and enraged, it could’ve been Satan auditioning for a boy band with a kazoo lodged in his throat.

Webb hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d warned me about them. At the time, I’d rolled my eyes when he'd told me that they screamed. Now, I stood corrected—and mildly traumatized.

Naturally, being the brave, unflinching badass that I was, I screamed back.

The noise that came out of me was loud, reflexive, and a mix of primal terror and deeply offended disbelief.

It wasn’t just a scream—it was a full-throttle emotional response aimed directly at Mother Nature and her amphibian horror shows.

Silence followed it, and the frog shut up.

My body was still frozen with my hands up in front of my face as I turned to Webb, and my chest was heaving as my heart rattled like a caged animal. He stared at me, one eyebrow arched in what I could only describe as amused disbelief.

“Did you just… out-scream a frog?” he asked.

I nodded solemnly, like a woman who’d just faced war and won.

“I think,” I rasped, voice still shaky, “we reached an understanding.”

By nightfall, we were sitting around a small campfire Webb had built with practiced ease, the flames crackling in the humid air. It was still too hot for a fire, and I felt like I was back in the firepits of hell, only this time I’d volunteered for it.

But we were roasting wieners for dinner, and apparently, that required sacrifice.

“This better be the best hot dog I’ve ever had,” I mumbled, sweating from my eyebrows as the heat stung my still recovering sunburn.

“You’re in luck,” Webb reassured, rotating his over the flame. “They’re nitrate-rich and shame-free.”

I’d attempted to make eggs again earlier, but somehow, I'd managed to set them on fire. Again. That was the final straw—I'd officially called a truce with the stove and put myself on cooking probation. Indefinitely.

“Next time I get too confident,” I told him, thinking about the culinary messes I'd made, “just throw a spatula at me.”

“Deal.”

We sat together in a comfortable silence—the kind that didn’t need to be filled, only felt. Above us, the sky deepened, shifting from soft violet to rich navy as stars began to pierce through the fading light.

Then, out of nowhere, Webb said, “I’m not the golden child.”

I blinked at the randomness of the statement. “Okay?”

He kept his eyes on the fire, face unreadable in the flickering light. “I mean, in my family. There’s a spotlight on the Townsends, always has been. It skips around from cousin to cousin, wedding to wedding, baby to baby, but I’m not interested in being the one who shines.”

I didn’t say anything. I just listened, understanding that this had been playing on his mind.

“I’d rather be the one holding the line,” he added. “The one who keeps things from falling apart. The protector and the fixer. I’m not built for attention, Gabby. I’m built for damage control.”

I watched the way the flames danced in his eyes. How he looked more relaxed in that moment than I’d ever seen him at any family gathering.

“What’s it like?” I asked softly. “Having a family that... big and loud? And just a little bit crazy?”

He cracked the faintest smile. “Eventful, but never boring.”

I smiled, too, because somehow, despite the spiders, the bucket baths, the flaming eggs, and the rogue raccoons, this—sitting beside Webb Townsend-Rossi in the middle of nowhere, sweat-sticky and smelling faintly like firewood and hot dogs—this wasn’t boring either.

The fire popped, sending a little shower of sparks upward like they were trying to join the stars.

Webb didn’t say anything else after that—about his place in the family, about being the fixer—but it hung there, weighty and unspoken like something between us had shifted.

And for the first time in days, maybe longer, I didn’t feel like I was running.

I glanced at him sideways. “You know, I always thought you were kind of intimidating.”

That pulled his gaze from the flames. “Yeah?”

I shrugged. “Not in a scary way. Well, aside from the gauges in your ears and excessive artwork on your body." He snorted at my description of him. "More like, you’re the guy who doesn’t say much, but when you do, people listen. There’s weight behind it.

It’s like, if the world’s on fire, you’re the one everyone wants holding the hose. ”

He chuckled under his breath. “Guess I’ve got good timing with buckets.”

I smiled at that, but it didn’t quite reach all the way. My chest was tight again, but it wasn't with panic or fear this time, it was something raw.

I poked the fire with a stick. “I think I wanted to be seen that way, too. Collected and in control, but I’m not.”

Webb stayed quiet. Not in a judgmental way, just in a present way, like he was giving me space to decide if I really wanted to go there. So, I did.

“I started the PI stuff as a joke,” I admitted, my voice low. “I didn’t even take the first job seriously. I figured it’d be a few pictures, a couple hours of pretending that I knew what I was doing, and I’d use the money to pay off my car.”

He was still listening, I could feel it.

“But then I got good at it, not because I was trained or anything, but because I noticed things. I kept my head down, so people don’t see someone like me as a threat. I've always been quiet and awkward and pretty much background noise.” I paused. “I made that work for me.”

He nodded slowly, like he understood what I meant, but shocked me by saying, “You’re not background noise.”

I swallowed hard. That shouldn’t have meant so much, but it did.

“I thought I had it under control,” I admitted.

“Even with Maddox. Even when it started getting sketchy. But that night—when they tried to get in—” I stopped as my hands clenched in my lap, and I had to breathe for a second before continuing.

“I’ve never felt so small. Not even in high school, when I wore headgear and a training bra at the same time. ”

That earned a soft laugh from him, but it wasn't mocking. Just... gentle.

“I had every lock on that house. Every camera, every plan,” I said with a groan. “And none of it mattered because they had more power and more people. I was just one woman with a camera and a file. If it hadn't been for the paranoid-special door, they'd have gotten me.”

“You were smart enough to run,” Webb pointed out. “That’s more than most people would’ve done.”

“I don’t feel smart. I feel like a walking target in these discount sneakers you got me at the gas station with a sunburn that still stings when I breathe.”

He looked at me for a long moment. “That might be the most relatable sentence I’ve ever heard.”

I laughed, really laughed. The kind that cracked something open in my chest and let some of the fear out.

It stopped as I realized I was safe to ask him the biggest question I had. “Do you think I’m gonna get through this?”

Webb didn’t hesitate. “I think you already are.”

It took my breath away for a moment. He wasn’t trying to make me feel better. He wasn’t sugarcoating it. It was just what Webb saw was the truth, like he’d planted it in the dirt between us and dared the world to argue. And for the first time in a long time, I believed it.

The fire burned low as the night curled in around us. But I wasn’t cold, and I wasn’t alone. Not anymore.

The fire had burned down to soft orange coals, just a warm glow under the stars. Neither of us said anything for a few minutes. Not because we were out of words but because the silence felt good. Like the kind that builds between people who are no longer strangers to each other’s shadows.

Finally, Webb stood, brushing off his hands. “Come on, before the mosquitos get bold.”

I nodded, stretching out my legs with a groan and wincing slightly as I stood.

Webb noticed. “Still sore?”

“I’m living in a constant state of burned flesh and emotional instability,” I said. “So yeah, a little.”

His brow furrowed, just a flicker, but he didn’t say anything. He just waited while I followed him toward the cabin, each step slow but comfortable in the hush of the night.

Inside, the warmth from earlier still lingered, mixed with the smell of firewood, faint soap, and whatever weird forest scent had permanently infused everything they had in the place.

I flopped into the chair near the fireplace with a sigh. “We should’ve made s’mores.”

“Tomorrow,” he agreed, flicking on the small lamp in the corner. The light was soft and golden, making the wood-paneled walls look a little less haunted.

He grabbed the first aid kit off the shelf, the same one I’d seen him use when he scraped his knuckles splitting wood this morning and walked over.

“What’d I do?”

“You’re limping,” he pointed out, making me aware of the pain in my foot that I'd been doing my best to ignore.

“It’s a graceful limp, though.”

“You’re limping like someone ran from raccoons barefoot.”

He crouched in front of me, unzipping the kit. “Let me see.”

I hesitated, then lifted my leg, wincing as I peeled off the sock. A shallow but ugly scrape curved around the side of my ankle, red and faintly swollen.

Webb didn’t react, he just opened a small packet with a wipe in it and started cleaning it with steady, warm hands.

“You’re good at this,” I muttered, watching the way he moved—calm and sure, like he’d done this a hundred times.

He shrugged. “Comes with the territory.”

“What territory?”

He glanced up. “Being the one who stays calm while everyone else falls apart. And having so many brothers.”

That made my chest squeeze, but I didn’t say anything and hid it behind a snort. The sting of antiseptic made me flinch, and his grip tightened just slightly, enough to steady me.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

“It’s okay. It kind of feels nice, you know, not doing everything alone.”

His eyes flicked to mine at that, unreadable for a second. Then he looked away, focused on unwrapping a bandage. “You don’t have to anymore.”

The words were quiet, but they landed like they meant something.

He smoothed it over the cut, then stood up and tossed the wrappers into the trash. I wiggled my toes experimentally and leaned back with a sigh.

“Webb?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. For the fire, the medical attention, the weird raccoon jokes. All of it.” It was a lame list, but right now, it all meant the world to me.

He gave me a soft nod, leaning against the table now. “You’re welcome, you little maniac.”

The silence that followed wasn’t heavy, it felt like something settled into place. Something solid.

And just before I drifted off where I sat, my ankle wrapped and my guard finally lowered, I thought maybe this cabin wasn’t the end of the line. Perhaps it was the start of something else—a new Gabby.