by Susan Sey
“They do.” Addy put her warm, soft hand on Willa’s forearm. “But Eli didn’t hit Peter because he felt like it. He’s not even from here. He doesn’t give a crap about anything that happened fourteen years ago. He gives a crap about you. He laid Peter out because Peter is your brother and he didn’t protect you. Nobody protected you, and we all should have.”
“You didn’t even live here then.”
“I don’t care.” Her chin came up, trembled ominously then firmed.
Willa wanted to laugh but was afraid it might come out a sob. “You really are a good friend, Addy.”
“And I mean to keep it up, which is why I’m not going to back down on this. Eli Walker loves you. He’s in deep. And you might both think it’s temporary, but I’ve been there. I know what temporary is, and what forever feels like. And when I look at the two of you, when I look at the way he looks at you, and the way you look back at him?” She squeezed Willa’s arm. “It doesn’t look like temporary, Willa.”
She closed her eyes again, bent until her forehead touched the steering wheel. “Fuck me.”
Addy’s laugh was as warm and sympathetic as her hand. “I know, sweetie. That’s just how I felt.”
Willa rolled her forehead side to side on the slick steering wheel and moaned. “He has to leave, Addy. They’ll crucify him here.” She sat up, met those sympathetic eyes. “If there really is a fire, O’Malley will use the Cathedral Hill thing to smear it all over him.”
“I know. But you’ll stand with him.”
Willa dropped her head to the wheel again. “How the hell is that going to help him?”
“Because I’ll stand with you.” She touched the back of Willa’s head, light as a breeze, comforting as a blanket. “And so will Jax, and Georgie and Matty and Bianca. Because we’re yours now. You’re ours. We’re family.”
Willa lifted her head, baffled. “We are not.”
“Of course we are. Matty’s my brother. Matty’s your brother. That makes my family your family.”
She stared. “I don’t think the Davises are going to see it that way.”
“The hell they won’t.” Addy’s smile was sleek and sharp in the darkness. “Nobody does family like the Davises. Just you wait.”
“Yeah, I will.” Till hell freezes over. “Let’s just get inside, okay?”
CHAPTER 30
“I STILL DON’T understand why you need me here,” Willa said as Addy unlocked the Davis Gallery’s front door. The lights were low, but the widow display glowed softly, Diego’s work whispering as always of mystery and power and secrets. She hated the way it still tugged on her soul, the way his painting reminded her of how badly she could want things she knew she shouldn’t have, how she yearned to touch things that oughtn’t be touched. She thought of Eli, and sighed. Lord help her, after all these years she still loved forbidden things.
“I told you.” Addy led her through the night-time gallery and held aside the white curtain for her. “You’re family now.”
Willa balked at going into the Diego After Dark display. She stopped to frown at Addy instead. “And I told you, you’re wrong.”
Addy smiled beatifically. “I’m never wrong.” And she shoved Willa inside.
Bianca and Georgie were waiting for them there, perched side by side on the edge of a shiny white table.
“That’s true,” Bianca said lightly. “She never is.”
“Though God knows we wish she were sometimes,” Georgie said, and smothered a delicate yawn with one hand.
“Like now,” Bianca said, and smiled with a fierce fury that hit Willa like a bullet. “But she’s not. You’re ours now, Willa.”
She stopped, shock locking her up from legs to lungs. “I’m what?”
“Ours.” Bianca’s eyes were hot, angry. “Welcome to the family, dear.”
Georgie smirked and held out her arms. “Get in here, Willa. Time to hug it out.”
Bianca sent her daughter a dark look. “This isn’t funny, Georgie.”
Georgie shrugged and dropped her arms, her lips still curved in a lazy grin, her eyes still sparkling with something far sharper.
Addy rolled her eyes and said, “Do it, Willa. Go give Georgie a big fat hug. She deserves it.”
Willa folded her arms — they still worked, thanks be — and took a moment to consider each of the women in turn. To consider the bloody mess this night had made of her soul. Rage boiled up inside her, white and stark and clean. A rage she hadn’t allowed herself to feel in years, if ever. It was the nuclear-strength grief of an abandoned child mixed with the bewildered agony of a girl who’d given her heart and her body to a predator, both of them shot through with the aching loneliness of a young woman whose family had just shrugged out of her needy grip for the last time. It was all of them, clumsily stitched together with a staggering hunger for love, and set ablaze by Bianca Davis’s cold-blooded attempt to use that hunger against her.
“No,” she said flatly. Her voice didn’t even shake, which was vaguely astonishing, because the trembling inside her should’ve registered on the Richter scale. Things were crumbling in there, fault lines opening up, canyons appearing, mountains moving, islands rising. Jesus, it was seismic. It was the tectonic plates of her soul playing bumper cars, and all because somebody had claimed her. Even somebody she hated. Or used to hate.
“I’m not yours,” she said to Bianca. “I’m not your family, or your anything else.”
“Willa, wait, she didn’t mean—” Addy started and touched Willa’s arm.
“I know exactly what she meant.” She stepped away, and Addy’s hand fell helplessly to her side. Her dismay was nearly palpable. It came to Willa’s nose like the scent of wet rocks but she blocked it out. The rage rode over it easily. “She wants to put me under the Davis umbrella because she loves Matty and wants to make sure I’ll go along with whatever lies she wants to spread this time. And she thinks I’m such a damaged bootlicker that after all these years and all this abuse, I’d be grateful for the offer. That I’d jump at the chance to be a Davis, oh glory hallelujah.” She smiled grimly. “Well, guess what? I’m not interested. I don’t need your family. I don’t need your name or your money or your approval. And what’s more, I don’t want them.” The words were pouring out now, barreling from her in a cleansing storm. “So if you have some plan to make sure my mother never sets foot back in this town, just tell me whatever the hell it is you need me to do or say or be. I’ll lie through my teeth and I’ll do it for free, but not because you want me to. I’ll do it because Matty’s mine as much as yours.”
Bianca shot to her feet, her black eyes blazing but Willa said, “Oh sit your skinny ass down. I don’t want to take him from you. You’re his goddamn mother, and believe me, I know better than anybody what it is to lose a mother, even a shitty one. I’d never do that to anybody, let alone him. Jesus, Bianca, what don’t you get about the fact that I love him?”
Bianca only glared at her, her fury an icy whip in the still air that stung Willa’s nose like a January morning.
“She knows you love him,” Addy said softly. “But she loves him, too, and knows she played dirty to get him. It worries her, so you worry her.”
“I’m not worried about her.” Bianca’s chin came up imperiously. “There’s not a court in the country that would—”
“Of course there is,” Addy cut in with a terrible gentleness that stopped Bianca cold. “She’s Matty’s blood relative. If she wanted to petition for visitation, a court would hear it. And probably grant it.”
Bianca glared but Georgie said, “Mom. You know she’s right. She’s always right.” She slid Addison a languid sideways look. “Bitch.”
Addy shrugged modestly and turned back to Willa. “Believe me, she knows you love him.” She rubbed a hand up and down Willa’s cold arm. “That’s why she’s so frightened of you.”
“I’m hardly frightened of Willa Zinc.” Bianca lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “But I was prepared to pay for the privilege
of her cooperation.” She dropped her gaze to Willa. “As usual.”
Willa bared her teeth. “You bought me once, sure, but I’m not for sale anymore. Not ever again. So why don’t you take your precious family name and shove it up your—”
“Willa!” Addy caught her by the elbow. Willa realized with a shock of horrified delight that she had taken a threatening step forward. And oh, holy hell, had she actually cocked her elbow for a swing? Judging from the way Bianca had jerked back, her eyes huge and amazed, Willa thought she probably had. She grinned and dropped her fist.
“Easy, B,” she said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“B?” Georgie rolled her eyes lavishly. “Christ’s sake, Willa. You don’t get to use nicknames if you’re not in the family.”
“Shut it, Barbie,” Willa said, still gazing at Bianca.
“You can both shut up,” Addy snapped at Georgie and Bianca. Willa blinked, shocked. Addy didn’t go after her in-laws. Not ever. “After what I heard tonight? After the way you’ve spent the last decade and a half making Willa’s life an unconscionable misery? I think Willa can do whatever the hell she wants, and I’m her head cheerleader.” Bianca and Georgie both dropped their gazes to the floor, and Willa’s shock deepened. Addy was legendarily fierce in defense of her family, but Bianca and Georgie were her family. If she was taking a bite out of them over Willa, and they were letting her, then the only conclusion was that…Willa really was family, and not just in Addy’s compassionate imagination. As if Addy could read Willa’s mind, she concluded, “Plus, Willa’s totally in the family.” She grinned. “Barbie.”
“Shut it, you,” Georgie replied idly, but those sharp, sharp eyes were on Willa.
“But I am going to warn you,” Willa said to Bianca. “Don’t ever try to use my heart against me again.”
“Your heart?” Bianca echoed blankly. “When have I ever—”
“Every single person I’ve ever loved has walked away from me,” Willa said. “They’ve used me, hurt me, stolen from me, or just decided I wasn’t worth loving back.” She thought of Eli, of the way he’d curved himself over her back while she’d cried herself raw at the thinnie earlier. Thought of the way he’d absorbed the storm’s fury with his own back, absorbed her bottomless pain with his own wounded heart. She’d told him to leave, she thought with a pulse of wonder, and he’d said no. Flat out refused. And something fragile and new had sparked to life inside her, something that had uncurled thread-thin roots into the cracks in her soul. Something that even now was trying to grow. Something dangerous and beautiful and precious and terrifying. Something that gave her the strength to face down this woman who’d been the instrument of so much of her pain. “It’s the kind of childhood that would’ve messed up most kids. I mean, look at Peter.”
Georgie snorted. “Point taken.”
“I should be just that cold, just that selfish, just that greedy. But I’m not, and do you know why?”
“Why?” Bianca asked stiffly.
“Because I loved something. I loved Matty. Loving him saved me, and that’s what you don’t get. You don’t need to bribe me to protect him, for God’s sake. I’d do that anyway. I’d die to keep him safe. He’s my family, the only one I’ve got. The only one I want.”
“You’re wrong.” Bianca smiled again, smugly. As if Willa’s violent rejection of her family name had satisfied her on some level. “You’re ours now.”
Willa stared, her mind simply refusing to accept an about-face of this magnitude. “Why do you keep saying that?”
“Because it’s true.” Bianca waved a languid hand. “You’re Matty’s sister, and Matty is my son. Ergo, you’re my child as much as he is.”
Willa shook her head slowly, her bewildered heart thudding harder than it should. She was nobody’s. Nobody’s but her own. “Just tell me what you need from me, Bianca.”
“It’s not what we need from you, dear,” Bianca said. She folded her hands at her waist and studied Willa closely. “It’s what you need from us.”
“I don’t need anything from you.”
“Yeah, you do,” Georgie said. She hopped lightly off the table and came to stand at her mother’s shoulder, peered at Willa with an identical expression of satisfied calculation in those pale blue eyes. “The press is coming for you, Willa. They’ll be here by tomorrow.”
“Which is why we need to figure out how to protect you,” Bianca said, and her smile died. “Because I will be good and goddamned if I let Shay get wind of this and damage another of my children.”
Dawn was just touching the sky when Eli trundled his inadequate excuse for a car through the state forest to Cabin Six and found Willa’s truck parked at his porch. His heart leapt inside his chest even as he braced himself for the fight. Willa had told him to leave and he hadn’t left. He’d done the opposite, actually. Dug in hard. And the fire chewing up the forest a bare fifteen miles northeast of town was only half the reason why. Maybe not even half. The balance of what was keeping him in Devil’s Kettle was waiting for him inside his cabin, probably ready to tear him a new one for still being here.
He grinned, and it was the first time he’d felt remotely cheerful in the last twelve hours. Normally he got up this time of day to put a dozen or so punishing miles on his boots and on his soul. Then he’d pop a tent somewhere and not even pretend it was home. Coming home to Willa instead — even to a gloves-off show-down with Willa — beat the hell out of that solitary tent in the woods. He killed the tuna can’s sorry little engine and went inside. And froze just inside the door.
She was on his bed, asleep. He toed off his boots and eased the door shut, hope blooming inside him. Her suitcase stood at the foot of the bed, and she’d helped herself to his sleeping bag. He decided he’d own sheets by lunch time if she wanted to share his bed on the regular. A bed, too.
She lay on her side, her back to him. She slept in a tight ball, knees up, fists under her chin, gripping the sleeping bag like she was afraid somebody might snatch it. Her ponytail spilled over the edge of the cot, a tangle of black silk that nearly brushed the floor. Eli had no idea why she was here but he didn’t care. She was here, in his bed, and he was so goddamn tired.
He scooped up all that hair and smoothed it over the pillow. She frowned in her sleep and stirred but Eli eased himself onto the cot, stretched out along her back. He hooked his chin over her shoulder, wrapped an arm around her waist, breathed in the scents of sunscreen and wild things that clung to her always and closed his eyes.
CHAPTER 31
LATER — MINUTES, HOURS, who knew? — he felt her surface. Her consciousness touched his, brought him back to his body in time to feel her slip into hers again.
“What time is it?” she murmured, her voice rough with sleep.
“Barely sunrise, last I looked,” he said, and drifted his fingers over her forearm. “Go back to sleep.”
“Where have you been?”
“Slapping my glove in O’Malley’s face.”
She took a moment to process that one. “Really?”
“Figuratively.”
“That’s a relief.” She burrowed deeper into his arms. “Don’t duel him for real. He’s a decent shot.”
“Who’s shooting?” He tightened his arms around her, savoring the warm weight of her there. Rubbed his cheek into the cool spill of her hair. “I’d have picked chainsaws.”
“You challenged. He picks weapons.”
“Shit. Really?”
“Really. Good thing we’re being figurative then, huh?” She stirred and he loosened his arms. She rolled to face him. Her nose was about two inches from his, her cheek pillowed on his biceps. “What exactly did you slap with your metaphorical glove, anyway?”
“His authority.” He leaned in and rubbed his nose against hers. She smiled and something that had rusted shut ages ago cracked open inside him. God, Jax was right. He was totally in love with this woman. Like really, stupidly, dangerously gone over her. “Jax and I went up to look at the
fire last night. It’s small right now but ugly, and with nearly fifty unburned years of fuel just sitting out there, dry as shit? It’s going to grow. O’Malley needs to get after it with everything Boise’s got. Yesterday, if not sooner.”
“How far away is it?”
“Fifteen miles to the northeast, but there’s a westerly wind.”
“Which pushes it our way?” She frowned. “Crap. Devil Days opens today. Is it bad enough to keep the tourists home?”
“Might be.” He hesitated. “It’ll pass north of town by at least ten miles if the wind doesn’t shift, but—”
“But if it does?”
“It won’t be just Devil Days that’s in trouble, Willa. It’ll be the whole damn town.”
“Holy hell.”
“I know. But O’Malley’s a local boy. He knows Devil Days is this place’s Black Friday.”
“It’s more than that. It doesn’t just make us profitable. It makes us viable. Without those tourists, this town doesn’t survive.”
“And he’s not going to do a damn thing to derail that.” Bitterness crept into his voice. “Especially not on the advice of an ex-hotshot just looking for a flashy chance to redeem himself.”
Willa sat up. “He said that?”
Eli rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “He wasn’t happy that I went over his head and got Boise involved.”
She laid a hand on his chest. “I’m glad you did. Devil Days is important but not as important as people’s lives. Nobody’s going to make a living if Main Street burns down, for God’s sake.”
“Yeah, that was my thinking.” He tipped her a wry smile. “I’m in the minority, evidently.”
“The majority sucks.” She flopped back down beside him and joined him in frowning at the ceiling. “I hate the majority.”
Eli propped himself up on one elbow, smoothed a wild lock of hair away from her cheek. “Get outvoted recently, Willa?”
She scowled. “You have no idea.”
“Does it have anything to do with why you’re sleeping on this lumpy old cot when you have what I’m sure is a lovely, comfy bed in an actual house?” He hesitated. “Particularly after you told me in no uncertain terms that you expected me to be gone by morning?”
