Page 23 of Recluse Lumberjack Heart
I have to think about it. Really think.
"She was good to me," I say slowly. "Before. She was warm. She paid attention. Remembered what I liked, what I didn't. She just." My hand turns under hers. Grips. "She loved keeping peace more than she loved keeping me safe."
"That's not love."
"Maybe not. But she's dying. And she's asking for me."
"She is."
"So I gotta go."
"Do you?"
"Paige."
"I'm just asking." Her thumb moves across my knuckles. "Is this something you want, or something you think you're supposed to want? Because there's no rule that says you owe a deathbed visit to people who chose your brother's comfort over yours."
I stare at our hands on the table. Hers small, brown, callused from reins and fence wire. Mine twice the size, scarred from a decade of saws. They look right together. I'm not ready for how right they look.
"I gotta go," I say again. "Not for her. Not for Wyatt. For me. Because if I don't, I'll spend the rest of my life at four in the morning wondering if I should've."
She nods slow. Like she expected that.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"When do we leave?"
My hand tightens on hers. "We?"
"You walk in there alone and you're a man who ran off and sulked for twelve years. That's the story they already wrote." She leans forward. "You walk in with somebody next to you, somebody who gives a damn, it's a different room. Your mama sees you settled. You say what you need to say. Then we leave and nobody in that family holds this over you again."
"You'd lie to a dying woman."
"I'd stand next to you in a hospital room and hold your hand." That chin comes up. "Whatever that makes me."
"Why?"
"You know why."
"Paige."
"You first."
I look at her across my table, in my cabin, in the chair nobody's ever sat in, with dumplings going cold between us and the fire popping and the whole mountain going quiet outside.
She leaned in the rain and I pulled away. She held my hand in the yard and I couldn't speak. She's sitting three feet from me, offering to walk into my worst memories beside me, and she's telling me to go first.
I get up.
The chair pushes back. She tips her face up, tracking me, and her eyes go wide because I'm coming around the table toward her.
"Aiden."
I take her hands. Pull her to her feet. She comes up light, close, her hat bumping my chest as she tilts her head back to look at me. My hand finds the braid at her shoulder. Follows it up to where it starts at the nape of her neck. Wraps it once around my fist.
Her breath catches.
