Page 35 of Mountain Man

I caught it. The nails I’d wanted. “Thanks.”

Beau reached back into his truck and came out with a bag in one hand and a plate in the other.

He grinned. “Beer and” —he lifted the plate higher— “cake.”

I smirked. “One of your admirers?”

Beau started toward me. “Nope.”

“Where did it come from?” I asked as we headed to the seats on the porch.

“Birdie,” Beau said casually.

I stumbled up the step, then spun to face him. “Birdie? You saw her?”

Beau followed me up the stairs, took a seat, pulled a beer from the bag, and took his sweet goddamn time answering me.

He twisted off the cap, took a sip, and sat back. “Yep.”

Yep?

Asshole.

I hadn’t seen her in two goddamn weeks and I was slowly losing my mind. “You want to elaborate?” I gritted out.

His eyes, identical to mine, slid my way. “What do you want to know?”

Jesus, he had me. I’d been acting like I didn’t care, that walking away from her was no big deal. He knew I was full of it, though. Why the hell did I even bother trying to pretend otherwise? “Everything,” I rasped, giving up all pretense of not caring. “Tell me everything.”

My brother’s eyes softened, and I hated it, hated that he could see how much this was killing me, because it would hurt him just as much to see me this way. That’s just how we were.

He sat forward. “I saw her outside the library. She’d just finished for the day.”

My fingers curled at my sides. “How did she look?”

“Pretty,” Beau said. “She was wearing these jeans with butterflies and shit at the pockets, and a fluffy blue sweater. All that beautiful dark wavy hair of hers was loose down her back.” He took a pull of his beer and levelled his eyes back on me. “And sad, Hank. She looked like she’d lost someone she loved.”

I jerked back. “What?”

“There was no way to miss it, the pain she was feeling, but there was a split second when she first spotted me, just a moment, where I knew she thought I was you…and, brother, she lit up like a sunrise.”

I gripped one of the porch railings. “You talked to her?”

“She asked after you, wanted to know how long I was in town and if I could swing by her place before I headed home.” He motioned to the cake. “She rushed home and baked that for you. Wanted me to drop it off.”

I looked at the cake. Chocolate. She remembered how much I liked it. How my grandmother used to make me one every birthday.

“Think it’d only be polite to thank her in person, don’t you?” Beau said.

I looked at my brother. “I don’t know, I can’t—”

“She’s leaving, Hank.”

My knees nearly buckled. “What?”

Beau leveled me with a look that made my gut clench painfully. “She was in the middle of packing.”

No.