Chapter 6

6

L ate that night, the pain was bad, and Callum shifted in the twin bed Iris had tucked into Joe's old office in the front corner of the house. The room was roughly ten-by-ten. She'd shoved Joe's heavy oak desk against the wall. It was still loaded with years of junk and paperwork from the ranch.

A big picture window looked out over the prairie. The blinds were closed, but the moon was almost full, and pale light filtered through the slats.

Callum had never been invited into the house when he'd worked here. Joe'd preferred to do business standing beside his truck, sunshine or rain.

Like graduation night, when he'd confronted Callum outside the town limits. Callum had been hiking back to the boys' ranch after Cord had told him to run.

He'd recognized Joe's truck as it approached and then pulled off the side of the road. Thank goodness. Joe would know what to do.

Callum was still shaking. He couldn't stop shaking, not after seeing the blood that had covered Noah's face.

He swiped his wrist over his mouth. They'd only had a six-pack between the three of them. Two beers. Whatever buzz he'd had from the alcohol was long gone, eradicated by the terror of what had happened less than an hour before.

The accident had been his fault. And Joe might be able to smell the beer on his breath.

Joe'd promised him a paying gig on the Red Cedar Ranch now that graduation was over. It was more than Callum had expected, and, since he'd age out of the system in another week, it was a blessing. He'd need the money to find his own place.

Now all his plans were in jeopardy. Unless... Joe could help him get back to the boys' ranch quickly!

Joe stood beside his truck in the dark. "You okay?"

Callum stopped roughly six feet from the other man. "Yeah." No. He wasn't okay. One of his best friends was injured—maybe dying.

"What're you doing?"

"Walking home." It was eight miles back to the boys' ranch. In the dark.

He should have stayed with Noah and Cord, stayed to face whatever came next.

But he already had a record. Two strikes. If he got arrested for underage drinking and driving without a license...

"Two of your friends were in an accident over close to Mackie's place. Drove right off the road and into a tree. Big branch shattered the windshield and went right through. Your friend Noah got hurt pretty bad."

The scene played like a movie reel through Callum's head. Losing control of Cord's truck—Callum'd been the one behind the wheel. The headlights illuminating the tree off the side of the dirt road. No traction. The tinkle of breaking glass.

Cord's truck was so old it didn't have airbags.

Fear for his friend had Callum by the throat. "Is Noah gonna be all right?"

Joe shrugged. He was so calm that Callum had a moment of panic. Did Joe know Callum had been behind the wheel?

"You got some blood on your jeans there. You sure you're all right?"

Callum didn't answer this time.

In the dark, his craggy face unreadable, Joe was out of reach. And everything Callum was feeling boiled just beneath his skin. He wanted to scream, to let it all out. The fear, the anger, the unfairness of it all. He fisted his hands at his sides, barely able to hold on to himself.

Joe took a step closer. He had an inch on Callum, and tonight that inch seemed to grow as the older man bristled.

"You know what I think?" Joe asked. "I think it looks mighty suspicious for you to be walking home alone, in the dark."

Callum's pulse pounded in his head.

"I think you were there. Driving that truck. You might've killed your friend. And you ran like the yellow-bellied chicken you are."

The cruel words cut because they were true. Callum was an awful friend, running away. But he didn't have any other choice.

"You don't have any proof." His voice was hoarse with emotion. And fear. Cord had promised to keep his mouth closed. Had he told everyone that Callum was driving?

"Betcha I can get some." Joe stepped closer again, and Callum could see the twist of his lips that was some kind of snarl. "Iris's daddy runs the Sutter's Hollow P.D. One of our own gets hurt in an accident like this? You can believe there's going to be an intense investigation."

Our own . Noah wasn't a foster kid like Callum. That was what Joe meant.

Noah belonged. And Callum never would.

The old hurt rose up, joining the chaos of Callum's rioting emotions. "I gotta get back to the ranch."

He started to walk past Joe. The other man stepped into Callum's space and swung him around with a shove to the shoulder.

Callum reacted by instinct, bringing his fists up to guard his face.

Joe was spitting mad now, all traces of composure gone. "Don't walk away from me. We're not done here. You think I don't know you've been sneaking around with my niece?"

All the blood rushed out of Callum's head, leaving him feeling lightheaded. Joe couldn't know. Callum'd been careful to keep their relationship a secret.

"I don't want my niece mixed up with a piece of trash like you."

Another body blow. More cruel words.

Hadn't Callum been battered enough?

He was days away from being eighteen. Iris was still seventeen. She had her senior year ahead of her. Her whole life.

Joe's voice went deadly calm. "You got two choices, boy. Choice one: you hike back to your foster home and wait for the cops to show up. Which they will. The police'll find out you were driving, and you go to jail. Everybody in town knows you got a record. And it don't look good that you were fleeing the scene. Plus, Wade knows every judge in the county."

Joe's words were an echo of everything that'd been running through Callum's brain since he'd taken off after the accident. His nightmare, after knowing Iris and imagining the life he could have had.

"Choice two: I'll give you five hundred bucks and a ride to the bus station, and you disappear."

Callum woke up in the strange room with a pained gasp.

Disoriented, he tried to get up, but his leg sent a sharp reminder why he shouldn't.

Had he managed to sleep? Yes, and apparently dove right into a nightmarish memory of graduation night.

Just what he needed. He was soaked in sweat and shaking from the visceral memories.

Muffled noise from upstairs alerted him that he wasn't the only one awake. Maybe the Dad part of him that slept with one ear open had woken him up. He didn't care, as long as he didn't have to relieve that night again.

He strained his ears. The old house was quiet except for a metallic buzz coming from the fridge in the kitchen.

There the sound was again. Brandt, sobbing.

Then, an angry shout from Levi.

They'd gone to bed all right. He'd kissed them from the bottom of the stairs, and Iris had taken them up to bed. They hadn't tiptoed out of the room or anything.

But now they were awake. At... he glanced at his smartwatch. Two in the morning.

They were in a strange house. They needed him.

Callum scrambled out of bed, his broken leg screaming in agony as he grabbed his crutches. He stumbled to the doorway, crashing his shoulder into the frame.

Everything was dark. Only a vague blue glow emanated from the kitchen.

He heard the tread of footsteps upstairs. Then Iris's soft voice. The cries didn't stop.

Levi and Brandt needed their daddy.

He struggled toward the hall and the stairs, knocking his crutches against furniture on the way, tweaking his ankle. He stifled the cry by locking down on his molars.

He paused at the foot of the dark, narrow staircase. Was he really going to do this?

Over his loud, labored breathing and the cries of the boys, he heard a new sound. A soft, female voice. Singing.

Iris was singing to his boys.

He couldn't make out the words, but that didn't stop his heart from pounding hard against his sternum.

He lifted his good foot onto the first step and dragged the crutches with him. They pressed hard into his armpits, but he kept on.

The boys weren't calmed by Iris's singing. If anything, they got louder. He gritted his teeth and tried to move faster.

It took three times as long as it normally would for him to climb the staircase. At the top he leaned his shoulder into the wall, breathing as hard as if he'd run a 10k.

Soft light came from a half-open doorway in the center of the hallway. He leaned forward and pushed himself toward it.

She must've heard him coming, because she turned toward him before he had a chance to say anything at all.

He swallowed hard. She wore a T-shirt and shorts and perched on the edge of the bed, one hand on each of Brandt and Levi's heads. Her eyes were soft with sleep. "You shouldn't be up here."

"I shouldn't be anywhere else," he said quietly.

In the mellow light from a bedside lamp, he could see the boys' tearstained cheeks. "Daddy's here."

Their cries began to quiet.

But much as he wanted to, he couldn't reach for them. His fingers flexed on the grips of the crutches. He maneuvered into the room, nearly tripping over a stuffed animal on the floor and falling face-first. Luckily, after wobbling dangerously, he caught himself and managed to stay upright.

Iris moved out of the way and Callum sat on the bed, the boys scooted over, and, when he used both hands to bring his leg onto the bed, he found some relief. The tightness in his chest eased some, and he took a deep breath.

He got Levi up close, almost buried in his armpit, and Brandt snuggled in next to his brother, both of them under Callum's arm. This was right. This was where they belonged. Together.

Iris hovered at the end of the bed, her heart in her throat.

What was it about seeing the tough, independent cowboy snuggling with his little cowpokes? Her heart pinched.

"Your daddy needs to go to bed," she told the boys. She was sure the doctor hadn't meant stay off your feet as climbing a flight of stairs a day and a half after surgery.

Levi shook his head vehemently. "No! Daddy, tell a story."

Callum sent her a quelling glance. "I'll sleep up here tonight."

Brandt hummed, snuggling in.

"I'm firsty," Levi whispered.

Her gaze met Callum's over the boy's head. A slight smile crinkled the corners of his eyes, and she was helpless to keep her heart from reacting.

"Daddy!" Brandt's demand broke the spell between them.

Callum cleared his throat and ducked his head to lean his cheek on the boy's head. "Which story do you want to hear?"

"Bad wolf."

"I'll get a glass of water," she murmured.

Callum's voice carried quietly as she left the room. "Once upon a time..."

The glaring lights in the bathroom made her blink hard. Jilly kept some disposable cups in the drawer, and Iris pulled one out. Her hands were shaking as she turned on the tap.

She'd felt it when she'd met Callum's eyes. The same instant connection they'd always had. It'd leapt to life as if ten years and a whole lotta distance hadn't separated them.

She couldn't do this.

She had no room in her life for distractions. Watching Jilly's body waste away was killing her. Not only was she a major emotional support for her sister, but she had to deal with her own fears and worries. They'd lost Mom to breast cancer. She couldn't lose Jilly.

She took a deep breath. Stay calm. Go back to bed.

She took the water cup back into the boys' room. Levi leaned close as she sat on the edge, his head lolling against her sternum. She couldn't help but let her fingers feather through his curly hair as he sipped the water. Her heart thudded loudly as he drowsed.

Now that they had their daddy, it didn't take long for the boys to succumb to sleep. She carefully laid Levi out flat, tucking the blanket around him.

"You need anything?" she whispered.

Callum only shook his head. His face was in shadow, outside the rectangle of light cast by the window, and she couldn't make out his features.

"I'm sorry I couldn't get them calmed down." Everything she'd said to them, even her singing, had only made things worse.

"I wasn't resting real well to begin with."

"Are you in pain? Do you need some more meds?"

She heard his soft sigh and imagined the muscle in his jaw ticking away. "I'm all right. You should go back to bed."

She felt his gaze boring into her back as she left the room. Her bedroom was at the end of the hall, and it only took a few seconds to burrow back under her covers. They were stone cold. Of course.

She punched the pillow a few times, trying to get rid of the emotion overloading her.

It didn't help.

What happened with your dancing? Why'd you stop?

She couldn't get Callum's earlier question out of her head.

She'd stopped dancing because of her back injury and because she'd been heartbroken over Georgio.

But her back had healed. Okay, not to the level that she could dance onstage with a big company. She couldn't do lifts.

But she was fit enough to do a basic warmup and simple routine. If she wanted to.

She'd loved dancing ballet. So much that, for the past years, if she'd stumbled across a performance on TV or online, she'd quickly turned it off. It hurt too much to watch when she couldn't dance anymore.

Jilly had never asked her why she didn't dance anymore. Dad didn't care.

Iris was only thinking about it now because Callum had brought it up. And he'd only brought it up because she'd been dancing when he'd known her in high school.

She'd moved on from dancing. Life had happened. She was busy enough with the rescue and taking care of Jilly.

Dance wasn't for her. Not anymore.