Page 16 of Finally Home

“Why her?” Her voice was timid, and she wasn’t sure West had heard her.

He looked down at her with furrowed brows. “Who?”

“Tiffani.”

West stopped walking and released her arm from his. Turning to her, he wrapped her in his arms and pulled her to his chest. The steady rhythm of his breathing helped calm her nerves.

When he spoke, his voice was steady. “It was never supposed to be her. But things happened, and I had to marry her.”

Cami cocked a brow, her eyes glaring at him. “That’s not exactly an answer.”

“I know.” West abruptly pulled away, dropping her arm. Before she got the opportunity to lay into him, he pointed ahead on the trail. “Looks like Bear found us one. That’s the tree.”

Bear circled a tree not far ahead of them. “It’s perfect,” Cami whispered.

And it was. The right height. The right girth. It didn’t have any missing branches or holes. She only wished Bear had waited to find it until she’d got some answers out of West. Right now, she didn’t have much.

For the next five minutes the only sound between them was the ax aggressively hitting the tree’s trunk. West wouldn’t look at her, homed in on the tree as if it were the only thing he lived for. Cami’s eyes roamed over him, trying to discern what was going through his head, and ultimately failing. More than once she bit her tongue to stop herself from asking the questions eating at her. Why did he have to marry Tiffani? And if it wasn’t supposed to be her, who the hell was it supposed to be?

Halfway through the process of felling the tree, Cami insisted West let her take a turn at the ax. The stubborn ass wouldn’t admit his muscles were sore, even though he’d been continuously rolling his shoulders back and stretching forward every couple of swings. He wasn’t thrilled with the idea, mumbling something about being the man, but he reluctantly agreed, handing over the ax. She made a show of rolling her eyes at him as she took up the instrument and, with expert precision, wailed on the tree’s trunk.

Cami hoped to release all the pent-up frustration on the tree by the time it fell, but that wasn’t the case. In fact the underlying irritation only grew when West quickly wrapped the tree with rope and took off toward the cabin without a word. He left her standing there alone. Again.

West walking away from her was becoming a trend, and she fucking hated it.

Stomping through the forest, she imagined every object in her path as a weapon she could use to smack him upside the head. Maybe that would finally knock some sense into him.

Pine cones.

A large stick.

The ax might do more damage than she intended, but maybe it’d get through his thick skull.

She knew chucking something at him wouldn’t actually get him to open up, but it might dull the anger within her. What she really needed was to figure out how to get him to talk. To find out exactly what the fuck happened after he left and where Tiffani came into the picture.

As they approached the cabin, Cami decided to make herself feel better, her anger getting the best of her. She knelt, formed a perfectly sculpted snowball, and chucked it at his back. Hard.

West whipped around, anger focused solely on her. “What the fuck, Cami? What was that for?”

“For leaving me.” She marched toward him, her eyes never leaving his.

He threw his arms out wide, dropping the rope as he shouted at her. “I was like ten steps in front of you the whole way back.” When a glare was her only response, he bent to pick up the tree.

Before he could grab the rope, she grabbed his shoulder and pushed him up, screaming in his face. “It was for leaving me fifteen years ago, asshole.”

His eyes narrowed on hers, and the muscles on the sides of his jaw ticked. “Now is not the time, Cami. We’ve been getting along. Please just let it be for now.”

Toe to toe with him she looked up, taunting him. “Oh, it’s not? When would it be better? In ten years when you come home again with zero intention of seeing me?”

He ran a hand over his face, his gaze finding the ground. His voice was steady but laced with anger. “You know why I had to leave.”

Cami pushed her finger against his chest and bit back the tears that threatened to fall. Her lip quivered, but her voice remained strong despite the urge to fall apart. “You were supposed to come back. You said you’d come back.”

West shrugged, his demeanor cool, as if she wasn’t freaking out in front of him, which only enraged her more. “Life happened, and you never wanted that life.”

Her anger flared, and her voice echoed through the trees. “What’s that supposed to mean? I wanted you.”

He sucked in a sharp breath as if she had slapped him across the face and glared at her. “No, Cami. You wanted the me that was here. The me that didn’t have responsibilities to his family. I had to go, and you made it extremely clear you would never leave Aspen.”

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