Page 90 of If You Were Mine
We would find a way to make our jobs work in both places, so that way we wouldn’t have to choose.
I pressed my lips to her temple as we made our way to the large dining table that my brother had expanded to fit everybody. And even with extra chairs, it was a tight fit.
“I never would’ve guessed I would have to find another damn table to make all of us fit in this house,” Aston said with a laugh.
“I know a guy, I’ll figure it out,” Hudson said with a shrug of his shoulders, but he didn’t elaborate.
I didn’t know what I knew a guy meant, but I had a feeling that by the time we did a dinner like this again with the whole lot of us, we’d have space to fit.
Because that was my brother, all of them. They got shit done, confused you, and made sure you remembered exactly what our family was about.
“Maybe we can stretch it to only five days,” Wellesley whispered into my ear, and I groaned.
“Woman,” I growled.
She threw her head back and laughed, looking like a dream I had never allowed myself to believe in.
I would do anything to have Joshua back, to have the man who was like a brother to me, my best friend. But that couldn’t happen. And there were no second chances when it came to some of the most important things in life.
But he had given me a gift. Part of his heart.
My Wellesley.
And I would do everything in my power to make sure the world knew I was worthy of her. As I looked around this family of mine, some by blood, some by circumstance, I knew I was damn lucky. I had almost given in to the darkness, almost given up. But in the end I was here. My family was here.
And Wellesley was mine. No ifs. No goodbyes.
Just everything. This time, I didn’t mind calling myself a Cage. Because this was the family we had made, not the ones our parents had tried to destroy. One day Wellesley would be one too. If that didn’t bring a smile to my face, and a roll to Joshua’s eyes, I didn’t know what would. I had given in and fallen in love with my best friend’s little sister.
And it was the best decision I would ever make.
Chapter 18
HUDSON
When I had moved back to Cage Lake, I hadn’t thought much of it. In fact, it wasn’t technically moving back to the town as I had never lived there permanently. I’d only been there during the summers and some other vacation times with the family. I’d lived all over the country after high school, because I had enlisted rather than dealing with certain parts of my family. Not my brothers, those I could handle. No, it was the rest of them.
Being overseas hadn’t been a picnic. I held back a shudder trying not to go too far down that path. And yet here I was, in a town that was not my own, but I had nowhere else to go. I didn’t want to live in a big city, didn’t want to live in a place that I had to truly start over again. I just wanted to live in the woods and not deal with people. And yet I was never allowed to do that because apparently when you lived in a small town, all you did was deal with people. That was not in the terms of service when I decided to move here.
Because of course my family owned the damn town. Maybe not the title of each property, but enough of them that they named the damn thing after us. There was really no going back to normalcy and anonymity after that.
In retrospect, moving to a town that held my last name probably wasn’t the best place to hide, but I hadn’t quite been thinking clearly when I had come here.
So now I had to deal with people. Daily.
Because once my dad had died, may he rest somewhat in peace, somebody had to take care of all the properties. And it wasn’t like he had been doing a good job of it. So Aston, James, and Flynn had been doing a decent job of it—with Flynn being the one who dealt with things in the majority once Dad had walked away from the company. But Flynn rarely came to Cage Lake with his full time job at Cage Enterprises in Denver.
So when I had decided to move back permanently, they’d all been so happy. Not that I was back in the country, well, maybe. But no, because now somebody could do their dirty work. And that of course made it sound like we were part of the mob or something. And I wasn’t sure we were. I mean, I’d been away for a while, and who knew what some of my brothers got up to, but I was pretty sure we were clean on that front. Dad, however? Dad I wasn’t quite sure about.
We owned multiple businesses, residential properties, and land, which we knew we would never develop so we could keep the town looking how it needed to. Like it wasn’t some overrun piece of land in the Colorado mountains. Which to these days, was hard to find. The number of developers who came after my family, including stomping up to my fucking house, was ridiculous. Once they got to know me though, nobody came by my house. They knew better than that. And I hadn’t even shot at one of them. I was growing.
I held back a snort at that. Okay, maybe not particularly growing, but I was too tired to deal with that bullshit. And now they knew it.
So while the Cages owned many of the businesses in town, our biggest source of income was right on the edge of town.
And the source of my annoyance. And possibly my nemesis.
I hated the resort. Full of uppity rich people who did not care about anybody else. They paid for their overpriced hot toddies, cocoa, bourbon, and rental skis. Because while most people brought their own, some people wanted to rent something from the Cages. Because apparently that meant something to them.
