Page 100 of Little Bird
My bigger concern is that my mother will use the conflict between us to hurt Gabe and Gunner. Destroy everything they’ve built up here on the mountain.
And of course I can’t tell them that. I don’t want them to worry, and I’m not positive that she’ll even show up. Hell, I might be overestimating my own importance to her and borrowing trouble I don’t need. I don’t want to use my own exaggerations to destroy Gabe and Gunner’s Christmas.
Whatever happens, I’ll handle it without involving them or ruining their peace.
I’ll protect them.
I take yet another tray of cookies out of the oven and slide it onto the counter, laughing. There’s a stack of cookies a mile tall already on the plate at the end of the counter, and I honestly don’t know why I started this batch. Actually, that’s a lie. Gabe asked me to create peppermint cookies for Christmas, and I didn’t know how to tell him we didn’t need them because we already had five different varieties that we needed to eat.
Honestly, I wonder if those two are starting to take advantage of having someone who can bake in the house.
The banging starts when the tray is only halfway secure, and I drop everything and scream. The aluminum sheet hits the floor with a loud clatter and cookies shoot across the kitchen floor, but I’m already spinning toward the door, which is shaking in its hinges with the force of the person hammering it from the outside. What the actual fuck is going on out there? It’s not snowing anymore but the snow is still heavy enough on the ground that no one is traveling much, and we haven’t had any visitors from town at all. I know no one from down the mountain is coming up right now; the roads are too hard to drive for people who don’t know them.
The thought brings my heart to a freeze, though, and suddenly my feet are moving toward the door, because if someone from down the mountain got up here, I need to know about it.
If the roads are open, I need to start planning.
I jerk the door open, ready to shout at whoever is making such a racket, and then freeze again. I know that face. And I know the face of the person behind it.
They’ve found me.
My mother leans up against the door frame and gives me a very nasty, very intentional smile. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t the prodigal daughter.”
The prodigal son. The one who returns home after a long absence, and after having squandered his inheritance. The symbolism isn’t lost on me, though she’s got the story wrong if she thinks this is how it goes.
“That’s son,” I tell her bluntly. “And prodigal means he returns home voluntarily. That’s not happening here. What are you doing here, Mom?”
Johnny reaches from behind her and grabs me, pulling me toward him so quickly I slam against the door jamb on the way out.
“We’re here for what’s ours, girl. And we’re not leaving until we get it.”
He turns and shoves me toward the driveway, and I cry out as my toe hits a step on the way by. Moments later, I’m on the ground in the snow, my mind working overtime as it tries to understand what the fuck is going on here. One moment I was in the kitchen making more cookies, Christmas only hours away, my heart full of love for the men I’ve come to call family, and the next my old family is at the door pulling me back out into the cold and shoving me around.
There’s a metaphor there, but I don’t have time for that sort of thing right now. I need to figure out what the fuck they want and get them out of here before everything goes sideways.
And I want to know how the fuck they got up here when the roads should be so icy they’re not passable.
I get to my feet and spin back toward my mother, the question already on my tongue, when I see that they have someone else with them.
Someone who would definitely know how to drive the mountain roads in the snow.
“Gabby,” I say quietly.
She tilts her chin up and looks me up and down like she’s never seen anything more disgusting in her life. “That’s right.”
I don’t even have to ask what she thinks she’s doing, because my brain is already putting it all together. My mother spent four years living in this town, and I presume Gabby was here at that time. They must have known each other, or at least known of each other. And since I’ve been back in town, Gabby has spent most of her time throwing me dirty looks and reminding everyone that Gunner belongs to her.
Not me.
“You went and got her,” I say, stating the conclusion out loud.
She just shrugs, like this is all completely standard. “Course I did. I figured she’d want to know what her darling daughter was up to. Moving into Hawke’s Wood and winding the Hawke men around her little finger. Making them fall in love with you. Keeping them to yourself and not allowing anyone else in the house.”
It’s such an unfair accusation, and so insane, that when I open my mouth, nothing comes out. Making them fall in love with me? Keeping them to myself?
What?
Johnny doesn’t seem to be worried about that aspect, though. He’s got only one thing on his mind, and it isn’t Gabe or Gunner. He yanks a gun out of his waistband, clicks the safety off, and holds the nose up to my forehead.
