Chapter Seventeen
Willow
The doorbell rang, and my heart leaped, just like it had the last three times Cam had picked me up for a date. The last three and a half weeks, he’d taken me to dinner down in Buena Vista and a traveling art show in Salida and held my hand as we hiked the trail that led up to the falls, where I lay with my head in his lap as he read to me.
The snowpack had melted pretty much everywhere but the shaded patches, and I couldn’t help but sigh like a lovesick teenage girl when I thought about Cam’s defenses melting right along with the snow.
“Got it!” Rose called out, already at the door.
“Hi there, Rose. How’s it going?”
Cam’s voice slid over me like sun-warmed silk, and I walked out of the kitchen to find him crouched down just inside the living room, talking to my niece.
“Hi.” Awesome. My voice was all breathy and awkward.
“Hey, Pika,” he replied with a wink.
Hate to break it to Mrs. Barstrom, my freshman biology teacher, but she was wrong. That wink right there was how babies were made.
“So it made me think of you!” Rose finished saying as I shook my head free of the Cam-induced fog. She handed him a black T-shirt with a toothy grin.
“Oh yeah? You really bought it for me?” he asked, holding the T-shirt out in front of him to inspect it. “Wow, that’s amazing! Thanks, Rose!”
“You like it?” she asked, hopping on her toes.
“Love it!” He turned it around to show me.
I bit my lip to keep from laughing at the glittery unicorn that adorned the front of the shirt.
“I saw it when I was shopping with Mom, and she said I could get it for you,” Rose finished with a nod.
“Well, that was really nice of your mom.” Cam stood to his full height and unzipped his black jacket. “You know, I can’t remember the last time a girl gave me a present.”
That gave me pause. He’d been pretty open about his past over the last few weeks. Of course there had been women, just like I’d dated a handful of guys. And I knew he kept his relationships brief, but none of them had given him a gift?
He dropped his jacket on my couch, and I picked it up, holding it to my chest as he pulled the T-shirt over his long-sleeve Henley and straightened it out.
“What do you think?” he asked Rose, spreading his arms wide.
I buried my nose in his coat to keep my laugh under wraps. It smelled just like him, all mint and pine.
He wasn’t fooled, cocking an eyebrow at me as I tried to stop my shoulders from shaking.
“It’s perfect,” Rose declared.
“I think you chose perfectly. Thank you.” He bowed his head to her like he was a knight with a princess, and I fell in love with him all over again.
How easily those words slipped through my mind now that I’d admitted them out loud. I would have thought I’d feel weird or insecure, having said them when Cam hadn’t, but instead the words were incredibly freeing.
“Rose, why don’t you grab your coat so we can get going?” I suggested.
“Okay!” She bounced down the hallway to the guest room, her braid swinging behind her.
“Thank you for being so easy about this,” I said as Cam closed the distance between us.
“It’s no problem,” he promised, tilting my chin up with his thumb.
“I just promised Charity that she could finally get a weekend with her boyfriend, and then Rose’s dad didn’t show.” I dropped that last part to a whisper so Rose wouldn’t hear.
“Willow, it’s no problem,” he repeated, then brushed a kiss across my lips. “We could probably use a chaperone anyway.”
A chaperone was the last thing we needed. What we needed was a week with no phones, no distractions, and a very large bed. Any minute I expected this dream bubble to burst. To wake up and find that we were where we’d been a month ago. Years ago. A decade ago.
And I knew that was exactly why he’d kept his hands PG for the last three weeks. I had to trust this as much as I trusted him.
“I’ve missed you this week,” I admitted, stealing another kiss.
“I’m so sorry. Dad had a rough day on Thursday, and yesterday I got tied up in work.”
“You don’t have to apologize. I can miss you; that’s allowed. It’s not like we’re back in high school, when I could sneak a peek at you between classes every day.”
“Every day?” he asked.
“Every. Day.”
He smiled, and I echoed the expression.
“It’s okay. You can kiss her,” Rose said from the hallway, and I ducked my head, laughing.
“Some chaperone you are,” Cam drawled.
“I helped Aunt Willow make lunch!” She lifted the small day pack we’d filled with a picnic this morning.
“Then, I guess we’d better get going so we can eat it, huh?” he asked, crossing over to her and taking the bag from her hands.
She nodded enthusiastically, and we piled into Cam’s Jeep once she was all zipped up for the breezy spring weather.
Cam took us out of the driveway and then turned onto the road that led to the mine. “I thought you might want to see the progress before we picnic.”
“You thought right,” I confirmed.
Five minutes later, we pulled up to the entrance of the mine. Two construction trailers with the contractor’s name sat parallel to the road with various pieces of large equipment parked around them, blocking my view of the tunnel I knew lay beyond.
I hopped out of the Jeep and then helped Rose down. “Stay close, okay?”
“You got it,” she promised, already staring at the construction equipment.
“Your coat, my dear.” I handed Cam’s jacket over as we met in front of the Jeep.
“I like the sound of that,” he said quietly, taking it.
“My dear?”
He nodded, then slipped the jacket on and zipped it up. I noticed the label and laughed.
“What?” he asked, looking down like he’d spilled something.
“It’s silly.” I shoved my hands into my purple North Face.
“Oh, now I definitely want to know.” He adjusted his hat, pulling the stretchy material down to cover his ears.
I snuck a peek at Rose, who was already examining rocks about twenty feet away. “You call me Pika.”
“Right?” He reached over and tugged at my hat, then swept his hand down my unbound hair.
“You know how they like to live with other animals? Well, beneath other animals?” My cheeks heated, and I wished I’d kept it to myself.
His brow furrowed. “Yeah. Sometimes they make burrows under the homes of ones that will alert them to predators.”
I nodded and dropped my gaze to the label on his jacket, then ran my fingers over the embroidery. “Marmots.”
He looked down where my fingers traced those very letters and laughed. “Guess that’s pretty fitting.”
When I was sure my face couldn’t flush any hotter, he cupped my cheeks in his palms and kissed me with warm, closed lips.
“We have a chaperone,” I reminded him but reveled in the contact. It still floored me that I was allowed to kiss Cam whenever I wanted. That he was mine in every sense. Well, at least when we were alone. We hadn’t exactly gone outright public, both content to stay in our little happy space.
“A bad one at that,” he said with a smile. “Hey, Rose, what do you say we check out your namesake?”
“Can you bring the bag?” she asked, her arms already full of rocks.
“I’ll do you one better,” he replied. “Wait right there.”
A minute later, he returned from the first construction trailer with a canvas backpack. “What do you think?” he asked as he handed it to her.
“Cool! Can you unzip it?”
“You bet.” Once they had Rose’s rocks secure, he showed me the bag, which had the logo I’d designed for him embroidered across the back.
“Rose Rowan Mine,” I read.
“They just came in yesterday. I’ve also got sample batches of T-shirts, hats, and key chains in the trailer. Told you I loved the design.”
We stood there looking at each other with upturned lips. I loved designing it for him. Loved working with him. Loved helping him and confiding in him. Loved everything about every moment I got with him.
“Are you two going to kiss again, or can we go find more rocks?” Rose asked.
Cam took my hand, enveloping my grip in his larger one. “Let’s find you some rocks.”
We cleared the construction equipment, and the main tunnel appeared. “It’s smaller than I remember.”
“You were smaller,” Cam countered as we approached the wooden platform, where an open-topped train with three cars waited. “Look what I got running this week.”
“That’s so awesome!” Rose said, racing ahead to the train.
“What she said,” I agreed. “Is that…?”
“Completely safe and in park, I promise.” He dangled the keys from his finger. “It’s the original from the last time the mine ran in the fifties, and I worked with Keith Mayberry to convert it for tours.”
“That’s great, and I bet Keith really appreciated the business.” He was one of the business owners in Alba who didn’t own historical property.
“Yeah. He’s tracking down another setup just like this one—historically accurate, of course—and then he’ll do the same with those. I figured if we’ve got the grant money, we’d better keep as much of the business in Alba as we can, right? It should benefit the whole town.”
I nodded, swallowing back the little lump of emotion in my throat.
“This is amazing!” Rose shouted, already sitting in the car behind the driver’s seat.
“Want to go for a ride?” he asked.
“Yes!”
I tensed.
“Relax, Pika,” he muttered against my temple. “We’ll only go as far back as they’ve reinforced. I won’t let anything happen to her or to you.”
My head nodded, but my brain was already down the mine. “How far have they reinforced?”
He heard the catch in my breath and squeezed my hand. “Not that far.”
“Okay.” I hadn’t been more than thirty feet inside the mine since the day I’d been way farther than that.
Cam helped me into the ore cart, which now had cushioned benches and seat belts, and I made sure Rose’s was buckled.
“Ta-da!” he said, flourishing a bright-yellow hard hat with Rose’s name in big, bold letters above the headlamp.
“That’s mine?” she squealed.
“It’s no unicorn shirt, but yeah, it’s yours.” He leaned over the division between cars and put it over her hat. “Can you get it buckled?”
“You bet!” She buckled as Cam handed me a bigger model that read pika.
“Your boyfriend is so awesome!” Rose shouted with her hands in the air.
My eyes popped wide. Oh God. Were we labeled? Was labeling even a thing anymore? Did he think he was my boyfriend?
“Well, it comes with the territory when you have an awesome girlfriend,” Cam confirmed. “Buckle up, Miss Bradley,” he ordered as he put his own hard hat on.
Dazed, I snapped the helmet in place, then switched on my headlamp and did the same for Rose as Cam started the engine.
Rose’s gaze swung back and forth as Cam drove us into the mine, the tunnel beginning a good twenty feet above our heads before sloping down to only five feet or so. The air was musty, thick with moisture and the tang of metal.
It tasted like blood and fear on my tongue, but I watched how excited Rose was, and the panic eased.
We traveled more than a hundred yards before the first antechamber opened up and a wooden platform appeared. Cam put the train into park and killed the engine, leaving the lights on.
“This is as far as the train goes for now,” he told Rose. “Do you want to explore a little with me?”
She nodded, then swung her backpack over her shoulders and climbed onto the platform.
“Remember it?” Cam asked me quietly.
I nodded. “How is it that every happy memory I have of playing down here was eclipsed by that one crappy one?”
He traced the bump on my nose with his finger. “We can come back and make an even better memory,” he whispered.
“You say no to hot springs, but a dark and creepy mine is on the table?” I teased.
“Eventually everywhere is on the table.” His eyes heated.
I did my best to remember that my niece was ten feet away, when all I really wanted was a table. Any table.
“Rocks,” I reminded him.
“Right. Okay, Rose, what do you know about the mine?” He turned to where she had leaned close to the chiseled stone wall, examining the rock.
“I know I’m named after it. Well, not it but the lady it was named after. Mom thought it was a pretty name.”
“It is a pretty name,” he agreed, helping me onto the newly built platform.
It was a good ten feet wide, built according to the specifications I’d given him when we’d discussed this part of the mine.
“They mined mostly gold and silver,” Rose told Cam. “The first rush came in the 1880s, but by the Great Depression, they only had a small section of silver, and they stopped mining in the fifties.”
“You know that? At nine?” he questioned.
“Every kid born in Alba knows that by the time they’re seven.” She looked up at him from under her hard hat with an expression that said she wasn’t impressed.
“Okay, smarty-pants, do you know where the three tunnels lead?”
She glanced among the three offshoots of the antechamber and shook her head.
“That’s the newest tunnel.” Cam pointed to the right. “It was constructed in the thirties. Great Depression, just like you said. The one to the left was a 1910 silver find. The one straight ahead is the oldest vein.”
“Can we go back there?”
Fearless, that one.
“Not today,” he told her. “We haven’t cleared all the tunnels yet. There are places the tunnels have caved into the ones under them. Places the air shafts collapsed, so the ventilation isn’t good enough for your little lungs. and the sides haven’t been reinforced yet like they are here.”
“Can I look around here, though?” she pushed.
“If you stay in this chamber and your aunt Willow says it’s okay.”
Two sets of pleading eyes met mine.
“Promise to stay right here,” I ordered, hoping she heard the urgency in my voice.
“I will,” she vowed, then scrambled down the stairs and across the tracks to where the space widened a good thirty feet.
“Ready for my surprise?” Cam asked.
“Definitely.”
“I think I can have at least one tunnel open for tours by the Fourth of July.” His eyes danced.
“Really? That would be amazing! Have you told anyone?” The town was going to flip. As much as they despised Cam, they loved money.
“I wanted to tell you first.” His smile blew me away. He was…happy, as much as I hesitated to even think it, and it looked wonderful on him.
“I love you,” I whispered.
He kissed me in response, then pulled back with a grin. “Hey, Rose, if you come hang with your aunt Willow, I’ll find you something sparkly.”
“Deal!” she agreed, already heading back to me, and Cam disappeared off the other end of the platform, his light bobbing down the oldest portion of the tunnel.
“This place is amazing. Pretty sure there’s still gold here somewhere.”
“Maybe,” I muttered, my eyes trained on that light as it got smaller. A few minutes later, it grew larger until Cam came into view.
I let loose a huge sigh of relief.
“You don’t like it down here, do you, Aunt Willow?” Rose asked, taking my hand.
“What? No, it’s fine. I’m fine,” I lied.
“Here you go,” Cam said as he handed two sparkling pieces of ore to Rose.
“Is it gold?” she squeaked.
“No. It’s pyrite. Fool’s gold,” he replied.
“Well, it’s still pretty.” She looked up at him. “You could have pretended it was gold.”
“You can pretend it’s gold now that you know it’s not.” He tapped her helmet. “I’m not in the habit of lying to girls.”
Her brow wrinkled, but then she nodded. “Pyrite.”
“You got it. Now, let’s get you ladies out of here.” He helped Rose into the train.
“Do you think there’s real gold down here?” she asked, buckling her belt.
Cam reached for me, letting his hands linger on my waist once my feet hit the steel bottom of the car. “I think there’s a real gold unicorn pin down here somewhere,” he told her, looking straight at me.
“Really?”
“Yep. Your aunt lost it when we were kids.” His hands flexed on my waist again before he let me go and climbed over into the driver’s car.
“You lost a unicorn pin?” Her eyebrows rose in accusation.
“I did. I got lost down here when I was your age, actually.” God, she was so young. So small. Had I really been her age?
“You did?”
Cam fired up the engine, and I buckled in. “She did.”
“I was exploring with your mom and Xander, and I got separated somehow. I don’t remember a lot of that part, but I slipped and fell down one of those shafts.” I motioned toward the older tunnel as Cam drove us around the circular track that would bring us back to daylight.
“Were you scared?”
“Terrified. But Cam found me. It felt like I’d been gone for days, but really it was only a few hours.”
She nodded slowly, thinking over what I’d said. “And you left your pin?”
“It got ripped off my shirt when I fell, I think.”
We were quiet as the train sped up, and I breathed a heck of a lot easier once the sun hit my face.
“How about I keep your helmet on my desk so you have it whenever you want to visit?” Cam offered.
Rose debated for a moment but eventually agreed. “I can come back, right?”
“Whenever you want,” he promised. “I mean, as long as you’re with an adult.” He shot me a sorry look.
“Deal.” She handed it over. I did the same, then walked toward the Jeep with her as Cam took the hard hats back to his office.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing down the hill to the charred, overgrown remains of the bunkhouse.
“That was the bunkhouse,” I told her. “It’s where the unmarried miners slept.”
“It doesn’t look like the other buildings,” she noted. “Even the roofless ones.”
“It burned down.”
“When?”
“When we were teenagers,” Cam replied, coming up behind us. “We had a really big party one night, and it caught fire. Guess what?”
“What?” she asked him with big eyes.
“I carried your aunt out of that, too.” He nodded seriously, tucking me into his side.
She looked from us to the ruins and back with a shake of her head.
“What?” I questioned.
She sighed and headed toward the Jeep. “You guys get in a lot of trouble. Mom would have grounded me if I’d been in the middle of any of that.”
I didn’t bother telling her that her mom had been at the fire, too.
Cam’s phone rang, and he let go of me to answer it as we walked behind Rose. “What’s up?” He halted, so I did, too. “Are you serious? Have you tried Walt’s cell? Okay, I’m on my way.” He hung up and cursed softly.
“What’s going on?”
“Can we make a pit stop at Dad’s? Apparently Walt busted him from at-home-care jail a few hours ago, and Xander is losing his mind.”
“Absolutely.”
We pulled into the Danielses’ driveway about ten minutes later to find Xander yelling at Walt on the porch.
“At least they’re back,” I offered.
“Right,” he replied, killing the engine and getting out.
I checked to make sure the keys weren’t in the ignition and the e-brake was on. “Wait here,” I told Rose.
“Where are you going?”
“To make sure Camden doesn’t get in any more trouble your mom would ground him for.” I jumped down from the Jeep and headed up the stairs.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Xander yelled.
“That my best friend asked me to take him out, so I did.” Walt crossed his arms calmly over his chest.
Mr. Daniels sighed and moved to do the same, but he winced instead and put his arms at his sides. Cam’s attention focused on his dad.
“And you were okay with this?” Xander questioned, but I kept my eyes on Mr. Daniels, noting the way he shifted his weight.
“Well, he was on the approved list you left me, Mr. Daniels,” May explained. At least according to the schedule Cam had tacked on his fridge, it should be May.
“Well, he’s not anymore! How could you not tell anyone where you were going? Not pick up your phone?”
Mr. Daniels moved again, the same wince puckering his expression for a second.
He was in pain.
“Alexander, I don’t answer to you. You’re not my mother,” Walt stated.
Xander ripped at his tie to loosen it. He couldn’t have looked more different from Cam’s casual ruggedness in that moment.
“Enough, you two,” Cam growled. “Dad, what the hell did you do? You’re hurt.”
Art’s chin rose at the same moment Walt sighed. “Look, he wanted to.”
“Wanted to what?” Xander snapped.
Art unzipped his jacket and let it fall to the wooden porch. “My name is Arthur Daniels. I’m fifty-eight years old, and I have early-onset Alzheimer’s,” he said to Xander as he started unbuttoning his long-sleeve flannel shirt. “This here is Walter Robinson, who’s been my best friend since we were kids. That’s the babysitter you hired—I don’t remember her name because I just don’t care. Sorry, but it’s true.” He glanced at May and back to Xander. “You’re Alexander, my oldest son. That’s Camden, my second son. And that’s—” He saw me and paused, surprise flaring in his eyes. “That’s Willow Bradley—”
Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it.
“Sullivan’s girl.”
FML.
Cam stiffened next to me, his jaw flexing. I brushed the back of my hand along his. Now wasn’t the time or place, but I’d back whatever he decided.
“And you can control just about everything in my life, Alexander, but I’m lucid as you are today, and guess what?” He pulled back the sides of his shirt, and my mouth dropped open.
Under a layer of shiny plastic wrap were large, bloodied, and raised black letters that read do not resuscitate.
“You took him for a tattoo?” Xander shouted at Walt.
Walt shrugged. “When your best friend asks you for ink, you go for ink. Art, I’ll see you later.”
Art nodded at his friend and began buttoning his shirt.
“Don’t you have anything to say about this?” Xander asked.
“As first pieces go, Dad, that’s a pretty bold one,” Cam told his dad. “Make sure you’re keeping it clean. Did they give you anything for it?”
“Are you serious?” Xander fired back.
Art lifted a small brown bag from the deck. “Got the instructions and everything.”
“Okay, then I think we’re done here.” Cam turned to face me. “Willow?”
I nodded and felt Cam’s hand on the small of my back as I walked down the steps.
“That’s really all you have to say about this?” Xander challenged.
Cam paused, then laced his fingers with mine.
My breath hitched, and he squeezed me reassuringly.
“No,” Cam replied over his shoulder. “Willow isn’t Sullivan’s girl. She’s mine. Nice ink, Dad. Call me if you need any help.”
I looked back to see Xander’s eyes narrow and Art’s jaw drop as he saw our clasped hands. “It was nice to see you,” I said in farewell.
They didn’t respond.
“Well, that was a way to go public,” I told Cam as he walked me to my door.
“Seemed like a good day for bold statements.” He opened the Jeep and kissed me in full sight of the porch before helping me up into the lifted monster.
“Did you keep Camden out of trouble?” Rose asked from the back seat as Cam walked to his side.
“I’m not sure,” I said slowly.
Cam climbed into his seat and gave a little wave to his dad and brother as he fired the engine to life. “Well, I’m starving, ladies. How about that picnic?”
Picnic? He’d just handed the town gossips enough fodder to keep them fed for the rest of the summer.