“I guess I could send you some smoke signals.”
His lips twitched, and the movement stirred something in me that I didn’t want to look too closely at. “All right, smartass. Take my number.”
I pulled out my phone and unlocked the screen. I typed his name into my contacts. “Ready.” He listed off the digits, and I plugged them in. “Prepare for some prank calls.”
Hayes groaned. “I guess I’d deserve that.”
“You would.”
His gaze met mine, freezing me to the spot. “Call me if you need anything.”
I wouldn’t. “Okay.”
He shook his head as if he knew I was lying and turned towards his SUV. “I’ll be seeing you.”
The words felt like both a promise and a threat. There’d be no escaping Hayes now.
10
Hayes
A knock sounded on my door, and I looked up from the pile of paperwork on my desk to see Calder standing in my doorway. “Look what the cat dragged in after he got it out of a tree.”
“After all the calls you get from Ms. Pat, I’d say missing cats are your wheelhouse, brother.”
I leaned back in my chair and glared at him. Because he was right. I’d had two this morning already.
Calder barked out a laugh. “She called you today already, didn’t she?”
“It’s been a long Friday, and it’s only nine a.m.”
He slid into one of the chairs opposite me at my desk and set down some coffee in a to-go cup. “Maybe this will help.”
I eyed him cautiously. “You’re bringing me coffee…”
“Yes…”
“You need a favor, or something bad happened.”
Calder rolled his eyes. “So suspicious of everyone.”
“I’m suspicious of you because I’ve known you my entire life.”
“Can’t a guy check up on his friend? Make sure he’s hanging in there?”
I picked up the cup and took a sip. “Mom told you Everly’s back?”
“Hadley took the twins to the park yesterday.”
Hads adored Birdie and Sage and loved stealing them away for adventures whenever she could. I scrubbed a hand over my face. “She talk to you about Mom at all?”
“No. They get into it at family dinner?”
“Understatement.” Over the years, Calder had become one of the family and had seen more than a few dustups between Hadley and Mom.
His gaze drifted out the window as a muscle ticked in his cheek. “Hads needs to understand that she can’t just take off to climb a mountain by herself and expect no one to worry.”
“I know that, and you know that, but Hadley’s yearned to stretch her wings from the time she was seven. Mom and Dad were protective after what happened to Shiloh, and Hadley took the brunt of it for the longest.”
Calder looked back to me. “I get that she needs freedom, but it’s not worth her getting hurt or killed.”
His words alone caused my chest to constrict, made breathing just a little more difficult. Calder muttered a curse. “Sorry, man. I shouldn’t have said it like that. I know you worry about her.”
“It’s fine.” But the tension in my voice argued otherwise.
He studied me for a moment, likely taking in the lie. “Want to come fishing with me and the girls tomorrow? Should be the perfect day for it.”
“Can’t.”
“Helping out at the ranch?”
I picked up a pencil and rolled it between my fingers. “Dad and I are going up to Everly’s to assess her barn. It looks like it’s one gust of wind away from collapsing.”
Calder’s brows rose practically to his hairline. “You’re going to help out up there?”
I wasn’t setting foot near that damn shed. But I didn’t mind helping stabilize the barn, run some new fence line—whatever else she needed. “She wants to start an animal sanctuary, and I’m trying to make up for being a total asshole to her when I showed up at her place the first time.” Well, the first and the second times.
Calder snorted. “You never did handle surprises well.”
“Shut up.”
“Sounds like a good use for all that land. And it’s something the community could get behind.”
“More than a few animals in this county could use a good home.”
He took a sip of his coffee and then rested it on the arm of his chair. “You think she’ll give them that?”
“I do.” Everly had a stubborn determination that meant she wouldn’t back down from a challenge. But there was gentleness, too. The way she’d sunk to the ground to engulf Koda in a hug. “She was good with Koda.”
“Probably the only way she could’ve gotten you on her side—being good to that dog of yours.”
“Sides have nothing to do with it. I’m just trying to make things right after biting her head off.”
Calder’s expression sobered. “You gotta let this go, Hayes. The only person responsible for what happened is in jail. He’ll be there for a long time. It wasn’t Everly’s fault, and it sure as hell wasn’t yours.”
My back molars ground together. “I know that.”
“You may know it in your head, but your heart sure as hell doesn’t. That guilt is going to eat you alive.”
It wouldn’t. Not if I didn’t let it catch me. It was why I stayed so busy. And why I went on such long runs. “Every time I see someone from that family, it’s a reminder of how I failed. Of all the ways my family is still broken. So, I get angry. Not because it’s any of their faults, but because when I see them, I have to remember.”
“If you’re going to be helping Everly, you’re gonna need to figure out a way to come to terms with this. It’s not fair for you to hold on to all this anger and make her deal with it.”
“I know, it’s not,” I growled. It made me feel like the lowest of the low that anger had been my reaction to seeing the woman who had saved my sister’s life when she was a girl. But there was more than anger in the mix now, too. There was also a healthy dose of admiration.
“Okay.”
“I’m working on it.”
Calder’s mouth twitched. “She flusters you. Is she pretty?”
“Pretty?” No, Everly was heart-stoppingly gorgeous. She had the kind of beauty that could bring a man to his knees. I bit the inside of my cheek to stop that train of thought.
“Yeah. Is she attractive?”
I spun the pencil between my fingers. “I guess you could say that.”
Calder barked out a laugh. “Oh, man, this is going to be so much fun to watch. Maybe the girls and I should ditch fishing and go up the mountain to watch the show.”
“Don’t make me deck you. You know I’ll do it.”
“I’m not scared of you. I know all your tells.”
My eyes narrowed at my lifelong friend. “I still have some tricks you’ve never seen.”
“But I’m quicker. That’s what happens when you have to do your job with forty-five pounds of gear on your back. That desk you’re riding has made you lazy.”
“I do not ride a desk,” I said through gritted teeth.
Calder inclined his head to a stack of paper on my desk. “What’s that? Looks like a whole lot of paperwork to me.”
“It’s called being the boss. It comes with strings.”
“Sure, but just remember what the nail in your coffin was when you try to take a swing at me.”