Just as the first of the sun’s rays peeked over the mountain, she got into her car. She pulled the list from her pocket and crossed off the mural.
She eyed the rest of the list, trying to force her mind to settle on one item because she needed a direction now, more than ever, something to jump right into and take her mind off what had happened.
Skydiving?
No, she decided. She’d just discovered she was going to get to live, no sense in tempting the fates.
London maybe… Yes. That would do nicely. And she put her car into gear and headed off the mountain, not looking back.
Okay, she totally looked back, taking in the glorious colors of the new day in her rearview mirror.
Wishing…
But even as she let herself half hope, the words replayed in her mind. She’s not a keeper to me…
As the words washed over her again, she strengthened her resolve and hit the gas.
Chapter 29
Hud almost always knew what to do. On the mountain. On the job. With his mom. With any of his family, really—with the sole exception of Jacob—he knew what to do. And he did it.
A dad who’d walked when Hud had been so young he didn’t remember much of him at all? He’d handled it.
A mom who had a little problem sticking to reality? He’d handled it.
Having to move around because of poverty as a child due to said mother not being able to hold down a job for long? He’d handled it.
Finding out at twelve that he had siblings who wanted him in their lives? He’d handled it.
But then Jacob had left him. Walked away like their dad and never looked back, and Hud had finally come up against something he couldn’t handle.
So he’d faked it. He’d faked it pretty damn well too. He’d faked it for so long now that he’d given off the air of handling it just fine. And it had become true.
But losing Bailey? No, he couldn’t handle that. Wouldn’t. He’d make sure of it. He had no idea how, yet, but he’d figure it out and handle it like he had everything else.
If he ever got off work. The call that had taken him away from her last night had originated when a woman called the police because her boyfriend and his best friend hadn’t come back from skiing at Cedar Ridge for the day.
Dispatch had called Hud and put him on it. He’d done a quick sweep of the parking lot for any cars that didn’t belong to staff.
There were zero.
When he called the woman directly, she’d told them that she’d dropped the guys off that morning with the directive to call her when they’d finished skiing.
That call had never come.
The mountain had been swept at closing, as always. All of ski patrol skied the entire mountain at dusk yelling, “Closing,” checking every nook and cranny.
They never left anyone on the mountain.
But at the very end of the phone call the woman had admitted that the two men had been talking about going off-trail to ski, in an area clearly marked NOT CEDAR RIDGE PROPERTY.
Hud had been forced to call back all the staff who’d already left for the day, and they’d spent the long hours of the night combing the out-of-boundary areas along with search and rescue.
It was five in the morning before the woman called dispatch again to tell them she’d heard from the guys. Apparently they’d left the mountain at closing and had gone to the Slippery Slope and gotten drunk. They’d hitched a ride and had just showed up at home.
Unbelievable.
Penny had taken Carrie to the Kincaid lodge, where she’d fallen asleep on the couch waiting for Hud. He’d walked in at five thirty in the morning, bleary-eyed, knowing he had to take her home for her meds before anything else—including going to Bailey. He got his mom up and out to the parking lot, where he discovered Aidan’s truck blocking his.
Aidan waved them into his vehicle saying he was headed to McDonald’s for breakfast and it wasn’t out of the way. He didn’t say another word on the ride, but Carrie had woken all the way up and had plenty to say.
“It’s not too late to make things work with Bailey,” she started.
Hud had spent the entire night out in the cold on the mountain searching for dumbasses, so he’d had lots of time to replay what had happened in his head. He didn’t need to discuss. He’d screwed up, big time. And the worst part was, his life was so crazy he didn’t even have time to fix it. “Mom—”
“No, I know you. You’re stubborn. So determined to be a damn island. But you can do this, baby. You can stop pushing away people who care about you. You can learn to accept love. You accept mine, you accept your siblings’, why can’t you accept anyone else’s?”
Aidan snorted beneath his breath and turned Hud’s way for his response.
Hud didn’t have one. He put on his sunglasses and stared out the windshield. A storm was blowing in, a hell of one given the gunmetal-gray clouds pouring in over the mountain peaks like smoke coming out of a cauldron. He hadn’t had a spare second to check the weather so he turned on the radio now, which was predicting the storm of the season, maybe the decade.
Perfect.