Killian (West Bend Saints 4)

on edge from this morning, practically crawling out of my skin on the drive home from Autumn’s place. What happened this morning shouldn't matter. It was a bullshit argument after a bullshit one-night-stand and that was it. It shouldn’t get under my skin.

And it shouldn’t have me this edgy now, twenty minutes later. I tell myself that she means nothing to me.

Friends, she said. I don’t have friends – not of the girl variety.

“He has his panties in a bunch over some chick he’s banging,” Silas explains, supposedly talking to his twin, but says it loudly for my benefit.

All I hear is the part about banging some chick. I walk straight toward Silas and shove him backward. “I said fuck off.”

“What the hell, Luke?” Silas lunges for me, and then Killian and Elias are between us.

“Both of you,” Killian says. “Shut the hell up. Now.”

“Then tell him to stop being such a fucking asshat,” Silas yells.

“Oh yeah, I’m totally the ass –“

Killian smacks me hard in the chest. “Shut up before I knock both of you idiots out,” he says. “Our mother kept a diary.”

My blood is pumping so loudly in my ears that it takes a second to register. “A diary?”

“We found it,” says Silas. “Tempest and I did. Everything is in there.”

Everything’s in there.

“What?” I ask. “Show me.”

I’m struck by a sudden overwhelming sense of guilt. I’d stuck around in West Bend after my mother’s suicide because I’d thought something was off about it. I’d even gone and poked around the old house, at least until I couldn’t stand being there anymore, until the darkness of the place threatened to envelop me even in the middle of the daytime. It reeked of memories of the past, shit I didn’t want to think about anymore.

Since then, I’ve been distracted by Autumn…

Killian claps me hard on the back, jolting me out of my thoughts. “Elias has the diary.”

Family, I remind myself. That’s why I’m here. I'm not here to be distracted by a woman.

“You were right.” Elias hands me the notebook. “It wasn’t a suicide. Jed killed her.”

“We assume Jed killed her,” Silas adds. “The journal implies it.”

“Whatever,” Killian says. “We know it was Jed. We could easily take care of it.”

Elias snorts. “Yeah, man. That’d be real fucking smart, seeing as he’s the sheriff and all. Why don’t you go take his ass out right in front of the mayor’s office, while you're at it? I’m sure that’ll work out well.”

“Shit, start seeing a movie star and all of a sudden you’re all ‘think logically’ and ‘don’t commit murder, Killian’.”

“Shut up for a damn second," I say, opening the journal. “I can’t even hear myself think.”

“You think?” Silas rolls his eyes. “I wasn’t even sure you could read.”

I glare at him. “I’m going to kick your fucking ass in two seconds if you don’t shut your mouth.”

Silas hoots. “I'd love to see you try, big brother.”

“Cut it out, both of you!” Killian sighs. “You guys are giving me a headache. Why are we standing outside anyway? You got beer in the fridge?”

“Dude, it’s like nine in the morning,” Elias says.

Killian raises his eyebrows. “Do you have a fucking point?” he asks. “Beer? Fridge?”

I toss the keys at Killian. "The fridge is full of beer. Wait, I thought you were going back to the rig?”

“I have to. Leave tomorrow.”

“You’re going to really leave right in the middle of this shit?”

Killian shrugs, the way he does. Things just roll off his back; that's the way Killian has always been, mellow like that. But it pisses me off that he can just walk away like none of this matters to him. It should matter to him. He points at Elias and Silas. "You two idiots, leave Luke alone to read through the journal while I get us some beers. I'm not doing jack shit out here until I get a cold one."

"It's all near the end in the journal," Elias starts.

"Leave him be, Elias," he says, disappearing into the house.

Elias glares at him. "I folded down the page," he adds anyway.

I pull up a lawn chair and open the journal to the page, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Fuck this day. It was already a shitty day to begin with, and now this.

I lose myself in the pages, squinting at the pieces of handwriting that are hard to decipher, words here and there that I can't quite make out. It's definitely hers, though – it's like hearing my mother's voice from beyond the grave. At one point, I look up from it and catch Silas' eye.

"It's weird reading that shit, isn't it?" he asks.

"Spooky," I agree. It's like stepping into her head, and that's not a place I've ever wanted to be. I've always thought of her as weak, too afraid to leave my asshole stepfather. He'd beaten her down so many times that she was too helpless to get out. Except, that's not what I see in the journal. Her voice changes over the course of it. And then I get to the thing that hits me like a blow to the gut, that makes the world tilt on its fucking axis.

I look up at Elias. "Are you kidding me?" I ask.

"Keep reading," he says. "It gets worse."

21

Autumn

Olivia points at the freezer, and then at her mouth, before letting out a loud scream.

"Ice cream?" I ask. I'm about to say no, when Connie – Connie C. to differentiate her from Connie S. over at the salon – bustles past me, wiping her hands on her gingham apron.

"Oh, give that baby some ice cream," she says, slipping behind the ice cream freezer and reaching into one of the containers to scoop out a bit into a cup. "It won't hurt her any."

"Says the woman who doesn't have to deal with a kid who doesn't want to nap after she gets all hopped up on sugar," I protest, but halfheartedly. This is part of our regular routine here.

Connie C. laughs. "You sound like my daughter when I get around the grandkids," she says. "Here you go, little Olivia."

"I swear, I think she's associated you with ice cream, Connie," I say, holding the cup while Olivia tries to spoon some into her mouth, the liquid dripping down her chin.

"There are worse things to be associated with," she says. "How's business, Autumn? That fire up there didn't hurt your harvest now, did it?"

"Not terribly," I tell her. "We caught it in time. We're actually almost finished harvesting."

"Luke Saint has been helping you out, I hear." She slips behind the counter and begins placing my groceries in the paper bags, but I know she's really sussing me out for juicy gossip. I force my expression blank. Connie is one of the worst gossips in town – her general store and the local hair salon are the two main sources of information in West Bend, and everyone knows it. And the last thing I need is for her to get the idea that there's anything other than a business relationship going on between Luke and I.

I haven't talked to Luke since we hooked up. No phone call, no text, no Luke knocking on my front door with groceries in his hands and that crooked grin on his face.

Nothing.

"Yep," I say. No elaboration. "Do you have any of that French bread you had before?"

"Oh, it's in the back, sweetie." She thrusts a head of broccoli into a bag. "Hang on, I'll grab you a loaf."

I exhale, relieved at the brief reprieve from Connie's questions. And from thinking about Luke.

At least, that's the case until he walks in the door.

Luke is wearing jeans and a t-shirt that looks like it was dyed to match the color of his eyes, a cornflower blue hue that's warm and icy at the same time. When Olivia sees him, she holds up her spoon and grunts, waving it in the air excitedly and sending droplets of ice cream all over the floor. He looks at me for a good long moment, then down at Olivia. "Hey there, Olivia," he says. "That looks like some delicious ice cream."

When he looks up at me, his eyes look tir

ed, dark circles underneath, and his face is wan. "Hey, Red."

"Grocery shopping?" I ask brightly. Too brightly, I think, clearing my throat. Be casual, I tell myself. Be cool. Like I do this all the time, hook up with someone and then, you know, act like a big asshole.

"Just popped in for a couple of things." He glances behind me, looking uncomfortable.

"I – uh, wanted to say something, Luke," I start. My heart thumps loudly in my throat, so loudly I swear he has to be able to hear it in the room. I wipe my palms on my jeans. Why are my damn palms so sweaty?

Just apologize to him, Autumn, I tell myself.

"Oh yeah," he says, distracted. "Don't worry about it. I haven't given it a second thought."

Oh. Not a second thought. I feel like someone punched me in the gut.

"Here you go, dear," Connie says. "Luke Saint. Well, speak of the devil. Did you feel your ears burning? We were just talking about you no more than thirty seconds ago, now weren't we, Autumn?"

If my face could flush any darker, I'd be the color of an eggplant. I look out of the corner of my eye at Luke, but the expression on his face is unreadable. This is the kind of thing he'd usually be prepared for with a quip, some kind of wisecrack to embarrass me even more.

Oh God. He must hate me that much, that he doesn't even care to be a smart-ass about it. I have thoroughly fucked things up.

"No, uh—" I stammer. "We weren't talking about you, I don't think…"

"I was just asking about how you were helping her out at the orchard," Connie says.

"And I was just telling her that I was grateful for your help," I say, my voice curt.

Luke nods, his expression drawn. "Yes." He looks at his watch. "I'll see you at the orchard on Monday, then."

I swallow hard, watching Luke's back as he walks out the door and trying to stifle the uneasy feeling I get in my stomach as he leaves. It's just a casual fling, I tell myself yet again.

"Well, now." Connie eyes me as she slides the loaf of bread into my shopping bag. "He turned around and left without even getting what he came in here for."

"Yes," I say, my head swimming. He obviously didn’t like what he saw in the store.

"He's a good-looking one, that Luke Saint is," she says, clucking. "All of the brothers are. Damn shame about that family, though."

"Shame about what?" I ask, still looking at the door as if I can will Luke to turn around and come back in.

"Oh, you wouldn't know because you haven't been around here long enough, have you, honey?" She shakes her head. "The father was a real son of a – well, you know – never treated those kids right. Mother wasn't that much better. Real pretty, though. Killed herself after the father died."

"That's terrible." June had already told me about their parents' deaths, but now all I can think about is that scar on Luke's back and what it means about the kind of hell he's lived through.

"It's an odd thing, though," she says.

"What is?"

Connie shrugs, her brow furrowed. "It's just that she stayed with him all those years, you know? If that were me, and that man died, I'd take his stuff out into the street and have a celebration. Roast marshmallows over the bonfire."

"That is odd," I agree. "I guess you never really know about people, do you?"

I begin to wonder about how Luke is dealing with his mother's death, but I don't get a chance to think about it for more than a second before Connie pushes a flyer across the counter at me. "You get one of those offers on your property?" she asks.

I glance down at the paper advertising a town hall meeting. "I did. Told them I wasn't interested."

"It's $34.92 for the groceries," she says, tapping her finger on the paper. "You should come to this. People in town, they like you. Respect you. June, too."

"Me?" I ask. "I've only lived here a couple of years."

"Yes, but they know your cider. And you're a businesswoman. Educated. They know you told the mining company no, too. You should tell them why."

"I don't know. I said no for personal reasons, not political ones."

"Well, I've heard there's been some shady business with some folks out here," Connie says. "People who've told them no and had problems after that."

"What?" I ask, but someone enters the store, interrupting us, and Connie is off doing something else. I stuff the flyer in my grocery bag and pick up Olivia, who's only partially covered in ice cream, and head outside.

22

Luke

This town is the smallest place in the damn world. I wasn't prepared to run into Autumn and Olivia in the general store yesterday. I wasn't ready to see them. I was getting some space – and some beers – after reading that damn diary. I didn't want them to see me like that, and I did the only thing I knew to do to keep this shit away from them, and that was to walk away.

That damn diary.

Page after page of excruciating detail. I read the whole thing, driven by my need to understand why the hell she did what she did. I’m not even sure my brothers read the entire thing. They paged through what they needed to, and handed it over to me, glad to be rid of it.

I expected it to be filled with depressed ramblings about life or something – except it wasn't. Instead, she confessed to killing my father.

That should have made me feel happy. She finally grew some balls and killed the asshole. Except it just made me angry at her. After all that time, all those years of him beating her to a bloody pulp… Fuck, all those times he beat the shit out of us in front of her, she did nothing.

I'd always thought of her as being weak.

It turns out that she wasn't weak at all. Protecting her kids just wasn't enough incentive for her to get rid of him. But money was.

She wasn't weak; she was greedy.

The journal laid out everything, starting when my father discovered europium in the illegal old mine back behind the house where we grew up. He'd brought a sample to the geology teacher down at the high school where my father worked as a janitor. When the geology teacher found out what it was, he'd gone to a mining company he thought would be interested – and was bought off. And after the mining company started buying properties in West Bend, with the wheels greased by the town sheriff and the mayor, my father thought he was going to get rich. He'd gotten drunk and bragged to my mother about the life they were going to have.

It turns out that my mother already had a life that didn't involve him. She was having an affair with the senior Jed Easton – the fucking mayor of West Bend.

It also turns out that she had more balls than any of us would have ever thought.

She hit my asshole father over the head with a rock. Since he was a drunk and no one gave a shit whether he lived or died, it was ruled an accidental death. But my mother wanted him silenced so she could get the payout. And she didn't simply want to sell the