Looking for Trouble (Jackson: Girls' Night Out 1)

Alex watched the canyon coming closer as they walked. “Doesn’t seem like she wants to let it go too much.”

“I’m hoping that it’s just coming to a head. It’s almost over. She’s panicking a little at the thought, but once it’s done... I don’t know. If it’s not over after tomorrow? Shit. If she won’t help herself, there’s nothing I can do anymore.”

Alex rolled his eyes, but Shane watched him without a hint of anger.

“Let’s just get through this and see. You’re already here. What’s the harm?”

“Fuck, man. When did you become the personification of patience? You got kicked out of school for fistfights a half dozen times.”

“The truth?” Shane asked.

“That’d be a first in this family.”

Shane shrugged. “All right. The truth is that I was just as angry as you for a long time. After you left, I was pissed as hell. I wanted to make people pay. That’s why I tried to take my pound of flesh after Granddad died. And then I met Merry.”

“Really? Love of a good woman?”

“No. It’s not that. She’s had a rough life, she’s had challenges and pain, but she sees the good. And that shamed me.”

Alex felt his whole body tighten at that. With shame or something like it. For mocking his brother. For thinking he knew anything about it. After all, Alex had been in love, too, and he hadn’t been able to do a damn thing with it. He’d fumbled it and dropped it and walked away from the mess he’d made. What the fuck did he know?

He swallowed the thickness in his throat and nodded. “All right.”

He noticed then how far they’d walked. How narrow the trail had gotten. Grass bent over the dirt. Their legs brushed it aside. The smell of aspen touched him, and then it was inside him. Every time he smelled that scent, he was home again. He never wanted to be. It just hit him. Home. Hiding from his brother during a game of tag. Running from the house after an argument. Sitting at a campfire with a girl, hoping to lose himself in her body for a few minutes.

His leg brushed sagebrush and that bright menthol scent broke over him, too. That was an earlier memory. Of being here. With his dad, with Shane.

“You found him,” he said as they reached the mouth of the canyon.

“Yes.”

The shade swallowed them and the air was suddenly cold. “Here?”

“About thirty minutes up the trail. I was on horseback.”

“Happenstance?”

Shane barked a dry laugh. “No. Merry again. I’d taken her up a higher trail to show her something, and I spotted a flash of white. I didn’t think it had anything to do with Dad. I only rode up out of curiosity.”

Alex stopped and looked up the narrow canyon. The tumbled rocks looked like they were frozen, just waiting for a signal to start rolling down again, straight toward Alex.

“Do you want to walk up a ways? Get an idea of where he was?” Shane asked.

“No,” Alex snapped before he could temper the word.

“The truck’s gone. It’s just a clearing.”

“No.” He crossed his arms to hold back a shiver. This was the place. The mysterious spot their mother had searched for. The place that had kept her husband from her for reasons she couldn’t understand or sympathize with. This canyon had swallowed Wyatt Bishop whole and kept him from his family for so many years.

“She was right, after all,” he murmured.

“What?” Shane asked.

“He really didn’t mean to leave.”

“No. He didn’t. They were taking the trailer up to that clearing by the old settler’s cabin. It’s the only place that road led.”

Alex couldn’t figure out why it didn’t make it better. It should. He could recognize that. But it didn’t change anything, somehow. All the things he’d felt as a kid, they were still there. And he still hadn’t had a father for a dozen years. Not until he’d met Oz.