Once he started his engine, Maddox didn't drive away. He sat in his truck, grimly studying the house that Hannah and Ava were inside. Lights were blazing through the windows, telling him that in the thirty seconds since he'd walked outside, they hadn't yet lost power.

He drummed his fingers on his steering wheel, restless, tense.

He felt uncomfortable abandoning them in that house with the storm descending upon them. But at the same time, what the hell else was he supposed to do? It wasn't as if he could walk in there and make an announcement that he was going to stay with them until the storm was over. Besides, he'd made an oath to himself a long time ago, that night when he was seventeen, to never bring anyone into the hell that was his world, especially not a woman and a child, who he could break so easily, the way his bastard father had broken his mom.

Maddox took a deep breath, reminding himself that they had enough wood in the house to last for a week, even if they had to feed that woodstove twenty-four/seven. He'd seen what she'd unpacked in the kitchen, and he knew they had enough food. They would be okay. It was time for him to go.

A bad mood settled over him as he shifted his truck into gear and swung it around to drive out. There was already several inches of new snow on the driveway, and the visibility was poor. He realized he had almost left too late. If he didn't have the tire chains in the back, he would have had to weather the storm in town.

But he had a job waiting for him, another scumbag who had jumped parole needed to have his ass hauled back in. As he drove, he hit the button on his dashboard. "Call Chase," he said.

His truck obeyed him and the phone began to ring. Chase picked up immediately, as he always did whenever one of his brothers called.

"You coming by?" Chase said without preamble. "Lissa said you were in town."

"No, I'm going to try to make it south." Maddox glanced over his shoulder as he turned the bend in the driveway, catching his last glimpse of the glow coming from Hannah's windows. And then the house was out of sight. A strange sense of discomfort settled on him, a sense of wrongness that he was driving away, but he gritted his teeth and focused on the road in front of him, which he could barely even see at this point. "I've a favor to ask, though."

"Name it," Chase said without hesitation.

"So, there's a woman named Hannah Crowley who just moved into the old Anderson place with her daughter."

"Yeah, Lissa told us about them. She and Bridgett came over here for dinner since Travis is gone, and they both wanted Hannah and Ava to come over. Lissa was worried about them, and Bridgett was excited to have someone to play with during the storm. You bringing them over to the ranch?"

"No, Hannah insisted on staying. I set them up with firewood, but I have a bad feeling about the generator. Can you plow her out as soon as the storm eases, and check on them? She doesn't have a phone that works in the area, so she can't call for help if she needs anything." Again, tension rippled through him. What would she do if she needed something? He should've left her his phone.

"You bet," Chase said. "But the storm's going to hit hard. We're all going to be grounded for probably five days at least. The storm is bringing in more snow and higher winds than they originally predicted. It's going to be whiteout conditions for the next five days, pretty much. If you weren't heading south, I'd tell you to get your ass over here, because the driving is going to be impossible here within the hour."

Even as Chase spoke, Maddox felt his truck slide as he drove up the slight incline at the end of Hannah's mile-long driveway. Swearing, he slowed down. "I'm going to put my chains on before I get on the main roads. Just get over here as soon as you can."

"Will do, bro. Drive safe. Next time you're in town, stop by. You know it pisses me off when you swing through and don't tell me."

Maddox grinned. "I have bad guys to catch. They don't wait around so I can have family dinners with my brothers and their wives."

"That's a pathetic excuse, and we both know it. Promise me that the next time you're in town, you'll sit your ass down at my dinner table for one meal, or I won't go check on your lady friend."

Maddox laughed as he stopped his truck and set it in park. "Give it up, bro. You know you're going to go check on her no matter what I do, and she's not my lady friend." But as his laughter faded, he realized that even though he could never be a part of the life that Chase and the others had set up on the ranch, he missed them. "But yeah, I promise I'll stop by and choke down some of your home cookin'."

"You love my cooking. I'm the best in five counties, so quit blowing smoke. Catch you later, bro."

"You got it." Maddox hung up and opened his truck door. The wind was brutal, slicing into him as he slogged through the snow to the back of his truck. He had just rolled down the window to grab his chains out of the back when a viciously loud crack jolted through the storm.

Maddox instinctively dove to the side, landing beside his rear tire, using his truck to protect him.

He had barely landed when the shadow of a massive tree slammed past him, hitting the ground so hard that his truck moved. Maddox swore and leapt to his feet, shocked to see the four-foot-wide tree trunk laying less than six inches behind his rear bumper. Hell. The thing would've crushed him.

He quickly scanned it, trying to see how far it extended. Due to the heavy snow, he could see only about ten feet in either direction, but it was enough to know that the tree had completely blocked off the driveway. It would take chainsaws, a couple workers, and several hours to get the thing cleared.

Swearing, he slogged back to his truck and grabbed his phone again. He dialed Chase as he walked back toward the rear of his truck to get his chains.

"You coming over? Road's too bad?" Chase asked.

"No, but a tree just fell across Hannah's driveway. The sucker is close to four feet in diameter. You're going to need to bring machines and some help to get through it." He grabbed the duffel that he kept the chains in and unzipped it.

"Man, the favors keep mounting."

"Not in the mood, bro." His bad mood was increasing by the second. He did not like the idea of Hannah being trapped there behind a blockade. "Just tell me you'll get her out of here."

"Of course I will. Did it hit her power lines?"

At Chase's question, Maddox's gaze jerked to the side of the driveway. He tried to remember which side the power lines were on, back from the days so long ago when he'd come there as a teenager. "Are they on the south side of the driveway? You remember this property?"

Chase was silent for a minute. "Yeah, I think they are. Why? Is that where the tree hit?"

Maddox grimly studied the tree, his gaze sliding along the length of it, until it disappeared into the snowy darkness. Since the tree trunk was so thick, those branches were no doubt stretching far, plenty far enough to have taken out power lines. "Shit."

"I take that as a yes."

"What?" Maddox could hear Lissa's voice in the background. "She lost power already? Tell Maddox he has to bring her here. There's no way she can last five days without power in that house. Tell him to get her and make her come."

Chase came back on the phone. "I'm with Lissa on this one, Maddox. She's got no power, no car access, and no phone. You can't leave her there, especially with a kid."

Maddox swore, thinking of little Ava and Hannah's exhaustion, and the way she'd slid to the floor in the kitchen, too sick to stand. "It's almost a mile back to the house. They can't walk out to my truck in this storm, and the tree is behind my truck. I can't drive back there." He could hear Lissa talking to Chase, and then Lissa got on the phone.

"You have to go back there, Maddox," she announced. "You have to stay there with them until the storm is over."

Maddox swore, and leaned against his truck. "That's not a good idea, Lissa—"

"It's the only option. You have to."

"I can't—"

"Maddox!" Lissa's voice was spiking with emotion. "You don't understand what it's like for her. She's alone with a small child. She needs someone to help her, and you're the only one who can do it! I don't care whether you're terrified of women and children. You have to go back there."

"Lissa—"

"Do you know what would have happened to me if the woman who owned the Wildflower Café hadn't offered me her apartment to stay in for free when I arrived in town? And then, when she let me buy the café off her for a ridiculous price that was all I could afford? She told me that the only payment she wanted was for me to pay it forward someday. This is it. This is the pay it forward, Maddox. This is who I'm supposed to help, and right now you're the only one that can do it for me. You can't leave her Maddox. You have to go back, and you have to stay there."

Sweat broke out over Maddox's brow, sweat that had no business in a sub-zero wind. He gripped the edge of his tailgate and bowed his head, fighting against the fear slamming into him. He was suddenly back in that moment when he was seventeen, staring across the back porch at his girlfriend, seeing the look of absolute horror on her face, because she'd seen the monster inside him. He would never forget that moment, when he'd finally understood that the curse of his father ran too strongly in him, and that he could never, ever take the chance of bringing a woman into his hell. "Jesus, Lissa—"

"Maddox." It was Chase on the phone again. "I know."

Maddox nodded, gritting his teeth. Chase did know. All nine of the Stockton brothers knew, because they had the same bastard father. "What the hell, Chase?"

"You're not the monster you think you are. None of us are."

"Fuck that—"

"Shut up and listen to me. This is not forever. This is a couple days. This is your moment, this is your chance to see that you're not who you think you are. You don't have a choice, and you know it. No Stockton would ever walk away from someone who needed help, especially a woman and a child."

"Dad would have."

"Fuck him. He's dead. He doesn't define us, or what we stand for. You are not him."

Maddox bowed his head. "I am him."

"No, you're not. You surround yourself with the dregs of society, so yeah, they bring that out in you. But there's a woman and a child in that house that aren't going to bring that out in you. I wouldn't send you in there if I thought it was a bad idea. I've known you for almost thirty years, and I know what you're capable of. You can handle five days without destroying everyone around you."

Maddox took a deep breath, still gripping the truck. He wanted to go back. Every fiber of his being was screaming at him to get his ass over that tree and back to the house. He knew that house was dark, cold, and getting colder by the minute.

"Okay, do this," Chase said. "Go back and check. If they have power, then they're okay for the moment. You can hike back to your truck, if you want."

"And if they don't have power?"

"Then you need to start a new chapter for what your last name stands for."

Maddox swore. "Five days."

"Maybe less. You can be a decent human being for five days. This is your call to action, bro. I had mine, and it gave me my life back. Same with Travis, Steen, and Zane. If you don't want Dad to own who you are, then you've got to do this. You'll never forgive yourself if you walk away right now, especially if I show up there in five days and find out that something bad happened during the storm and Hannah couldn't call for help. If you walk away, then, yeah, you are Dad. If you can walk back in there, then you have a chance to be you."

Maddox closed his eyes. He knew his brother was right. He had no choice. He took a deep breath, resolution settling over him. "Fine. I'm going." God, it felt good to say that. Terrifying, but also right. He needed to know they were okay. "But if the power's on, I'm not going in."

"And if it's off?"

"Fuck."

Chase laughed softly. "Call if you need a kick in the ass when you get there. Keep in touch."

Maddox heard Lissa ask if he was staying, but the phone disconnected before Chase answered.

Maddox leaned against his truck and lifted his face to the snow, letting the tiny shards of snow bite into his skin. He hadn't said a prayer in decades, maybe his whole life, but he knew he couldn't do this himself, so he asked for a little help, some kind of help, something that would keep Ava and Hannah protected from who he was.

When he finished, he didn't feel any better, because he knew exactly the blood that ran so thick in his veins. But at the same time, Chase and Lissa's words were lodged in his gut. He couldn't walk away. But hell. Five days?

Five days.

He took a deep breath, and then shook out his shoulders. He was going in, because there was no other choice.

It took only a couple minutes for him to grab what he needed from his truck, and then he turned to face the tree and the long driveway stretching to the isolated house. For a long moment, he didn't move. He felt like his boots were stuck to the snowy driveway.

He wanted to go back there. He wanted to help them. He wanted to find some fragment of sunshine in his soul, and he somehow knew that Hannah and Ava were his only chance to find it.

But he was scared shitless to try. Scared shitless of repeating the cycle that had killed his mother, and put that look of terror in the eyes of the girl he'd been planning to propose to at graduation.

But the night was dark and cold, and the storm had taken retreat away from him.

He had to face this. Not for Lissa. But for his own soul, because Chase had been right when he'd said he would never be able to forgive himself if he walked away from that little girl who had stared at him so silently, and the woman who had made his heart stop with her smile.

He took a deep breath, and started to walk.