Chapter Four
Will had spent a lot of years being easily distracted by whatever the next fun thing might be. He’d honed that part of himself. Spontaneity and fun. A disorganized kind of chaos that would lead him from one thing to the next without a whole lot of time to plan or obsess over the details.
But, as it was so often in his life, Mile High was the exception. It was easy to be as detail-oriented and conscientious about things as Brandon always was—as long as Will cared, especially when survival depended on it. For so long Will had assumed he was something short of worthless in that department, but Mile High had opened his eyes.
He just needed to be in a place that suited him. In a field that interested him on a variety of levels. Mile High and the building of it had become linked with his soul.
He paused in his current prep for a weekend backpacking trip that was going to act as some kind of employee bonding experience for their clients. Souls and whatnot was not something he wanted to think too deeply about.
He really hoped the clients knew as much about backpacking as Hayley had assured him they did. There was nothing worse than customers who overplayed their strengths and underplayed their weaknesses.
When Will’s phone rang, he didn’t even glance at the caller ID before answering it.
“Hey, Will, it’s Hayley.”
Will noted Hayley sounded strange. “Hey. What’s up?”
“Um, well, the hikers wanted to get a bit of an early start, so you’re going to meet them . . .”
He lost his concentration on Hayley’s words in his ear when Tori walked in, cell phone cradled to her ear, bright pink backpack—if he wasn’t mistaken the same one he’d given her for her birthday as a joke ten years ago.
Tori hated pink, and she probably hated him, but she was here and she was wearing that backpack.
Their eyes met across the meeting area of Mile High headquarters, and if she was paying attention to her conversation, she was doing a much better job than him.
But he was friendly, easygoing Will, no matter that the mere sight of her made his ribs feel like they’d tied together and squeezed everything inside of him.
That feeling would go away. He’d always, always been something close to sure about that. But seven years had passed and here he still was.
“Will?”
He blinked, realizing he’d zoned out on his conversation with Hayley. “Yeah, meet them there.”
“And the other part?”
He flicked a glance at Tori again, despite every voice in his head telling him to stop. Her expression was grim, she’d shifted so she now held her phone to her ear with her hand, her knuckles white from the pressure.
“Will!”
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay?” Hayley asked, concern lacing the already weird tone to her voice.
“I’m fine. Just distracted trying to get ready. What’s the other part again?”
“Sam can’t make it. We’re going to send Tori instead.”
His brain came into sharp focus then. Tori and her backpack. Tension-filled phone calls. The weirdness in Hayley’s voice.
A setup. So clear and damn interfering he almost laughed. What had he expected, really? For everyone to let it go? For everyone to pretend? That was his expertise. The rest of them were pokers and prodders and obnoxious as hell.
“She needs the experience, and—”
“And please spare me the lies. You aren’t any good at it.” Though he was irritated, his voice didn’t come out as sharp as it could have. He couldn’t muster anger, not when he was the idiot who hadn’t seen this coming.
Hayley didn’t say anything, though the call didn’t end so she was still on the line. Something shifted inside of him, mostly against his will, but Hayley was his sister, half or not; kept a secret for most of their lives or not, she was his little sister.
He felt protective of her, some weird biological thing, and it had been a long time since he’d felt the need to protect someone, the desire to. He was the youngest—even as a twin. He’d always been the one at the bottom of the totem pole, so to speak. Having something of a purpose was . . . Well, he’d always liked that. It was why he threw himself so wholeheartedly into Mile High. Purpose.
“Tori and I will meet the clients at Healing Point, and if you set it up with that much symbolism, you and Brandon and Lilly need to work on your subtlety.”
She let out a little huff of breath. “Will.”
This time when he looked at Tori, she didn’t have the phone to her ear, and she looked . . . wary. Pissed. And, worst of all, uncertain.
Because it mirrored all his feelings and then some, he smiled at her, but in that Tori way, it felt as though she saw right through it to everything he was trying to hide underneath.
In his twenties, he’d been fascinated by that. Until she’d wanted more. How was it fair to want more than that? She could already see through him. What more was there?
“Anything else pertinent I need to know?” he asked Hayley with as much nonchalance as he could manage. He could do a backpacking trip with Tori. Even with that damn pink backpack and all the memories and old weirdness, because it was just that.
Old. Gone. A lifetime ago that no longer existed. Like his childhood, like his marriage, things that didn’t exist anymore, so they couldn’t possibly matter.
“No. The rest of the information is the same. Just . . .”
He waited, but Hayley wasn’t finishing her sentence. Which meant it was something he didn’t want to hear.
“Have a good time, I guess,” she finished, quite lamely.
“Of course.” He hit End on his phone and focused all his energy on sending a bland smile Tori’s way. “I guess it’s the two of us.”
“And this doesn’t reek like hideous setup to you?”
“Of course it does. Why do you think I’m agreeing to it with a smile on my face?”
Her lips twitched a little, the first hint of any amusement she’d had toward him. It shouldn’t unlock something inside of him. It shouldn’t affect him at all.
So he wouldn’t let it.
“Let them think forcing us to work together will create . . . Hell, I don’t know. We’ve been civil to each other for days now.”
She studied him in that oh-so-careful way of hers. Somehow different from Lilly’s concern or Hayley’s curiosity. A world in itself, that blue-green look filled with a history he didn’t know how to erase.
“Civil isn’t always comfortable, Will,” she said, and her voice was calm and quiet, and it was nothing like before. Because Tori had been loud and brash and had barreled through any conversation.
He didn’t recognize this careful stranger, even when he did.
“Where’s Sarge?” he asked, because the dog always seemed safer. A buffer. Happier memories. A better past.
“My neighbor’s looking after him overnight. I wanted to read up on the dog rules in the National Forest before I brought him along for an overnight trip, and this was a little last minute.”
“Leashed on common areas and campgrounds, fine in the backwoods.”
She gave a little nod. “I’ll know that for next time. But I imagine clients should have to sign off on agreeing to backpack and camp with a dog.”
“I’m sure Brandon can draw up something for future trips.”
This was all civil. Easy back and forth. He didn’t understand why everyone felt the need to maneuver them into working together.
“It’s this, right here,” she said, not looking him in the eye.
“What?”
She shook her head. “The long pauses. The awkward silences. Oh, we can pretend the past didn’t happen, Will, but it’s in every quiet moment.”
“Then let’s eradicate the quiet moments, shall we?” he offered with a grin he didn’t feel, hefting his backpack onto his shoulders. “I hope you’re prepared for one chatty hike.”
* * *
Will lived up to his word. They hiked. For hours and he talked basically nonstop the whole damn time. Tori had lost count of how many times she’d seriously considered kicking him in the ass.
The only thing keeping her from doing it was the fact it was something she might have done then, and she was trying to avoid that line back into the friendship they’d had.
Civil might not be comfortable, but it had a lot fewer land mines than friendship.
There’d been a sparkle of it. The old him. The old them. When he’d asked why she thought he was agreeing to the setup, because Will could be counted on to never quite react the way you thought he would.
One night in particular.
She wished she had brought Sarge, rules and clients be damned, if only so it would give her heart somewhere soft to land when her brain and memories were trying to be a dick.
“The backpacking camp area is up here.” Will pointed, a frown crossing his face. “We should hear someone by now. If they left when Hayley said they did . . .” He trailed off and increased the pace of their hiking.
Tori followed, more than ready for company that wasn’t Will Evans. It was easier to ignore all the silences, all the ways they stared at each other—lost in thought and memories—when other people were around. She knew they noticed, but still. She could focus on them instead of him.
Him who hiked up mountains with ease, whose voice was the same rough timbre of her memories. Oh, she’d gotten over all those old feelings, but it didn’t mean the ghosts of them didn’t still haunt her.
He’d been a first, so many different firsts, friendship and love and utter heartbreak in a way she hadn’t even felt with her family when she’d left them, so maybe he’d always haunt her.
Gee, isn’t that a cheery thought.
Tori followed Will into a little clearing where the campsite should be, if the map was right.
“Where are they?” Will wondered, pulling his walkie off his pack, but before he called back to Mile High, he scowled deeper and strode over to a tree at the edge of the clearing.
Tori hadn’t noticed it before, but now she realized there was a bright pink piece of paper nailed to said tree.
“What the hell?” Will muttered, stepping toward it, before letting out a curse.
Tori moved closer and squinted at the piece of paper to read it herself. All it said was sorry, but she supposed that’s all it needed to say.
“There are no clients,” she said tonelessly. Just her and Will—not just having to work together, but there was no way to get back to their vehicle by nightfall. They had to camp.
Together.
Just the two of them.
It was her turn to curse.
“Lilly’s always a bit sneakier than I think she’ll be,” Will muttered, tearing the piece of paper from its nail and crumpling it in one hand.
“You think it was Lilly?” Not that it mattered. Someone from Mile High had plotted to get her and Will alone together for some reason. Did it really matter who?
“It was all of them, but it started with her. You’ll find, soon enough, when it comes to Mile High, everything starts with her.”
“Not Brandon?”
Will shrugged out of his pack and placed it on the ground. He rubbed a palm over his beard as if he was trying to plan how to get out of this, but Tori knew. They were stuck.
“Brandon’s part of it, but Lilly . . . She came along and I barely remember what it was like before. She swept in and changed everything, Brandon included. They fight. They disagree constantly. And yet, when it comes to Mile High, it’s like that all twines together and becomes some idea, some plan, some scheme.” He gestured disgustedly with the crumpled piece of paper in his fist. “And everyone’s on board. Everyone’s falling in line to do the bidding of the Brandon-Lilly Express, and you know what the worst part is?”
She shook her head, a little too interested in the fact a woman could sweep in and change anything about the Evans brothers. What would that look like? What would it take?
“They’re always fucking right.”
Tori didn’t particularly care for the implication in this case. Mostly because she didn’t know what any of the people at Mile High were trying to prove.
“I wouldn’t even be surprised if we head back down tomorrow the best of friends,” Will muttered disgustedly as he rifled around in his pack.
“I would be,” Tori returned. What could be said that would erase all that had kept her away for so long? She had a hard time believing years could eradicate it. She had no trust a day could.
“We should set up camp before it gets dark,” he said.
“Joy.”
“Just be glad they didn’t somehow confiscate one of our tents so we had to share one,” Will returned, unclipping his tent from the outside of his backpack.
Tori shuddered. Yes, she would be very grateful for that. Sharing a tent would be pure and utter torture. Really, he had a good point on all of this. It could be so, so much worse.
She shrugged out of her pack and worked on getting out everything she would need to set up her backpacking tent.
Will did the same and they did it in silence. Oddly enough, it wasn’t that uncomfortable, tense silence she’d hoped to get used to. This was an almost companionable one. Working side by side had always been easy, but it was a surprise it still could be.
“I’m sorry. I don’t get what they’re trying to accomplish. You know them better. What could possibly come from this that would benefit them? What’s their endgame here?”
Will sat back on his haunches and looked out over the forest around them. The air was heavy with pine and sun and it’d be very nearly relaxing if she didn’t have a million things going on in her head.
“I really don’t know,” he finally said. “Unless it’s just . . .”
He trailed off. Completely. Then started busying himself with setting up his tent. Oh, he was not getting off that easily.
“Just what?” she demanded.
He glanced at her sideways. Assessing. Wondering. Finally he shrugged, as if it didn’t matter at all. It didn’t, so she couldn’t figure out why his nonchalance made her bristle.
“Maybe they think we should rehash all that old shit.”
Tori had a lot of snide comments for that, but she couldn’t quite make any of them come out of her mouth. Her throat had tightened and something far too close to panic fluttered and jittered in her chest.
She thought she’d accepted rehashing the past was a possibility. In all the weeks leading up to coming to Gracely, to facing Will, she thought she’d accepted that at some point they might have to discuss that horrible night.
She had moved on. She’d lived a whole life without Will and those feelings. She didn’t feel the same way anymore, and she wasn’t the same person anymore. It shouldn’t matter.
It shouldn’t, but it did. Not because she felt the same way, but because if they rehashed she would feel that old pain. No matter that she was over it. The memory of it would hurt, and having the memory of it hurt with him witnessing it was too much to bear. It had always been too much to bear.
“There isn’t much point in that, is there?” She was beyond gratified when her voice came out strong and clear.
“No. Can’t change the past, right?”
“Right.”
They both returned their focus to setting up their tents, and Tori could only hope that was that.