Chapter Ten
Cole turned his truck off the road and rolled down the windows, gravel crunching under the tires as he pulled to a stop at the edge of the trees.
“Where are we?” Sienna asked, blinking like she was waking up from a dream. She’d been in her own world since they left Jase and Emily’s, staring out the front window while she rubbed a finger over the tiny scar on her wrist.
They hadn’t spoken because she seemed to need quiet and Cole respected that. He understood the need to process things and didn’t want to push her too hard or fast. But he also wasn’t willing to let her go just yet.
She might not realize it, but alone was the last thing Sienna needed to be at the moment.
“One of my favorite spots in Crimson.” He turned off the truck and opened his door. “Come on.”
“I should go home,” she protested weakly.
He glanced over his shoulder, arching a brow in her direction. “Where is home for you right now?” he asked, not to be unkind but because he was truly curious how she would answer.
She tugged her bottom lip between her teeth and sucked in a breath. “Fine,” she said after a moment, not answering his question. “Show me this special spot of yours.”
He led her down the dirt path, holding back branches that hung across the trail, partially obstructing it and hiding it from plain sight. It was one of the things Cole liked best about this area—not many people knew it existed so even at the height of summer tourist season, it wasn’t crowded.
The sun was just beginning to dip behind the peak, the evening light that played through the trees soft and warm.
“Watch your step,” he told her as they navigated a rocky section of the trail.
A minute later, the forest ended and they emerged onto a grassy knoll with the river flowing in front of them. From the spot they were standing, there was a view of the tip of Crimson Mountain in the distance, along with a hillside covered in aspen trees and early season wildflowers on the other side of the bank.
“It’s beautiful,” Sienna whispered.
The look of wonder playing across her face was far more to Cole’s liking than the confusion and pain in her gaze right before she’d rushed from the table at Jase’s.
His heart skipped a beat, and he smiled. “The river is high right now because of runoff from the snow. It will be half this size by August if we have another dry summer.”
“Look, there’s deer over there.” Sienna pointed to a spot in front of the trees near the bend in the river. “Those are the biggest deer I’ve ever seen.”
“Because they’re elk,” Cole explained. “They come down to the river this time of day. They’ll go back up to higher ground as the weather gets warmer.”
He stepped back and pointed to a bench tucked at the base of two pine trees about ten feet away. “Want to sit down?”
Sienna glanced between him and the rustic wooden bench. “Did you build that?”
“I wish I had that talent,” he said, shaking his head as they moved toward the trees. “I found out about this place from one of the guys who ran the snowplow when I first got a job with the sheriff’s department. Manny’s retired now and moved to Pueblo last year to be closer to his daughter. He and his wife used to come out here so he could fish.” Cole brushed a few pine needles off the bench, then took a seat next to Sienna on it. “He built this so his wife would have a comfortable place to sit and read while he did his thing.”
“That’s sweet,” Sienna murmured.
“Yeah. There’s a few popular fishing spots about a half mile down on either side, but not many people come right here because the trailhead isn’t obvious.”
“Do you fish?” she asked.
“Not nearly as much as I’d like,” he admitted. He pointed to a section of the river where the current wasn’t running so hard. “But that’s about as perfect of a spot as you can get.”
“My dad used to fish. I remember it now.”
Sienna was back to worrying the tip of one finger against the scar on her wrist.
“He still does.” Cole took her hand in his, lacing their fingers together. “Want to talk about earlier?”
“No.”
He lifted her hand and grazed a kiss over her knuckles. “Talk to me anyway.”
“I made them into the bad guys,” she said after a moment. “They were the ones who didn’t want me then. They wouldn’t want me now.” She swiped at her cheek with the hand he wasn’t holding. “I never questioned why I couldn’t remember any details from the time before Mom and I left Crimson. She’d barely talk about it or her reasons for leaving, so I think I made up a story in my mind about how bad it was.”
“And maybe that wasn’t the whole story?”
She looked over at him. “It wasn’t great. My memories are hazy but coming back to me. You may not have been raised here, but you’ve heard plenty of Crenshaw stories, I’m sure.”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “The family track record is spotty at best.”
“The Crenshaw track record is a mess of crater-size potholes and everyone knows it. I thought there was nothing more to my father. I wanted closure. I wanted him to admit that he didn’t care enough to make my mom stay. He didn’t fight or come after me.”
She shook her head, and a lock of blond hair fell forward against her cheek. “If you’d asked me a week ago, I would have told you there was nothing Declan Crenshaw or even Jase could say that would make me forgive them for letting her take me.”
“Even though your life might have been better away from here. The advantages and opportunities you had—”
“But it wasn’t my life.” She pulled her hand away from his, stood and paced to the edge of the river. He let her go, watched as she hugged her arms around herself. There were some things a person had to work out on their own, and Cole hoped the serenity of this space—the view of the mountains surrounding them and the sound of the river babbling over rocks—would help her calm the demons pulling at her.
He’d certainly come here often enough to soothe his own soul.
She turned back to him after a few minutes. “I know I sound like an ungrateful little princess,” she said, her gaze pained. “I did have opportunities. I had stability and security. They sent me to the right schools and ballet and debutante balls. I went to cotillion and birthday parties where parents rented ponies and magicians and we vacationed to beaches and mountains and...”
She threw up her hands. “None of it mattered because it wasn’t mine. My mom made the choice to reinvent herself, and she worked so hard to leave behind everything about her marriage and life before. But I was always there, a physical reminder of the mistakes she’d made.”
“She couldn’t have thought of you as a mistake,” Cole argued, hating that she believed that about herself. “She’s your mother.”
Sienna gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Not all moms are created equal, Sheriff. It wasn’t that I blamed her. I didn’t think she had a choice. She made me think that. Now I know...”
She sat down again beside him. “Somehow I blocked the details before we left. But I remember...not all of it but enough. She left Jase behind because Dad needed him. He was always the strong one—the caretaker of all of us. I wasn’t that important, so I got the ticket out of Crimson.”
She held up her wrist, pale and delicate in the soft evening light. “I dropped a sparkler on myself at one of the Crimson Fourth of July festivals. Maybe I was five at the time. My dad took care of me. Granted, he got ice from a beer keg plus a refill at the same time, but he tried to make it better.”
“Declan isn’t a bad man,” Cole told her. “He has issues, but he’s also got a big heart.”
“I wanted—needed—him to be the bad guy in this.” She leaned forward and placed her elbows on her knees. “My brother taught me how to ride a bike. He sat with me instead of his friends on the bus home from school when I started kindergarten so I wouldn’t get scared.”
“You didn’t remember any of this before tonight?”
“No. The only things Mom would ever discuss were the drinking and fighting between her and my dad. So those are the things I remember. Now I wonder which are mine and which are hers.”
“I’m sorry, Sienna.” He curled his fingers around her neck and massaged gently.
“But that doesn’t give me an answer to the million-dollar question. Why did my dad let me go so easily?” She swayed toward him, and Cole looped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close.
“I don’t know, sweetheart. You’ll have to ask him.”
“I’m so afraid,” she whispered, “of hearing the answer.” She let out a choked sob that just about ripped open Cole’s chest. He pressed a long kiss to the top of her head and smoothed a hand over her hair.
After a few minutes, she straightened, dabbed her fingers to the corners of her eyes and shifted to face him. “How did you lose your parents?” she asked, and he felt his head snap back like she’d punched him.
“We were talking about your messed-up family,” he said, trying to keep his tone light. “Not mine.”
“Change of subject.”
He swallowed, ignoring the tightening in his gut. He hated revisiting his past. Most people were shocked enough when he shared that his family had died that he could sidestep giving any details. Leave it to Sienna to be different.
“My father killed himself,” he said bluntly. “Mom had a heart attack six months later.” He closed his eyes and added, “I’m pretty sure she actually died of a broken heart.”
“Oh, Cole. Was your father... Did he... Were there drugs or alcohol involved?”
“Not a bit.”
“Mental illness?”
He shook his head, feeling the suffocating band of anger and humiliation tighten around him. “He was a career army man, close to retirement age. They were based outside of DC at the time. My mom had her eye on an RV. She’d traveled the world but wanted to see the United States.”
“That’s sweet.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “She was a sweetheart. The perfect army wife. She could make the most basic military housing feel like home. Then my dad was arrested.”
“For what?”
“He was charged with conspiracy and bribery. There was a ring of officers being bribed by a defense contractor in the Middle East. They gave him classified and confidential information that he used to defraud the US military and he offered...” Cole paused, shook his head “...a lot of things in return. Apparently it had been going on for years, and he was one of the ringleaders. He denied everything, but the government had enough evidence.”
Sienna placed a hand on his leg. His skin burned beneath the fabric of his jeans where the warmth of her seeped through.
“Mom posted bail, and he came home. The next week, he shot himself.”
“No,” Sienna whispered. “Did she—?”
“I found him,” he said. “Mom had asked my brother and me to fly in. She thought seeing the two of us would bolster his spirits. She’d come to pick me up at the airport. Shep was arriving that night. There was a note on the door when we got back to the house that I should come in without her.”
“I can’t even imagine, Cole. I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged, trying to stay strong. He’d become immune to sympathy in the weeks following his father’s death because at that time the kind remarks were always laced with a trace of judgment.
Almost everyone in his parents’ circle of friends was or had been military at some point. The accusations against his father, and the fact that his suicide seemed tantamount to admitting guilt, were a hard pill to swallow for some people. Most people.
The question of the kind of man his father truly was had driven a wedge between Cole and his twin. Shep had always been a free spirit, the family rebel and the brother who’d given their parents the most trouble growing up. He’d felt somehow justified in his choices after Richard Bennett’s years of treachery had been revealed.
Cole, who at the time was stationed in Texas, proud to follow in his father’s footsteps with his own military career, had been knocked so far off center he wasn’t sure he’d ever right himself again. Despite the mountain of evidence, including emails and other correspondence that implicated Colonel Bennett, Cole still wanted to believe his dad could be innocent.
“The worst was mom’s reaction,” Cole told her, keeping his voice neutral as emotions buffeted him from every side. “She was his biggest supporter. She’d been so proud of his service. Even after the arrest, she insisted he’d been framed. She wanted him to be the honorable man she’d married but would have stood by his side no matter the outcome.”
“He didn’t give her that choice,” Sienna said quietly.
“She felt like he’d abandoned her. It didn’t help that Shep was doing the ‘I told you so’ routine every waking minute. Her pain didn’t seem to phase him at all.”
She squeezed his leg. “That couldn’t have gone over well with you. It’s obvious you were protective of your mom.”
“Picture the most generous, selfless, caring person you can imagine, then multiply by ten. That was my mom.”
“You were lucky.”
“So was Shep. I still don’t get how we could have had the same parents, the same childhood, most of the same experiences and his take on everything was the polar opposite of mine.”
“I can’t answer that,” Sienna said. “Jase and I obviously had different upbringings, at least for most of it. Did you finally get your brother to come around?”
Cole shook his head. “We got in a fight at Dad’s funeral. Both of us ended up with black eyes, and he had a split lip to go with it. Never could block a shot. Mom blamed us both.” He closed his eyes as memory and regret coalesced inside his chest. “Shep left that night. I haven’t talked to him since.”
“What about when your mom died?” Sienna asked.
He pressed his lips together, then said, “He didn’t come back, and I did a private burial. Without Shep, it was only me there. I couldn’t stand the idea of her family and friends judging her in death at a big service.”
“You don’t know—”
“I do,” he insisted. “It was awful for her, and she had no one with Dad gone.”
“She had you.”
He stood, paced a few steps forward and plucked a stone from the creek bank, hurling it toward the river. It skipped across the water twice, then disappeared into the current with a plop.
He closed his eyes and listened to the water, hoping the bubbling sound would calm his tumultuous emotions as it had so many other evenings. This was the place he came when he needed to regroup—when the stress of work or the sting of the past got to be too much.
Before tonight, he’d always come here alone.
He felt more than heard Sienna come up behind him. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek to the center of his back. “Neither one of our fathers fought for us,” she said into his shirt. “What a pair.”
A pair.
Cole liked the sound of that. He liked the thought of not being alone, and especially of not being alone with Sienna. She softened his edges, dulling the throbbing pain inside his heart until it lessened to a manageable ache.
No one had ever been able to reach him that way before. Cole might be stubborn, but he wasn’t stupid. What she gave to him was precious, a gift to be cherished even if only for a short time.
So he turned around, cupped her cheeks between his hands and kissed her.