“Why’s that?” Badger frowned at him. “Maybe we shouldn’t send you.”
“It’s all good,” Harley replied. “She wanted me to stay, and I didn’t dare.”
“Why?” Cade asked.
“Her family. I wasn’t good enough,” he explained. “Believe me. I won’t be good enough now either.”
“Maybe they’ve changed,” Erick suggested.
“Maybe.” Harley shrugged. “But I haven’t.”
Chapter 1
Looking in Montana for a dog named Bowser was hardly something Harley had thought would be part of his life. Yet returning to this part of the world was a goal that he’d never really left behind, because Jasmine had been here. What did one do with that first love that never had a chance to go anywhere?
Eureka, Montana, was a place where he had spent, as he had told Badger and the others, ten years. He’d arrived as a desperate, young, broken-hearted boy who’d lost his grandmother—the only loving family member he had. He shook his head, as he drove through the town. A lot of this area had grown more than he had expected. But then his memories were from a while ago. He had a lot of good memories here, but most of the memories were of his childhood with his grandmother and then growing up in a foster home, where he felt included and accepted by the daughter, Jasmine, but never accepted by the foster parents. There’d always been that sense of You’re here only temporarily.
It wasn’t his home. It would never be his home.
It wasn’t a family he had kept in touch with after he left. It had been made very clear that he was for optics, not because they were good people or that they were doing their best and that this was the way they could be of service. They weren’t the kind of people who wanted to adopt him or to keep him around long-term, particularly not once a relationship between him and Jasmine developed. That had been something they’d been against from the very beginning and had let him know in no uncertain terms that their daughter was off-limits.
Harley hadn’t understood anything except rejection. It had been something he’d struggled with for a long time. And, at one point in time, it had made life difficult because he was trying to find his own feet, and that rejection had hurt. But, when his foster parents had made it very clear that they would dump his ass back into the foster system, and he could finish his school wherever, he had toned it down and had stayed quiet and acted “decent” per their rules, just to graduate from high school, just to reach the age of majority.
But he hadn’t forgotten.
And twelve years later, he wanted to say that he’d forgiven the harsh treatment by his foster parents, but, at the same time, he wasn’t exactly sure what was the right way to deal with the residual effects from that couple either. They were obviously terrified that Harley would take their daughter down the wrong path and then leave her in a bad way. He certainly had cared enough about her—and he had believed at the time that Jasmine had truly cared about him—but there was no getting away from the fact that her parents hated that the two would have anything to do with each other.
Even now Harley was both excited and unnerved at the thought of seeing Jasmine again. He had no wish to see the rest of the family. He wasn’t the man he was when he left, and that was a good thing because that version of him had toned down things to get by, and that had served him well in the military. It had given him patience and endurance and the ability to bite his tongue.
There had been plenty of opportunities in the military where Harley had really wanted to let loose, but being court-martialed for bad behavior wasn’t something that he wanted to encounter. The navy had punishments that went over and above anything that his foster family could have devised.
As it was, Harley had left, telling Jasmine that he would return but, of course, hadn’t. His good-bye speech had been only to stop her tears and to get out of a situation he knew had no happy ending—especially if she wasn’t prepared to leave with him. But then, she’d only been sixteen, and that had been even harder for him to deal with over each passing day because he had been older. He’d wanted to take that further step with her but didn’t out of respect for her and his foster family. He also knew that step would lead to an ending of which there was no going back from, at least from her parents’ perspective.
Harley had left as soon as he could to avoid that attraction. And, of course, Jasmine, being sixteen, had desperately wanted him to promise to come back, so he had. But he knew at the time that he wasn’t returning, and he figured she’d known it too, even at sixteen. But, if not then, now, some twelve years later, she should be more than happy that he had left. Or at least that she had had a full life that she wouldn’t have had if he had stuck around.
The best thing Harley could have done was go into the navy, but he didn’t want to tell his foster family that—although they probably figured it was a good thing because it got him out of their hair. Plus it would straighten him out because, as far as they were concerned, he needed straightening out. Yet what he really needed was acceptance and a little love, and that was in short supply with this temporary family. With that foster family came lots of discipline, lots of anger, and lots of You will do this because we say so.
But, at the same time, they gave him food, a bed, and a roof over his head. That the home environment had been cold and that the foster parents didn’t include him was a completely different issue. Harley didn’t understand his foster parents’ desire to have a foster child around. Harley couldn’t envision needing a foster child around, especially when his foster parents had no healthy feelings toward him.
Plus, they had a child. A biological child. It’s not like Harley filled a childless gap in their home. He shook his head at the thought. He didn’t know what kind of sin his foster parents were trying to make up for or what kind of life they were trying to give anybody because, from Harley’s perspective, it had been a pretty rough one right from the get-go. He felt sure Jasmine would agree with him, even today.
But Harley had survived, and he had to admit it was in part because of them. So they deserved his respect if nothing else. He never talked to anybody about the kind of relationship he had with them—even not telling Jasmine much, as they were her birth parents—yet the saving grace for all of the dysfunction in that household had been Jasmine. As a little sister, she’d been to die for. The fact that she wasn’t his sister had just added to their stress and their relationship issues.
As far as his foster family was concerned, he would never be good enough, and he needed to learn that lesson right off the bat. And he did. The foster parents didn’t hold back right from the beginning, so, when Harley realized how close he and Jasmine were getting, he knew it would just be trouble. When somebody was off-limits at that stage, off-limits was off-limits. No such thing as partial off-limits. It was like, You are a bad deal, Harley. Get out of here fast, before you break our rules, … before you cross these lines.
He drove through Eureka, staring at the relatively large malls that had sprung up since he’d been gone. He even passed what looked like a large training center, maybe for the sheriff or the military. He shook his head in wonder and kept on going. As he traveled through the town, heading north, he realized that he hadn’t given the location much credence, when he thought about the drug-running and the problem of the dog. Eureka was very close to the Canadian border, just about nine miles farther north. Maybe that was good, as far as drug-running went. Maybe they were crossing the border all the time with the drugs. He didn’t know.