I glance up at him.
He quirks a smile. “We’ll change that.”
Good luck.
Jake grabs the door handle and starts to pull it closed.
“You hated my father.” I turn my eyes on him, stopping him. “Didn’t you?”
He straightens and stares at me.
“Won’t it be uncomfortable for you to have me here… Uncle Jake?”
If he hated my dad, won’t I remind him of him?
But his eyes on me turn piercing, and he says in an even tone, “I don’t see your father when I look at you, Tiernan.”
I still, not sure what that means or if it should make me feel better.
You look like your mother. He’d said at the airport that I looked like my mother. Did he see her when he looked at me, then? Was that what he meant?
His eyes darken, and I watch as he rubs his thumb across the inside of his hand before he balls it into a fist.
I’m rooted, my stomach falling a little.
“And you don’t have to call me uncle,” he says. “I’m not really anyway, right?”
But before I can answer, he clicks his tongue to call the dogs, they follow him out, and he pulls the door closed, leaving me alone.
I stand there, still, but the nerves under my skin fire. One phone call, a coach seat, and four states later, it finally occurs to me... I don’t know these people.
Tiernan
I yawn, the warm smell of fresh coffee drifting through my nostrils as I arch my back on the bed and stretch my body awake.
Damn. I slept like shit.
I reach over on the nightstand for my phone to see what time it is, but my hand doesn’t land on anything, just falls through the empty space.
What?
And that’s when I notice it. The roughness of the new sheets. The whine of the bed under my body. The pillow that’s not the feather one my neck is used to.
I blink my eyes awake, seeing the faint, morning light stream across the ceiling from where it spills in through the glass double doors in my room.
Not my room, actually.
I push up on my elbows, my head swimming and my eyelids barely able to stay open as I yawn again.
And it all hits me at once. What had happened. Where I am. How I ran away, because I was rash and I wasn’t thinking. The uncertainty that twisted my stomach a little, because nothing is familiar.
The way I don’t like this and how I’d forgotten I don’t like change.
The way he looked at me last night.
I train my ears, hearing the creak of tree branches bending with the breeze outside and how that breeze is getting caught in the chimney as it blows.
No distant chatter coming from my father’s office and the six flat screens he plays as he gets ready for his day. No entourage of stylists and assistants running up and down the stairs, getting my mother ready for hers, because she never leaves the house unless she’s in full hair and make-up.
No phones going off or landscapers with their mowers.
For a moment, I’m homesick. Unbidden images drift through my head. Them lying on cold, metal slabs right now. Being slid into cold lockers. My father’s skin blue, and my mother’s hair wet and make-up gone. Everything they were—everything the world would recognize—now gone.
I hold there, frozen and waiting for the burn in my eyes to come. The sting of tears. The pain in my throat.
Wanting the tears to come.
Wishing they would come.
But they don’t. And that worries me more than my parents’ death. There’s a name for people who lack remorse. People who can’t empathize. People who demonstrate strong anti-social attitudes.
I’m not a sociopath. I mean, I cried during the Battle of Winterfell on Game of Thrones. But I don’t cry—not once—when both of my parents die?
At least no one in this town will care about me or how I’m coping with their deaths. The only person back home who’d understand is Mirai.
And then I blink, realization hitting. “Mirai…”
Shit. I throw back the covers and climb out of bed, heading for the chest of drawers where my phone is charging. I grab it, turn it on, and see a list of missed notifications—mostly calls from my mother’s assistant.
Ignoring the voicemails, I dial Mirai, noticing it’s before six on the west coast as I hold the phone to my ear.
She answers almost immediately.
“Mirai,” I say before she says anything.
“Tiernan, thank goodness.”
She breathes hard, like she either ran to the phone or just woke up.
“Sorry, my ringer was off,” I explain.
“You’re okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Chills spread up my arms, so I flip open the top of my suitcase and pull out my black sweatshirt, juggling the phone as I try to slip it over my head.
“So…are you going to stay?” she asks after a pause. “You know you don’t have to. If the house isn’t comfortable or you feel weird—”
“I’m okay,” I tell her. “The house is nice, and he’s…” I trail off, searching for my next word. What is he? “Hospitable.”
“Hospitable,” she repeats, clearly suspicious.
I clear my throat. “So how is the world?” I ask, changing the subject. “Anything that needs me?”
“Just take care of yourself,” she says, and I don’t miss the way she cuts me off. “I won’t bug you again. Call me if you want—I want you to—but I’ll stick to texts to check in from time to time. I just want you to forget about everything here for a while, okay? I got it handled.”
I look around the bedroom I slept in, thankful I have it to myself, because at least I have one place here that’s mine where I can go to be alone.
But the thought of walking out of this room and confronting new people makes my stomach roll, and I…
Just book me a flight back home, Mirai. I want to tell her that.
But I don’t.
Jake seems to be amenable to letting me be and not pushing too hard, but Noah is friendly. Too friendly.
And I’ve yet to meet Kaleb, so that’s another new person coming.
I walk for the double doors, needing some air.
The least of my worries should be what people are thinking or saying about my absence back home—and what they’re thinking and saying about my parents—but I can’t help it. I feel like far away and out of the loop is suddenly the last place I should be right now. Especially when I’ve foolishly hung my hat in the middle of nowhere, with some guy my father hated, and on land that smells like horse shit and dead, rotting deer carcasses.
I pin the phone between my ear and shoulder as I throw open the doors. “I should be there for…”
But I trail off, the doors spreading wide and the view looming in front of me.
My mouth drops open. Suddenly, I’m an inch tall.
“You should do what you need to do,” Mirai replies.
But I barely register what she says. I stare ahead, absently stepping onto my large wooden deck as I take in the expanse before me that I didn’t notice in the dark the night before.
My heart thumps against my chest.
So that’s “the peak.” It didn’t cross my mind that the town was named so for a reason.