A Real Cowboy Loves Forever (Wyoming Rebels Book 5) Page 7

  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 pr
opose 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.

  Chapter 10

  Hannah shoved open the back door and stumbled into the kitchen, shaking snow off her face as she leaned against the door, using her body to force it shut against the wind. She let her head rest against the wood, unable to stop the shivering deep inside her body.

  She'd been outside for twenty minutes, trying to get the generator started, and she'd failed. Her fingers were numb. Her toes hurt from the cold. Her face was burning, and she couldn't stop shaking. She'd thought she was used to the cold after all the Boston winters, but even the coldest Boston weather felt like a balmy tropical beach compared to a Wyoming blizzard.

  Good God. Why on earth had she held this desolate, brutal place as a fantasy for so long? She was far too warm-blooded for this. She really was. And now, she was stranded in it without heat or power, with a four-year-old, for a week. Suddenly, her brave and stubborn decision not to accept Lissa's offer seemed incredibly stupid and short-sighted.

  A sliver of fear trickled through her, a deep, real fear of the impact of her decision to stay there with a small child.

  She took a deep breath and looked around. The kitchen was pitch black. The only light was the faint orange glow from the wood stove in the family room. When the power had gone out, she'd been philosophical. She had pulled out her phone, used the flashlight function to make her way across the room to the stove, and lit the fire that she was so grateful Maddox had left for her. For that brief moment, she had felt resourceful and confident that she could handle it. The ibuprofen she had taken for her fever had kicked in, and she had been feeling better. Capable. Determined.

  But after twenty minutes outside, everything had changed. The generator wasn't working, and she felt so sick she could barely stand up.

  She closed her eyes and let the door support the weight of her body. How long had Maddox said the storm would last? Five days? Five days. She had to make it five days, then however long it took to get plowed out. Maddox had said he would call his brothers, so she knew someone would be coming for her. She took a deep breath, wanting nothing more than to slide down to the floor, wrap herself in a blanket, and curl into a ball.

  But the house would be getting colder by the minute, and she had a four-year-old daughter who was sound asleep in the other room. Before she collapsed, she had to make sure they were safe.

  For a split second, panic tried to grab her. Fear tried to suck away the last vestiges of confidence that she could do this. Her heart started to hammer, and weakness seemed to consume her.

  She immediately opened her eyes. "No." She spoke aloud, her voice reverberating in the dark, empty kitchen. She had been in similar situations before, back in the days when she and Katie had been living on the streets of Chicago, with the Hart clan as their only support. She knew what had to be done in a situation like this. Number one was shelter. They had that. Number two was warmth. Number three was food, but they had that, as well. Clearly, they were way ahead in the game, so rah, rah, rah. All was well.

  Keeping her parka on, she pulled off her gloves and set them carefully on the corner of the counter, so she would know where to find them if she needed them again in the dark. Then she pulled her phone out of her pocket and turned the flashlight on. She could only hope that the cold weather and the snow didn't keep her from getting to her car to recharge it when the battery went low. For now, it was all she had to see by.

  She took a deep breath, and levered herself off the door, making her way around all the boxes on the floor toward the living room. She stepped inside the living room and slowly flashed the light around the room, using instincts learned as a teenager to assess the situation. There were three big open doorways that were letting the heat dissipate into the rest of the house. One led into the kitchen, one was going to the hallway, and one opened into what appeared to be a dining room. Except for the door into the kitchen, there were no doors between the rooms. She was going to have to find a way to tack blankets up over those openings, to keep the heat inside. Ideally, she'd like to keep the kitchen heated as well, but she'd have to see whether that was possible.

  She needed a hammer. Nails. God. Where had she put those? She was pretty sure they were still in her car. Regret flooded her, regret that she hadn't done a better job preparing for the possibility of losing power in the middle of the night. She had just been so consumed with arriving at their new place, with surviving the moment, that she had failed to adequately prepare for the contingency. She felt like she was a kid again, trapped in an inadequate housing situation. First, the barely habitable apartments her mom had been able to afford, then being homeless when even those were out of reach.

  Her years of living in her nice condo in Boston as an adult had put her past behind her, making her think she would never again be in this kind of situation, and now, here it was again, a repeat of the life she'd grown up with.

  Well, she'd survived that, so she would get them through this.

  One thing at a time. First thing, she had to move her mattress into this room, so that she and Ava could sleep together. Once she had the bed set up, she would try to move Ava without waking her up. Then she would deal with trying to figure out how to get the blankets over the doorways.

  Step one: mattress, doable.

  Summoning strength she honestly didn't know she still had, she worked her way across the family room and down the hall. She popped her head into Ava's room just to check. The little girl was sound asleep, the light from Hannah's phone illuminating her sweet face. Hannah piled another blanket on top of her, and gently pressed a kiss to her daughter's blond hair.

  As she did so, a powerful, undecipherable emotion flooded her, a need so deep to protect this fragile little life that was all she had left of her family. "I won't let you down, sweetie. I promise." She might have lost her sister, her mother, and left the safety of the Hart clan to go to Boston, but she had one more chance, with Ava.

  For Ava, she could do this.

  She gently tucked the blankets more snugly around Ava, then slipped out of the room, closing the door behind her. She made it to the end of the hallway, where her room was, and stepped inside. The blankets and comforter beckoned to her, so tempting to her exhausted body and soul. She had literally just finished making her bed when the power had gone out, but going to bed was going to have to wait.

  She grabbed the blankets and pulled them off the bed, her arms so weak she had to pull them one at a time. Moving the mattress felt like it would be an impossible task, but she had to find a way. She gritted her teeth, found the little handle on the side of the mattress, and leaned back, using her body weight to haul it off the box spring. Triumph rushed through her as it slid off. It crashed into one of her moving boxes, and stopped abruptly, a massive, immovable force. Tears filled her eyes, but she bent over and shoved the box out of the way, then cleared the path of the other boxes.

  When she had a passageway big enough for the mattress, she went back, grabbed the handle, and hauled on it. The mattress came sliding forward, landing in a horizontal heap on all the boxes. She managed to get it across the floor, but it thudded into the doorframe. She stepped back, realizing that she was going to have to tilt it on its side to make it through the door. Obviously. She didn't need to be a math geek to realize she should have been able to anticipate that little issue.

  She grabbed the corner of the mattress, and tried to lift it. She got the side of it about two feet off the ground, but the far side of it was wedged in the middle of one of her boxes, and she couldn't get the angle to move the mattress to a vertical position. She pushed as hard a
s she could, then paused. Letting the mattress lean against her shoulder and the side of her head, she closed her eyes. Sweat was pouring down her temples, and her arms were shaking. "It's just a mattress, Hannah," she said aloud. "You can completely handle this. You've moved plenty of mattresses down hallways in your life, and this is just one more."

  But it didn't feel like one more. It felt like the one that would break her. Because you know what? Moving a queen-sized mattress out a door and down a hallway sucked on a good day. Moving it when she had a freaking fever and was exhausted? It was like a bad joke by a universe that had decided to become a bully with an obscene and rude sense of humor. Translation: it was impossible.

  Except, it couldn't be impossible.

  It had to be possible, because there was no other way.

  "Ava needs this," she said aloud. "You have to do this for Ava." The thought of her little girl galvanized her, and she gave a mighty shove to the mattress. It finally flipped upright, even though it was still on top of the boxes. Not giving it a chance to fall back down, she grabbed the handle and hauled it fiercely toward the doorway. It slid through, coming to a stop against the opposite wall. She stumbled, and lost her balance, crashing into the wall. She landed hard on her knees, and suddenly exhaustion consumed her.

  She closed her eyes, and pressed her face to her palms. One minute. She needed one minute of rest, and then she would stand up and wrestle that mattress through the doorway, and down the hall. But as she sat there, it felt increasingly difficult to summon the strength to stand up again. She had been at the end of her coping capacity many times in her life, but for some reason, in this moment, it felt like she had no more reserves left to give. She could tell the fever was getting worse, and her muscles were shaking with exhaustion.

  A sudden banging from the front of the house jerked her awake. She froze, her heart stuttering as she listened to something hammering against the front door. Dear God, was that the wind? Fear galvanized her to her feet, and she grabbed the mattress again, shoving it with all her weight, trying to get it to bend around her doorframe, so she could get it angled down the hall.