Texas Heroes_ Volume 1(121)

Mitch leaned heavily against his truck. A half-sister? Had Sam cheated on their mother? That bastard.

He closed his sagging jaw. Hell of a deal, dropping only part of a bombshell like that. Boone hadn’t changed much—still knew how to taunt his older brother.

Mitch shook his head and read on.

I’m giving you a chance to come back by yourself, but I’ll warn you—I’m coming after you if you don’t show up pretty soon. Dad was wrong to do what he did, and in the end, he knew it. I want my brother back. You belong on this land, same as I do.

You never should have had to leave. Maddie’s made this place feel like it did when Mom was alive, but there’s one thing missing. You.

Mitch bowed his head. Jenny would still be there, making it a happy place, if not for him. He couldn’t go back. It was his fault that everything had gone wrong.

This is your home, Mitch, and you’ve got family waiting. It’s been too long. Besides, I need to show you I can take you now.

Mitch snorted, and a laugh almost broke through. You and whose army, little brother? Then he read the last line and sobered again.

I’ve missed you, big brother. Come on back where you belong.

Boone

Mitch’s chest ached with a pain sharper than any he’d felt since the night his mother died. Home. Hadn’t he wanted to go there a million times? Hadn’t it been like cutting his heart out to have to leave, knowing he could never return? How many nights had the kid he’d been felt like blowing his brains out or racing off some cliff, just to make the endless emptiness go away, quit eating at his soul?

Damn you, Dad. Why did you die on me? We can’t ever fix it now.

And damn me, for starting the whole nightmare.

Too much was kicking up inside him. He didn’t want to leave the one place that was starting to feel like home. He didn’t know how to go back to the home he had lost. And the last thing Mitch wanted to do was to walk back in that store and think about groceries.

Which was why that’s exactly what he’d do.

Shoving the letter in his pocket, Mitch squared his shoulders and headed back inside the store.



Pulling on the homemade travois Cy had fashioned, Mitch pulled the heavy load through the woods, the cabin’s contours visible now. The long drive had done nothing to settle the turmoil inside him.

The last person he wanted to see right now was Perrie. Or Davey. They made him feel too much, and feelings had always been the enemy. Always would be. From the day he’d fought with his father and taken off in a rage, life had pounded that lesson into him again and again.

Don’t feel. Just put one foot in front of the other. If he hurried, there was a slim chance he could pack up and leave before nightfall. He just had to get through the next couple of hours, and then he could be alone again. Put his careening thoughts in order.

At the cabin steps, he dropped the harness of the travois. Drawing a deep breath, he steeled himself to enter.

The first thing he saw was their suitcases, stacked by the door.

Perrie walked into the room, her hands full of Davey’s toys. When she saw him, she froze.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“We’re leaving.”

If he’d had any lingering notion that last night had meant anything to her, this put paid to it. “Where are you going?”

“It’s not your concern.” But she wouldn’t look at him, her movements jerky, almost feverish as she set the toys on the sofa and began to stuff them into the waiting bags.

“Do you even know where you’re going?”

“It’s not your concern,” she repeated, her voice quavering.

“You don’t, do you?” When she still didn’t answer, the upheaval inside him at last had a target. “What the hell are you doing? What kind of mother are you that you’d just take off with that boy, not knowing where you’re headed?”

She shrank from his words like he’d punched her, but the pressure inside him was too intense, too primed to blow.

Still she didn’t answer.

“What if you get sick again, huh? Do you even have any money to take care of him? And what about that junky damn car you’re driving? What if it breaks down? Are you so desperate to get away from me that you’ll risk your child’s life?”

He stalked across the floor, looming over her. “What are you running from, Perrie?”

Her head jerked up in surprise.

He took a stab in the dark. “It’s Davey’s father, isn’t it?”

All color drained from her face. “You—you don’t—you can’t know that.”

“But it’s true, isn’t it? You’re on the run. Tell me why. Tell me what he’s done to you.”