Great and Precious Things Read online

  Well, that story changed quickly.

  The man reached back, hooked his hand around my waist, and tugged me closer. I tensed, even though the violation of my personal space was nothing compared to the shotgun pointed at us. His arm was a vise, locking me in place with casual strength. Just like freshman year when— I cut myself right off. There’s no way.

  “Be careful,” I said softly to the stranger. “He has Alzheimer’s. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

  He pulled me tighter against his back, and the scent of mint and pine filled my nose as he started to shift in tiny movements so my back was to the trees and not the ravine. God, that smell… I knew it.

  “We’re just hikers,” he said to Mr. Daniels, low and slow.

  Certainty slammed into me with the force of an avalanche, knocking the breath from my lungs. My eyes fluttered shut as I swam through the flood of memories, desperately hoping I wasn’t the one hallucinating right now.

  “Cam,” I whispered, letting my forehead rest against his back as I gripped a fistful of his coat.

  “Are you okay, Willow?” he asked, so softly that I would have gone with the hallucination theory if I hadn’t felt his deep voice rumble through his chest.

  I nodded, the fabric of his coat soft against my skin. Maybe Mr. Daniels had already pulled the trigger. Maybe I’d never felt the impact. Maybe he’d killed me instantly. That was the only logical explanation for Cam’s presence.

  Because Camden Daniels had sworn the only way he’d ever come back to Alba was to be buried here. But he felt so real. So solid. Smelled exactly like I remembered. And if I were really dead, wouldn’t it be Sullivan’s arms around me? Not Cam’s. It could never be Cam. Not for me.

  I followed Cam’s almost-imperceptible lead as he backed us away from his father.

  Cam couldn’t be here. He hadn’t been here in years. And he definitely couldn’t stop a bullet. But a feeling of safety drenched me anyway. It never mattered if the rest of the world saw him as a menace—Cam had always been my unlikely refuge, even when he earned every last bit of his reputation. He’d protected me for the simple reason that I’d been theirs all my life.

  The girl who tagged along with the Daniels boys.

  The naive teenager who stayed behind when three brothers went to war.

  The woman who shattered when only two came home.

  Cam might be here now, but one misstep, and we’d both be buried next to Sullivan.

  “Stop moving or I’ll shoot!” Mr. Daniels shouted, and Cam obeyed. “Empty your pockets! You’d better not be stealing from me!”

  “I’m going to let you go, and I want you to slowly back into the woods and then get the hell away from here,” Cam ordered me softly.

  I vaguely heard Mr. Daniels’s agitated muttering in the distance.

  “I can’t leave you here,” I protested.

  “For once in your life, listen to me, Pika. I’m trying to save your neck. Alexander is coming up behind Dad, and help is on the way, but you have to go.”

  The nickname tightened my throat with a lump so big, I couldn’t swallow it down. “He doesn’t recognize you, Cam. He’ll shoot. It’s been six years since he’s seen you. He doesn’t even recognize me, and I see him almost every day.”

  “He’ll remember me.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought, too, until he pointed a shotgun at me, you stubborn idiot.”

  “What was that?” he whispered. “I thought I heard a squeak, but my coat must have muffled it.”

  I would have pinched him in retribution under any other circumstance.

  “He’s not going to remember you,” I argued, “and you’ll just agitate him even more when you try to remind him who you are.”

  Mr. Daniels’s muttering grew louder until he was shouting again. “You trespassers, trying to steal what’s mine! You can’t have it! Can’t have it…”

  Cam’s heartbeat stayed calmingly rhythmic, his breathing deep and even. If I hadn’t seen Arthur Daniels myself, I’d never think there was a gun pointed at us.

  “You can’t have it!”

  A shot rang out, and birds scattered from the woods at my back. I froze, my grip tightening on Cam’s coat.

  His hand splayed wide over the small of my back.

  “Cam!” I whispered as loudly as I dared. If he was hurt—if he’d come back only to be buried… I wouldn’t survive burying another Daniels boy. I leaned to see around him, but Cam’s grip tightened, trapping me firmly behind him.

  “I’m okay,” he replied just as quietly. “He aimed at the sky.”

  “I guess at least we know it’s loaded.” My heart slammed against my ribs, fear coating my tongue with a bitter, metallic taste.

  “Way to find the silver lining.”

  A corner of my lips lifted slightly.

  “There’s one more in the barrel. Remember what I said. Back toward the woods slowly.”

  “No,” I argued.

  “Yes,” he countered, and his hand disappeared from my back. “Now, Willow.”

  Ice rippled through my veins.

  He stepped forward, and I let the fabric of his coat slide through my grasp, leaving me precious inches away from Cam.

  “Dad,” Cam called out. “I could have sworn you told me never to point a gun at a pretty girl.”

  I stood paralyzed, watching Cam walk forward like his dad didn’t have a gun pointed at his chest.

  “What?” Mr. Daniels called out. “I’m not your… Who are you? What do you want?”

  There it was—a softening in his tone. If Cam could get through to him, they both might live through this. But the odds of that happening were so small, they almost weren’t worth mentioning.

  “It’s me, Dad. Camden. And you looked about ready to shoot Willow, so I figured I should step in. You don’t want to hurt Willow, do you? Little Willow? Our neighbor?”

  “Willow? Who’s…”

  The farther Camden walked, the more his dad came into sight. I needed to move, needed to get back into the woods so this all wouldn’t have been in vain, but the idea of leaving him here to face his dad alone was simply unfathomable.

  Sullivan had been alone. I couldn’t reach him. Couldn’t hold him. Couldn’t brush his hair out of his eyes one last time.

  I wasn’t leaving Cam.

  “Come on, Dad. Put the gun down. We’ll go back to the house, and I’ll cook you up some chicken exactly how Mom made it, okay?” Cam kept his arms outstretched, his palms facing his dad.

  “Get off my land! You can’t have it!”

  Another shot fired, and I screamed as Cam’s body flew backward, landing in the field with a sickening thud.

  “No!” The denial ripped from my throat as I sprinted across the uneven ground to where Cam lay on a patch of winter-brown grass.

  “Willow!” Xander shouted from behind his father, already gripping the shotgun.

  “Call 911!” I didn’t spare more than a cursory glance as my knees slammed into the unforgiving ground next to Cam. How the hell were we going to get him down the mountain? Could a helicopter land up here?

  His jacket was shredded, tiny feathers spilling free all over his chest and blowing away in the wind.

  But they weren’t red. Yet. Neither was the grass beside him, right? But it was already so dark.

  I reached for his coat, but his back arched, and I scanned up to his pained face—God, I’d missed this face—then took the scruff-softened angles between my palms without thinking. Motion in my peripherals told me that the other searchers had arrived. Too late. Too late. Always too late.

  “I’m here,” I told him, looking into eyes so dark, they swallowed me whole. “We’ve got this,” I promised when I had no right to, forcing optimism into my tone with an exaggerated nod and a shaky smile. “Help is coming.”

 
His eyes were wide as he struggled for a breath that wouldn’t come, his fear palpable as his gaze dropped down my frame and over my white coat, frantically searching.

  “I’m okay. I’m not hit. You are,” I assured him. Idiot. Like that would comfort him. “I need to see how bad it is.”

  His hands reached between us, fumbling at his coat.

  I jolted back, gently brushing his hands out of the way. “Let me.”

  He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay. You can’t take him, too. Do you understand? You took Sullivan. You can’t have Cam.

  Cam’s lungs wheezed as the first stream of air made its way in. My eyes flew to his, finding them already on me, his brow slightly furrowed as he struggled for more air.

  I unzipped his coat in one long pull and steeled myself for whatever lay underneath.

  “Jesus, Cam!” Gideon cursed as he hit his knees on Cam’s other side.

  “Arthur shot him.” My shaking hands opened his coat, revealing an expanse of dark fabric with several holes ripping apart the weave where the buckshot hit him. Where was the blood? “It’s too dark! I can’t see!”

  “I’m. Fine,” Cam forced out with a rasp of breath.

  A click sounded as Gideon powered on his flashlight.

  “Shut up,” I ordered. “Stupid man can’t even tell when he’s been—” Light shone on Cam’s chest and reflected back on tiny bits of shiny metal like a lone constellation in an otherwise dark sky. “Wait. What?”

  “Son of a bitch!” Gideon laughed, shaking the flashlight with heaving breaths as he looked over his shoulder. “He’s fine!”

  “I. Said. I’m fine,” Cam growled.

  “How? You’re shot…” And I could see the bullets—buckshot. Defying all logical thought, I dipped my finger into a tiny hole and felt cool metal pressing back. I let my fingers trail down Cam’s hard—too hard—chest.

  “Pika, stop.” Cam captured my hand, then flattened it, pressing my palm against the unnaturally hard surface of his chest. “I’m okay. Just had the wind knocked out of me.” He let go of my hand and unsnapped a clip up by his shoulder and another at his side. Velcro ripped. A giant piece of… What the heck is that?

  “Nice. What’s that rated?” Gideon asked, nodding toward a slab of armor as it fell to the side, baring Cam’s Black Flag T-shirt.

  His very clean, very white, very intact T-shirt.

  I blinked, then blinked again, convincing my brain that my eyes told the truth and this wasn’t something I dreamed up out of desperation. There was no bullet hole. No blood. No damage.

  “It’s a four,” Cam said, his voice returning to full strength. He ran his hand over his chest and abdomen, then gave a sigh of relief, letting his head fall back to rest on the ground.

  “Nice. And you carry it around?”

  “Funny thing about having all your belongings in your car,” Cam answered with a wry grin.

  “You’re prepared for your dad to randomly shoot you?” Gid scoffed.

  “Something like that.” Cam winced as he sat up.

  “You’re okay.” My butt hit the unforgiving soles of my hiking boots as I rocked back, sitting on my heels. The voices behind me registered as white noise even as they became louder, everything buzzing in my head except the fact that Cam wasn’t shot, or bleeding, or dying.

  “I already said I’m fine.” He pulled back his shirt and glanced down his collar. “I’ll probably have a nasty bruise, but it’s too dark to see.”

  “I’m just saying it’s a good thing you were here,” a voice said at my left. “The way you got that gun away from him was…that was heroic, Xander.”

  Sgt. Acosta stepped into my view, patting Xander on the back. The two were the same age, but Acosta looked way more comfortable with his sidearm than Xander did holding Arthur’s shotgun.

  “No, I didn’t do anything,” Xander argued, dropping down to Cam’s eye level. “Cam took the brunt of it. Are you okay?” he asked after glancing at the body armor.

  Cam nodded and got to his feet.

  “Yeah, if the brunt means aggravating your dad into shooting him.” Acosta laughed, and my fingernails bit into my palms.

  My mouth opened to tell Acosta that Cam had most likely saved my life, but a swift shake of Cam’s head in my direction had me shutting it. He’d always been content to let others think the worst of him, and I guess nothing had changed.

  “Let’s just get him home,” Cam said to no one in particular, clipping the vest back in place and staring straight ahead. His tone was one I’d heard often growing up—shutting down the conversation, letting me know he’d disengaged from whatever would have had the chance to touch him emotionally.

  With the danger passed, I greedily drank in the sight of him. He was bigger—not taller, of course, but thicker, harder—and the same went for his presence. He had an edge to him that had been missing when he’d left Alba a decade ago, and those impenetrable walls he’d always kept felt even more impossible to breach. But his eyes— Those carried the same grief that had echoed in mine when I’d seen him last.

  He and Xander walked forward, pausing to no doubt discuss what was going on with their father as Art stood with Captain Hall, getting a quick field exam. Mr. Daniels was shaking his head, as if trying to explain the situation.

  It had been tragic when Mrs. Daniels had died. Heartbreaking to bury Sullivan nine years later. But watching Arthur Daniels these last two years felt like burying a piece of him at a time, and it was torturous.

  “Don’t see much of you around town, Willow. You still playing with your paints?” Robbie Acosta asked, smirking down at me as Gideon joined the Daniels brothers.

  “You still pretending there’s enough crime here to warrant your job?” I retorted, my voice saccharine sweet. My graphic design business kept me more than financially comfortable, but no one ever took note of that. It was always the painting—or lack thereof—that people wanted to bring up.

  Guess it was more fun for them to pick at my scabs than examine their own.

  “Whoa.” Robbie held his hands up like he was under arrest—like Cam had when he’d appeared in the field ahead of me. “Put your claws away, Willow. I’m just teasing.”

  “Yeah. Not in the mood.” I kept my focus entirely on Cam’s back. An all-too-familiar ache invaded my chest. When had he gotten home? How long was he here for? What—or rather whom—was he going to break this time?

  “You need to get out more, especially if the only time you’re social includes a man with dementia and a loaded gun,” Robbie said, his voice pitching higher than I’d ever heard in high school as he rubbed the back of his neck. “You know, maybe I could take you to dinner?”

  “I’m sorry?” I asked him, my head tilted to the side in genuine confusion. “You want to take me to dinner?”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged with a sheepish smile.

  “You…you don’t like me,” I said slowly, shaking my head.

  He’d always gone for the prom queens—the girls who had perfected their makeup by middle school. The ones in Buena Vista, where we’d gone to school, who were styled and Instagrammed. I was twenty-five and didn’t even have a personal Instagram account…or any interest in Robbie.

  “I mean, you’re single. I’m single. Makes sense, right?”

  “Sure, if humans were an endangered species or something.” I immediately regretted my brash words when he looked away. “You know there’s life outside Alba, Robbie. You don’t have to date within town limits just because you’re all grown-up now.”

  “True,” he admitted with a cringe. “Oh man, I bet you’re not ready yet, huh? Shit, that was a dick move.”

  “What, asking me out after Art Daniels pulled a gun on me?”

  He blinked. “No, I mean, maybe you’re not ready to date yet…” His eyebrows rose.

  Seriously.

 
“Oh. I’m okay, really. Not that I don’t miss Sullivan, but it’s been six years.” Time moved slower in small towns, I supposed. I’d healed my heart in the years I’d spent at college, but everyone here acted like we’d buried him last week.

  Guess I was still supposed to be traumatized.

  “Right. Good for you, keeping strong,” he said with a nod and a pat on my back before answering a summons from the group at the edge of the tree line.

  It was too dark to make out who they were, but my bet was the usual suspects—sans Dad. Had Dad been here, he would have gone ballistic.

  Xander headed for Mr. Daniels, and I found myself drawn to Cam’s side just like a million times before.

  “I still can’t believe you’re here,” I said before I thought better of it. Mouth, engage filter.

  “Me either.” His eyes stayed locked on Xander and his dad. “What were you doing out here?” he snapped.

  “Looking for your father.” I bristled at his tone.

  “Well, you sure as hell found him.”

  “I help search all the time. It’s no big deal.”

  A muscle in his jaw ticked.

  “And how many times has he pulled a gun on you?” His gaze swung slowly to mine, and the darkness was suddenly more of a blessing than ever. I saw enough in those eyes to know he was pissed.

  “Never. And I’m sure Xander will lock up the guns and it won’t happen again.”

  Cam scoffed. “Yeah, okay. He could have shot you.”

  “Well, he did shoot you.” I poked his armor-plated vest.

  A ghost of a smile passed over his lips, and I nearly crowed in victory.

  “Looks like he’s about ready to go,” Cam noted as Mr. Daniels shook off Gideon’s offered arm to help him across the uneven terrain. “Still stubborn as ever,” he muttered as his father approached.

  “Must run in the genes, or did you not remember me warning you that he wasn’t going to remember you?” I teased, trying to lighten the mood. Cam had always done better if he could turn the hurt into something laughable. Not that this was.