Operation Homecoming. Justine Davis

at him with that awestruck look that was so embarrassing. And, admit it, secretly flattering, he thought now. If he’d known she’d turn out like this, maybe he wouldn’t have been so embarrassed by her tween-age devotion.

      And a few months later it was all gone. Everything had changed.

      He shook off the old weights. “You’re welcome,” he said.

      “I’m glad I got this chance,” she said sweetly. “Now I never have to speak to your irresponsible, cruel, heartless ass again.”

      She turned on her heel—giving him what normally would have been a pleasant view of a curved backside—and headed for the stairway. He stared, a bit confused by the sudden shift.

      “Ouch,” he muttered, feeling nearly as walloped as when Quinn had decked him. Still, this overt hostility was better than the pain in Hayley’s voice.

      Amy looked back over her shoulder, clearly having heard him. “You expected a warm welcome? After you abandoned your mom and my best friend, your own sister, to deal with the aftermath of your father’s death while you went gallivanting around the country on some teenage quest, with only a call or a note and a visit maybe twice a year?”

      “I waited until I graduated high school,” he protested. “She understood. And Mom. They told me to go, that they’d be okay.”

      “You left them still grieving! You think that they didn’t beg you to stay makes it right? When have you ever done what was truly right, Walker Cole?”

       At least once. And it may well have cost me everything.

      But Amy wasn’t nearly done yet.

      “She had to deal with the long horror of your mother’s cancer alone, you don’t even come home for your own mother’s funeral and you entirely skip Hayley’s wedding, with nothing but a few stupid texts? And then turn up three months later as if you’re just late to the dentist, and you have the nerve to be surprised that I’m angry?”

      Quiet little Amy Clark had definitely grown teeth. Yet he couldn’t help being glad of it, because it was for Hayley. It seemed he’d forgotten something on that list of her attributes. Loyal. Fiercely, completely loyal. And unchanging. People like Amy never changed.

      And in an ever-changing world, perhaps he hadn’t valued that enough.

      “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. About everything. All of it.”

      “Yes,” she said flatly. “I am. And I’m leaving before I slug you myself.”

      She vanished up the stairs, and Walker Cole chalked up yet another casualty to the chaos his life had become five years ago.

      They’d told him the price would be high.

      He hadn’t expected it to be everything.

Chapter 4

      By the time she closed the guest room door behind her, Amy was shaking. She hadn’t realized quite how much anger she’d been harboring all these years.

      It was mostly for Hayley’s sake, and if she was honest, it was in part because Hayley herself didn’t seem angry enough. She never had.

       “I don’t hate my brother. He’s just...Walker. Aptly named.”

       “That’s okay, I hate him enough for both of us.”

      How many times had they had that exchange?

      She wondered if Hayley was saying the same thing to her husband right now. She was doubly glad Quinn was here, both because he’d done what she would have liked to do in decking Walker, and because he was probably the best comfort Hayley could have just now.

      If she didn’t love Hayley so much she might have envied her that kind of support. Because now here she herself was, under the same roof with her adolescent crush. The perfect name for it, since he was the one who had crushed her heart. And who had come perilously close to being the last straw that destroyed any faith she ever had in the male of the species. No matter how many times she reminded herself that not all men were utterly irresponsible like her father and Walker, it was sometimes a hard belief to hang on to.

      At least Walker wasn’t a drunk, she thought as she made herself finish her unpacking. Or maybe he was. He did look a bit haggard, and while all the good looks were still there, his eyes looked different. Still beautiful, with unfairly long and thick lashes, but more world-weary somehow. And that thick, espresso-brown hair needed a trim. She didn’t mind longer hair, if it at least looked intentional. This looked like he’d just neglected it.

      Or like her father’s had, when the money for haircuts had gone for booze instead. And caused nights filled with furious arguments between her parents. That was part of the reason she’d escaped so often to the warm haven of Hayley’s home. Both Hayley’s parents had looked out for her, and she’d found in them the steady caring and consistency that had been so lacking in her own life. When Christopher Cole had been killed by, horribly, a drunk driver while on duty as a police officer, and then Nancy had died just over two years ago, Amy had grieved fiercely right alongside her friend.

      She closed the closet door rather sharply. She hated that Walker was able to unsettle her so after all this time. That she was wasting so much time and thought on him. He didn’t deserve even the anger she’d vented on him downstairs. In fact, she was a bit embarrassed about her rant. She’d hoped, if she ever laid eyes on him again, to be cool and unaffected. In fact, she’d hoped she might be able to react just as he had, puzzled, not quite able to place him. Although she’d have to pretend it; there was no way on earth she would ever forget him, no matter what he’d done. Or not done.

       “When have you ever done what was truly right, Walker Cole?”

      Her own words rang in her head. She stopped in her tracks.

      ...done what was truly right...

      She sat abruptly on the edge of the bed.

      “Girl, you need to listen to your own rant,” she muttered under her breath.

      For hadn’t she been wrestling with that very problem in those moments before Walker had arrived to blast it all right out of her mind? Wasn’t the question that had driven her here in the first place how to do what was right, or whether to even try at all?

       You have no right to criticize him if you’re not willing to do it yourself.

      As for Walker’s annoying presence disrupting everything, she would just have to do what she’d always told herself she’d do if she ever encountered him again.

      Ignore him.

      * * *

      Walker had had some sleepless nights before, far too many of them in the past five years, but this was a doozy. He’d gotten through some of them then by telling himself he’d sleep when it was over—or when he was dead, which could well have come first—but now it was over, at least as far as he was concerned, and here he was. Still watching the seconds tick by in the dark.

      He grimaced into the darkness of the living room, where he’d crashed on the couch. His old room was a home office now, not that he would have asked to sleep in it anyway. This was crazy. He was as wide-awake as he’d been when his life hung in the balance. When a single wrong word or step could have meant giving himself away to men who would kill him without a millisecond’s hesitation.

      Then again, didn’t his life hang in the balance now? The rest of it, anyway? Having quiet, shy little—well, not so much any of those anymore—Amy Clark chew him out in front of Hayley and her new, intimidating husband was bad enough, but what if Hayley couldn’t ever forgive him? What if he truly had lost the only family he had left because he’d done the unforgivable? He hadn’t let himself think of that possibility in his drive to get here, but after this reception he knew he had to.