locked eyes with the wolf, their icy blue color identical to Cain’s, and a searing sense of sympathy made his breath catch. The wolf was useless and trapped. All it wanted was to be freed, to run back to its natural habitat and rediscover its purpose.
Cain remembered the wolf with a new sense of understanding. He also wanted to run away—from Kentucky, and Apple Valley, and his dead cousin, and his devastated family, and the promises he’d made that he had no idea how to dignify. If he could just get on his bike and ride, he felt like he could outrun the unbearable heartbreak, the oppressive sorrow, the inconceivable reality of a long life spent without his cousin, his brother, his memory keeper, his friend.
And yet running also meant disgracing Woodman’s memory.
So he was trapped, pacing in front of the glass, cooped up and purposeless.
Beside his cot, his cell phone buzzed, rattling on the cement, and Cain crossed the room to pick it up.
KW: Cain, call me.
Just as he’d been Cain’s lifeline to home during his time in the military, his father made sure to text Cain at least once or twice a day since Woodman’s funeral, checking in on him and even—several times—urging him to “come home” to McHuid’s. Cain didn’t respond, so his father had no idea whether Cain was even still in Kentucky. For all Klaus knew, Cain could be in California or Maine by this point.
He hadn’t been back to Apple Valley since the funeral. The funeral was also the last time he’d seen Ginger, though he hadn’t spoken to her since that afternoon at the funeral home. She’d hung back with her parents, as though uncertain of her place or her welcome, and though they’d locked eyes as Woodman was lowered into the ground, he didn’t recognize her. Her mother wept on her daughter’s shoulder, but Ginger stood stoic and calm, cold and emotionless. Like she wasn’t really there. Like an empty husk. Like a ghost.
This was the girl he’d promised Woodman to love and care for.
Fuck. He could barely take care of himself.
The phone buzzed in his hand again.
KW: Cain, it’s urgent. Call me.
Sighing, he reached down for the bottle of vodka when the phone buzzed a third time.
KW: It’s Ginger.
Sucking in a swift breath, Cain Holden Wolfram, who’d thought just two seconds before that he was three-quarters dead, trapped in an aimless existence, suddenly realized that he was actually very much alive. His heart raced with fear—no, not fear, with terror. Had something happened to Ginger? Christ! While he’d been riding all over Kentucky and drinking himself into a stupor, had something fucking happened to her?
Promise.
I fuckin’ promise! Josiah, I promise.
Fuck. Fuck, please no. No. No, no, no. Please, God. Please let Ginger be okay.
His hands shook and sweated as he dialed his father’s number, as he heard the phone ring once, twice—
“Cain? Bist du—?”
“Papa, sag es mir!” Tell me!
“Gott sei Dank, Cain. Du lebst.” Thank God. You’re alive.
“Pop,” he said, sitting down on his cot, his body taut and wired. “What happened to Ginger? Is she okay? Is she all right? What happened to her?”
“She is . . . sehr traurig.”
Cain exhaled a long breath, his body relaxing. If something was seriously and immediately wrong, his father would have told him.
“Of course she’s sad,” he said, running his hand through his stubbly hair as he rested his elbows on his knees, shaking in relief just as he’d shaken with fear.
“I hear from Ranger. She don’t eat. She don’t talk. She don’t leave the cottage.”
Cain took a deep breath and held it until it burned his lungs.
“Cain? You are there?”
His breath came out in an exhausted sigh. “I’m here.”
“You have known the princess for . . . your lifetime.”
A tear snaked its way down Cain’s cheek, and he reached up to wipe it away. “Yep.”
“She is hurting, mein Sohn.”
His knees bounced from the adrenaline rush he’d gotten from his father’s texts.. “We’re all hurtin’, Pop. She ain’t the only one.”
His father was silent for a few seconds, then said, “She is hurting . . . more.”
Cain looked down at the half-finished bottle of vodka at his feet and picked it up. He unscrewed the top and raised it to his lips, but his mind flashed back to her glazed face at the funeral. He lowered the bottle and walked across the small office to the bathroom, where he tipped the bottle into the sink and watched the clear liquid swish down the