Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(115)

For now, though, they pulled gifts for Gia, Bo, Loki, Joey, and Millie out of Adrienne’s new car and bobbled their way through the fresh snowfall to the house, buried under packages Adrienne had wrapped with an obsessive artistry, despite the reality that the young children who would open them could not have cared less about the pretty bows and sparkles.

He’d wanted her to get a truck or an SUV like Lilli’s or Shannon’s, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She’d wanted another ancient Beetle, and he wouldn’t hear of that—it was the wrong vehicle for where they lived.

It just was. Four-wheel drive was better. Plus, if she went around a curve on one of these back roads at the wrong time and came up on some * thinking he owned the road, a shitty little insect of a car would lose that faceoff every time.

Then she’d wanted a new import, and that was just not gonna fly anywhere in or around the Horde.

They’d gone around and around for f*cking months. She threatened to just go and buy one on her own, and he’d asked how she thought she’d get there without him. He threatened to buy one for her on his own.

It had been one of their more heated fights, right in the middle of planning the wedding. Finally, she’d seen a bright red Chevy compact SUV on the road and had said it was cute. He’d literally turned his truck around and headed to the nearest Chevy dealer and bought her one of her own.

Isaac and Lilli’s house was crowded and chaotic. Gia and Bo careened through the rooms, weaving in and out of their uncles’ legs, and Loki toddled behind them, squealing happily and trying to keep up. The women were nowhere to be seen at first, but after Adrienne tucked their presents under the huge tree in front of the window, she kissed his cheek and disappeared into the kitchen. Of course.

Iris and Rose had come in the day before to spend the holiday week with Show and Shannon. Both teenagers, they had managed to avoid the feminine pull of the kitchen and were sitting on the stairs with their phones in their hands. As Badger watched, Nolan came up the hallway from the bathroom, and Rose turned her head and eyed him through the staircase railing, her sparkly pink phone forgotten. Badger realized that they were about the same age—almost exactly the same age, in fact. Seventeen. Nolan saw her and smiled a little as he walked up and looked over at her through the railing. “Hey.”

Rose took an earbud out of her ear. “Hey.” Playing a game on her phone, earbuds in, Iris was oblivious to the pheromone dance behind her.

“What ya doin’?”

“Nothing. Music.”

“Anything good?”

She shrugged and handed her loose earbud through the railing. Grinning hugely, Badger turned before they’d noticed him watching, and saw that somebody else was watching, too. Unhappily. He crossed the room to Show.

“You okay, brother?”

“I got no control over my girls. None. That over there is not a good thing. My Rosie cries over every little thing. She needs a different life from this one.”

Badger shrugged. “Relax, Show. They’re just dancing around each other. Not picking china patterns.”

Show cocked an ironic eyebrow at him. “Like you’re an expert on teen mating rituals?”

“I ended up doin’ okay.”

“Yeah, you did. Good you know that. After I beat some f*ckin’ sense into you.”



oOo



The women came out to corral the kids for gifts. After they’d opened all their presents and the living room was a knee-deep ocean of crumpled paper and shiny ribbon, the adults sat for a while and watched the commotion. Bo enlisted Dom and Nolan in building a pirate ship. Gia, Tasha and Len played with her new Breyer stable and horses. Adrienne and Shannon sat, with Millie and Joey in their bouncy cars, and chatted with Rose and Iris. And Cory followed Loki around as he learned to push his new riding motorcycle—a gift from Badger and Adrienne. With every thrust of his little legs, he yelled “VROOM!”

Isaac sat in a big leather and wood chair, Lilli on his lap, her head on his shoulder. Badger could see the edge of melancholy as they smiled and watched their children playing on Christmas morning. Isaac’s last Christmas with his wife and children for years.

A lump rising in his throat at the thought, Badger made his way through the crowd and clutter and went out on the front porch for some fresh air. The day was overcast and cold. About three inches of snow had fallen early in the morning, and the sky seemed to threaten more. Badge hadn’t checked a weather report to know for sure, but he could smell snow in the air. The house behind him smelled of the feast the women had been preparing, and sounded of a family’s holiday joy. A perfect Christmas day.

He thought about the Christmas before, when he’d been clutching at the slick sides of his Oxy chasm, fighting pain so deep and constant he’d lost the memory of what it was like not to have it. It had taken all his energy, every day, to cope with that pain and hold his life together, finding some semblance of a normal face to present to his brothers, his parents, so that they would not know the extent of his weakness.

He had been the only person in his life who’d thought him weak. Now, he almost never thought of the bliss of the high. And he was married to a woman he’d loved for years. There was fight and loss yet before them, but Badger felt a hope he’d thought was dead.

As the snow started again, and he was getting cold enough to think about heading back in, a truck came over the rise on Isaac’s gravel drive. It took Badger a beat to recognize it, probably because it was about the last truck he’d expect to see coming toward the home of the Horde President on Christmas Day. But then he saw the A/M Farms magnet on the door, and two passengers in the cab. He turned quickly and went inside.