Path of Destruction (Broken Heartland, #2)(6)

There was a pause and then her mom said, “No. She didn’t say that exactly. She still isn’t speaking.”

“At all?” His stomach tensed.

Ella Jane Mason hadn’t said a single word in two weeks. She hadn’t responded to a single phone call or text. And when he’d stopped by her house, she’d either been asleep or pretending to be.

“Not a word, Cooper. Listen, I hate to do this to you. I know your family is struggling as much as anyone’s, and I’ve just gotten off the phone with your mama. But EJ, well, God, she’d kill me if she knew I was telling you this.” She was quiet again, and he thought of what she was possibly about to say and how very wrong she was.

“I, um, know what you probably think, Mrs. Mason. But EJ and I are just friends. And she met someone else this summer and maybe you should try calling him because—”

“Brantley Cooper, if you ever repeat this to her, I will deny it until I’m blue in the face. But you know and I know that Ella Jane has been planning your wedding since she was eight years old. So right now, I don’t want to call anyone else. I want you to be there for her today. You. It has to be you. It’s always been you. Now that—”

A choked out sob cut off the rest of her plea.

“You’re going to look out for her, right? When I’m gone? I need to know that somebody is gonna be here to take care of her.”

“Someone has to look out for her now, Coop,” she said so low he wondered if she’d said it out loud or if he’d imagined it. “She’s all I have left.”

He swallowed a constricting lump in his throat and nodded as if she could see him. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll wait for her in front of the building.”

He could feel the sigh of relief from the other end even though his heart felt as if it’d been caught in a vise.

She thanked him and he ended the call. Pointing his truck toward the absolute last place on earth he wanted to be, he tried to talk himself down from just driving the hell out of town and never coming back.

She needed him. He’d failed her once already.

It wouldn’t happen again.





Toughen up, girl. You can’t go around acting like the world is ending over every little thing.

The words her brother had said so many times played on an endless loop in her head. Everything he’d ever told her came at her at once, and she grasped at the sound of his voice, trying to memorize it. He would be so disappointed by her lying in bed, weighed down by grief and anger. They’d had a dog, Beck, an old basset hound that had wondered up to the house when they were kids. He’d been in bad shape from the beginning, but in her eleven-year-old mind, love would make him all better. It hadn’t. He’d died after a few months, hiding away in the crawl space beneath their largest tool shed. The one farthest from the house.

She’d cried for a week. Her brother had rolled his eyes and told her to let it go. Dying was a part of life, he’d said, and at least Beck got to leave this world after months of belly rubs and plenty of leftovers. Kyle had said that Beck had died with dignity, choosing the place, and that she was disgracing his memory by wallowing like the world had come to an end. When things like this happen, it’s best to move forward, to focus on the things you can control instead of the stuff you can’t. He’d given her a similar speech when their dad left, except it had involved the words “selfish *” in place of “Dad.”

His constant reminders for her to be tough, to stand strong, to let go and move on when their dad left, propelled her out of bed. So she’d let the scorching hot water wash her tears down the drain in the shower, pulled on one of his plaid button-down shirts even though it was two sizes too big, and dug a pair of cutoff shorts from her bedroom floor.

Slipping into her worn out boots, the ones he’d bought her for her thirteenth birthday, she steeled herself from any and all human contact to come.

She’d stared vacantly ahead as her parents told her repeatedly that she didn’t have to do this. The school would understand. Their house only had half a roof and the solid tree out front had been split in half, the one-standing half of it having landed on their garage.

She barely heard a single word they’d uttered.

In her mind, black clouds rolled over a funeral procession. Her mind was muddled by the deluge of painful memories playing in reverse. Bare feet running through the woods, his lifeless body in her arms, the rain slamming down on them, sirens tearing through the sounds of the storm and her screams chasing after them.

Walking outside, she could hardly believe that the sun had the nerve to shine. It was glaring and offensive.

After slipping on his aviator sunglasses, she cranked his truck and tore out of the driveway.

Damaged homes, churches, and businesses blurred past on her drive out of Hope’s Grove. Crossing over into Summit Bluffs was like entering a parallel universe.

Her school was gone. Reduced to ruins. Every memory of every moment of her entire life hurt to remember.

She wasn’t Kyle Mason’s sweet little sister anymore. Wasn’t EJ or Coop’s Ellie May, wasn’t that tomboy that ran around town and watched night trains. She’d lost herself, lost that girl who’d given herself to a boy she’d thought loved in her now destroyed pickup truck.

She was a shell, an empty shell. And she didn’t give a single solitary damn what anyone in this pretty plastic place thought about it.