Return To Me. Shannon McKenna
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SWEPT AWAY
“I want to,” he said raggedly. “I want to so bad, I’m dying for it. Don’t ever think I don’t want to. Just…just don’t ever think that.”
“OK. I won’t.” She nuzzled Simon’s throat, kissed the sharp point of his jaw, stroked his scratchy beard stubble. “So what’s the problem? You want to, I want to. No lies, promises, no illusions.”
His dark eyes were tormented, full of shadows, but when she pulled his face down to hers, he didn’t resist.
They both jolted at the bright shock of contact, and that was it. They were lost, swept away. El wasn’t kissing him, or being kissed. The kiss held them both in its grip, had its own urgent, demanding life. It moved, ebbed and flowed like a dance of sweet, desperate abandon.
She was giddy.
SHANNON MCKENNA
RETURN TO ME
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 1
Simon Riley cut the motor and coasted his bike to the shoulder of the road as soon as he topped the rise that led down into the LaRue River Valley. He pulled the helmet off to let the hot wind dry the sweat in his long, tangled black hair and billow out the jacket of his riding leathers. He needed a minute, or maybe ten, just to stare down at the town of LaRue, pull himself together and muster his nerve.
The cold clench in his gut was no surprise to him. Neither was the catch in his breath at how beautiful this place was. No matter how far he traveled, nothing in the world was like this green river valley in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.
There was nothing like this feeling, either. The electric shiver of disaster in the making, like watching a baby trying to stick a fork into a light socket. Or maybe he brought the danger with him. God knows, he never meant to, but it came down around his ears every goddamn time.
The place looked so mellow, like nothing had happened here for the entire seventeen years he’d been gone. Wouldn’t take long, though. Something here had it in for him. As soon as that something sniffed out Simon Riley’s presence, it was going to wake right up and roll over.
A burst of laughter shook him. Look out, LaRue. Fun’s over.
He took off his shades as he looked around. The colors and sounds and smells of this place prodded a part of his brain awake that had been buried for years under the hustle and noise of his chaotic life. The sultry aroma of peaches fermenting under a tree by the side of the road, a tangle of foliage choking a drainage ditch, the hypnotic drone of insects. The sharp-sweet tang of yarrow and balsam root, pine and fir.
A sultry, nose-tickling mélange. Home.
He knew this place so well. He’d explored every hill and gully, every canyon and rock and cave. Property lines and barbed wire fences had meant nothing to him back when he was a kid running wild.
He’d imagined himself brother to snakes and lizards, coyotes and bobcats, eagles and owls, even the occasional cougar that ventured down from the higher reaches of the Cascades. He’d imagined that they accepted him as one of their own, made a place for him in their world.
The way El had made a place for him.
He pushed the thought of El away. He was edging too close to overload already. Besides, being accepted by lizards and bobcats and one lovestruck teenage girl didn’t carry much weight when you were rejected by everyone else. Though in retrospect, to give them credit, he hadn’t handled their rejection that well. He’d always overreacted. Freaked out, fucked things up, made things worse.
You know you’re just hurting yourself, Simon.
Those words rang in his ears seventeen years later. He’d heard them so often, from the guidance counselor, the school principal, the sheriff, the harried lady from Children’s Services, just to name a few.
What the hell. He hadn’t listened to them then, so why listen to them now? Simon Riley was home, and gearing up to hurt himself with all the wild abandon that was his birthright.
His eyes searched for the ravine that threaded down between McNary Ridge and Horsehead Bluff, the ragged line that led down to Gus’s house. He blocked the sun with his hand and tried to breathe away the ache in his belly. It hung there, heavy and cold as a lump of lead. Too deep below the surface to be eased by any of his usual tricks.
Years back, he’d dreamed about a triumphal homecoming. In his fantasies, Gus was the way he’d been back when Simon was a little kid, before he’d crawled deep into the bottle. That Gus had opened the door for him and nodded with the silent approval Simon had felt on his skin whenever he did anything that Gus thought was praiseworthy.
Then Gus would slap together a meal of elk steaks, pan-fried potatoes and onions, biscuits, sun-ripened salted tomato slices and a beer. After they ate, he’d pull out one of those blocks of dark chocolate that he kept in the locked pantry shelf, far from thieving little-boy hands. He’d use the cleaver to hack a chunk into splinters to pick at off the cutting board. The two of them would let shards of bitter dark sweetness melt in their mouths like pure redemption as the kitchen grew dim and the time came to light the kerosene lantern.
And then, as shadows flickered and shifted on the wall, Simon would recount his adventures over the years since he’d run off. All the ways in which he had finally proven his worth.
But there would be no quiet approval or elk steak or chocolate. Gus had eaten his last meal five months ago, a .45 caliber bullet from his CPA auto. There would be no prodigal nephew’s return for him. Just a silent, desolate house. The sheer, fucking, maddening waste of it all.
He wasn’t even sure why he’d come back here at all. It was one of those blind impulses that had always gotten him neck-deep in trouble. Gus was five months gone, his body cremated. It had taken a long time for the news to make it to Afghanistan. It had shot his concentration all to hell. He’d started having the fire dream again. A roaring, ravenous circle of fire that closed in on him from all sides.
What had happened to Gus didn’t square with his memories of his uncle. Nor did it square with the cryptic e-mail that Gus had sent him on the day he died. That e-mail had sounded like the ravings of a paranoid madman, yes, but not a defeated, suicidal madman.
So here he was. Financially, he could afford a break. He’d never cared much about money, but he’d managed to make a lot of it, running the risks that he did. It just sat in the bank and accumulated, since it seldom occurred to him to spend it. Returning to LaRue was an idea to approach gradually, ease into