Credence

Five Years Later…

I run my thumb over her lips as she moves on top of me, grinding and taking me inside her.

God, this girl loves tents. Fucking hell.

Her back arches and her hair falls down her spine as she rides me, and I lean back on one hand, holding her hip with my other.

Fuck, baby. I groan.

“Kaleb,” Tiernan whimpers.

She digs her nails into my shoulders and comes in, kissing me, her taste and heat making my fucking head spin. This is the second time in six hours, her climbing on top of me and stirring me awake at the crack of dawn just ten minutes ago.

How easily I stir for her, though. My beautiful girl.

Rocks shuffle and crackle on the beach, and I know someone else is up in the camp. I fist her hair, holding her tight to quiet her.

She slows down, calming her breathing, so we don’t embarrass ourselves in front of the others, but she keeps rolling her hips. Softly. Silently. Tonguing my lips, my goddamn stomach flipping as she drives me fucking crazy.

“You feel so good,” she mouths across my lips. “I love you, baby.”

My heart swells. I paw her tit, squeezing it and wanting it in my mouth.

But my cock throbs, warms, and I hold my breath as she quickens her pace, her hot body fucking me so good.

We come, our breath stuttering and fighting to keep quiet as her tight pussy squeezes around me in wet heat. I spill inside of her, dropping my head back as I pulse and jerk, going as deep as I can.

I gasp for breath. Shit.

She falls into me, and we crash back to the sleeping bags, droplets of morning dew dotting the roof of our red tent.

Over the years, in all of the tents, cabins, motels, and truck beds we’ve slept in on our hikes and travels, she is always extra horny in tents. I don’t know why.

I kiss her, gripping her hair on the top of her head as I hold her to me.

“I never want to let you go,” I breathe out. “Not even to piss.”

She laughs. “You have to,” she says. “It’s your turn this morning.”

I grunt my displeasure at the reminder. I hate making him eat that gross shit.

She rolls off me, and I gaze longingly at her ass for a few more precious moments before I slip into my jeans and take the small bag she hands me.

I leave the tent and rise, stretching my arms above my head and taking in a breath of warm July air. The pond and waterfall lay ahead, my dad down on the rocky beach, working the fishing pole already. I grin. Hunting and fishing was the one thing we really liked doing together. I should’ve done it with him more growing up.

I wash up in the pot of water and rinse my face before drying off and taking the bag Tiernan gave me over to the green tent next to us. Unzipping it, I lean down and step in, seeing Noah still passed out on his back with my son tucked in his arm.

I stand there, appreciating the view for a moment. Griffin is eighteen months, and even though it was hard for Tiernan to finish her degree as a new mom, she did it. With some help from me. We stayed in Seattle for a year after she graduated, raising him and road-tripping, but finally now, we’re home in Chapel Peak.

Noah opens his eyes, yawning. “Hey.”

I kneel down, rubbing Griff’s hair as he still lies asleep. “Thanks for watching him,” I whisper. “We needed a night alone.”

I try to pull the kid off him. He needs a diaper change, no doubt.

But Noah tightens his arm around him. “No.” He scowls at me. “The little fucker and I bonded.”

I snort, prying my kid off him anyway. “Get your own.”

I hold my son in my arms as he shifts and yawns. He has sandy blond hair and green eyes, his bare feet half the size of my hand. He’s incredible.

I kiss his cheeks a few times, trying to wake him up. Pulling out the sippy cup Tiernan gave me, I put it to his lips, his eyes finally opening and drinking the milk.

“What the fuck is that?” Noah asks, staring down at the bag.

I pull out the plastic container, opening it up and grabbing the spoon.

“Some avocado and tofu shit,” I tell him, scooping up a serving.

Tiernan is determined he’ll be as much a California kid as a Colorado one. She can keep that delusion, because this kid will be all mine the moment he tastes barbecue ribs for the first time.

“He can’t eat tofu in Chapel Peak,” Noah tells me. “He’ll get bullied.”

“Shut up.”

I feed Griff, his pouty, little lips scarfing down the food, and I laugh to myself. He’ll eat pretty much anything. I guess the longer he doesn’t know how awful this tastes compared to just about everything else, the better.

“Happy to be home?” Noah asks.

I nod, feeding the kid more and more. “Yeah.”

“You gonna stay out of trouble?”

“Nope,” I reply.

Noah chuckles as he lies next to us.

Dad is in California a lot now, Van der Berg Extreme merging with JT Racing about four years ago. Since the owners of JTR preferred to stay at their home base in Shelburne Falls, Illinois, it ended up being pretty perfect. Dad runs the California branch, and Noah races our bikes with their engines.

Tiernan and I moved into the house here, but just until construction on our own place—a little lower on the mountain—is finished. Which will take more than a year, I’m sure.

The only thing other than a house that Tiernan demanded on the new property was a place to land a helicopter. There was no way she was letting me stitch up our kid if he got injured. She wanted him airlifted to a hospital with local anesthesia.

I’ll continue customizations, she’ll design homes, décor, and furniture as the weather permits, and we’ll live for the winter and the warmth and our family with some adventures on the side.

I keep feeding Griffin, but I feel Noah’s eyes on me, like he has more to say.

“What do you want me to do with her ashes?” he finally asks.

Her ashes…

I don’t look at him, scraping the container and doling out the rest to the kid.

I shrug. “Take ’em, I guess.”

This is why he’s back. Why my father returned. Why we decided to go camping and be together and remember what we have to be grateful for as a family.

Anna Leigh is dead. My mother.

Our mother.

My throat tightens as Griff looks up at me, his big, emerald eyes watching me.

I force a smile for him.

“It’s surreal,” Noah says quietly. “I think she was really someone very different down deep. If not for the drugs.”

Why would he think that? She wasn’t on drugs in prison. She was in there fifteen years total, with some spells on the outside in between, and the only time she touched base was for money. Theft, robbery, dealing…negligence with her child. She was a bad person.

And I do remember. I still have to ride with the windows cracked in the car.

“Maybe she wanted to be different,” he goes on. “Someone who laughed with her kids. Played games with us and wanted a man to hold her with love.”

An image of her on her back as she propped me up on her feet so I could fly flashes in my head. She smiled. I laughed.

“That’s what everyone wants, isn’t it?” Noah asks. “To not be alone?”

He doesn’t have any memories of her. Only a year younger than me, but too young. Cancer crept up in March, and it worked quickly. She died in prison a couple of weeks ago.

Maybe he’s right. If she’d never had that first taste, maybe she would’ve been different.

“I just want to remember her as she should’ve been.” His voice falls to a whisper. “I’m too tired at this point to hate her anymore. When it’s over and done, maybe all she wants is to not be alone now. To know that we think of her sometimes.”

Tears fill my eyes, and I don’t want to fucking do this, but I can’t stop it. I cough to cover the emotion choking me up, because fucking Noah. Goddamn him.

She’s dead, and I’m wrapped warm every night in a family I love. Why should I hate her?

“Ah, fuck it.” I dry my eyes and gather up the food and sippy cup. “Leave me half of the ashes. I’ll spread them on the mountain.”

I don’t look at him as I leave the shit and grab my kid, getting out of the tent before I embarrass myself further.

Holding Griff close to me, I draw in some deep breaths, slowly letting it go. Fucking Noah.

My dad stands at the edge of the water, and I head over, turning the kid around, so he can see the waterfall. The first time we brought his mom here, she sat on a beach towel right about here.

Dad glances over, smiling at Griff. “I can’t tell who he looks more like.”

I look down at my son. His hair is darker than Tiernan’s, but much lighter than mine. He has my eyes, though.

“As long as he’s loved, I don’t care,” I tell him.

“That he is.” He reels the line back into the spool. “If you want to have a few more, I won’t balk,” he says. “It’s nice to have a kid running around again. I can be better with him than I was with you two.”

I gaze out at the scene, thinking about my childhood. I never once resented my father, growing up. It never crossed my mind that he wasn’t striving to do his best.

Until he had her. Then I resented him for a while.

But I drop my eyes, too happy to care anymore. We were lost and broken, each in our own way, and she needed us as much as we needed her. We’d die for her.

“We’re not robbing banks or drunks,” I finally reply. “Noah and I turned out okay.”

And then I turn to him. “You want to have a few more, I wouldn’t mind a sister.”

He chuckles, and I cast a glance at the blue tent, knowing who he has tucked inside, even though she continues to try to conceal what we all know has been going on for years now. She’s thirty-seven and has no kids. Maybe she wants one.

He sighs, reeling in his line and changing the subject. “You got a handle on the Robinson order?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry.” I shoot my eyes left again, seeing Mirai exit his tent, see us, and quickly dive into her own, as if we’re all stupid.

It’s amusing, though.

“She’s wearing your shirt,” I tell him. “Better go get it.”

He shoots me a smile. “I will.”

Tiernan walks out of our tent as he heads off, and I look over my shoulder at her, smiling.

She’s dressed in my favorite brown bikini and waving a swim diaper at me.

I head over, letting her take the kid and change him as I dive into the tent to get into my trunks and grab his life jacket.

We get him suited up and carry him into the pond.

“Ohhhhhh.” She smiles excitedly at Griffin as he splashes his arms in legs in the water. “It’s cold, isn’t it?”

We wade out, holding him and playing, the waterfall grabbing his attention as he coos.

“Can you say ‘waterfall’?” she asks him.

His eyes light up, looking at her and talking in baby talk.

We slip behind the falls, water drenching our heads and laughing as he sucks in air, a little shocked.

Tiernan looks around, both of us taking in the new artwork on the walls. “You scared me so much the last time we were here,” she says.

I hold Griffin by the jacket, letting his arms and legs wade freely.

“You scare easily,” I joke.

“I don’t. You were intense.”

“Were?” I ask, feigning insult.

She knows I’m intense where it counts now.

We drift in deeper, spinning the baby around in the water.

“I should’ve brought you here then,” I tell her. “Or stayed with you in here that day.”

“What makes you think I wouldn’t have run?”

“Because I made your thighs quiver.”

She snorts. “You didn’t.”

“That wasn’t you moaning on top of the car that first night we met?”

“I told you to stop!”

“I’m sorry,” I say sweetly. “I couldn’t hear you over the sound of all your panting.”

“Shut up.”

I hold the kid with one hand and pull her in with the other. “Wanna try your luck again?”

Her eyebrows shoot up at my challenge.

“I can leave Griffin with Noah for a while again tonight.” I stare down into her eyes, her body pressing into mine, riling me up again. “And maybe meet you in here at ten? You can show me how good you are at hating everything I do.”

She bites her bottom lip, looking at my mouth, and I still see her that day—backing away from me and nervous, but God, I just wanted to stay here with her.

But she giggles and twists out of my hold, grabbing our son and moving back toward the falls to exit the tunnel.

“It’ll be really dark in here at ten,” she warns.

Really dark.

I move toward her, looking at her just like I did that day so long ago. “I’ll find you.”

“If you can…” she taunts.

And then she disappears with Griff through the falls, and I smile at all the nights ahead of us.