Great and Precious Things

by Rebecca Yarros

Of course he forgave me. Of course he welcomed me with open arms. Of course there was no malice in his eyes, just open, raw love.

He’d always lived as an example, showing me every single way I’d never measure up by simply being him.

“What are we going to do? He has the shotgun and doesn’t know who I am about seventy-five percent of the time.”

Xander gripped my elbow, and I tensed, reminding myself at least a dozen times not to beat the crap out of him for touching me without warning.

Cam had always been my unlikely refuge, even when he earned every last bit of his reputation. He’d protected me for the simple reason that I’d been theirs all my life. The girl who tagged along with the Daniels boys. The naive teenager who stayed behind when three brothers went to war. The woman who shattered when only two came home.

“I mean, you’re single. I’m single. Makes sense, right?” “Sure, if humans were an endangered species or something.”

“This is the son of a bitch who killed my Sullivan.”

God, but the relief in her voice when she’d whispered my name and leaned closer… She didn’t hate me. I deserved her hatred, her absolute loathing, and instead she’d trusted me like the last six years had never happened.

Xander’s place was to make peace. Mine had always been to bring war.

The boy I’d been would have cried. The teenager I’d grown out of would have cursed at him and walked away. The man I was now stood there and took it because I was finally strong enough to.

Because I was an idiot, not a masochist.

Willow was so untouchable that she didn’t even go on the untouchable list. She went on the unthinkable one.

“You’re funnier than I remember.” “I’ve always been this funny. You were never mature enough to appreciate it.”

“No. This was not your fault.” Xander shook his head and leaned forward, keeping our conversation private in the noisy bar. “I grabbed your shoulder. I knew how messed up you were from Afghanistan. I knew better. You reacted. That’s on me. Not you.”

“I’ve been in hand-to-hand enough to know when my skin splits,” he answered in utter boredom.

“Or maybe that was really me, and this is the alternate reality where everything is messed up.”

“Sully never wanted to ruffle feathers. I mean, if Alexander was the good kid, and you were the rebel, then he was the one who wanted to simply exist without conflict.

I’d simply realized in these last years that it wasn’t the right love—the consuming, passionate, all-encompassing one in the books and songs I loved. But that truth would never leave my lips. I’d let it fester and rot inside me before admitting something like that.

In reality, I was trying to honor my first dream, since I’d lost my last.

Loving Sully had been easy because we’d fit. We’d been supported and encouraged—enabled—by everyone around us.

“I never hooked up with Cam for a reason. He only had eyes for one Bradley girl, and it wasn’t me.” There was zero teasing in her tone or expression. “Wh-What?” I sputtered. That was definitely not the answer I’d expected. “Think about it. You’re the only girl who’s lasted more than five minutes in his orbit. He may have glanced at other girls, but he only saw you.”

But don’t be blind, Willow. He looked at you for years. He only stopped when you got together with Sullivan.”

The path rejected me. It didn’t want me, so I decided not to want it.

“If you deserve to determine your future, then I deserve to explain my past.”

Couldn’t he have gotten uglier in the last decade? At least have a receding hairline or something?

“Respectfully,” Dorothy replied, saccharine sweet, “I’m well aware of our rules, Mr. Bradley. I’ve been a voting member for the last twenty-five years. If my memory serves me right, you’ve been in that seat for the past…seven?”

“You’ll see that when Cal Daniels passed away, he left all of his estate to his nephew Camden. He didn’t split it between the Daniels boys. He chose Cam as his sole heir, which also transfers his membership seat.”

Because I’d known this day would come, eventually, where I’d have to step into Genevieve’s shoes if I wanted to ensure our town could survive.

Flames licked up through my lungs, tickling my tongue to say something reckless, to breathe the fire that Xander knew I was capable of.

So if money is really the only reason you won’t let him stay in the house he was born in, that our mother died in, then I’m alleviating that concern.

Left. I’m the only brother you have left.

“Sully made everything look easy because it was easy for him. It was easy because the town loved him and you loved him. You and Xander tackled anything that was remotely a challenge for him.”

They were the fucking storybook, and I was the fire-breathing dragon. And sure, I’d burned shit to the ground, but never them. Never him.

“This town needed Sullivan more. You needed Sullivan more.” The skin between his brows wrinkled, and pain filled his eyes for a second before he blinked it away.

There is more beauty in truth.

When you watch the person you love most lose what they love most, then you’ll understand. But I pray to God that never happens to you, Willow.”

Almost ten years since I left the white onyx bishop on Cam’s dashboard when he wouldn’t let me thank him.

“I’m so scared that I let the silence speak for me,” I whispered. “Well, you seem to have found your voice now. Use it for good. You know, the whole ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ thing.”

“You’ve survived more than anyone I know, then gotten on your feet and started going again. That makes you a hero in my book.”

all my choices when it came to Willow had been made decades ago. She called. I came. It was that simple. And that complicated.

I wore my grief like armor, a wall I refused to let crumble or weaken. She wore hers like art, a bold invitation to experience the loss with her, daring you to look away, daring you to forget that he’d lived.

“No, you don’t. I was most angry at Sullivan, because he had the right I would have died for and never even used it. Because when he passed, it was Mom’s name on his lips, when I knew mine would have been yours.”

My ability to build shit was always secondary to my capability for destroying it.

that snow. On the plains, maybe, but not on the mountain. Willow: A girl’s gotta save herself. I’m not a helpless damsel 24-7, you know. Cam: I’m aware, Pika.

I would have traded a year of my life to know what she’d typed and deleted.

“Willow Bradley has always been your girl, Camden. Doesn’t imply any romance.”

Calling Milkshake was never to be taken advantage of. It was only for the moments your sister, and only your sister, would do.

There was a sacred understanding that we were a combination-free vault. Secrets went in. Nothing came out. We were uncrackable. And when one of us called a Milkshake, the other stopped whatever she was doing, no questions asked.

“And you’re just now telling me this?” There was no way. Or was there? “You’re just now willing to hear it.”

“Go for the throat, because they sure went for yours.”