“How does Dorothy get up here every day?” I asked as we started the ascent. The Jeep rocked with enough force to jostle the boxes in the back, and Gideon braced himself on the roll bar as we made it around a shady, iced curve. That particular spot was always the last to melt.

“She cuts over from the Bradley property. You know the judge keeps his drive paved and clear.”

The land was adjacent to ours, but it would have added ten minutes, and I wasn’t in the mood for sightseeing…or Bradleys.

God, if there was anyone in the world who had the right to hate me more than I hated myself, it was—

A flash of blue in my rearview caught my attention.

Gideon glanced back. “Xander,” he said, answering my unspoken question. “That’s his truck.”

“Well, this should be fun.”

“Welcome home?” he offered.

I blatantly ignored him as we rounded the final switchback and came into the clearing. I’d been back only once in the last decade, but I’d seen this view nearly every night in my dreams.

The setting sun reflected off the windows of the two-story structure I’d grown up in, painting it with a picturesque light that matched the majesty of the bare peak that loomed just behind it.

Dad had always joked that it was safer to raise his family at the tree line, where the wildfires weren’t as big of a threat.

Personally, I thought he took a perverse pleasure in living at the edge, where there was barely enough oxygen for anything to grow.

I threw the Jeep into park, killed the engine, and then grabbed my coat from where it had fallen to the floor behind me.

By the time Xander pulled in next to me, I was out of the Jeep and had the black North Face on and zipped, wishing it was my Kevlar. I would rather have been dodging bullets than facing him—or Dad, for that matter.

“I’ll…uh…not be here,” Gideon said awkwardly before leaving me in the yard. I heard the house door open and shut right around the same time Xander’s car door did.

He came around the front of his polished, brand-new truck and stopped suddenly, his hands pausing mid-zip on his coat.

A lifetime of memories assaulted me—the good, the bad, and the worst. Pretty much in that order.

He raked a hand through his Ken doll–perfect blond hair and sucked in a breath. “Camden.”

“Alexander.” I shaped the brim of my ball cap.

Guess we both had our nervous tells.

He hadn’t changed much. Same blue eyes. Same lean frame. Still Dad’s obvious genetic gift to the world. Still my opposite in every way.