Deep River Promise Jackie Ashenden (best life changing books .txt) 📖

Okay, so whoever this Aiden guy was, he was a subject she didn’t want to talk about.

Damon didn’t like that. He felt like he was flying in the dark with no autopilot and no navigation and heading straight into a cloud bank.

Looking around for Connor, he eventually spotted him standing just a little way down the street, his back to Damon, his attention determinedly forward. He looked big standing there, and broad. Not a kid. A man.

“So,” Damon said as he came up behind him, “you want to tell me what’s going on?”

Connor swung around. He looked furious. “You heard already. I want to quit school early. But Mom won’t let me. She doesn’t understand—”

He stopped short as Damon held up a quietening hand.

“I hear you,” Damon said, wanting to prevent a deluge of irritation right here in the street. “Let’s talk, but not here, okay?”

“But I—”

“You want people listening in on what you have to say? The whole town knowing your secret?”

Connor’s chin jutted. “They can. Perhaps they’d take me seriously if they knew.”

“They might,” Damon allowed. “But what about your mom? That’s going to affect her too, don’t forget. Also, it’s a hell of a way for your aunt to find out that her brother had a son she didn’t know about.”

Connor opened his mouth. Closed it. Then he looked away, thrusting his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, okay.” He was still angry, that was clear, but there was a grudging admittance in his tone. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Good kid. Unlike many teenagers, he wasn’t just thinking of himself when it came down to it.

“Have you got somewhere we can chat without anyone listening in?” Damon asked. “Like, a hideout or something?”

“A hideout?” Connor’s tone dripped with disdain. “I’m not ten.”

Damon grinned. “No, but you’re an angry teenage boy. You can’t tell me you don’t have a place to go brood on the injustices of life.”

The kid rolled his eyes, but the tension around his mouth eased. “Maybe.”

“Good.” Already an idea about what he was going to do was revolving in Damon’s brain. “Stay here a second. I’ll be back.”

Without another word, he turned around and made his way to the market. It was still open, so he went in, bought a couple of beers, then came out again.

Connor glanced then at the bottles in his hand. “Beer?”

“Serious conversation requires serious refreshment. My mom preferred whisky, but you’re underage, so beer it is.”

“You know beer has alcohol in it, right?”

Damon lifted a shoulder. “Hey, I’ll drink both of them if you don’t want—”

“Let’s not be hasty,” Connor interrupted quickly. “I didn’t say that.”

Damon laughed. “Didn’t think you did. Come on, show me where this ‘maybe’ hideout of yours is.”

Connor gave him a dark look, then turned and started heading down the street to the boardwalk, while Damon followed.

They stepped onto the boardwalk and walked down it, heading to the steps at the end that led to the path that ran along the bank beside the river.

The sun was going down, throwing out long streaks of gold and red and yellow light, bathing everything in a pretty twilight glow. It was starting to get cold, the unseasonable warmth of the spring day beginning to fade along with the light, making Damon draw his parka closer around him.

Stars started to glitter in the pale sky. When darkness fell, they’d be scattered across the night like jewels spilled from a treasure chest.

Connor continued on down the path and then abruptly veered off toward the river. Damon followed, curious.

The almost imperceptible trail led to a gravelly beach scattered with rocks. Connor scrambled over them like a mountain goat before disappearing around a particularly huge boulder.

Damon went after him, coming around the side of the boulder to find that the boy was gone. He had a moment of puzzlement and then he saw that the boulder had been hollowed out, the inside just big enough for a boy and maybe a companion.

Connor sat on the dry, sandy floor, pulling twigs from a stash tucked up at the back of the tiny cave and carefully piling them into a circle of fire-blackened rocks. A pile of dry driftwood sat next to the circle.

“This is something else.” Damon looked around in approval as he sat down. “You’ve got a real man cave.”

Connor reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter, then hunched over the fire. “I found it a year or so ago. No one else knows about it.”

Damon didn’t say that probably lots of people knew about it; you didn’t have something this cool within a couple of minutes of the town center and not have people know about it.

“I like it. It’s the perfect hideout.”

As Connor lit the fire, Damon took the tops off the beer bottles, then leaned over and put one in the sand beside Connor.

“Okay,” he said comfortably. “Let’s hear it. Why don’t you trust Silas and Zeke to do what’s right by the town?”

“Because Silas only came back a couple of weeks ago. I know he was born here, but he hasn’t been around for years, so what would he know? And I don’t know anything about Zeke.” Connor’s jaw was tight as he picked up more driftwood, slowly feeding it to the fire. “How am I supposed to trust either of them when I don’t know them?”

Damon could see his point. As far as Connor was concerned, Silas and Zeke were complete strangers who didn’t live in the town and who didn’t understand its ways. Hell, if he’d been Connor, maybe he wouldn’t trust them either.

The difficulty was that Silas and Zeke were totally trustworthy men—he’d trusted them with his life and vice versa—and Connor didn’t need to be worried. And the fact that he was was the issue.

What had happened in this boy’s life that he’d somehow taken on the responsibility for the whole town? That he didn’t trust two men who were totally trustworthy?