by V. K. Ludwig
“I asked if you still love him.”
“I do,” I said, rushing through the words before they might have turned into sobbing chaos. “Not that it matters. He hates me, and I don’t blame him. Most of the time, I hate myself, too. Once he’s back from his trip to the mountains, he will start the divorce proceedings.”
Bry’s eyes wandered over to the babies for a moment, where she observed Edric balancing himself on all fours. Not much longer, and he would crawl.
“But it matters,” she said. “There might not be any saving for your marriage, but you can’t both be in Rose’s life without being honest with each other.”
The door pushed open, and Einar’s voice sounded from behind it, his head nowhere in sight. “Is it safe to come in now? I finished the animals half an hour ago but didn’t want to interrupt.”
Bry chuckled. “Safe enough for you to come in, I’d say. I was just about to offer Darya to walk her back down. That is, if you can watch Edric.”
“You bet your sweet little ass I can.” He shut the door behind him, walked his snow-caked boots over the room, and picked up his son. “Say bye-bye to your friend Rose. Your’re gonna help your daddy fix that loose bedpost over there. You can hold on to the hammer, nails and all the other tools I —”
“No tools and no nonsense!” Bry barked.
“Haha, we got your mommy good,” he said in a sing-song voice. “Guess she doesn’t trust daddy. But you trust me, right?”
He gave me a wink and watched how Bry and I got dressed to go back outside. Rowan’s coat hadn’t dried just as I had expected, but the inside was still dry, and the rain had stopped.
We walked down the hillside and into the forest. The freezing rain had clung to the junipers and pines, dragging their branches down. The younger trees had been entirely pushed over by the weight of it. Unlikely they would recover from it.
Bry waved her hand around. “All this white is beautiful, don’t you think?”
No, it freaks me out. “Yes. Beautiful.”
I looked down at Rose who had fallen to sleep, gently being rocked back and forth by my body in move.
“How is it?” Bry asked. “I met no one who could tell me how the Districts truly are. Ayanna told us they don’t eat any meat at all.”
“They don’t. Something about animal agriculture being damaging to the environment. They’re pretty big on not repeating mistakes from the past.”
“And their men?”
I stopped to glance at her. “What do you mean?”
“Like…” She gestured her hands all over her body. “Are they really as timid looking as everyone says? That’s what everyone always told me, but then I met Max, and he is in pretty good shape.”
“They have a bit of everything,” I said. “Some are more athletic than others, which are the ones who are part of their Newgenics program. But, yeah, none of them are as strong as our men here.”
The moment Rowan’s cabin came into view, Bry began to point. “Hey look, there’s Hazel. Looks like they just got done.”
I stopped. “Done with what?”
The muscles around my heart clenched, and a disgusting feeling crept up my legs. It wasn’t new to me, that feeling.
I have no right to be jealous. I have no claim on him.
“Let’s say hi.”
“No!” My palm landed on Bry’s shoulder like a rock. “I, uh… we shouldn’t interrupt. Looks like they’re saying their goodbyes already.” With her fucking arms wrapped around my husband. And the way he gazed down at her… Bile rose from my stomach and swept onto my tongue.
“What was that?” Bry asked, holding her outstretched hands up.
The earth underneath us shook for a fraction of a breath. I couldn’t place where the low rumble came from, but it was there. Somewhere in the background, not too far away.
“An after-quake?” I asked.
“Hm.” Bry crossed her hands in front of her chest. “Been a while since we had one of those. Guess we’ll never know.”
She shrugged her shoulders, and her gaze wandered back to Rowan and Hazel, who must have felt it too given the way they pointed at the ground.
“She’s such a great doctor,” Bry said and set back into motion, oblivious to how pale my face must have been, considering I couldn’t feel it anymore.
“Such a great doctor,” I said in a mocking, high-pitched whisper.
“What?”
“Nevermind!”
Hazel waved a final goodbye and walked off, a skip in every single fucking step she took. Whatever had happened in there must have made her awfully happy.
“You’re not jealous, right?” Bry asked. She didn’t look at me, but a catty grin tugged at the corner of her mouth. I could see that much.
“Why would I be?” I asked, struggling my voice into something cool and unfazed. “It’s not like I still have a claim on him. I was the one who left him, and soon he will be free to marry someone else.” I almost choked on my own words.
“Well,” she placed both hands onto my shoulders. “Remember what we talked. Sit down with him like two grown-ups and talk about everything. Leave nothing out.”
“Right,” I gave her a sure nod. “Leave nothing out.”
Chapter 15
5 minutes earlier …
Rowan
I had allowed Darya to visit Bry and take the baby with her. Figured it would buy me some time to go over the divorce arrangement in front of me on the kitchen table. The last thing I needed was her snide comments, complaining about every fucking thing I wrote down with exclamation points and bullets.
It’s not that we argued a lot. We didn’t. Come to think of it, we didn’t talk at all. We weren’t exactly on speaking terms ever since that night.
Wherever she walked in silence, she left behind a trail of ice. The slippery kind, where one wrong step might cause you to slip, hit your head, and forever lose your mind. I couldn’t let that happen.
The familiar noise of a pair of feet shuffling up the porch stairs made me put the chewed up pencil down. I got up and opened the door before the knock landed on the wood.
Hazel stood in front of me, her balled-up hand still in the air.
“Still got a decent set of ears, huh?” she asked, cocking her head and making her pearl-blonde ponytail swing to the side.
“It’s all I got left.” I took a step back so she could squeeze herself inside. “That, and my good looks.”
She stopped in the center of the living area and gifted me a lovers-gone-enemies smile: friendly at first glance, but with unpleasant memories tugging on the corners. “Well, you’re aging gracefully, Rowan.”
I pulled a chair from the dining table and shoved it toward her. “Glad someone said it.”
“I’m not staying long,” she said and gestured a quick wave at the chair. “All I want is to ask you for a favor.”
“A favor?” I turned the chair around and sat astride it, hanging my arms over the backrest.
“My brother told me what chieftain Xavier requested from you in exchange for the helicopter.”
“Adair needs to learn how to shut his fucking mouth,” I blurted, stress forming inside my chest cavity. He had requested two things. One was reasonable. The other would send me straight to hell. At least that’s what Max told me about murder.
“It’s not like I want to do it,” I said, the heaviness in my voice reminding me of how long it had been since I had to kill someone. “But a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, right?”
“What if you had a volunteer?” she asked, pushing her hands into her coat pocket.
“Uh-uh.” I shook my head. “I made a deal with him, and I sure as hell won’t have someone else take care of my dirty business.”
She raised one of her eyebrows, and the other followed shortly after. “What dirty business?”
The way her eyes searched me for clues told me Adair had only given her half of the truth.
“He wants a wife.” She lowered her head sl
owly, adding an equally slow “Right?” to it.
“A wife. Yes!”
I confirmed with a big, perhaps exaggerated nod. Nobody else needed to know the gig also involved assassination. Except for Adair and Oriel. That was a burden I’d carry into my grave. On my own.
She pulled her hands out of her pockets and walked over to me. Then she placed them on the little surface left on the backrest of my chair and leaned over, almost towering over me.
“Let me be his wife.”
Her words left me stunned, the way she stared me down challenged. The way she didn’t blink left no doubt; she meant it.
“Why?”
Hazel pushed away from the chair, her eyes slowly drifting to the divorce papers on the table next to us. My hands dashed for the piece of paper and turned it upside down.
“Many reasons.” She gave a you-owe-me-this kind of sigh and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “The most important one being that I don’t like any of our men. But I like him.”
“You don’t know him.”
“Neither do you.”
Her answer came so fast; clearly, she’d been practicing this very moment in front of a mirror. Still like a pillar, she stood in front of me, her floor-tapping heel the only hint of anxiety.
I got up and pushed the chair back to the table. “We can’t lose our only doctor, and you know that.”
“Max is a doctor.”
“My brother-in-law is a fertility specialist,” I said. “He’s as useless at the clinic as tits on a chainsaw. Come on, you should know better than that.”
Her eyes narrowed into thin slits. “Should I?”
The wind picked up again, sending howls around the cabin. They penetrated the door gaps and made me look around, but her eyes remained on me.
“Does this have anything to do with what happened between you and me?” I asked, pointing my finger back and forth between us. “If you want to leave from here because —”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said, a taunt audible in her voice. “That was a lifetime ago, and it’s not like anyone ever asked me if I actually wanted to marry you.”
“You didn’t?” I asked, feeling how one of my eyebrows went up in a mix of provocation and genuine curiosity. Back then, our parents had proposed the engagement. Nobody was happy when I dissolved the engagement and married Darya instead. Gosh… Hazel was right, it felt like a lifetime ago.
She gave me a wink. “I wanted to marry you. Which girl didn’t? And because you broke my poor, poor heart, I think the least you owe me is another shot at a chieftain.”
Great, another debt owed! “Your poor, broken heart, huh?”
I leaned my ass against the weathered table and considered her proposal for a moment. She wanted Xavier. I wanted my debt paid.
“That doesn’t change the issue with us losing our only doctor,” I said. “Unless you would stay until you trained Max.”
She walked over to me and reached her hand out. “Deal!”
As unexpectedly as she had arrived, she shook my hand and marched straight to the door. With her goal achieved, we stepped outside to say our goodbyes.
“Thank you, Rowan.”
She swung her arms around me, making me hold my breath. A weird kind of discomfort settled where we touched, spreading across my entire body like a nasty rash. The closeness to a woman other than Darya still felt wrong to me, and I fucking hated how my body continued this kind of betrayal.
The earth underneath us shook. I grabbed Hazel by her arms, pulled her closer to me and away from any potential harm. Three seconds later, the soil underneath us settled once more, only a deep, creaky moan coming from the direction of the village.
“What was that?” she asked, taking a generous step away from me.
“Earthquake probably.”
I gave her a one-shoulder shrug. “You’ll be okay on your way back?”
“Yup, thanks to you, Rowan.”
Her legs set into motion and her ponytail bobbed up and down with each step she took.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” She turned around and rummaged through one pocket first, then the other. Once she found the little glass jar she’s been looking for, she shouted “Catch!” and fastballed it right at me.
I wrapped my fingers around it. “What’s it for?”
“Darya’s wounds,” she said and continued on her way. “Makes the itching stop.”
I stared at the label-less tub and the greenish content, walking back inside the cabin and shutting the door behind me.
How come I don’t know of her wounds?
The door opened and slammed shut behind me quicker than I could turn around.
“Little fart!” I walked up to Rose, who clung to her mother. Darya had taken one of my winter coats which covered them better than a family-sized tent. “She didn’t get wet, did she? Come here, sweetheart.”
Her tiny, little hand stretched toward me. The other one followed soon after, and she all but leaped into my arms. She went about her beard-digging ritual, making warmth spread throughout my core and into my limbs.
“She fell to sleep for a few minutes on our way down here, she might be cranky.”
Darya flung the coat into the corner and wrapped her hands around her stomach. “What did Hazel want?”
“Ask me for a favor,” I said, the warmth inside me puffing out.
I carried Rose through the cabin airplane-style, complete with stuttering engines and machine gun sounds, her body shaking with each of her throaty giggles.
“I can only imagine,” she said in an anger-dripping voice, “considering how happy she left from here with a skip in each step.”
“Uh-oh, mayday, mayday, storm ahead. Initiate emergency landing.”
My holo-band vibrated, but I ignored it. I lowered Rose onto my chest and hugged her tight.
Hands wrapped around her stomach had never been a good sign with Darya. Chances were her arms tried to contain something dangerously close to detonation.
Disarming the explosives would have been the most sensible thing to do. Nothing had happened between Hazel and me, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t serve at bringing more distance between us once more. The last thing we needed was one of us think that having sex with each other changed anything.
I lit the fuse. “Yeah, I made her pretty happy.”
“You’re such a fucking pig,” she snarled, jealousy making her eyes squint. “I hope you wash your dick between fucks.”
Redness spread from the tip of her nose to her cheeks and neck, making me feel a foot taller. Why did I get such a kick out of her jealousy?
My brain told me to do the only reasonable thing: burn down all bridges.
I gave a shrug. “I’m a gentleman after all.”
“Asshole!”
“Yeah, I know. You said that before.”
She took a rage-filled step toward me, came to a halt and stared me straight in the eyes. Yes, she carried fury behind them. But there was something else, too. It filled her beautiful green eyes with that thing I met each day in the mirror. A reflection of torment.
Why does the thought of losing me to another woman hurt her so much? It’s not like she still loves me.
The kick I got out of her reaction now drove shame into my bone marrow. “Look, I didn’t mean what I just said. I never touched Hazel because…” Because I can’t imagine being with anyone but you. “I might be an asshole in your eyes, Darya, but I’m no fucking adulterer. I started preparing some paperwork for the divorce. Whatever I do after isn’t any of your damn business.”
My holo-band vibrated once more and cut through the tense atmosphere between us. I waved at it, mumbled a quick “Not now,” and turned it off again.
Darya stood in front of me, her legs apparently melted into the floorboards. As if paralyzed from the mouth up, all she did was blink her eyes at something on my chest that wasn’t there.
“Did you know River had himself checked?” she asked whisper-quiet, continuing her sta
re into nothingness.
“What?”
“River,” she said. “When Ayanna didn’t get pregnant, he saw Max for it, and she didn’t even have to ask him to.”
“You’re talking nonsense,” I said with conviction, but it quickly faded away with each breath I took. Was that what happened between Max and River at the day of the sparring? But the more burning question: did it fix the issue?
A flutter moved into my chest, unrecognized at first because I hadn’t felt it in so long but yes… it was hope. Hope that maybe, just maybe, Max could fix me, too.
River had mentioned nothing to me. But then again, fertility issues ranked low on our topics of conversation, run up by tits, car engines and whose farts smelled worse.
Darya stumbled back, the kitchen counters the only thing keeping her from falling. Her hands touched blindly for something to hold on to, pushing about grease-covered plates and half-empty tea mugs.
Her empty stare slouched to the ground, along with every other part of her body. “You never even considered it could be you, did you?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” I gave another shrug, this one much heavier than the one before. “You never asked me to see a doctor or anything.”
She scoffed. “Neither did Ayanna, because River didn’t ignore the issue and left her alone with it. He loves her, and he stepped up. I always thought you loved me at least that much.”
My legs took an unchecked step toward her. “More. I loved you way more.”
“Yet it wasn’t important enough for you to have yourself checked out without me prompting you.”
Her words drove a dagger into my heart, twisting and turning right at the center. What she had said hurt — even more so because it was the truth. Why did I never set out for a solution? I never blamed Darya or suggested she should see a doctor. But I never blamed myself either.
The warmth coming from Rose’s body now chilled me to the bone, turning the blood in my veins into a river of ice and pain. How did I deserve keeping her if I did nothing to bring her into my life in the first place? Bile formed at the pit of my stomach.
She turned around, opened the faucet, and waited for the half-frozen pipes to allow for dribbles of water. “Can I ask you for a favor, too?”