by Carré White
Lottie nodded. “About that, I imagine you’re right. Of course, all it would take to save time would be straight wood...”
“Well if the damn stump is sitting crooked how can I fix it?” Colton was pacing back and forth, squatting down, lining his thumb up against the ground, then stood back up, took two more steps and crouched again. “I just can’t see it for being anything but square.”
He took off his hat and wiped away another gathering of sweat. Lottie and her father exchanged a glance when his back was turned, and Will gave her a knowing wink. He walked over to Colton and put a hand on the young man’s shoulder.
“It’s not your fault, not entirely. Very hard to see the incline and all. Here, let me see here.” He bent over, ran his hand along the ground and then squatted down, making a careful show of all his exaggerated motions.
With his hands in his back, Colton let out a whistle. “Now see here, Lottie, if you’re just joshing me, I’m certainly going to be cross about all this. You’ve got me all worried about ruining all the wood. Why wouldn’t you tell me all this sooner?”
She shrugged. “I just didn’t want you to feel bad. I thought maybe you’d straighten out on your own and we could just mix in the crooked bits. But now... well, at any rate, all it’ll take is another round of splitting.”
“All of it?” he bent over, with his hands on his knees, in exasperation. “But if all this snow’s coming, then... what? What’s so funny? That I’m going to have to do it all over again?”
William Wright’s shoulders trembled, his cheeks went red, and a second later, he burst into laughter. Lottie lost control of her very carefully maintained composure right afterward.
“No, no, no,” she said, wheezing she laughed so hard. “No, not that.”
“Then what?” Colton was red faced, flustered, and confused. “What on earth is—”
Slowly, his face changed. He pinched his eyes closed and bunched up his lips. “Oh you sneaky... you sneaky couple of...”
With a hard slap on the back, Will jolted the younger man forward. “I’ve never seen anyone fall so hard for a joke! The way you were,” he trailed off, doubled over and coughed when he was out of air. “The way you were going, we could have sold you half a herd of buffaloes!”
Gracefully, Lottie stacked the last pair of split logs on the sled and turned to him with a smile. “Let’s head in.” She grabbed Colton’s hand and put it on the sled’s handle. “That is, if you can manage to push this up the mighty hill that leads to our door.”
All three of them erupted at once, with so much noise that Rolf joined in, barking, from inside the house.
Looking from William to Colton, something that Lottie couldn’t quite explain struck her in that moment. Like things were okay, no matter how much they really weren’t. Like even with their town empty and winter bearing down with all the storms and snow and hardship that it always brought, her life was as it should be.
With Christmas only a month on the horizon, Lottie thought about what that meant – if it meant anything at all.
She’d never had a family at Christmas. It was always just she and her father.
The only thing she thought of as she looked at Colton brace himself against her father, as both of them shook with laughter, was family.
Chapter Seven
“Lottie? You awake?”
Soft knocks at her bedroom door, along with Colton’s whispered voice, shook Lottie out of her slumber.
In a daze, she looked around her still-dark room, and threw back the covers. When a burst of cold hit her, sending a trail of goosebumps all the way down her body, she grabbed the blanket right back, snuggling down in the warmest part of her bed she could find.
“What?” she said back. “It’s before dawn, what’s going on?”
“So you’re awake?”
She stifled a chuckle as she blinked in the darkness. “Well, yes, I suppose so,” she said. “What is it?”
“Come on,” he said in his urgent whisper. “Get dressed, there’s something I want to show you.”
She let out a heavy sigh. “It’s so early though, there’s frost on the window. What could you possibly have to show me before dawn?”
When Colton didn’t answer, she threw back the blanket again and steeled herself for the chill of her stocking-less feet hitting the floor boards. She took a deep breath, put them down, and hissed when the chill shot up her feet.
“This had better be worth my feet freezing to the ground. You know if you cut that wood more evenly, the house might still be warm.”
Outside her door, she heard a snicker and herself smiled. “I think you’ll enjoy it. Hurry up, there’s not much time left. This sort of thing doesn’t happen every day,” Colton said. “And be quiet, I don’t want to wake your father.”
His words were hushed, and had just a little twinge of naughtiness to them. Sneaking around, not waking father. Lottie blushed. She was slightly mortified at the things that came to mind when he said what he did.
She pulled some warm leathers over her nightclothes, which she had taken to do during the deepest cold of winter. The pairing of wind-blocking leather and insulating cotton kept her as warm as anything, she found. Thick stockings and soft-ankled boots pulled on and tied, she crept to the door, careful not to let her boot heels thunk on the floor.
“What do you want?” she asked again as she opened the door. “You better have a—”
Lottie let out a surprised gasp when Colton grabbed her hand and urged her to follow him. He tiptoed down the short hallway, past the open door to the room where William snored away, content as anything.
“Shhh...” Colton put his finger to his lips. “Careful,” he whispered.
As they passed, William snorted. Colton froze in place and Lottie followed his lead.
Seconds later, Will let out a long, whistling sigh and rolled over.
The two exchanged a look of relief and continued into the living room.
“Now,” Lottie whispered when they were a safe distance from her father’s bedroom. “What on earth did you get me up for?”
“Come on,” he said.
He grabbed her hand and pulled her to the door before turning around. “Maybe you oughta get a blanket,” he said.
Lottie pursed her lips. “Just what is it you’re on about, Mr. Howe? I’m not sure I like your intentions.”
She giggled, but he didn’t quite understand the joke. Thinking she was serious, Colton started to defend his own honor, and his respect for Lottie’s, before he saw her laughing. “You and your jokes,” he said with a sigh. “No, it’s cold outside. If you want your teeth to go to chattering, suit yourself, but I got one.”
“No, no,” Lottie said with a grin. “Give me that other one.”
He tossed it her way. “When last I came through, I noticed that there seems to be something a little different about the sky here.”
“Different? How do you mean?” Lottie said, draping the blanket around her shoulders. “I don’t see anything so special about it.”
The two of them stepped out into the frigid cold. The sun was an hour or more from coming up, and as such, the darkness surrounding them was total. The stars above Colton and Lottie were so numerous, so clear and looked so close, that even then when Colton looked up, he did so with an open, gaping mouth.
“It’s just... it’s amazing,” he said with a voice full of awe and wonder. “I’ve seen the stars all over this country of ours, but never, ever anything like this. So far up here without any trees without any lights or dust or anything. No smoke from a factory like you’d see out east. No railroads whistling through and coughing smoke into the air, it’s...”
Wordlessly, he spread a blanket and sat down before offering his hand to Lottie and helping her to do the same. As she settled herself to the ground, she stuck her legs out in front of herself and stretched, then lay back, cradled with the blanket around her shoulders.
Her head, though, didn’t hit the ground. Under
her neck, Lottie felt something hard and round and comfortable. She turned her head to one side, and giggled at Colton’s wiggling fingers, then turned the other way to see his face only inches from hers.
“Look up,” he said. “That’s Orion there, with the three...” he pointed the great huntsman out with the hand beside Lottie’s head.
“I’ve just never bothered to look, I guess,” she said. “Oh! What was that?”
“Where?”
“Right there,” she said as she grabbed Colton’s free hand and pointed at a white streak moving across the sky. “What was that?”
“Shooting star. They’re good luck. I’m surprised you’ve never done this before.”
Lottie stared at him, entranced by the vague color she could see in his eyes. “Never had a reason,” she said. “During the cold months we stay inside, during the warm ones we work. Suppose I just never... oh! Look at that one!”
She paused, again grabbing Colton’s hand and following it as a white then purple, then blue, light streaked across the sky. “What are they?”
“Shooting stars?” he asked. “My father said they were, uh, the angels playing a game. Somehow I don’t think that’s quite right.”
“What do you think the rules are?” Lottie asked, turning her head again from the brilliant stars back to Colton. The line of his clenched jaw, with his high cheekbones that swept to his perfect lips entranced her.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, almost like he knew she was watching. “Well, they’re angels,” he said softly. “The rules are whatever they want.”
Cautiously, she pulled closer to him. “Cold,” she said, as if needing an excuse. “What are some other ones? The stars, I mean?”
“Oh, well over there is the bear,” he used her hand this time, which he held tighter, to point. “And then the dipper’s here,” he traced the outline of the constellation with her fingertip. “And over here’s...”
Slowly, Colton turned his head to the side. A curl of Lottie’s hair almost touched his forehead they were so near. When he opened his eyes and stared straight into hers, the world seemed to stop for both of them.
“How did I find you? How did this all happen?”
Lottie couldn’t help but draw her lips to a smile. “I don’t know,” she said. “Good luck, I guess.”
“That would require me to believe in luck,” Colton whispered.
Lottie’s mouth fell open. She could hardly breathe, her heart pounded so quickly in her chest. “You don’t believe in luck? Then what was it?”
“I think,” he said as he intertwined her fingers with his, and kept staring straight into Lottie’s eyes, “that this might be exactly where we’re supposed to be. Think about it. Of all the paths I could have taken, I chose this one. Of all the times for your father to be gone, it was that day.”
“And for all the times for you to be on the run,” she said before stopping herself.
Thankfully, she thought, he answered with a smile. “Yes, that too. It all just came right together, didn’t it?”
Their interlocked hands drooped between them.
“You’re going to leave, aren’t you?” She asked him. “Like everyone else? One day I’m going to wake up and you’re going to be gone, aren’t you?”
“No,” Colton said. “Unless you want me to, anyway. Why would you think—”
“Everyone left. All my friends,” she said. “Everyone except pa, and those chickens. Just left. They all said they were coming back, but they never did. You’re the only person who ever kept their promise to me that they wouldn’t leave me alone.”
He touched her face with two tentative fingertips. “You asked why I returned. A couple of days back, remember?”
Lottie wiped her face and nodded.
“I said I wanted to get away from my past. In a way, that’s true, but it isn’t the whole story,” he said softly. “I came back because for that year I was on the run, I didn’t do a single good thing.”
“What do you mean? You didn’t hurt anyone else, did you?”
“No,” he said in a strained whisper. “I didn’t hurt anyone, but I also didn’t do any good for anyone either. Look there,” he said, pointing to another shooting star. “My pa, he said that if you’re with someone special, and you see shooting stars, it’s a good sign.”
Lottie smiled, feeling warm all the way through. “I thought it was angels playing marbles.”
His softly brushing fingertips raised a splash of goosebumps on Lottie’s neck. “Maybe angels playing marbles is a good sign,” he said with a grin.
Those eyes, that dimple. And here I am lying with this man in the frigid morning. Lying here – with a man. What is all this? How have I been so taken away?
“To tell you the truth, Lottie, I didn’t want to leave in the first place.”
“You were just an overnight guest though. What made you leave that letter?” She draw a tentative breath, feeling his fingers curl in her palm.
Focusing on her eyes, Colton pushed another fallen tendril of hair behind her ear and moved his head just a little closer. His breath slid across her skin, his scent filled her nose and for a moment, when she opened her trembling lips, Lottie was half expecting him to kiss her.
“I wanted to do something good. I wanted to keep a promise. For once in my life, I wanted to not be a coward. Running is easy, Lottie. Keeping ahead of Preston Grant, always on the run... that’s easy. But facing people you broke promises to, people you lied to? That’s hard.”
She squinted as dawn began to gray the sky. “You didn’t break any promises to me, though.”
Colton didn’t move for a moment. “So badly I wanted not to lie. The first time I saw you, when you came to that door with the shotgun and almost blasted me to Kingdom Come, I decided right then that I wasn’t going to play my games.” He coughed a laugh. “Of course, the very first thing I did was lie to you.”
“About where you came from?” Lottie’s voice was strained but soft. Almost as though she understood why he did what he did. “That’s the past. A long way in the past. Winter’s here, the sun is about to rise. What about a new start? It’s almost Christmas, so what better time to start over?”
“I want to,” he said. The arm he had crooked under her neck flattened against her back, and Colton pulled Lottie against his chest, clutching her like he needed to keep her right there, or he’d fall off the edge of the earth. “I want to start over and make everything right. But is it even possible? My brother, he—”
She shook her head, breathing his breath and thrilling at the way Colton’s fingers stroked against her back, even if she could barely feel it through all the layers. Just the light touch was enough that she knew he was there.
“You can’t bring your brother back, but it wasn’t you who killed him. It was that man, whatever his name was.”
“But I—”
“Hush,” she said, stilling his voice with a finger on the lips. “My turn to talk. You were young, sure, and you were reckless. Who isn’t? I tried chasing Andrew McKitchen halfway across the town one day because I wanted so badly to kiss him. That was,” she sniffed away a tear, “a time ago. I was still old enough to know what I was doing though. Lord, did I ever get a whipping for that one.”
Both of them laughed softly. “I don’t want to ruin this,” Colton said. “I don’t want to take something pure and good and twist it up like I always do. I don’t want to take you and your father’s hospitality and turn it around and steal his daughter. You’re the last thing he’s got, and I don’t want to hurt him.”
Lottie shook her head. “We were going to leave anyway. Come spring, we can’t stay here, no matter how much this farm means to him. We talked about it while you were off doing whatever it was you were doing.”
“You mean to tell me that,” he trailed off, taking a deep breath. He let it out in a heavy, weary sigh. “Look back there,” he tilted his head. “The moon’s still up.”
“No,” Lottie said. �
�I want to look at exactly what I’m looking at.”
The tips of their noses touched.
Something cold fell on the side of Lottie’s face.
“Good thing we got those nets up,” Colton said as he swept a snowflake off her cheek and blew it off his finger.
She nodded. “You were saying something before you tried to distract me by telling me to look at the moon.”
“No,” he said. “I just—”
“For all your talk about being a liar, Colton Howe, you’re a bad one.” A sly grin crept across Lottie’s face. “Stop trying, okay?”
“Just almost embarrassed myself,” he said.
“There’s nothing you can say that should embarrass you. You made what could have been another dark, dreary, lonely year a little brighter. You coming here changed everything in a place that hasn’t changed for as long as I’ve been alive, Colton.”
Her words gave him pause. For a moment, Colton’s mouth just hung open. He didn’t know what to say or even if he should say anything.
“Lottie?” Will’s voice came from inside the house. “Lottie? Colton? Where you two young’uns off at?”
“You answer me first,” Lottie said, anticipating that he was about to shout to her father.
“I was going to say that,” he gulped, “if I were to take you away from here, that I wouldn’t be breaking your father’s heart?”
Lottie smiled briefly. “No, you’d probably be giving him the best gift he ever had.”
“And what about you?” Colton said quickly. “What do you want?”
She grinned at him again, playfully, then said, “We’re out here, pa! Colton was showing me the shooting stars. Be right in!”
William grumbled an answer, but neither heard what he said.
“I guess you’ll just have to find out, won’t you?” Lottie said to Colton.
For another moment, they stay just like that, noses touching. Her lips were parted. His breath caressed her neck as his fingers curled on her back.
“Suppose we should go,” Colton said. “Hate to keep your father waiting.”