Together We Stand

by JA Lafrance

So, maybe time away had done one thing for her where that was concerned. Or hell, maybe it was just the distance that gave her a sense of accomplishment when where she had come from seemed warmer for those seconds that she sat stopped at the four-way.

  The man behind her in a black Tundra couldn’t quite say the same when he laid on his horn hard enough to send Kisska jerking forward in her seat. She came out of her thoughts knowing damn well her cheeks were hot with embarrassment.

  She waved a hand in the rearview mirror when the guy gestured through his windshield at her to go. If she tried hard enough, then she might even be able to hear the slight twang of an accent that accompanied most people who grew up in these areas as she watched his mouth move in silent annoyance.

  What the fuck are you doin’—move that piece-ah-shit car before I do it for ya.

  Canadians were kind. Always. To a fault, even, considering apologies during or after accidents were not actually considered admissible statements of guilt in a court of law. Except the veil of kindness was often ripped away when they were alone in their vehicles where no one could hear their pent up frustration spill out in a way that would make any Kanuck both embarrassed and proud.

  “Sorry,” Kisska muttered, catching sight of her—yep—reddened cheeks in the rearview mirror as she went ahead and turned onto the bridge. The guy couldn’t hear her apologize, obviously, but it was a habit.

  She couldn’t think on it for long. Or the fact that the guy in the black Tundra followed her onto the bridge without even stopping at the stop sign for his turn. Already, her heart raced, daring to make her believe it might beat right out of her chest as the wheels of her car took her further over the bridge.

  There was no four-way at the end of the bridge. Just a parking lot for the banks, or a right turn for the main road leading to the town’s hall, the historical family homes that lined the river’s edge, the trailer parks on the old highways, and the lower schools for the town and surrounding areas.

  But to the left …

  To the left, the road only went one way. Straight to the main access for the mountain. A winding, thousand-acre piece of The Valley that not only allowed people access to the small counties of Arthur’s Flat, Little Denmark, and the rural town of Castor Rock on the other side … but also belonged to the family of which it had been given its name.

  They called it Montgomery Mountain. That wasn’t the real name and most people couldn’t even remember what it was called before the Montgomery family came to The Valley. But from what Kisska had always been told, and even what she knew because she dared to let that mountain learn her secrets a long time ago, nothing has been the same since.

  And the Montgomery family?

  Well, they liked it that way.

  Kisska turned right.

  That mountain and the family to whom it belonged faded into the background of the town, eventually disappearing altogether. Right where it needed to stay.

  Gone.

  “You got the job, then?”

  “You’re still pregnant, then?” Kisska asked back after closing her car door.

  Fame Matthews didn’t even crack a smile at Kisska’s shitty attempt at dry humor to state the obvious. In fact, her sister seemed bored with her younger sibling—by only two years; Fame had just turned twenty-six a month before in May—as she stared her down from the front steps of her tiny riverside Bungalow.

  Kisska dropped her duffle bag when she came to stand in front of her car parked next to Fame’s newer SUV. Her clothes in the bag were the only thing other than a few boxes in her trunk, that she cared to pack and bring home from the apartment she left behind in the city. Someone else could use her furniture—it wasn’t like she had any real emotional attachment to the things she had picked up at second-hand shops and flea markets over the years to make due and have a functional living space. It wasn’t like she had taken a lot of things when she left, either. Most of her days were spent wearing scrubs as a registered nurse, so she was used to comfortable clothes and didn’t waste time on bags or jewelry, or anything that seemed pointless considering the state of her life.

  She didn’t go out.

  What were friends?

  And dating?

  Right.

  Kisska didn’t have a life to uproot and bring home with her when her sister called to say she was pregnant and needed help. The only possessions that meant anything to her were the boxes of books packed in her trunk that she had been collecting since she was a girl. Well, that and her sister staring her down from the metal veranda and stairs leading up to Fame’s front door.

  “Is that supposed to be a joke?” Fame asked, arching a brow.

  Like when they were kids, or even later in their teen years when Fame was forced to take on a more motherly role for her younger sister, Kisska felt her defensive hackles rattling. She even crossed her arms just because it felt fitting, and sometimes, time changed nothing.

  “Not really,” Kisska returned.

  Fame let out a controlled breath, her gaze darting to follow a car that passed them by on the street when a honk sounded. Her sister waved and put on a smile, reminding Kisska that the sign at the end of the driveway and the windows of nearby houses meant someone was watching. One of three hairdressers in town that someone could go to who wouldn’t butcher a simple cut and dye job, Fame was well known.

  So was Kisska.

  Just for different reasons.

  “By tomorrow, everyone will be talking about how they saw the two of us yelling in the streets,” Kisska muttered, eyeing the car disappearing down the short hill leading into the heart of the Valley.

  “Good—I’ll get more appointments booked in for overtime next week,” Fame replied just as easily. “Rumors are great for business in this shithole.”

  That had her smiling.

  “You’re terrible.”

  Fame shrugged. “I know.”

  “You can’t tell yet, by the way.”

  Her sister didn’t even flinch; Fame’s hands told the truth, though. The black apron she kept tied around her trim waist, above her simple white tee and light denim skinny jeans, soon became the hiding spot for her trembling fists when she shoved them into the front pockets. She hadn’t lied; her sister’s midsection was still as flat as it ever was. The town didn’t know Fame Matthews was pregnant, and not even her own sister knew who the father of the child was.

  “Yeah, well, I am only eight weeks, so …” Trailing off, Fame left the statement open, but Kisska wasn’t sure where to take it from there.

  “Yeah.”

  Some people used to like to say that the two were twins when they were girls, but it was a surface level thing. Their closeness in age helped it along, too.

  They both stood at barely five-foot-one, shared their mother’s knotty, black curls that wreaked havoc in the summer, but everyone else swore they’d give their last arm to have. Even their blue eyes, unnaturally bright and almost oddly colored in the sunlight, were the same. That was about where the similarities ended. Different fathers—both unknown because their mother refused to say—left Fame with a milk and cream complexion that burned within seconds of kissing the sun while Kisska had taken their mother’s olive skin that only gained more freckles with each summer.

  Nothing else about the two tied them together except for their mother and past. Her sister was smart … and strong. Kisska just wasn’t. Fame could dazzle a crowd. She only wanted a corner and a book. They once fought more than they talked, and sometimes old bitterness could be their best friends on their worst days.

  But they were sisters. That meant something to Kisska. Fame was the only thing she had left in the world that she could call hers in a real way.

  Fame pulled her hands from the pockets of the apron only to put them on her hips. “You didn’t even call to say you got the job at the hospital here. I was waiting.”

  “I changed my status on—”

  “Everybody uses that to message me for bookings or send me pictures of models a
sking if they can do that in a single session for eighty bucks. I’m not scrolling my feed looking for updates on whether or not you got a job, Kiss.”

  The thing about trying to leave the past behind was that sometimes, more things were intentionally forgotten in the process. Other than phone calls and late-night FaceTimes with her sister when she had a second to spare, they hadn’t seen each other in almost two years. Fame had traveled to the city when Kisska graduated as an RN, but she also had a life to live and a business to run all by herself, too.

  Kisska tried to remember that.

  Especially now.

  “Well, I got the job,” she told her sister.

  Fame coughed out a laugh. “And?”

  “I already had everything packed. I was coming whether I got it or not, Fame. I’m here to help.”

  Whatever that meant.

  Finally, the crack of her sister’s facade started to show when she glanced away to stare at the hanging pots of flowers that lined the front eave of her cute, pale yellow home. Fame waved a hand Kisska’s way when she turned for the front door, saying, “Well, get out of the driveway, then. I was just sweeping up the shop. I don’t have any more appointments today. Did they tell you when you start at Valleyview?”

  “Next week—night shifts in the ER.”

  “You always were a night owl.”

  Yeah.

  The last time she had stood where she currently did in her sister’s driveway, Fame had been shouting at her. Kisska could still hear those words slamming into her retreating, eighteen-year-old back, too.

  Don’t let them run you out of this town. This is your home, too.

  She promised not to come back.

  She meant it.

  Apparently, she also lied.

  Here goes nothing.

  “It’s not the same, is it?”

  Kisska glanced over at the older RN who sat beside her behind the reception desk of the Valleyview Regional Hospital’s small Emergency Room. Nearing her mid-fifties, and one of six nurses now including Kisska, who rotated the night shifts in the rural ER, she liked to be called Miss Lee. She laid eyes on Kisska her first night a week earlier and told her she remembered the night she had been born in the labor and delivery ward of the hospital that was now unused and defunct due to the flooding ten years earlier.

  “What do you mean?” Kisska asked.

  Miss Lee, with her name badge hanging from her scrubs to tell her full title, Marie Lee, RN, grinned wide. “Going from the city hospital to here. It must be boring.”

  Kisska thought about that—the hustle of a night shift in an ER in the city was … interesting. What could be considered a good and quiet night there was a busy, chaotic night for a small town ER with only two nurses on staff between twelve AM to twelve PM every night of the week. Their one, thirty-minute break was just enough time to make a run to the twenty-four-hour gas station and coffee shop to grab food. Even the doctors on call for Valleyview ER stayed at home, sleeping in their beds until a nurse called to say there was a patient with an emergency that required a doctor because the nurses couldn’t handle it.

  “I don’t take it for granted,” Kisska told her companion. “And I get to read more here, too.”

  Miss Lee laughed as she stood from her chair and gave the glass window overlooking the waiting room a look. It was empty, and it had been that way for most of the night. Now, they were closing in on six in the morning. Lunch for Miss Lee, and Kisska’s would follow in a half-hour when the older nurse retook her post.

  “I’m gonna head up the highway and get coffee, do you want one?”

  “Extra-large.”

  “Triple-triple,” Miss Lee returned with a wink. “You like it too sweet.”

  “The sugar gives me an extra boost, that’s all.”

  “Mmhmm, so you say. I say all that sugar is gonna come back and bite you. I’ll let the security guard know on my way out the front. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Okay.”

  Kisska was able to watch the headlights of Miss Lee’s old Honda Accord pull away from her designated parking spot through the ER’s bay windows where it overlooked the parking lot and the river. Knowing the lone security guard was probably all the way on the other side of the hospital and only now making his way over to be at the doors to let Miss Lee back in when she returned, Kisska went back to her open book on the desk.

  The night was quiet.

  A six-month-old baby boy with a bad ear infection. An elderly woman from her assisted living apartment just up the hill behind the hospital who had fallen and needed a bed before she could be transported to a larger hospital in the morning slept in a private room off to the left of the nurses’ desk. The most excitement had come from a hospital in a larger town forty-five minutes away who had planned to divert a moose-involved vehicular accident to Valleyview but ended up being able to stabilize their patients long enough to get them through to the larger hospital in Three Falls where they were more equipped to handle the situation.

  Kisska expected the rest of the night to be the same. Little to no activity. Her first two weeks at the hospital had proven rather easy, and the twelve-hour shifts—four days on, three days off—kept her busy when she wasn’t helping Fame in the salon.

  Sleeping a good portion of the day away probably helped, too. At least, the town had yet to catch up with the fact that the runaway Matthews sister was back and working in the hospital on the night shift. Or maybe the town had caught up, but news just hadn’t worked its way back around to Kisska yet.

  That was possible.

  The Valley worked in funny ways.

  “That ain’t Miss Lee,” came a familiar voice in the hospital’s darkened corridor.

  Between the two metal doors that separated the ER from the rest of the hospital’s facility, the lone security guard had finally made his appearance. Lucas stood in his dark blue uniform—the yellow SECURITY—across his back the only badge he was allowed to wear other than his nametag. Even the weapon tucked into the holster at his waistline was only a stun gun. She was sure it was Lucas’ large size that intimated people into behaving during his shifts at the hospital because the man was a giant teddy bear.

  “Too many lights,” he murmured after a moment.

  Kisska lifted her head a bit higher to see what the guard was talking about. It didn’t take her long to spot the stream of headlights coming up the road for the hospital’s ER through the front windows. The six lights, three on each side, made her pause.

  It wasn’t unusual for people in the rural communities to outfit their vehicles with light systems that could flood an entire highway with lights for what seemed like endless kilometers. it helped for hunters and loggers who traveled the woods’ roads, anyone who wanted to avoid collisions with large animals at night, and it was also illegal.

  But as long as they didn’t get caught, well …

  “Are they pulling in here or going up the hill?” Kisska asked, knowing the land behind the hospital had been developed for more than just elderly homes for those who needed assisted living. Homes had been built there for doctors, and even some of the main street Victorians that hadn’t been damaged in the flood had been moved up the hill with the help of professional transporters.

  “Pulling up,” Lucas replied, glancing over his shoulder just long enough to say he recognized the vehicle. “Damn, better close that book up, Kisska. You’ve got a good one.”

  What?

  There were two entrances to the ER. The one at the front where the windows overlooked the river, and the one at the back where a smaller parking lot was reserved for ER use during the day so the larger parking lot in the front could be used for everyone else. She expected the vehicle with the bright lights to pull up to the front, but instead, she watched the flash of lights approach through the window of the private doctors’ office behind where she sat at the desk.

  “Unlock the door,” Lucas called to her.

  Right.

  Kissa reached over, with
out even checking the cameras, and hit the button that would automatically unlock the rear entrance door and open it for whoever waited outside. Lucas stayed on the other side of the ER, lingering at the doors where he would probably stay until Miss Lee returned with her lunch and Kisska’s coffee.

  “Call if you need me, okay?”

  She nodded to the guard as she stepped out behind the desk just as two men stumbled through the now-opened rear doors. She had to walk around the partition wall to see who it was, but she heard his voice first. Had she not been a nurse, trained to stay calm in all situations, then she might have froze right to the spot.

  Or worse, run.

  Again.

  “Heard you were back in town, Kiss,” came the smooth, all too familiar voice of Cruz Montgomery.

  She only stared at the boy he had helped inside who was holding his hand against the side of his midsection while his older brother did the same with his own to aid in applying pressure. The bloodstain getting bigger around whatever injury Ronan Montgomery was trying to hide—or help—meant Kisska didn’t really have time to indulge the green-eyed, gorgeous liar smirking her way. Just his presence, from the way he carried his six-foot-two frame made for bare-knuckle fistfights and breathless, aching early morning sex to the messy, windswept, wheat color of his hair did enough to set Kisska off balance.

  Entirely.

  Cruz had that effect on everyone.

  Like the rest of his family.

  Except once upon a time, he lied and said she was his. She had stupidly dared to believe him.

  “Hey, Kisska,” Ronan said, forcing a weak smile on his face that seemed a bit too pale. “It’s been a while.”

  “Yeah, you were like ten the last time I saw you,” she told the younger Montgomery brother. His boyish charm hadn’t entirely left, and he was a lot closer to the age his brother was the first time Kisska laid eyes on the Montgomery brother that would rip her heart apart. The same man that was now looking at her for direction. “Get him into bay one, Cruz. What happened?”

  “Accident,” Cruz mumbled on the way by.