Chapter 8 #2
The bitterness in his voice made her look closer. The firelight played across his features, highlighting the set of his jaw and the dark shadows around his swollen eye. He looked tired—bone-deep exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with the day’s events.
“And what do they think is best?” She pulled her knees closer to her chest, trying to trap what little warmth had begun to thaw her insides.
“They think I need settling.” He tossed the stick into the flames. “That I’m too restless. Taking too many risks. That marriage would give me something to live for instead of—” He stopped himself, his mouth pressing into a thin line.
“Instead of what?”
His gaze shifted to the ice wall, then back to the fire. “Instead of leaving for California.”
California. The word hung between them like smoke. He planned to leave? That’s why his brothers had acted—not just to settle him, but to trap him here. Or maybe just keep him close.
“You were going to leave your family.” She didn’t say it as a question.
“I was going to build my own life.” The distinction clearly mattered to him. “There’s a difference between leaving people behind and choosing your own path.”
Was there? She’d spent years planning her escape from Columbia—from her stepmother’s conniving and her father’s weakness. She’d dragged Clara halfway across a continent to avoid the future that had been laid out for them. Running or choosing—the destination looked the same either way.
“Is it?” Her voice held a challenge. “Choosing a path means you know where you’re going. Running just means you’re desperate to be anywhere but where you are.”
His gaze snapped back to hers, something sharp flashing in those hazel eyes. “And which one are you doing, Miss McKinney?”
The question landed like a slap. She tightened her jaw, heat flooding her face despite the cold still clinging to her bones. He had no right to turn this back on her.
Except he did have a point, didn’t he?
She looked away, focusing on the flames instead of the uncomfortable truth in his words. The fire crackled and hissed, a piece of bark curling black as it burned. Was Butte really the place she’d chosen, or just the farthest point she could reach before the money ran out?
“I’m making sure my sister has a future.” The words came out defensive. “That’s not running. That’s protecting what matters.”
“And what about your future?” Thomas shifted. “Or does protecting Clara mean you don’t get one?”
The question dug under her skin like a splinter. She pulled her arms tighter around herself. “My future is tied to hers. It always has been.”
“That’s not an answer either.”
Heat flared in her chest. “You don’t know anything about me or my situation.”
“You’re right.” His voice went quiet, stripped of the defensive edge. “I don’t.”
The admission caught her off guard. She’d expected him to push back, to defend his question or deflect with more of that easy charm he’d used when they first met. Instead he just sat there across the fire, his bruised face half in shadow, waiting.
The silence stretched. Wind howled beyond their shelter, a reminder that the world outside hadn’t softened just because they’d found temporary refuge. Kate’s fingers had begun to tingle as warmth crept back into them, bringing the ache that came with thawing.
She should leave it there. Let the conversation die and retreat into the careful distance she’d maintained since stepping off that stage in Butte. Safer that way. Cleaner.
But something about the firelight and the ice walls closing them in made the words rise anyway.
“My stepmother wanted Clara to marry a man old enough to be her grandfather. A widower with money and connections that would elevate our family’s standing in Columbia society.
” Bitterness coated her tongue. “Never mind that he’d buried two wives already.
Never mind that Clara was terrified of him. ”
Thomas’s gaze stayed fixed on her face, but he didn’t interrupt. Didn’t offer meaningless platitudes about how it would have worked out or how Clara would have adjusted. Just listened.
“Then Clara saw the advertisement your family put in the newspaper.” She pulled her knees tighter to her chest. “She corresponded, and when she received the reply, she showed me. I thought it was a miracle—a way out that wouldn’t destroy her.
” The memory of reading those letters rose unbidden.
The careful words about faith and family, about building a life together in the mountains.
“I never imagined your brothers had written them without your knowledge.”
Thomas poked at the fire again, though it didn’t need tending. “They meant well.”
“Meaning well doesn’t make it right.” She forced herself to soften her tone.
“Clara traveled more than three months to marry a man who never asked for her. Do you have any idea what that does to a person? To believe you’ve been chosen, that someone wants you enough to wait for you across half a continent, only to discover it was all a lie? ”
He flinched.
Good. He should feel uncomfortable. His family’s deception had consequences, whether he’d known about it or not.
“I can’t undo what they did.” His voice turned rough. “But I meant what I said in Butte. You and Clara have choices. I’ll make sure of that.”
The promise should reassure her. Instead it scraped raw against the trail of broken promises behind her.
“And what will you do?” She met his gaze across the fire. “You don’t think your brothers will try to meddle in your life again? They must have had a good reason to start with.”
Thomas’s jaw worked like he was chewing on something bitter. He stared into the flames for a long moment before answering. “I’m going to California.” He finally lifted his gaze back to her. “Was planning to leave in a fortnight, but I’ll see that you and your sister are safely on your way first.”
He was leaving. In two weeks.
She stared at the flames, at the way they bent and twisted around the wood.
Why did it matter? She’d known from the moment they arrived in Butte that this arrangement was a disaster. That Clara wouldn’t be marrying Thomas Balfour. That they’d need to find another path forward.
But somehow, hearing him say it—hearing the certainty in his voice—made their situation feel more precarious. As if the ground beneath her had been unsteady all along, and she’d only just noticed.
“So you’ll abandon your family.” She kept her voice level. “Leave them to manage the ranch without you.”
“They’ll manage fine.” His tone carried that same bitterness from before. “They always have. I’m just the brother who fills in where needed but isn’t actually necessary.”
The words should have sounded self-pitying. Instead they landed with the flat certainty of someone stating a fact they’d accepted long ago.
His profile in the firelight—the bruise spreading across his cheekbone, the set of his jaw—spoke of decisions already made.
Something about the way he held himself, even battered and trapped in an ice cave, suggested a man who’d spent years being told what he was rather than getting to choose who he wanted to be.
She understood that better than she’d like to admit. “You think being the youngest makes you unnecessary.”
His shoulders tensed, the defensive wall building behind his eyes even as he kept his gaze on the fire.
Still she pushed on. “But leaving won’t prove you’re more than that. It’ll just prove them right—that you can’t commit to anything difficult.”
His head snapped up, and the firelight caught the flash of anger in those hazel eyes. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe I don’t.” She leaned forward, the heat from the fire doing nothing to cool the anger building in her chest. “But I know what it looks like when someone makes excuses for running away. You think California will be different? That you’ll finally prove yourself there?
” She let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh.
“You’ll just be the same man in a different place, still running from whatever it is you’re afraid of. ”
The words hung between them, sharp and cutting.
His face shifted—the anger there deepening, but something else flicked beneath it. Something that looked uncomfortably like recognition.
Then his features lost some of the expression. Turned guarded. “California has opportunities. Land for ranching. Room to build something that’s mine. Not my brothers’. Not the Balfour name. Mine.”
The way he said it—mine—carried a weight that tightened her chest.
She knew that hunger. Had felt it clawing at her own ribs since she was old enough to understand that everything in her father’s house belonged to someone else.
The furniture, the silver, even the roof over her head—all of it came with conditions attached.
With expectations she could never quite meet.
But wanting something didn’t make running toward it the right choice.
“And when you get there?” She kept her voice steady, though something uncomfortable shifted beneath her ribs. “When you’ve built this ranch that’s all yours, who will you share it with? Or is the point to be alone?”
His jaw worked, the muscle jumping beneath the bruise. “I’ll make connections. Build a life.”
“With strangers.” The words came out flatter than she’d intended. “People who don’t know you. Don’t care about your history or your family.”
“Exactly.” The single word carried conviction. “No expectations. No comparisons to my brothers. Just me and what I can build with my own hands.”
She should understand. Should recognize the appeal of starting fresh where no one knew your failures or your family’s disappointments.
Wasn’t that what she’d wanted when she’d dragged Clara across the continent?
A place where her stepmother’s poison couldn’t reach, where Clara could breathe without fear of being sold to the highest bidder?
But California felt different somehow. Thomas wasn’t running toward something—he was running away from people who loved him. Who’d raised him and stood by him and yes, meddled in ways they shouldn’t have. But at least they cared enough to meddle.
Who would care in California?
The thought twisted in her chest, sharp enough that she had to look away from his face. The fire crackled between them, sending shadows dancing across the walls. Her fingers had finally stopped aching with cold, though her toes still felt like blocks of wood in her boots.
“Your brothers care about you.” The words came out quieter than she’d meant them to. “They interfered, yes. Overstepped in ways they shouldn’t have. But they did it because they don’t want to lose you.”
“They have a funny way of showing it.” Thomas reached for another branch and tossed it onto the fire. Sparks flew, dancing toward the ice ceiling before winking out. “Ordering me a wife like I’m some problem to be solved.”
“Better than not caring at all.” The words scraped her throat raw. Her father—the way he’d retreated into his study when her stepmother started planning Clara’s marriage. The way he’d nodded along with every scheme, every manipulation, too weak or too indifferent to fight for his own daughters.
Thomas’s gaze found hers across the flames. Something in his expression had softened, the defensive anger bleeding into something that looked almost like understanding.
“Who didn’t care for you?” His voice carried across the fire, quiet enough that she almost missed it beneath the wind’s howl beyond their shelter.
The question landed too close to her broken center. Her throat tightened, and she looked away, fixing her attention on the flames instead of the concern in his tone. She shouldn’t have said that. Shouldn’t have let her own bitterness bleed through into words.
“It doesn’t matter.” She forced the words out steadily and looked away from his face, back to the flames. “We were talking about your situation, not mine.”
The silence stretched again, heavy with things she wouldn’t say.
Couldn’t say. Because once she started talking about her father’s weakness, her stepmother’s cruelty, the way they’d both treated Clara like a commodity to be traded and Kate like she didn’t deserve to be there at all—where would it stop?
She’d spent years building walls to keep those memories locked away. Opening them now, trapped in an ice cave with a man she barely knew, felt dangerous in ways she couldn’t articulate.
His gaze lingered on her face, studying her the way she’d studied him since they’d met. Calculating. Measuring. Trying to understand what lay beneath the surface.
She hated it.
Finally, he shifted, the movement accompanied by a barely audible hiss of pain. “I should get more wood.” His voice had returned to that careful neutral tone—the one that gave nothing away. “Fire’s burning faster than I thought.”
Relief slipped through her, sharp enough to make her chest ache. He was letting it go. Not pushing for answers she couldn’t give. Not forcing her to examine wounds that hadn’t finished scabbing over.
She nodded without looking at him, keeping her attention fixed on the fire. “The storm sounds like it’s getting worse.”
He stood, the movement stiff and careful. “Won’t be long.” As he moved toward the entrance, his shoulders hunched against the cold that already pressed in from the opening.
The blue-white light from the ice silhouetted him for a moment before he disappeared into the swirling white beyond.