5. 5
5
Hettie
T here’s a rawness to Bo’s words that makes me lean into him. My hand is already on his chest, and the way his is covering mine—strong and callused, but tender.
The way he’s looking down at me is like an ax sliding down the old break in my heart, splitting it open like one of Bo’s logs.
“Bo,” I plead in a tiny voice.
He breathes my name. “Hettie.”
And then my arms are around his waist, and his arms are cradling me and I’m clutching him as tightly as I’ve ever held anyone.
It’s a moment, and it’s good, despite the fatal crack in my heart.
Suddenly he lets go, opening a gaping, cold space between us—and unzips my coat— pushing it off my shoulders. I shrug out of the sleeves, letting my jacket fall onto the floor behind me, desperate to be back in his arms.
His hands are on my back, in my hair, moving like he’s trying to convince himself that I’m real.
I know what he’s doing because I’m doing the same thing. The soft cotton of his shirt, damp and warm as it hugs the strong muscles in his back. The waistband of his jeans …
On the flight here, I told myself not to hug him. There would be no physical contact. There didn’t need to be any touching. We would communicate as adults, like the friends we used to be, only without the affection, because that could lead to touching.
I promised myself I’d keep my distance but now, somehow, my cheek is pressed against his shirt, and all I smell is Bo—old leather and pine, and yes, sweat, because cutting wood does cause perspiration.
But I don’t care because it smells like Bo. I breathe deep and tighten my arms around his waist, my hands fisting in the back of his shirt.
Kody nudges my knee with his chew toy, wanting attention.
Or telling me he likes what he sees. That it’s about time.
That’s when the heat in my eyes and lump in my throat gets to be too much and a sob escapes.
“Hettie… Hettie, don’t,” Bo begs as the tears begin to fall. He always hated to see me cry. The memory of this makes me choke back a laugh, which makes me cry harder, because we’ve missed so many laughs.
We’ve missed so much of everything.
Long minutes pass, Bo holding me as I cry, the kettle whistling as it boils. The sound becomes too much for the dog’s sensitive ears, and Kody lets out a sharp yip of protest.
I pull back, wiping my cheeks and wishing for a tissue. “It’s good to see you,” I manage, my throat thick with tears.
Bo pulls the kettle off the burner and turns it off before handing me a sheet of paper towel. “Yeah.”
I draw in a shaky breath. “I’m glad Kody… He hasn’t changed.” I wipe my eyes and do my best to control the so bs. “And Buck.”
“No.”
“This place has.” I look around in an attempt to settle myself.
The cabin was once one room with a basic kitchen in one corner and a bed pushed into the other. Bo’s family called it the hunting lodge, and maybe it was, but it always seemed to me that the little building in the middle of the Wabush Forest would have been perfect for a rendezvous with someone connected to the royal family.
I have no idea if Bo’s ancestors used it for that; I’m certain his father never did.
I have a flash of memory of lying in the old bed with him, his body cocooned around me.
The first time Bo brought me here, for our first time, I couldn’t help but think of other young lovers wrapped in each other in front of the fire.
It’s different now.
The bed is gone.
Bo has his back to me as he makes tea, so I take the opportunity to look around. The kitchen is a new addition, still sparse but much bigger. The living room looks like a man cave with dark walls covered in shelves, and leather couches, and a huge flat-screen television mounted on the wall. There’s a hallway where the bed used to be, possibly leading to bedrooms.
The fireplace has been expanded, enlarged, so big I could stand upright in it.
It’s all very different now.
“I added on,” Bo says needlessly, appearing with two mugs of tea. “Buck helped. ”
“You’ve got lots of room now. Do they come and stay with you?”
They being his brothers and sister.
“Sometimes.” He brings the mugs to the coffee table, and I follow him, taking a seat on the far side of a couch with a full cushion between us. It’s a large, long couch, because Bo is a big man. “But not for a while,” he adds. “They’re busy.”
He’s too far from me. Before, when we sat together, it was always hip to hip, me leaning against him. Bo was never fond of public displays of affection, but in private, he never stopped touching me—his fingers in my hair, his hand on my knee, my shoulder, splayed against my stomach. He was always kissing me, those lips—
That line of thought comes to a screeching halt because I’m not here to fall back into the memories of kissing Bo.
They haunted me for long enough.
“I can’t believe Kalle is getting married.” I sound remarkably chipper for someone whose eyes are still red and nose clogged from crying. “I watched the coverage of Odin’s wedding—”
“You did?”
I only nod because I’m not about to confess to how I searched through the videos and pictures of the wedding looking for any sight of Bo. “Is Lady Camille nice?”
“She’s great.”
“He gave up his spot in the line of succession,” I say even though Bo must be very aware of the fact. “That makes you—”
That makes Bo the next in line for the throne, after oldest brother Kalle. “Yeah. Not going to happen,” he says in a gruff voice, picking up his mug of tea .
“I always thought it would be Odin.” Neither Kalle nor Bo had ever expressed an interest in being king, and I—like most of Laandia—expected Prince Kalle to eventually step down and allow Odin to become the next king. It still would have pushed Bo forward, but Odin’s children would have taken care of that. Now it’s only Kalle standing in the way of Bo becoming the next king.
“So did everybody.” Bo cups his mug in his hands, steam curling up. I don’t want to think about those hands, because that brings more flashes of memory, and they hurt.
“I’m glad Kalle is going to end up with Edie,” I manage.
“He didn’t really have a choice. They belong together.”
I reach for my cup. “Some said we did.” The words just pop out and I wish I could stuff them back in. Along with the no-hugging rule I made for myself—and already broke—there was the strict no-talking-about-the-past vow.
Two for two already. I’m clearly not good at this.
“Why now?” His voice is choked, sounding angry, hurt, and confused. “Why are you here?”
He’s probably all of those things. Me showing up out of the blue like this, literally walking out of the woods, must be…
I should have warned him. I should have given him time to process. I had weeks to plan, to tell myself this was the right thing to do. That I needed to end it. Shut the door. Closure. Move on.
Whatever it can be called. I needed to see Bo and finally talk to him after so many years.
“It’s not because of the succession thing,” I tell him quickly.
He pauses, looks over the rim of his cup at me. “I never thought it was. ”
I nod. I don’t know how to tell him, because I know it’s going to hurt.
Or maybe it won’t. It has been eight years of no contact, so it’s likely Bo has gotten over me long ago, met someone else, and is looking to move on with his life. Maybe this is a blessing for him, too.
“I met someone.”
Bo jerks like I’ve kicked him, and tea splashes over the rim and onto his wrist. “Oh—hot! Are you okay?” I gasp.
He swipes at it with his sleeve. “It’s fine.”
“But you could burn—”
“Who?” he demands. Taking a breath, he sets the cup down. “Who is he?” he asks, softening his tone. His blue-eyed gaze meets mine, and yes, I falter.
There has never been another man since Bo. There has only been strong, solid Bo, who looked at me with so much love that he made me believe in happy endings. I trusted him completely because I knew he’d never hurt me.
Only he did. He broke my heart, and now I’m here, telling him about someone else.
“A man… He’s from Victoria. Timothy.” I draw in a shaky breath. “He’s a good man. He says he’ll take care of… me.” It hurts to look at Bo, the way his jaw flexes, his fingers dig into his knee, but I can’t turn away.
“You don’t say you’ll do that, you just do it,” he says roughly.
You didn’t . But I don’t say that. I can’t. Bo is… He’s still wounded. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s not over me, not by a long shot. I think deep down I’ve known that he wouldn’t be. He’s vulnerable, but pretending not to be. Like a branch that’s be ginning to rot from the inside as the bark gets tougher and thicker to protect it.
I have no idea if that actually happens to trees, but I can see it’s how it is for Bo. “He’s a good man,” I repeat. “And it’s been a long time.”
“That’s what you’ve been doing then? Meeting other people? Getting over me?”
No. I’ve tried to convince myself that was what I wanted—to forget Bo, to stop feeling all the feelings. To push away the hurt and disappointment and anger —yes, I am still angry with him, with myself, with the circumstances that brought us here, that I still don’t understand.
“I’ve never gotten over you,” I whisper into my tea. “But I had to move on.”
“You never came home. You never let me explain.”
“What would you have said?”
There’s no response. Bo could have tried to explain before I left, while I was gone, but he didn’t. He never said anything other than mistake , shouldn’t have happened and can’t tell anyone. He didn’t stop his wife of less than two weeks, the person he promised to love and cherish for the rest of his life, from moving to another country.
Alone. Without him.
I wonder if he even understands it now. I know I don’t.
I shrug into his silence. I have versions of what I might have said to Bo, dreamt up during sleepless nights when all I wanted was to see him one more time but I can’t find the words now.
“You never came home,” he repeats .
“Mabel came to visit,” I offer, like he might have been worried about me being alone.
Maybe he was. I have no idea because I never heard one word from Bo once I left.
“I was with Abigail and my grandfather. Everyone else…” I don’t have to explain about my family. I’ve never had to with Bo.
We both knew that was a big part of the reason I was able to leave.
“It would have been too hard,” I add. “I didn’t want to see you if we…” If we couldn’t be together, I’m thinking.
Is he thinking the same thing? “Maybe we could have.”
Could have what? There only would have been one possibility. If I had come back, or if I’d never left in the first place, I know where I’d be right now.
Not having this conversation, that’s for sure. “You can’t say that now,” I whisper. “That’s not fair.”
“Nothing about this is fair.”
He’s got a point there. As much as I blame Bo for not coming to find me, for telling me the marriage was a mistake, I had been the one who got on the plane headed to British Columbia.
I’m the one who ultimately left. I could have stayed and fought for him, rather than cry through the entire flight.
There’s a lot of things I can be blamed for too.
And I know Bo will blame me, as soon as it all comes out. “Bo… there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Yeah. You met someone.” I’ve never heard him so bitter, so full of remorse. “You said that.”
“No, it’s…” I gulp my tea, scalding my mouth as I hunt for my courage. How do I do this? What do I say? Should I blurt it out and take the repercussions as they fall? Gently ease into it?
Bo turns to me, and looking into those blue eyes makes me lose my nerve. I can’t find the words. I pull my bag toward me, find my phone. With my heart stuttering like an old car backfiring, I scroll through my pictures.
I hand my phone to him. “This is Tema.”
He has to know. The smile… the reddish hair. Those eyes.
But he looks at me with confusion. “Who? What is this?”
“Bo, she’s…” There’s a moment of terror because how can I tell him? How could I have not told him?
“She’s our daughter.”