Amethyst Sky
LILA
He says it like it’s so simple to make a clean break of things. He’s obviously had a lot of practice leaving things behind. Different cities, different teams. I suppose a just-on-paper marriage is one more thing it’s easy to toss in the fire. Watch it turn to ash.
I walk to the edge of the overlook. The valley drops away steeply below. The wind is stronger out here, the land is breathtakingly beautiful and impossibly vast.
I need a second to think.
His wife.
I’ve never lived with anyone as an adult. Not a roommate, not a boyfriend, not anyone. Seven years of my own space, my own schedule. No one to answer to, no one else’s preferences I had to bend to. After the way I grew up, I craved that independence, even if it felt a little lonely sometimes.
What would it look like, Slade’s life and mine overlapping at the edges?
His boots by the door when I come home. His truck in the drive next to my car. The scent of his coffee, black and strong, already made when I come downstairs because he’s been up for hours doing things I’m only beginning to understand.
What does he look like first thing in the morning, that thick hair still rumpled, barefoot and in sweatpants? What does his deep voice sound like before it’s fully awake?
A year is long enough to find out.
And then I’ll have to learn to forget it.
I don’t realize how close I’ve walked to the edge of the overlook until a warm hand closes around my waist and gently pulls me back from the brink.
For a moment my back is pressed against his chest. The clean, sharp scent of cedar and leather fills my lungs.
“Not too close to the edge,” he murmurs.
A pleasant shiver runs through me at that velvety voice in my ear. His breath is warm and smells faintly of mint. If I turned my head my mouth might graze his cheek. I wonder how that stubbled jaw would feel beneath my lips.
“I won’t blow away in the wind,” I assure him. “I’m tougher than I look.”
“I know.” Softly. His thumb grazes an arc across my waist. “Doesn’t mean I want you to put yourself in danger.”
He walks us back a few steps and then releases me. I turn around and he’s right there and I have to tip my chin up to look at him. I’m still warm everywhere he was just touching me.
The air feels strangely thick between us.
I should take a step back. Right now we’re still in touching distance. It makes it hard to think clearly, especially when he’s looking at me like that, his gaze dipping to my lips. To my body.
“So you and I are definitely not going to have sex,” I say softly.
His eyes focus on mine, very still, very alert. Like I’ve said something that requires his complete attention.
“But does that mean…” I pick my words carefully, which is difficult when he’s standing this close and smells this good. “No sex at all?”
He frowns. “What do you mean?”
“You have a literal online fan club of women.” I look down at my boots. “Being with other people on the side… is that something you want as part of this arrangement?”
“No,” he says instantly. And then tension comes into his whole body as he asks, “Is that what you want?”
“No,” I say, just as quickly.
His eyes flash fierce and possessive. “Good. I don’t share.”
Heat pools low in my stomach, making my skin feel too warm. I’m suddenly very aware of how close we’re standing. Of exactly how long it’s been since anyone looked at me like that.
“In any case,” he says, “it’s best not to give anyone ammunition. Hard to call it a real marriage if it gets out we’re not even faithful to each other.”
“So no sex, period. You really want to sign up for however many months of celibacy?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
It surprises me to hear that. He must have women throwing themselves at him constantly.
Obviously the celibacy is a voluntary thing.
I suppose it fits in with what I’ve learned of him so far: the rigid exercise and meal routines, the monk-like disregard for creature comforts.
This is a man with extreme self-discipline, and abstaining from sex is probably part of focusing his energy.
What happens when all that focused energy is directed towards sex instead?
I shiver involuntarily. I’m never going to find out. Which is for the best. It’s bad enough to get your heart broken; worse when you’re ruined for anyone else in bed.
The wind picks up and blows a strand of hair across my face again. Before I can push it away, Slade’s hand is there, tucking it back. His fingertips just barely trace the shell of my ear, and the sensation shimmers through every nerve ending in my body.
“What if you meet the girl of your dreams in the next year?” I ask breathlessly. Even though it’s the lightest graze of his fingertips on me, it’s enough to steal the air from my lungs. “It wouldn’t be fair to let something fake get in the way of something real.”
Now he’s gently tracing one of the gold helix piercings on my earlobe, seemingly fascinated by it. “It won’t be an issue,” he says.
“And if I meet the man of my dreams?” I tease.
At that, something heated and territorial moves through his expression before he veils it almost immediately.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a look of jealousy.
“We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it,” he says gruffly, dropping his hand.
I can’t believe I’m seriously considering this.
Do I actually want to do this?
Surprisingly… I think I do.
Then again, I’ve always had a rebellious streak. My family spent the first eighteen years of my life and then some trying to sand it down and here it is, alive and well.
“Last question,” I say. “How long do we have to stay married before we can end it without looking suspicious?”
“Your family will probably contest it if we split too fast. We should probably wait until I move to Denver. A little less than a year from now.”
A year of making his house into a home. A year of sitting across from this man at a kitchen table that doesn’t exist yet because I haven’t picked it out. A year of sharing his home, his dog, his life.
“So we’re basically just roommates,” I say. “Who happen to be married.”
“More than roommates. I’d like to think we’re friends now, right?”
“Friends,” I repeat.
The words doesn’t quite fit.
I try to make sense of what word would. But nothing about this moment makes sense.
I look out at the valley as if it’s going to give me any clarity, but I only feel more jumbled up inside.
The sun is starting to set behind the mountains, washing the sky in shades of lilac and peony pink.
It’s a picture perfect moment, one that should be among the happiest of my life.
An incredibly handsome, fundamentally good man is proposing to me after knowing me for three weeks.
It’s fake marriage with a divorce date built in, but hey. There are worse fates.
Still, it feels bittersweet.
“Can I tell you something strange?” I say.
“Of course.”
“I’m a designer, and yet I never spent much time designing what I’d want my own wedding to be.
Never had a moodboard or a dream venue or any of that.
I always figured I’d know what I wanted when the time came.
The only thing I ever assumed, the one thing I thought was non-negotiable, was that whoever was standing across the aisle from me would be… ”
“Would be what?” he asks when I trail off.
“In love with me,” I admit. “That was the only thing that mattered.” I laugh a little, because if I don’t this confession will be too unbearably raw.
“And now here I am thinking about marrying a man I’ve known for three weeks who is very kind and very decent and very much not in love with me, and I’m just…
” I shake my head. “It’s fine. Just ironic. ”
He’s quiet for a long moment. Long enough that I think he’s not going to say anything else.
“I’ve never been in love,” he says finally. “Don’t know if that’s a character flaw or just the way I’m built. But I’m not going to stand here and tell you it’s something I can offer, because that wouldn’t be fair to you.”
He turns to look at me directly.
“But what I can offer you is a faithful husband. A hard-working one. Someone who admires you and respects you and will spend the next year making sure you have everything you need. I’ll protect you.
Provide for you. Do my best to make you happy.
” His voice is low and certain. “That’s not the same thing as what you dreamed of.
I know that. But it’s true. Every word of it. ”
My own flesh-and-blood family never gave me their admiration or respect. They never cared about making me happy. And now this man I’ve know for a few weeks is willing to give all of that to me, not in exchange for anything, just because…
Because why?
“Why?” I ask, genuinely mystified. “Why would you do all that for me?”
“Because you deserve it,” he says simply.
Deserve. I don’t deserve that five million dollars, either. I did nothing to earn it, unless you count enduring my family.
All the Sherwoods made it very clear from an early age what they thought I was worth, and it wasn’t much.
Wrong choices. Wrong career. Wrong personality and body and everything else.
I stopped arguing with them at eighteen and I haven’t looked back.
It took time and therapy but I’m in a good place now.
I’m happy. I don’t need my family or their approval or especially their money.
But five million dollars doing some actual good in the world?
That would feel like the last word.
“Five million dollars does buy a lot of dog beds,” I say with a smile.
“Yeah? Does that mean you’re thinking about saying yes?”
Shaking my head, I put my hands to my overheated cheeks. “It’s crazy, Slade.”
“You don’t end up in the Montana wilderness without coming from a long line of people who’ve done crazy things to end up here.
” He takes a step closer and drapes an arm around me, his other hand gesturing out across the valley spread below us.
“You can’t see it from here, but Rosemont, our family estate, is to the east side.
The original part of the house was built in the mid 1800s, before Montana was a state. ”
“Wow. That’s even older than my family’s home.”
“Legend has it their money came from ill-gotten gains. The first Rhodes’s were highwaymen and bank robbers. My ancestors probably robbed your ancestors, back in the day.”
“Huh. Funny to think two hundred years ago we would have met when you held up my train and stole all my jewels.”
His eyes glint. “Two hundred years ago I might’ve stolen you.”
The dark, playful look he gives me makes heat cascade through me. Slade might be kidding… but maybe not. I don’t mind either way.
“You would have saved me from a very dull existence,” I tell him. “I’d have taken the outlaw life with you any day.”
His fingertips squeeze my shoulder and he pulls me infinitesimally closer. “My brothers have their own houses here too, scattered across the land. Thirty thousand acres. From that river line all the way to the base of those mountains. You can ride for hours and never reach the end of it.”
I lean into his warmth instinctively. “This feels like a very ‘Lion King’ moment.”
“I did just watch it with my eight year old nephew,” Slade says. I glance up at him, surprised, and he shrugs, almost smiling. “Told you I know movies. Most of them these days are Disney, though.”
I picture him sitting down to watch a kid’s movie with his nephew and my heart melts.
He’s not just Slade Rhodes, NHL menace-on-ice or the gruff, gorgeous cowboy of my fantasies—he’s a human being.
He loves and is loved by his family. He’ll rescue a three-legged dog and apparently has a soft spot for a damsel-in-distress—me and Lucky both.
Beneath that tough, cold exterior, there’s a big, warm heart. One that I would very much like to get to know better.
Slade looks down at me, eyes glinting. “Everything beneath the starlight will be your kingdom.”
We stand together on the edge of the cliff. The sun is going down behind the peaks, tinting the whole valley in shades of lavender and salmon-pink.
I try to imagine riding across this land as if I belonged here.
The meadow grass rippling in the wind like an ocean of liquid gold.
Flying past the other horses and cattle moving through the pastures, the mothers and babies clustering together against the chill.
The sun on my face, watching the way it turns the clouds into opals floating in an amethyst sky.
Wind in my hair, fresh air in my lungs. Freedom.
This land deserves an artist or a poet to capture its essence. All I’ll have to remember it by is my heart. My heart, which already knows the cowboy standing beside me belongs to this land the way the mountains do: here before I arrived and will be here long after I’m gone.
My future husband, if I say yes.
For a little while, at least.
“Let’s do it,” I say. “Let’s get married.”