Chapter 29 #4
Tobias crossed the room carefully.
“Jonas.” His voice was quiet. “He's finished.”
Jonas did not appear to hear him.
Tobias crouched beside him without reaching out. “Jonas, look at me.”
Jonas turned his head.
“The sheriff has him,” Tobias said. “Let him take him.”
Martha watched the fight leave Jonas's body by degrees.
He pushed himself away.
The moment his weight shifted off Silas, his face went gray.
Martha reached him before he collapsed completely.
Her bound arms caught awkwardly around his shoulders, and his weight nearly dragged her down with him.
“Jonas.”
His hands found her arms.
“Martha.”
The way he said her name broke something open in her chest.
Reuben moved immediately to them, dropping to one knee and drawing a knife from his boot.
“Hold still,” he told her, sawing through the rope at her wrists. His eyes flicked once toward the blood on Jonas's leg, and his mouth tightened. “Tobias, get pressure on that.”
Tobias was already pulling a folded cloth from inside his coat.
The rope fell away.
Martha gasped as blood rushed painfully back into her hands.
Across the room, Crane hauled Silas upright and twisted both arms behind his back. Iron cuffs closed around his wrists with a heavy click.
Silas spat blood onto the floor.
“You're making a mistake.”
Crane shoved him toward the wall. “I've been told that before.”
“There are things you don't know about her.”
Martha looked up.
For weeks, that sentence had been enough to make her stomach turn.
Now it sounded tired.
Almost small.
“You're right,” she said.
Everyone in the shack looked at her.
Martha kept one hand against Jonas's shoulder as she pushed herself upright.
“There are things Sheriff Crane doesn't know about me.”
Silas smiled slowly.
Martha met the sheriff's gaze.
“I'll tell you every one of them.”
The smile vanished.
“And I'll tell him what you told me today,” she continued, looking directly at Silas. “About the missing gold. About why you came to Willow Crossing. About taking over what's left of the gang.”
Silas's eyes sharpened.
Martha's pulse jumped, but she kept going.
“And I'll tell him about Gideon.”
Sheriff Crane turned toward Silas.
The reaction was slight but unmistakable.
“What about Gideon?”
Silas glared at Martha.
She understood then, perhaps for the first time, what power there could be in simply refusing to protect a secret.
“He killed him,” she said.
“I didn't say that.”
“You didn't have to.”
Crane's hand closed more firmly around Silas's arm. “We'll discuss it. Get him outside,” Crane ordered.
Reuben rose to help, but Tobias remained with Jonas as Silas was dragged outside.
Martha barely watched Silas leave, her mind already moving back to Jonas.
Tobias pressed the folded cloth hard against the bullet wound and looked toward him. “Can you feel your foot?”
Jonas grimaced. “Yes.”
“Move it.”
Jonas did, though the effort brought a sharp breath through his teeth.
Tobias nodded once. “Good.”
Martha knelt beside them.
Her hands were shaking badly now that there was nothing left to fight.
“You came,” she whispered.
Jonas turned his head toward her.
A crease appeared between his brows. “Of course I came.”
The answer was so immediate that tears blurred her sight.
“You shouldn't have put the gun down.”
His mouth moved faintly, not quite a smile. “He would've shot you.”
“He shot you instead.”
Jonas glanced toward his leg, where Tobias was still pressing cloth against the wound. “I noticed.”
The dry answer pulled a broken laugh from Martha before it dissolved into a sob.
She covered her mouth with one hand.
Jonas lifted his fingers and brushed her cheek, his hands unsteady.
The gentleness of it almost hurt more than anything else.
Martha caught his hand and pressed it there, closing her eyes briefly against his palm.
“I'm sorry,” she said.
Jonas's expression changed.
She knew immediately that he understood she did not mean the gunshot.
“For what?” he asked quietly.
“All of it.”
Pain tightened his face, though Martha could not tell how much came from his leg.
“Martha.”
“I should have told you.” Her voice broke, but she forced herself not to look away. “I should have told you before you had to ask. Before you told me about your father. Before any of this.”
Jonas closed his eyes for a moment.
When he opened them, the hurt was still there.
“I know.”
She closed her eyes briefly. “I don't know how to fix what I did,” she said.
Jonas watched her for several seconds while Tobias shifted the cloth against his leg.
“We don't have to fix it right now.”
Martha's breath caught on the word we.
Outside, men's voices carried through the open doorway. Someone called for rope. Horses shifted in the clearing. Sheriff Crane shouted an order, and another man answered from farther among the trees.
The whole camp seemed to be breaking apart around them.
Inside the shack, Martha heard only Jonas breathing.
“I thought I'd lost you,” she whispered.
His fingers curled faintly against hers.
Martha immediately regretted saying it. It sounded too much like a plea. As though his coming here had erased what she had done.
She lowered her gaze.
“I know you don't owe me anything.”
Jonas studied her face. “You hurt me.”
Martha looked up again. “I know.”
“I'm still angry.”
“You have every right to be.”
“I don't know what happens after this.”
The honesty of it hurt, but there was mercy in it too. He was not giving her a promise neither of them could keep.
Martha nodded, tears slipping down her cheeks. “Neither do I.”
Jonas's hand tightened weakly around hers.
His eyes held hers for so long that she forgot the others were in the room.
“But I love you.”
Martha stopped breathing.
Nothing in his expression suggested that love had solved anything. He looked exhausted, hurt, and frightened by the admission himself.
That made the words feel more precious, not less.
Her mouth trembled.
“I love you too.”
Jonas exhaled slowly, as though he had been carrying the words for longer than either of them understood.
Martha leaned toward him instinctively.
Then she stopped.
A kiss would have been too easy. Too much like pretending love could close every wound between them simply because they had survived the day.
Instead, she kept his hand against her cheek.
Jonas's eyes drifted shut.
“Jonas?”
His fingers loosened.
Martha's heart stopped.
“Jonas.”
His head tipped back against the wall.
Tobias moved at once, sliding one arm behind his shoulders. “He's lost blood.”
Martha caught Jonas's face between both hands.
The shack disappeared.
For one terrible instant she was somewhere else entirely, younger and helpless, kneeling beside Amos while fever consumed him.
She remembered begging him to stay.
Remembered the terrible stillness afterward.
No.
Not again.
“Jonas, look at me.” Her voice shook so badly she barely recognized it. “Please.”
Tobias pressed harder against the wound. “Reuben!”
Footsteps sounded outside.
Martha bent closer to Jonas, one hand moving instinctively to his chest.
A rise.
Then another.
He was breathing.
She held on to that single fact while men crowded back into the shack and the last of the afternoon light faded beyond the shuttered opening.
Jonas had come for her when he had every reason to stay away.
He had told her he loved her without pretending the hurt between them was gone.
Now his blood was warm against her hands, and Martha could do nothing except stay beside him and hope they had been given enough time to discover what came after.