5. Colton
Burn - David Kushner
“I want a divorce.”
Those aren’t words a normal prospective groom would like to hear from his intended, but this isn’t normal.
Nothing about this bride or groom is normal.
Treading water, the small yet surprisingly lithe bundle that is Susanne ‘Zee’ McAllister in my arms, I rasp, “Only after we have a baby.”
The words are foreign to me.
A baby—I’m going to be a father at some point in the near future.
A wife—who’ll divorce me the second she becomes a mother.
All with a woman I cut from my life ten years ago.
Fate has funny ideas for a good time.
“You’re okay with this?” She tips her head to study me, making her hair ripple away from her features, sinking into the water and turning into amber silk, exposing the stark lines of her cheekbones.
I always knew she was pretty—she had the bone structure for it. But I never realized she was beautiful when she wasn’t finding shelter behind those dirty blonde curls that shield her from the world.
There’s no hiding from the fact that the last ten years look good on her.
Better than good.
She”s too skinny, but I know she has to monitor her weight with her condition so I”m not worried. Her hair is about six inches longer than it was. And her moss-green eyes still skewer me like an ice pick to the skull.
When my answer isn’t immediate, she prods the beast: “Why would you want to marry a killer?”
The accusation has my mouth firming.
“I’ve had some time to consider the prospect,” I reason, my voice gruff with a thousand emotions I didn’t expect to be feeling when I first reconnected with my soon-to-be wife.
I’m both here but also transported to the past.
To memories of an adolescence that this troubled kid helped me get through.
That night changed everything. Robbed me of Loki. Took away her friendship?—
“Why the hell didn’t you stanch the idea before it became a contract, then?”
For a second, I can do no more than be trapped in her gaze.
It’s like she won’t let me out. Won’t free me.
It’s as if she sees through to my very soul.
Nothing’s changed there.
“You want the God’s honest truth from me, Zee?” I watch those omniscient eyes of hers widen at my words. “Bearing in mind that whatever you say here will alter every single interaction we have in the future…”
Her lips purse. “I-I’d prefer you not to lie to me.”
There’s a push and pull between us that I didn’t expect.
She’s not the girl I knew. Neither is she afraid. Or cowering. So why the hell did I find her in the lake like some tragic Ophelia?
“There are a multitude of truths. I can tell you what you want to hear—that’s your truth. I can tell you facts. I can tell you logic. I can tell you what my feelings are on a subject…
“See, more truths than lakes you own. The question is, which do you want to hear?”
Her throat bobs, drawing my gaze to it. Her collarbones are narrow and right in the nook, there’s a small pendant. Silver. I’d say it’s a saint’s medallion, but if it is, she’s smoothed over the figure’s features with her thumb too many times for me to recognize which one.
It’s new though. She didn’t wear it before.
“Did you know I’m a paralegal in New York?”
“Yes. You can continue to work if telecommuting is an option?—”
“Bet your damn ass I’ll continue to work!” Zee grinds out, showing more of that fire I can’t deny I like in her.
“Well, that’s good,” I soothe, hiding a smile because her knee is far too close to my frostbitten junk for me to risk it.
Which, of course, is a reminder that she’s still in my arms.
I should let her go…
Unbidden, the image of her floating in the lake returns to me. Combined with hours of hearing her tell me she didn’t want to live anymore once her mom had passed, I thought she was?—
“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God?”
The question liberates me from the memory. “We’re not in court.”
“Marriage is but two defendants on opposing sides in need of an adjudicator,” she dismisses.
If I’d needed a reminder we both had troubled pasts, that was it.
“You were how I finally banished my father from the Seven Cs.”
She grows tense at the first mention of Pops. Water trickles as she settles her hand on my chest. It’s clue enough that we need to get out—there’s no warmth to be found in her skin touching mine. But, nails digging in, she demands, “He’s not here?”
“What are you two doing in there? Come on out before you catch your deaths!”
I’d recognize Juliette McAllister’s bark from anywhere, but neither of us reacts to it. Her because she’s desperate to hear my answer. Me because I’m desperate to know why she’s scared.
“Did he hurt you, Zee?”
I can feel her fear.
Lots of people are frightened of Pops in Pigeon Creek though. For different reasons. Most of them money related. But she’s too beautiful for that. After the fire put a target on her back, I could easily imagine that Pops would?—
She swallows. “No.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“He didn’t hurt me.” Her nails dig in again, making a liar out of her. “I-I wouldn’t ask you for nothing but the truth and then lie to you.”
“Context is key,” I mock.
“He didn’t hurt me,” she repeats, “but that doesn’t stop me from being relieved I won’t have to see him much. You say he’s banished?”
“This isn’t the 1700s, Zee. Business-wise, he’s banished and I’ve had him move into the house in Saskatoon. He doesn’t spend that much time here anymore anyway. He only comes back to cause havoc.”
If I sound bitter, then so be it.
She, better than anyone ironically enough, understands why.
I’ve never liked my father, certainly never loved him. So it wasn’t that I missed him during his extended absences. If anything, I resented how he always returned when a routine of sorts had settled into place.
I’ve been raising my kid brother for years on my own—routine matters.
She peers at me through thick lashes that draw my attention because tiny diamonds of water have collected on them. “I won’t have to see him?”
Her relief sets my nerves on edge all the more. The thought that our families’ dealings might have drawn her to commit the unthinkable still has me in a chokehold.
What the hell was she thinking, wading into the lake that way? This is where her mom died, dammit.
“Not if you don’t want to.”
“What was your deal with him?”
As nosy as ever.
That hasn’t changed.
“That I’d become the new CEO and President of Seven Cs’ Inc. That he’d be nothing more than a shareholder.”
“And he agreed?!”
“He had no choice. Look, I know you’re getting a shit payoff from this, Sus— I mean, Zee. If the promise of a divorce once you’ve had our child is what’ll make you feel better about this situation, then you can have it.
“I’m not my father. I won’t make you miserable. We don’t need to live together over on the Seven Cs. We can settle here if that’s what you want?—”
“Would you be okay with IVF?”
My jaw clenches.
I have a healthy ego and I also own a mirror—I’m not Shrek here, for Christ’s sake, but from the break in her voice, you’d think I was.
“If that’d make you feel better,” I rumble.
Almost immediately, her brow puckers. “What’d make me feel better is you not believing I set fire to the stables.”
“That was ten years ago.”
“Ten years ago, sure. Might as well have been yesterday. Do you truly think I’d hurt the horses, Colton? Do you think I’d hurt your horse?”
“You were angry?—”
“That angry? No. I was hurting. Mortified. Humiliated. All those things, sure. But to kill Loki?” Her chin juts out. “How could you want to marry a woman who you believe to be capable of that? Why would you love a child that woman bore?”
I stopped thinking about the fire ten years ago when I gave her a false alibi. I had to. Losing Loki, then my brothers losing their horses too, all because of something I’d triggered, it was either dissociate or go mad.
Yet, the questions sink into me like she’s hitting me with an ax. I can feel my blood swirling to the depths of the lake floor.
“Put everything else aside. The reason I did it, if you think I’m vindictive enough to… Just ask yourself this: do you truly believe I could have killed Loki? Not the others. Him.”
My mind drifts to the many times I found her in his stall.
She’d hide in the pile of hay there.
Just to be close.
Sometimes, I’d even find him with his head on her lap, both of them snoozing the quiet evening away.
And with that question, she tears off the blinders, making me see the truth. Forcing me to face reality.
“No,” I growl.
She couldn’t have killed Loki.
Not in a vengeful state of mind.
She loved him as much as I did.
Ergo, she didn’t do it. Couldn’t have done it.
She dips her chin, seeming to have faith in that one concession, unaware that she just triggered an earthquake that shatters the cornerstones of my belief system.
Of my life.
Because if she didn’t do it, who did?
And I mean who—I never believed that BS about faulty wiring.
“Okay, then.” That’s when she wriggles out of my arms. “We need to go before Grand-mère throws a fit that sets off a heart attack.”
I’m still floundering. Torn between the truths and lies of our shared history so it only just registers that the old bitch has forgotten her boarding-school training and is cussing up a storm.
As Zee swims over to the shore, I stick fast, waiting until I can watch her rise from the lake.
I saw her tossing off her clothes from the road and assumed the worst as I watched her wade into the water, but knowing she’s safe and that my father and her grandmother’s machinations haven’t driven her to… well, I decide to enjoy the show.
Even if I am freezing my ass off.
A soft whistle sounds in the distance, drawing me away from the past and plunking me into the present.
It keeps on hitting me in the solar plexus—exactly how glorious she is.
When did little Susanne McAllister grow up to be Zee? And when did she become such a beauty?
Did that happen in New York? Away from Pigeon Creek? Or was I too hindered by the stress of life here at home to notice when we were younger? The age gap didn’t help. I saw her as a traumatized kid. Not much else.
Another whistle cracks through the air. This time, its meaning registers.
“Get back to work,” I snarl, the words drifting on the breeze that comes off the lake.
The order is loud and angry enough that a couple of the ranch hands jolt in surprise then, sheepishly, retreat to their original tasks despite me having nothing to do with the running of the Bar 9.
Yet.
Zee turns, and for the first time, I see the two patches on her arm.
Her insulin pump and her continuous glucose monitor.
I walk toward her, but I’m distracted by Juliette sniping, “What on earth were you thinking of, Susanne? Acting like some common hussy! What will the?—”
Before she can continue her diatribe, I grate out, “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t speak to my future wife like that.”
Juliette’s shoulders straighten and her eyes promise me hell.
Unfortunately for her, that’s already been my home turf for decades.
“Your future wife or not,” she scorns, “Susanne isn’t the first woman whose marriage will save the Bar 9 and I’m sure she won’t be the last, so I’d appreciate some decorum?—”
Uncaring that it’s disrespectful, I loom over her. “Screw decorum. She will be the last because the child that she has will also be mine and no one will ever force any of my descendants into an arranged marriage.”
Though she bristles, her nose pointing into the air like she’s smelled something bad, it shuts her the hell up.
Scooping my sheepskin jacket from the shore where I tossed it earlier, I turn to my future bride and cover her with it.
Our gazes lock as I do, and the trepidation of before is gone, so is the anger. There’s some confusion lingering in those gorgeous green eyes of hers, but mostly, there’s gratitude that I gave her my support.
Surprising us both, I slide my fingers across her jawline.
Her skin is like silk.
Her chin slopes into high cheekbones that are rosy red from the wind, almost as crimson as her lips. No paint stains them. She’s all-natural. Her dirty blonde hair frames her face with soft bangs that are tangled from the water.
My God, she’s enchanting—a water sprite.
“No one will ever force you to do anything again either, Zee McAllister.” Gently, I chuck her under the chin as I make that vow, watching her pupils dilate as a result.
I’ll give her her divorce, but as my mum found out when she finally got my father to sign on the dotted line, once a Korhonen, always a Korhonen.