My throat tightened, like I’d swallowed glass.
But that was inside. Outside, I kept it all business. “Fine. Just Zion and Boone.”
Her shoulders tensed, like she was about to argue further. Then something shifted. The fight drained out of her eyes, and she looked down at the ground.
When she spoke again, her voice was smaller. Uncertain.
“Is this what being mated is like in your community? Like the first mauls are the ones in charge, and they get to tell everybodyelse in the polycule what to do?” She paused. “Were you like this with your late wife?”
The question hung in the air between us. Lit from both our ends like cartoon dynamite about to go off.
Tell her. Tell her you weren’t. Tell her Niska never made you feel like this. Like you’d rather die than let anything hurt her….
“I’m not trying to abuse my power or control you,” I carefully answered her real question instead of burdening her with the intensity of feelings she wouldn’t understand. “Or remind you of your ex. I just...”
I just really like you. And I’m scared you’ll never like me back. That maybe you falling for the two other males in our maul won’t be enough, like it wasn’t with Niska. The truth is, I’m terrified, too. You scare the hell out of me.
Out loud, I finished, “I just need you to be safe. That’s my main role as first maul. To keep you safe.”
Her face crumpled a little at my explanation. “I don’t want… I don’t want to be like this. I feel so helpless and ashamed.”
Bell’s voice broke on the last word.
I so badly wanted to pull her into my arms. Comfort her. Like Boone did this morning. But she wouldn’t even let me sleep on the floor of the widow’s cottage she’d chosen. There was no way she’d abide me touching her.
“Bell…” I started.
“No,no.” Before I could finish, her expression hardened from helplessness to resolve. “I’m stuck here for now, but I’m going to figure out a way to get myself some real choices. I’m going to payyou back for everything, and then I’ll never let you tell me what to do a…”
She stopped mid-sentence, her eyes refocusing on something over my shoulder.
“What is that?”
Her voice had gone distant, like she was asking herself more than me.
Then she moved past me, arcing around me to get to the scattered pile of red cedar trunk rounds waiting to be split. She crouched down, running her hands over the rough surfaces, searching.
Then she found one. A round about two feet in diameter, maybe two feet tall.
She didn’t try to lift it. Just ran her hands over it with the most wondrous look on her face. Like she’d just discovered gold.
And when she raised her gaze to me, all the anger had drained from her eyes.
“Can I have this?”
20/
humming
BELL
The wood was humming. Singing to me, like that piece of soapstone had before I decided to go into debt to purchase it for my thesis project.
I peeled off the last piece of bark with the kitchen knife. I’d have to figure out how to resharpen it after this was all done.
But there it was.
An animal.
