Lifting onto my knees, I rock on the bed, my core unsteady. I throw one arm his direction. “Feel free toannounce to the world that we’re pregnant too! You know, just choose something you know is a complete lie and call it fact!”
My final words are lost though. He’s gone, and the front door has been slammed shut.
“This is not allmy fault, and he isn’t going to pin it all on me!” I say, stepping over a log that’s fallen in the woods. Yep, a nice forty-degree snowy walk in the woods is just what I need to cool down.
Just. What. I. Need.
“I was trying to make sure he got to keep this cabin! I was trying to give my parents a little peace,” I complain to myself and the great outdoors. “I didn’t announce our marriage to every news station in the southwestern United States! But he’s going to stomp off? He’s going to hire a marriage counselor?” I glare at the snow-covered path ahead of me. “Did I call your love-making average? Why yes, I did. But did you deserve it, Roman Graves? YES, you did!” I bellow into the open air, waiting for some kind of grand response. But I am in the woods. With nothing and no one. Not even Roman hears me. His car is gone, and I don’t know where to.
The brush ahead of me rustles and I stop my trek.
“Hello?” I say into the quiet of the trees. “Roman?”
The brush wiggles again, and black, white, teeth, and tails come skittering out, not one yard from me.
My heart stops and I am frozen. I cannot move. I simply stare and scream. “Roman!”
And then, I’m hit.
Twenty-Six
Sweat dampensthe back of my T-shirt. A bead of perspiration slides down the side of my face into my short beard. But I keep walking. I keep hauling.
I should be angry with Stella. She could have told me a hundred times that I wasn’t risking prison, that I didn’t commit any crime.
Am I really the only one getting anything out of this marriage? Have I truly been so selfish?
She looked so sad when she mentioned that my house had no semblance of Christmas. This tree is much too large for my cabin, but I’ve already driven into town, obtained the license, purchased decorations, and chopped this bad boy down. It will be going up in our house. It will be staying there until February.
Steadying this Jeffrey Pine with one hand, I open the front door to the cabin, ready to be Stella’s hero. But the house is dark and quiet. No sign of the little woman.
My nose tickles as I step inside. “Stell?” I call. But there’s no response. Her car was in the drive, so she hasn’t left me. Iwouldn’t blame her if she did. That’s what I get for listening to Lucca.
Maybe she took a walk. My brow wrinkles with the thought. It’s getting late. I prop the tree against the living room wall of the cabin. Long branches ram into my couch and small rectangular coffee table, shedding pine needles over the floor. Yep—much too big. I sigh and slip my phone from my pocket. I’ve pinned Stella as my one and only favorite contact. It’s easy to dial her number this way. Her phone rings and a vibration sounds from the living room coffee table. I move a large branch to find her cell still buzzing with my call.
“You didn’t take your phone, Stell?” I mutter to myself.
I peer around the room and into the kitchen, looking for a note, for any kind of a sign of where Stella might be. My heart patters. I yelled at her. I was so angry and so relieved at the same time. I lost it, I yelled, and now she’s run off. I’ll never forgive myself if something happens to her.
I take two steps toward the kitchen when I hear something … Something quiet and muffled and … miserable. I tap on her bedroom door, but when no answer comes, I slowly open it up. She’s not there either.
Where in the world …
“Stella?”
The sob grows louder from inside Stella’s room. But it’s still not clear. She must be in the bathroom. The Jack and Jill bath that separates our rooms.
I swallow, scratch my tingling nose, and trudge to the bathroom door. Tapping on it quietly, I say, “Stell?”
Another sob.
Tell me she hasn’t been in there crying for two hours. “Gah,” I groan. I’m the worst. I should be red-carded for life,for the human being that I am. I clamp my eyes closed and tap once more. “Stella? I’m sorry. I?—”
More sobbing.
“Shoot. Stella,” I whisper. I can’t stand out here—not with her in there. Not when I yelled at her. Not when she’s crying because of me.
I twist the knob of the door, and to my shock, it turns. A clicking noise comes with it, and I pause, remembering that first day when Stella asked me to not walk in on her naked.
