Page 53 of The Bride
Which was actually a good sign. It meant she’d gone from frozen to cold.
I got on my knees in front of her and slowly fed her sips. She was through about half the mug when the shivering stopped. Another few sips and she could hold the mug on her own.
I pulled her wet hair off her back and took the mug out of her hands when it was empty.
“You unhook yourself from the line?” I asked her.
“It got away from me. It was so close,” she said quietly. “A couple of feet.”
“You unhook yourself from the line?” I asked again.
She nodded.
A rage, unlike any I had ever felt, swept over me. Any lingering cold I had in my body was gone in that moment. She had unhooked herself. She had lost sight of the line. She had kept moving with the damn calf tied to her arm.
I pulled her off the toilet seat until she was also on her knees. My hands were tight around her arms and I wanted to shake her. I wanted to shake her so hard so she would never ever do anything as stupid as that again.
“I could have lost you,” I shouted at her. “Do you understand that? You could have DIED!”
Her lip was quivering, but I didn’t care. I had so much feeling inside of me, so much of everything all at once.
And then it happened. I couldn’t shake her. I couldn’t beat her. So I bent my head and I kissed her.
I took her lips and her tongue. All of it. I took every ounce of my anger and fury and I growled it into her mouth.
I was kissing her. I was kissing her and this was Ellie.
Fuck!
I don’t know if I pushed her away or she pushed against me, but suddenly we were apart. Each of us breathing hard, looking at each other, neither one of us knowing what to say.
“Jake…”
I stood up. I took the mug.
“Get dressed. Something warm. You’re going to be tired, lethargic, but you can’t go to bed. I need you to get to ninety-eight degrees before you can sleep.”
Then I walked out of the bathroom, walked downstairs, and threw the mug against the fireplace as hard as I could.
Watching it shatter felt good.
Cleaning it up sucked.
Fourteen
Ellie
March
So that happened.
Jake and I didn’t speak the rest of the night. I didn’t have the energy for it, and he was still really mad at me. The snow let up eventually, but the cold lasted another brutal three days, getting as low as forty below freezing.
Jake went out the next day to try and save more calves. He told me not to bother to ask to come with him, but the truth was I didn’t have it in me.
He came back three hours later with a grim expression.
We still didn’t talk.
