Page 26 of Break the Ice
I wish I hadn’t bothered as soon as I check it. A weight settles in the pit of my stomach.
Mom.
Staring at the screen, I debate what to do.
Accept. Decline. Or maybe I should go for one of those automated responses like:Sorry, I can’t talk right now.
It’s not like I haven’t been expecting this call. In a way, it’s surprising it’s taken my parents this long to reach out. Regardless, the smart thing to do is answer and move on.
I step back outside the boutique, finding a quiet spot off the sidewalk to have the conversation I’ve been running through my head for days. My gut tells me it’s not going to go any of the ways I’ve imagined it. Still, I swipe my screen, answering the call. My teeth clench the instant my AirPods buzz to life.
“Bring that girl back, Elijah,” Mom growls down the line.
“Hello, Mom.”
“You’ve brought shame on yourself. On us.”
“I’m sorry.” The apology rolls off my tongue on impulse. So naturalthat it’s nauseating. Because I’m not sorry. So, I guess that makes it a lie too.
“Yeah?” Her tone softens to a sickly-sweet coo. “If that’s so, return the girl to her family.”
“No.”
“No?” She scoffs, all the sweetness evaporating in an instant. “She belongs to her family. To the fellowship… to the Lord.”
“Finley belongs to herself.” As true as they might be, the words are bitter on my tongue. Because even the six, almost seven, years we’ve been physically apart, she’s still the only girl I’ve ever wanted. When things get confused in my head, she’s the memory I cling to.
“Oh please, Elijah.” I can hear the ‘stupid boy’ in her austere tone. “A woman owns nothing more than her righteousness. If you care so much about that girl, you’ll give that back to her and bring her home. To the light. To God.”
“Finley’s not going back to Havenview. She’s with me, where she belongs.”
“Matthew fifteen, Elijah:For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man,” she rants at me. “In taking that girl, you are stealing from the Lord himself.”
The grate of her voice turns over my insides, all the emotions simmering at the surface boil over at her overzealous rhetoric. “The Lord will get over it,” I snap.
“Grandmother was right, we should never have let you go out there. You’ve lost your way, and you have taken that girl with you into a world of sin and immorality. A man and a woman cannot share a home outside of the holy vow of marriage.”
“You had the chance to convince the Elders to let us marry when I came to you and father.”
“She is not yours. Not for you. And it is not your choice. The Lord decides who and when.”
“Finley stays with me.”
“She’s promised to Asher Montgomery. She agreed to submit herself to him.”
My gut lurches the contents of my stomach up into my throat. Everything burns as I think through Mom’s words.
The longer they settle, the deeper they burrow, and past all other emotions, anger blazes in my chest, spreading like an inferno through my bloodstream.
Finley’s not theirs to promise to another man. She’s not his. Havenview’s. Or the Lord’s. And I’m not letting her go for anything or anyone.
Finley ismine.
My salvation and damnation all intertwined. She’s my nightmare and my escape.
“Whatever agreement you coerced her into is done. It’s off.”
“Elijah—”
