Page 9 of Married to Her Yeti
“I’m sorry for everything,” he finally said. “I’m sorry for how I behaved tonight and my lack of control around you.” He ran a hand down his face. “I’m sorry for not coming to talk with you the second I arrived in Wildwood. I’m sorry it took me a decade to return to our hometown. Most of all, I’m sorry not to have cleared things up with you ten years ago after Nevada and for letting my best friend slip away.”
Best friend, huh? Is that how he saw her? Did best friends give each other orgasms or get married? Mari inwardly rolled her eyes. Okay, sometimes they did, but she was oddly disappointed that he thought of her as only a friend. They were married, for fuck’s sake!
The tears stung like a bitch, and Mari was powerless to stop them. She simply wiped her cheeks with quick efficiency. “Well,friend, thank you for that apology. Maybe I should also have reached out to you, but given the circumstances in which you abandoned me, I just couldn’t.”
Nima’s face paled, turning a ghostly light blue. And if Mari wasn’t mistaken, tears tracked down his cheeks as well, disappearing into his white, furrybeard. “You were more than a friend, Mari. You were?—”
Suppressed hurt and anger got the better of her, and she cut him off, stomping her slippered foot on her snowy doormat as she shouted, “Your wife, Nima! I was your wife—that you abandoned.”
He had the audacity to look shocked. “My what?”
The rage inside her flared, and Mari paced away from Nima, needing space and distance from him while she seethed. She stopped where the corner of her porch met her deck and sucked in a breath of icy air. Then another. Finally, she spun around to face him again and held up the envelope. “I need to move on, Nima,” she said, calmer now. “Helen has drawn up divorce papers for us.”
But Nima still looked gobsmacked. “Divorce? I don’t understand. I?—”
His words were cut off as the earth rolled beneath them. Mari gripped the cold, snowy deck railing, holding on as the wooden boards lurched under her. Her cabin’s windowpanes rattled in their frames, and the ground under her rumbled and groaned. She seemed to hear stone grinding against stone as the earth moved.
“Mari, get off the deck!” Nimashouted as a large spruce tree cracked, the sound splitting the frosty night air.
She glanced up at the snapping tree before running toward Nima. The terror etched across his features as he came for her spiked her adrenaline a moment before something smashed into her back. She went down, the snowy porch rushing up to meet her face.
CHAPTER FIVE
Divorce? Nima’s heart thumped in time to an ominous rhythm. And despite running miles through the snow and sweating through his shirt, his limbs suddenly went cold, and he fought a shiver.
Legal marriages were unusual for yeti. That required an in-person trip to a courthouse, not to mention identification, something furry creatures who lived in secret rarely had. But with the right paperwork and friends, Nimahadmanaged a State of Alaska ID. In Nevada, he and Marihadtaken advantage of strategic clothing and accessories to obtain a marriage license in Reno on their way to Burning Man, in the Black Rock Desert, where they’d considered getting married.
But Nima hadn’t even lasted twenty-four hoursat Burning Man, and his memories of his time there were fragmented. He remembered flashes of the tent they’d pitched under the stars and the people from the cryptid-friendly group they’d camped with. Many wore costumes. Some believed he was in costume too. There’d been solar lights, music, and incredible structures, some large enough to walk through.
But a wedding ceremony? He’d remember that, wouldn’t he? His stomach knotted as he sorted through fuzzy memories, finding nothing.
“I don’t understand,” he began. Maybe he’d misheard Mari or misunderstood. What was she saying? How could they have been married all this time without him knowing? He needed her to explain. But before he could ask her anything, the ground vibrated beneath him. Again.
As the earth trembled, the foundation of his reality shook just as hard. He doubted his memory and life choices. His heart raced with fear and uncertainty—for himself, Mari, and everything he thought he knew. He’d never felt so vulnerable, not only from the earth trying to knock him off his footing but from Mari’s request for adivorce.
A nightmare was unfolding before Nima’s eyes. The ground undulated, the snow-covered drivewayrising and falling in a way that seemingly defied physics. Mari’s parked truck bounced as the seismic waves rolled it up and down. Treetops violently wrenched back and forth as the earth jerked beneath them. Along with all the movement came sound. Mari’s cabin windows rattled, her truck squeaked as it bobbed, and a tremendous roar, like a semi speeding down her driveway, rose above all other sounds.
Mari’s wooden porch wrapped around into a deck as the ground sloped down the hillside. It didn’t appear stable with all this movement. Nima wanted Mari off it and safe by his side and in his arms—at least until the shaking stopped. “Mari, get off the deck!” he shouted as he rushed toward her, wanting to tuck her against him, shield her with his body.
A trunk snapped, the sound sharp in the cold air and louder than the rumble of the quake. The top of a large spruce tree tipped toward the deck and porch, falling slowly at first, then gaining speed as it toppled. Nima burst forward, trying to reach Mari before the tree did, but it happened too fast. The tree took her down, smashing her against the porch before the top branches hit him as well.
“Mari!” he yelled, straining to get to her side, but the bushy spruce boughs blocked him. The houselights flickered and went out, as did the cheery holiday lights along the cabin’s eaves, plunging them into darkness. The half-moon’s meager illumination didn’t penetrate the dark tree branches.
“Mari,” he called again, trying to move toward her. She let out a low moan but otherwise didn’t respond. Given the size of the tree and how hard she fell, moaning was good—she was conscious.
“I’m coming, Mar,” he cried as he searched in vain for a hatchet or something on her porch that would cut through the branches. No luck.Fuck! I have to get this tree off her.
With a loud growl, Nima tore at the spruce boughs, ripping them from the trunk with his bare hands until he uncovered her shoulder. But this wouldn’t do. He needed to move the whole fucking tree. Nima fought his way between obstinate branches and the side of Mari’s house, past her prone form, still pinned in place. The jagged end of the broken tree rested on the now-cracked deck railing.
Nima ripped more branches away, the pungent fragrance of fresh-cut wood and spruce sap filling the air. In the opening he created, he squatted under the tree, firmly gripping the trunk. As he did, the wooden planks lurched beneath him, and the windowpanes rattled again.Fucking aftershock!Hisheart couldn’t race any faster. Adrenaline already saturated his body. He wouldn’t let another earthquake unnerve him, not when Mari needed him.
He slowly stood from a squat, lifting the trunk, careful not to let the end resting on the railing crash onto the deck surface, further injuring and trapping Mari. He reached new depths for her to move this heavy and awkward-as-hell hunk of wood.
With a roar, and various muscles and joints popping, Nima hefted the tree. As he raised it overhead, a beam of headlights hit him mid-chest. He tossed the tree over the deck railing, freeing Mari as a vehicle raced down her driveway.
Nima didn't care about exposing himself, and all yeti, if the person in that vehicle could take Mari to the clinic. She needed medical attention. He waved his arms and yelled, “Help! Mari needs help!”
Nima then dropped to his knees at her side. The erratic headlight beams lit the scene like a strobe, amplifying his unease. Pine needles coated her torn sweater, and melting snow darkened her pants. But she’d curled into a ball on her side—a good sign. At least she could move her limbs.
