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“You better,” I say, as we break off our embrace and hold hands, walking around the edge of Crystal Lake. “Out here, it sort of feels like Stone Harbor doesn’t exist, doesn’t it?”
“I know what you mean,” he agrees. “It’s good to forget sometimes.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re off the hook, though.”
“Hmm?” he banters, cocking his head.
“There’s more to the story,” I say. “I can tell.”
“Millie, if that’s true, then you can read me better than anyone on this planet.”
“Well, isn’t that fitting?” I sass. “If I’m going to be the mother of your children, I’ll need to keep you on your toes, right?”
Light swims into his eyes and I feel his body flame, a combustible heat moving through him as he leans down and our lips lovingly rush to meet each other, my hands snaking up around his shoulders.
I moan – muffled – through the kiss when he picks me up, my legs wrapping around him naturally, feeling like those airy girls in high school, being carried through the corridors as though they’re made of clouds.
But better, because they never had Markus freaking McCabe.
I sink deeper into the kiss, grinding against him, heart hammering deep in my soul as something feral tries to unleash inside of me. My womb batters down the walls of my anxiety, screaming at me to strip him here, take him now in the snow, sit on his fiery length until he shoots a river of lava hot seed inside of me.
“Markus,” I gasp, when we pause the kiss, staring into each other’s eyes. “You can tell me anything.”
“I’ve never talked about it before,” he says gruffly. “Well, except with Johnny. He’s my uncle. He raised me after …”
“After what?” I murmur, the destruction of my home returning to me in vivid shades of memory, the door collapsing inward and the fireman striding in.
My mom, my dad.
All gone.
He sighs and places me down, and together we turn and look once more at the glittering lake, a thousand points of winking light, ten thousand, a freaking million it seems like. There’s a whole pale night’s sky hidden beneath the film of crusty ice.
“I don’t know how the fuck you do this to me,” he says, jaw working as though trying to banish some years long pain.
And failing.
“But maybe you ought to know just what you’re getting yourself into.”Chapter FifteenMarkusI stuff my hands in my pockets, feeling Millie’s patient gaze on me as I focus on the lake. Something about nature has always been able to calm me, to quiet the demons that growl and bark from the eaves of my consciousness.
“You asked why I got so angry when you called yourself … that,” I murmur.
“Yeah,” she says, placing her hand on my arm, seeming impossibly warm against the contrasting cold of the lake.
Her cuteness is like an eruption as she stands there in my jacket, her face ruddy from the cold, a few wisps of her hair coming loose and blowing around her face.
“When I was a kid, my mom was anorexic, and – well – my dad encouraged it. I was too young to know what was going on, but all I remember is she was thin, too thin, and my dad would always call her fat, always belittle her. He was an evil motherfucker. I see that now. But when you’re a kid …”
“You don’t know any better,” she murmurs.
I sigh. “Exactly.”
We pause, and then silently agree to walk a short circuit of the lake. She reaches across and interlocks her fingers with mine, squeezing supportively. I squeeze on even harder, hungrily taking her warmth, her closeness, her goddamn essence, not that I ever thought I’d be thinking such a thing.
“This went on for years and shit got really bad,” I go on. “I guess that’s why you made me so angry back there. Not just because you’re beautiful, which you are … but because I don’t want you thinking that you’re not. I saw firsthand the damage that can do to a person. And then one day my mom left. She found a man who didn’t abuse her and she went to live overseas. I only found out recently that she lives in Australia and has a new life there, a husband and a piece of land they own and work on together. Johnny told me.”
“Have you spoken to her?” Millie asks.
I wince because I knew she might ask that. And I know I haven’t got the answer she probably wants to hear.
“No,” I tell her. “It’s been three decades, Millie.”
“It’s never too late,” she says fiercely. “I know if I had the chance to talk to my parents again …”
“I know,” I say quietly. “I guess life is complicated sometimes.”
“It is,” she agrees. “But maybe one day you can give her a call and just be like, ‘Hey Mom, no hard feelings.’”
