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She ran away?
“And I guess you…” Vivian narrows her eyes at me. “I guess you look a bit like her.”
I do?
My fingers clutch my shirt. I want to ask more questions about my mother, but I think I’ve had enough for one day.
I draw a deep breath. “It’s okay. I’m fine. But I think I’ll go back to my room now.”
Vivian nods. “Okay.”
I force a smile. “It was lovely meeting you.”
I turn around and drag myself back to my room. I still feel half paralyzed from the shock of all I’ve discovered. My feet feel heavy, my knees weak. Halfway through, I stop and look out the window at the falling snow.
Now what? Now that I know who Samantha Northup is, what?
I lean against the window. My head hits the cold pane of glass.
What exactly am I doing here?
Chapter 14 ~ The Good and the Bad
Rainier
I shouldn’t have come on this little hunting expedition.
Even with my parka and my fleece-lined pants, I can feel the cold in the marrow of my bones. My teeth scrape against each other in my jaws. Sure, I wanted to cool myself off, but not like this.
The snow is so thick it almost covers my boots. Every now and then, I almost slip. It keeps falling from the sky, too, hiding whatever tracks any hare might have left behind.
So far, there’s been no sign of a single one.
I let out a sigh as I rest against a tree. My breath turns into mist before my eyes.
The hares are probably in their burrows where they’re safe and warm. Smart. If we were any smarter, we’d be in ours. We’d be back in the mansion and I’d be under the covers with Ellis. I should never have left that bed. I should have waited for Ellis to wake up, then pulled her into my arms and kissed her until all thoughts of getting out of bed fled from her mind. Better yet, I should have done that last night. I should have plowed through that wall of pillows and picked up where I left off in the study. I know Ellis still wants me. Why else would she still feel the need to put all those pillows in the middle of the bed after I promised her I wouldn’t touch her?
And even if I weren’t in bed with Ellis, I’d at least be drinking a glass of scotch by the fire. That’s still better than freezing to death out here trying to hunt something that clearly knows what it’s doing better than we do.
“No sign of those sleazy little furballs, huh?” Gabriel asks me.
He seems sober but still in a foul mood. Then again, he’s always in a foul mood.
“Nope,” I answer. “And I think we should get back before we die of hypothermia out here.”
“Hypothermia? Isn’t that a needle?”
“You mean hypodermic. Hypothermia is – ”
“I know what hypothermia is,” Gabe says. “I’m just messing with you. I’m rash, insensitive and apparently a failure as a father, brother and son, but I’m not dumb.”
Not humble, either, or the least bit remorseful about his actions last night from the looks of it.
“And I’d rather die of hypothermia out here than go back inside that house,” he adds. “That there…” he points to the mansion in the distance, “is a slow and painful death waiting for me.”
I can’t say the same for hypothermia – it’s not painful and at this temperature it won’t be particularly slow – so I stay silent.
“Have you ever felt like that, Dr. Knight?” Gabe asks me. “Like you’re trapped and being held hostage by your own family? Like you exist just so they can suck the life out of you?”
“No,” I answer.
Nor do I intend to listen to the whining of a spoiled brat who never grew up.
I push myself off the tree trunk and turn around. “I’m going back.”
He can die out here if he wants. I’m not dying with him.
“You can’t,” Gabe tells me. “You’re a doctor, right? It’s your job to make sure I stay alive.”
“No. It’s your job to stay alive. It’s my job to do the same.”
I start walking back. My boots sink into the snow.
“It must be nice being a doctor,” Gabe remarks.
I roll my eyes. Apparently he’s not done whining.
“You get to say who lives or dies. You get to play God.”
“No, I don’t,” I tell him with a tinge of disdain. “I don’t put people on my table. They end up there because their lives are in danger and I do my best to save them.”
“So you’re saying you’ve never let anyone die?”
“Doctors don’t let people die,” I explain to him. “They’re already dying when they come to us, one way or another. We do everything to save them, but sometimes we can’t and so they die.”
