Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 141556 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 708(@200wpm)___ 566(@250wpm)___ 472(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141556 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 708(@200wpm)___ 566(@250wpm)___ 472(@300wpm)
Then she opens the box, rummages through it, and pulls them out.
I cut away the damaged section and pull new wire from the roll we left out here last year when we mended the fences. The work is simple and repetitive. Stretch, staple, move on. Saint stands a few feet away, arms wrapped around herself against the wind.
“You can sit if you want,” I tell her. “There’s a flat rock over there.”
She doesn’t sit. She just stands there watching me work, her gaze distant. After a while, I notice she’s not watching me at all. She’s looking past me, toward the valley below, where the creek winds through cottonwoods just starting to bud. Beyond that, the town sits small and contained, smoke rising from chimneys in the distance.
“It’s different up here,” she says suddenly. “Quieter.”
“Yeah.” I hammer a staple into the post. “That’s why I like it.”
“Does your family own all of this?”
“Most of it. The cabin, these pastures, the timberland to the east. My great-grandfather bought it piece by piece. Back when land was cheap, and people were desperate.” I move to the next post. “He wasn’t a good man, but he understood something important.”
“What’s that?”
“That land doesn’t lie. People do.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Considering, maybe? “Did you come here often? Before all of this, I mean.”
“When I could. It’s the only place Roman doesn’t show up unannounced.” I pause, realize what I’ve just admitted. “Was. Past tense.”
Because everything’s past tense now.
We work in silence after that, me fixing the fence, her standing watch like a ghost haunting her own life. The sun climbs higher, warming the air, and some of the tension leaves her shoulders. She unzips the jacket and tips her face toward the light.
“I used to think Montana was just… gray,” she says after a while. “All those fire-and-brimstone sermons about hell made me think heaven would be somewhere tropical. Palm trees and beaches.” She gestures toward the mountains. “But this is beautiful. In a harsh kind of way.”
“Heaven’s overrated.” I test the wire tension and am satisfied with the stretch. “This is better. Real.”
She almost smiles. Almost. Moving closer, she crouches down to examine some thistle near a rock. Her fingers brush the thorns, gentle and reverent.
“What are these?”
“Bull thistle. They’ll make flowers in June, but mostly stay like that the rest of the year. Stubborn little bastards.”
“My mom used to press flowers in books.” Her voice goes soft, distant.
It’s the first time she’s mentioned her mother. The first real piece of herself she’s offered me since I dragged her into this nightmare.
“You miss her,” I say. Not a question. I don’t pretend to know every single thing I could find out about her.
“Every day. Especially now.” She stands and brushes dirt from her knees. “She was so smart, and it seemed like she had an answer for every problem.”
“We’ve done decent so far. You’re doing okay. Surviving.”
“Am I?” She looks at me, and for the first time in days, there’s something sharp in her eyes. “Or am I just going through the motions until you decide what happens next?”
Fair question. An honest one. I pull off my gloves and shove them in my pocket.
“You’re surviving. And you’ll keep surviving. Because that’s what Bishops do, and you’re a Bishop now.”
Her face hardens. “I’ll never be a Bishop.”
“The law says otherwise.”
“The law doesn’t know what you did to me.”
“No,” I agree. “It doesn’t. But even if it did, it wouldn’t change anything.”
The moment stretches between us, taut and dangerous. Then she turns and walks away toward the next section of fence.
I watch her, the way she moves through the landscape like she’s always belonged here. Like the land recognizes something in her that I’m only beginning to understand. We work through the morning, stopping only when the sun’s directly overhead, and hunger becomes impossible to ignore. I pull out the sandwiches I made before we left from the toolbox, nothing fancy, just bread and meat.
We sit and eat on sun-warmed rocks, even as snow is piled up around them, with the valley spread out below us like a promise.
“Can I ask you something?” Saint’s voice breaks the comfortable silence.
“Depends on the question.”
“Why did you kiss me back? That night. In your truck.”
I force myself to swallow, mainly to buy myself some time. “I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did. For just a second, before you stopped. I felt it.”
She’s right. I did. And I’ve regretted it every day since, not because I kissed her, but because I didn’t kiss her properly. Didn’t take what I wanted when she offered it freely, before everything turned dark and twisted.
“It was a mistake.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer you’re getting out of me.”
She studies me, those dark eyes searching for cracks in my armor. Then she nods slowly, like she’s figured something out. “You wanted me then. You want me now. That’s what this is really about, isn’t it? You took me because you could. Because Roman gave you the excuse you needed.”