Chapter 17: You Decided Again

The door swung in and hit the wall.

His mother was in a wingback chair by the lamp with her hand over her mouth.

Vidar was standing at the cold fireplace.

He turned and saw me in the doorway in a quilt with lake water still in my hair.

All the color went out of his face.

"Linnea."

"Say it again," I said. "I want to hear it with the door open."

He didn't.

"You'll hold back," I said. "On purpose. In my bed."

"Linnea, listen to me..."

"I knocked on your door and said yes."

My voice shook and I let it.

"I asked you on that bench if it could take you, and you looked me in the eye."

"I didn't lie. I've never held back. Not yet."

"Don't you dare do word games with me."

His mother stood up slowly.

Neither of us looked at her.

"You let me give you my first night," I said. "You let me think we were both in it. Both of us risking it."

"You were never risking it. That's the point. That's the whole point."

"Because you decided."

"Because he will kill you."

He came one step toward me, and his voice cracked open.

"I've already had the papers drawn," he said. "The lodge, the land, the seal. The lawyer in Duluth has them."

"You had your will witnessed before you let me say yes?"

He didn't answer, and that was the answer.

"So I wake up on the thirty-first with a crown and a dead man in my bed."

He flinched.

"You'd be alive."

"You don't get to pick that for me!"

I was shouting now, and I didn't care who on the second floor heard.

"You nodded at that council table. You agreed to my terms."

"I nodded because I didn't know you yet."

"You know me now." I pulled the quilt tighter. "And you're still doing it."

The lamp hissed.

His mother put her hand on the back of her chair.

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