My Stepmother Sold Me to the Alpha Who Hates My Father's Name, and the Child He Wants Is the Proof That Clears It novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Bridge

Caly's POV

My father never let me cross the swinging bridge, and at dawn I stood in the middle of it with the snow coming down.

I had not planned that either.

I had come down from the road across the field with my kit on my back, meaning to cut through the laurel to the springhouse and sit out the weather.

I stopped at the bridge because it was there.

It was the one thing on the whole place that had always been forbidden.

He had replaced its rope every spring for fourteen years.

I knew because I had watched him.

He would haul out the old line, frayed and grey, and string a new one with his big gentle hands.

I would ask if I could help.

*No, honey.*

*Why not?*

*Because I said.*

It was the only time in my life he ever said *because I said*.

I put my boots on the planks.

They were slick with snow, and the bridge swayed under me.

The creek ran black and fast thirty feet below.

I walked out to the middle and held the frozen rails.

I did not know what I was looking for.

I looked down at the water, and then at the far bank, where the laurel hung over the creek.

A flat rock lay there at the foot of the bridge, white with snow, no bigger than a kitchen table.

I looked at it for a long time.

The snow lay on it clean, but the brush above it was broken, as if something had been carried down through the laurel.

I heard boots behind me, and I knew the step.

I did not turn.

"Caly," said Ned.

He stood at the near end of the bridge in snow to his knees, with no hat and no gloves.

He had come on foot.

I could tell by his face.

It was blue with cold, and his lips were cracked, and there was ice in his eyebrows.

I had never seen him look like that.

He looked like a man who had walked out of a grave.

"You walked," I said.

"I would not take the truck."

I stared at him.

"You're over the line," I said.

"I know."

"You've never been over the line."

"I know that too." His voice shook. "I'm here. Will you come off that bridge?"

"Why?"

"Because I can't look at it."

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