Four Weddings and a Fireman (21 page)

“There, now you know my story.” He upturned his hands in a helpless gesture. “I just gave you the perfect excuse to push me away. It's too much to handle. It's not what you want in your life. Go ahead, say it.”

A heavy, electric silence vibrated between them. Was that what he thought of her? How could she make him understand . . . without telling him everything?

But she couldn't do that.

But she had to.

Oh Jacob, I'm sorry
.

“You feed me little crumbs, Cherie. All I want to do is love you and take care of you and . . . and . . .”

“I can't. Marry you.” Low and abrupt, with a passionate tremor, her voice barely whispered into the moonlight.

“You keep telling me that. But you still haven't made—­”

“I can't because I'm already . . . sort of . . . married.”

 

Chapter Twenty

V
ader took a stumbling step backward. Of all the things Cherie could have said, nothing could have shocked him more. She was
married
? And she'd never told him? And what the hell did “sort of” mean? Through the thick fog of betrayal, he grabbed on to something he'd learned from firefighting. Keep your feet on the ground. Deal with what's in front of you.

“What are you talking about?”

From his position, standing near the foot of her bed, she was a dark lump huddled against the headboard.

“I mean, I signed something that made me married. Prophesize arranged it. I didn't agree to it, not consciously,” she said in a voice so shaky he could barely hear it. “I was confused. I'd never drunk any alcohol before, and Mackintosh brought a bottle of champagne to celebrate. We were in our old henhouse, me, Prophesize, and Mackintosh. I only had a few sips, but I got kind of woozy after that. It was like I was floating up on the ceiling away from my body. He had some documents and a pen, and I signed where he said to. And then he said, ‘Welcome to the Mackintosh clan.' My father and him shook hands, then my dad left. Mackintosh started talking about stuff like what he liked for dinner—­I remember he mentioned Sloppy Joes, because I started picturing hot dogs and chili beans and feeling so queasy. I wasn't floating anymore, I was right there in my body, feeling sicker and sicker. Then he changed the subject to sex, and how many times a week he liked to do it, and I just lost it. Everything was spinning around like I was doing cartwheels. When he came after me and grabbed me, I threw up a little, and caught it in my hand. He said I was disgusting and told me to go outside and take care of myself.”

“He drugged you,” said Vader flatly. He knew it as clearly as if he'd been there himself.

She clenched the bedcovers as if they were Mackintosh's neck. “Oh sweet Lord. I think you must be right. Two sips of champagne won't make you throw up. I can't believe I never thought of that before! What a lowlife scum he was. Is.”

She shuddered. Vader cracked his knuckles, wishing Mackintosh would walk through the door so he could beat him up.

“Anyway,” she hurried on, “I went outside to puke my guts out, and there was Jacob, waiting for me. He had our little rucksacks, and the money we'd been saving. Mackintosh came after me, and I grabbed an old piece of pipe and smashed it over his head. Jacob kicked him in the groin, and maybe in the throat too. It's all pretty blurry. I thought maybe I'd killed him. After that, we ran. I was so ill I could barely move, but every time I thought about what was waiting back there, I made myself do it. Jacob half carried me part of the way. When we got to the highway we hitched a ride with a trucker who took us all the way to Texas. I lay down in the backseat of the crew cab. I kept throwing up, but I didn't want the trucker to stop so I'd do it in my rucksack, really quiet. First thing we did when we got out of the truck was wash everything in that bag. It felt like I was washing away that slimy man.”

Before he realized what he was doing, Vader was at her side. She was gripping the sheets tightly enough to rip them. He sat on the edge of the bed and gently enclosed her hands in his. A weird sort of relief filled him, because that didn't sound like any sort of legal marriage to him.

“What happened next?” he asked. He sensed that she needed to spill the whole story, now that she'd started.

“Texas didn't seem far enough away from Arkansas, so we kept on going, hitchhiking until we got all the way to California. That was a great feeling—­all that space, all those fields going on forever and ever, those wide highways. We figured they'd never find us here.”

He ran his thumb along the pad of her palm. “So no one tried to find you? Was no one worried about you?”

“Well, about two months after we left, we took a bus to Nevada and found a phone booth. My hands were shaking so hard I could hardly dial the number. The Harpers don't even have a phone, you know. You have to leave a message at the feed store, 'cause the owner's a friend of my father. That's how I found out that Mackintosh was in the hospital and the police had filed charges against us.”

“
Charges?
”

“We weren't there to tell our side, were we? I was too afraid to go back. We just decided to stay here and never go back to Arkansas. And hope Mackintosh didn't come after us. And never tell anyone about what had happened. We made a pact, Jacob and I. And I just broke it.”

She took in a shuddering breath, but right now Vader wasn't worried about some idiotic pact with Jacob.

“This Mackintosh . . .” Even the name tasted bad in his mouth. “If you were forced into marriage with him—­an illegal marriage—­why don't you just file for divorce?”

“Because of my sisters.”

He looked at her with complete incomprehension. “Is this more Harper family craziness? You're going to have to spell it out for me.”

“In my eyes, Mackintosh is not my husband. Why, it was never even consummated. But if Prophesize
thinks
me and Mackintosh are married, then he won't let the man near my sisters, once they start coming of age. Bigamy's a sin. See what I mean?”

He scrubbed his hand through his hair. “Not really. Keep going.”

“Mackintosh only wanted me because I'm a Harper. He made a deal with my father. Humility or one of the others would be a perfectly fine replacement. The only reason he didn't go after Humility was that he thought his son was going to marry her. But she ran away. So now I don't know what he's going to do. But I know that Prophesize doesn't believe in bigamy, and he doesn't believe in divorce. So as long as my father thinks Mackintosh and I are married, my sisters are safe. Get it now?”

“Yeah. I get it. You're sacrificing your future to protect your sisters. You know what, Cherie? This is the craziest story I ever heard. But I'll tell you one thing. You're not married.” His certainty rang through the room like church bells. “First of all, how old were you? Seventeen, you said?”

“Yes. Seventeen.”

“That's not even legal.”

“It is, with parental consent. I checked the Arkansas statutes online. My father was there and I signed the paper . . .”

“I don't care what you signed. Did you sign it in front of anyone official? Like a clerk or a judge?”

“No. Just a few stray hens.”

Vader brushed a strand of hair off her face. “Hens don't count. On top of that, you were given some kind of drug and you were unwilling. No judge in his right mind would consider that a legal marriage.”

“I know that. But it doesn't matter,” she said in a firm voice. “As long as Prophesize thinks it's legal, Mackintosh can't touch my sisters. Besides . . .” She let out a deep whoosh of breath. “You might as well know everything. There's probably still a warrant out for my arrest in Arkansas. I don't want to go near the legal system. I have Jacob to think about too. Mackintosh hates him even more than me. He's a terrible homophobe.”

If Vader ever met this Mackintosh face to face, he'd tear him apart. “There has to be a better way to deal with the situation. Why don't you file charges against him?”

“What do you mean?”

“He drugged you and forced you to sign something. You were defending yourself when you hit him.
He
should face charges, not you. I know a lawyer who helped my mom with her insurance stuff. I'll make an appointment with her.”

“
Vader.
” She scrambled to her knees, the bedsheet falling off her bare shoulder. She grabbed one of his hands. “I don't want you to charge in like some sort of warrior king. This isn't your problem.”

He frowned. From where he was sitting, it sure as hell was. This crazy situation had kept him and Cherie apart all this time. “How can you say that? You say you can't think about marrying me because you're already married. Why isn't that my problem?”

“Mackintosh is scary. And if Trixie's right, he's even scarier now. I made him worse when I knocked him on the head. I don't want him coming after you. It's between him and me.”

Vader leaned forward, his hands on either side of her, making sure she met his eyes and saw how serious he was. “Believe me, I'd love it if he came after me. Bring it on, Farmer Dude who drugs girls he wants to marry.”

She gripped his forearms, her fingernails digging in. “This is exactly why Jacob didn't want to tell you. He was afraid you'd make a big fuss and alert the legal system, and then Mackintosh—­”

“Calm down, Cherie. I'm just trying to help.”

“Listen. I'll think about calling that lawyer. But you have to promise me not to do or say anything. To
anyone.
I don't want you involved.”

He flinched. “I'm already involved,” he said tightly.

“Yes, okay. I know. And I know I haven't been fair to you. I should never have gotten involved with you. It was wrong and I'll probably rot in hell, but it would make it so much worse if you got hurt somehow, and . . .”

Vader couldn't stand to listen to another second of her so-­called reasoning.
She
was trying to protect
him
? Didn't she understand anything about him?

He stood up, fists on his hips, unconcerned with the fact that he was still stark naked. “First of all,” he said, in clipped syllables, “I wouldn't fucking get hurt. If you don't trust me on anything else, trust me on that. Do you know why I have these muscles?” He thumped his chest with one fist.

She shook her head, as if stunned into speechlessness.

“I built them. Me and my free weights. I started at fourteen and I never slowed down. I wanted the strongest body I could get. Why? So I could keep
bad things from happening to ­people
. Same reason I became a fireman. And it works. Not always, but sometimes. I can carry my mother from the van to the house. I can carry a downed fireman. Two, probably. And I can take on some loser idiot from the backwoods. And you're going to tell me, ‘Thanks, but no thanks' because you don't want me to get hurt? That's insulting. Don't you know what I'm all about by now?”

She opened her mouth, closed it. “What's wrong with not wanting you to get hurt?” she asked in a small voice. “I don't want anyone to get hurt. I never did. That's why I kept saying no to getting married.”

He slammed his jaw shut, pressing his mouth into one tight line. How could he explain this to her? “You should have told me before. Straight up. But I can see that your so-­called pact with Jacob got in the way. I can live with that. I can live with you keeping your sort of, not-­even-­close-­to-­legal, forced marriage to yourself until now. But that was before. This is now. You and me. And you have to start trusting me, Cherie. You have to
let me help
.”

When she stared back at him, silent, her eyes huge and silvery as twin moons, he felt a leaden weight in his gut. He turned up his hands, let them drop, then bent to retrieve his clothes. “I'm going to go check on my mom. She still isn't sleeping well. You think about what I said. Think hard.”

Hand on the doorknob, he turned back one more time. “And Cherie. I love you.” Then he was gone.

After Vader left,
Cherie cried into her pillow for a good long while. Emotion piled on emotion until she felt confused and completely overwhelmed. Reliving that night, and the time afterward, was never easy. And then dropping the bombshell of her “marriage” on Vader had been horrible.

Of course, he was right, and it wasn't a real marriage. It probably didn't afford much protection to her sisters, but just in case it did, she refused to rock the boat. And that's what he wanted her to do. Rock the boat. File charges. Stir up the hornet's nest back home.

And yet, a huge part of her ached for what he offered. What if she could turn to him? What if he could protect her—­and her whole family—­from Mackintosh? What if she didn't have to feel so alone and frightened? What if she had someone fighting by her side? If only, if only . . .

She set her jaw. No. She'd been wrong to fall for Vader, wrong to let things go as far as they had. Wasn't she right to try to limit the damage? She'd created this mess and she should solve it.

First things first. She found her phone and called Jacob. Now that she'd broken her promise and told Vader their story, she'd better alert her brother.

He reacted as badly as he possibly could. “You took a blood oath, Cherie! Does that mean nothing to you?”

“Jacob, that's not fair. Our pact was stupid, it was because we were afraid of Mackintosh. I don't want to be afraid anymore. I've been wanting to tell Vader for so long, you know I have. It was destroying our relationship.”

“You don't know what you've done, Cherie.”

Cherie fought back against the tears. If Jacob turned against her, she didn't know what she'd do. “What do you mean? Vader's not going to say anything.”