But Not Forever by Jan Von Schleh

Author:Jan Von Schleh [Schleh, Jan Von]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781943006588
Publisher: SparkPress
Published: 2018-06-15T07:00:00+00:00

WE had no blackberry jam for the inhabitant of the fourteenth cabin, but I did save my pear for him. Tor flung open his door and jogged to the carriage. He helped me out, nodding at Maxwell, who turned the carriage around and left to take care of the last two deliveries.

Tor held my hand, his eyes never leaving my face, and walked me through his door. He took me in his arms and held me to him. I pushed my body up close, as close as I could in my layers of clothes, next to his thumping heart. I breathed him in . . . sunshine and horses and the fir-scented wind off the mountain. He kissed me. And this time he knew who I was.

I unwound myself from his arms and moved to the middle of the room, setting the pear on his little table. A blue-and-white enamel pot sat on top of a small pot-bellied stove. I could smell the cold coffee grounds inside it, and his ragged breathing was all around me. I stared at two red wool blankets folded neatly on the end of a narrow bed. . . .

“I can’t fight against it,” Tor finally said.

“I know, I know,” I whispered. I glanced back at him. Those eyes of his deserved a long paragraph, a page, an entire story. They devoured every inch of me. Hyperaware of being alone with him, everything I had been trying hard not to dream of was here, and I didn’t trust myself. My body made me afraid of what might happen if he ripped me from the pot-bellied stove and up against him again.

I turned back to the blankets. The wool was as thick as winter socks, and the loops were uneven and nubby. Slate-colored threads, barely visible, were scattered throughout the red. I had never seen a blanket as clearly. “It’s so confusing. Maxwell and Simeon said there are no mistakes. So why are we here together in Monte Cristo?”

“Perhaps it has nothing to do with us. Or perhaps it is beyond understanding, and we will never know.”

He waited until I looked at him again. His fists scrunched and then opened at his sides, hanging. He swallowed hard, as if he had something big caught in his throat. “Sonnet, if Emma does not return . . .”

“I have to go back to my life, Tor.”

“If you stay and she does not come back . . .”

“Emma will come back. She has to.”

“Please, listen to me. If you stay here and she stays there. Reassure me . . .”

I smiled. “My family would be horrified to think I would marry so young. It isn’t done where I come from. Girls, if they get married at all, don’t get married until they’re older. Girls get to have a life, too. I want to go to college, Tor. I want to have a life.”

“How old must you be to take me as a husband? I’ll wait. My parents would have been pleased if I married someone like you.

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