Read Online Winter Rose by Rachel A. Marks - Free Book Online Page A

is your choice. You want to be rid of him?” When I don’t move, he adds, “If you can’t do it, I can.”
    I look at Pa, at his red face, smashed into the wood of the floor. At his hair turned grey along the temples. At his hands, rough and black from work.
    His hands. The memory of them...
    I step closer and kneel down, hovering the tip of the knife over his face.
    “I should cut your eyes out,” I whisper. “I should tear your ears from the sides of your head. How many times did I cry, plead with you to leave me be? And just when I thought I was at last free of you, you bring your darkness back to me. You sent those men to Becca and made us steep ourselves in depravity just to survive. I should drink your blood. I should cut out your heart.” I raise the blade and then stab it into the wood floor, a sliver away from his nose. “May your body crumble slowly in pain and torment before you make your way to Hell, Pa. May you live long enough to feel the full weight of all you’ve done.”
    I stand on trembling legs. I back away, and go to the basket, pulling the baby, my miracle, from the folds of cloth. I breathe in the smell of her, new and innocent, then walk out of the shack into the trees, leaving Luke to do whatever he wants.
     
    *
     
    Luke finds me and the baby near the spot where I caught him in my trap. 
    “He’s gone,” he says, coming closer, slowly, like he doesn’t want to startle me.
    “For how long?”
    He brushes snow off a fallen tree and leans on it. “He won’t be back.” He studies me, a furrow in his brow. “You all right?”
    “Did you kill him?”
    He hesitates and then says, “No.”
    I’m not sure if I’m disappointed or relieved. I hug the baby closer to my chest.
    “Are you all right, Rose?”
    I try to push down the emotion roiling through me, the sorrow, the agony of memory, the terror rocking my bones, but it presses at my skin, desperate to be free. I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
    We sit there in silence for a few minutes as I try to fight back the darkness. The snow settles, crackling under the warm beams of sunlight that cut through the branches. A woodpecker is working on a tree somewhere not too far off. The sound of its pecking hammers at the mountain air. And in my arms the baby twists its head, opening its mouth, looking for milk.
    Luke moves to stand in front of me. He puts a hand under my arm that’s holding the baby, supporting it. “You want me to take her?”
    I shake my head.
    He reaches up, brushing a snowflake from my hair, then lets his finger run down the length of a damp strand. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, so soft I wonder if the words were really said aloud. His hand moves to my cheek, hesitating a breath before he cups my face in his palm. “I’m here, Rose. You’re safe.”
    The warmth of him bleeds through me. His smell fills my head, pine and earth, and something strange and beautiful that’s all his own. I breathe it in, I lean into it, finding myself in his arms. They wrap around me, pulling me closer, surrounding me. My cheek presses against his chest, the wool of his coat scratching at my skin, and I wonder...
    I wonder, what I would’ve become if Luke had never come to us.
    I close my eyes and let myself feel him, his heartbeat, his breath, his strength. And I know. In my core. In everything I am, I know. He’s become a part of me.
    “I love you,” I say. He needs to know that he fills my heart, whether I’m enough for him or not.
    He goes still, then pulls away a little, to see my face.
    I look up at him. “I love you,” I say again. And my insides swell with it, the connection, a drawing of my soul, up and up until it rests in my throat, urgent to show itself.
    His eyes glisten with tears as they search mine. He bends low, his face closer to mine, his breath hot on my skin, and he waits, he lets me rise to meet him, my lips touching his. Delicate, soft, and my soul flies away, into the treetops. We kiss and hold the