Love After Snowfall by Suzanne D. Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

right. I’m a fool. I’ve lived out here alone to be what he wanted of me.”
    “You don’t have to do that anymore. Marry me, Clem, like I asked.”
    Her kiss this time was tender. She buried her face in his chest. “Is this why God brought us together?”
    “I think sometimes …” Ezekiel began. “Sometimes God sees two people’s hearts an d knows how they’ll match. Kind of like puzzle pieces. I used to do these great, big puzzles with my mom. She’d do the same scenes over and over again, and sometimes, after so many attempts, they’d turn up missing a piece. That bugged her to no end, so she’d carve one out of paper and position it inside. But, you know, it was never really as right as the piece that was supposed to be there.”
    Clementine clutched at him, her hands wound in the fabric of his shirt, as if he’d fade from view otherwise.
    “I think me and you are supposed to be,” he said, “and God knew that.”
    “W hat of Nathan?” she asked.
    “Nathan made you who you are, and I have no regrets about that. I fell in love with the girl who could shoot a moose and carve it up while toting around a man shot in the leg.”
    “Is this love?”
    He brought her face toward his. “How did you feel when you knew you loved Nathan?”
    Her forehead wrinkled. “Giddy. Outside of myself.”
    “And now?”
    She ran a finger over his jaw and across his lips. “Like a satisfaction only you can fill. People don’t fall in love in three days.” She rushed the last sentence, her cheeks pink.
    “Sure, they do when God’s put them together.”
    She bit her lip, a facial gesture that made her appear so much younger, like a girl, afraid to speak before the class.
    “Answer my question,” he said. “I keep asking but receive no answer.”
    She exhaled, the rush of heat from her breath warming his cheeks. “You are a persistent man, Ezekiel Knapp.”
    He grinned. “My mom used to tell me that.”
    “She’s right. I’ll make you a promise, since you’ve made one to me.” Clementine curled her arms between them, her fingers curved into fists. “Just as soon as we reach a hospital and the doctor says you’re recovering, I’ll agree.”
    A delay then. It wouldn’t change his feelings for her. He couldn’t marry her anyway until he was physically able. No way was he spending his wedding night in a hospital bed.
    His mouth turned up, her words sinking in further. “You’re going with me,” he said.
    She ducked her face. “Anywhere you go even to the end of the earth.”
    Her devotion wound around his heart. Was that what Nathan had fostered? That kind of subservient, self-effacing sacrifice?
    “Clem, look at me,” he said.
    She brought her gaze up.
    “You’ve got it all wrong.”
    Worry lines appeared at the corners of her eyes.
    “It’s not anywhere I go you must follow, but anywhere you are I have to be. I’m half a man without you and nowhere at all.”
     
    ***
     
    Her eyes dark, the simmer in her gut sparking, Clementine shot out of the teepee into the frosted air.
    “Clem, come back,” Ezekiel shouted.
    For all his fine words, all the things he’d said to win her heart, this was too much.
    “Clem.”
    She walked to the edge of the pond, the ice crunching beneath her shoes. But he was right and that hurt the most. He was no longer able to travel, and she couldn’t shift him anyway. He’d stay warm and alive here, but over time, the infection would eat away on the inside. She had to leave, go for help on her own.
    She stared at the remains of a beaver mound. This water would be unfit to drink in the spring. Beavers carried disease with them. Disease that moved about unseen like the poison in Ezekiel’s leg.
    “Clem.” His voice was faint with the distance.
    He’d drank the broth well enough, complaining about their lack of salt, then come at her out of left field with this craziness.
    She turned around and gazed southwest. She could get there in a day, but not return. That