Page 20 of Running to the Mountain Man

I shake my head, even though I feel like scales are falling from my eyes. Just a little.

“It’s even worse than a legal wedding. It’s a spiritual marriage. Only the Prophet can dissolve it. Just me being alone with you makes me an adulterer.”

“Sure, if you believe in all that nonsense.”

Barrett is talking about nonsense that I’ve believed in since I was a child. I was raised in a mostly happy home, the surprise baby at the end of a long line of siblings—18 in all. Then it all went to hell when the Prophet took over.

“It’s not nonsense.”

“Being with more than one woman is unthinkable to me. I don’t understand why you would sit here and defend it.”

“You don’t understand the culture. And that’s okay.”

Barrett scrubs a hand over his face. “Look at you. You’re a badass. You fucking poisoned an old creep so you could escape. You climbed halfway up Windgrave Mountain alone and then took over my house like you fucking owned the place. That’s not a sweet and demure sister-wife. That life is bullshit. And I don’t know why a self-possessed woman like you would put up with it.”

With that, Barrett throws back the covers, pulls on those godforsaken sweatpants again, and mumbles something about needing to add some logs to the fire.

He leaves, and I take a moment to think about what he’s saying.

I think about everything I’ve been through. I think about the way things were before the Prophet took over. I do remember my mom and her sister-wives being jealous of each other. I do remember going weeks, sometimes months, without seeing my dad. We didn’t have enough food. My sisters had to make their own clothes or settle for hand-me-downs. I remember a lot of good times with my siblings as a child. I always had someone to play with. I was never alone.

But if I’m honest with myself, it was never ideal.

I was scared of men until I met Barrett.

Finally, I come out of the bedroom and find him nestled in his recliner, staring at the fire.

“You said you regret to inform me that I’m not married.”

“Yeah,” he says, dragging his eyes away from the fire to look at me.

“When you said that, why did it feel like you did not regret that at all?”

“Irony, baby.”

“That’s it?” I ask, taking a step closer.

When I’m close enough, he hugs one arm around my waist and drags me onto his lap with a breathtaking lack of effort on his part. One second I’m standing next to him, and in the next, I’m straddling this massive man on his recliner.

His hands are on both of my thighs. I stare down at his face, processing how close I am to this man now. How I’ve never been so close to a man, ever.

“I don’t understand what’s happening here,” I say.

“Don’t you?” His hands move up an inch, causing heat to build in dangerous places. Unfamiliar places.

I shake my head. “I never thought I was attractive to anybody. And at the same time, I never found anyone attractive. I thought something was wrong with me.”

Slowly, Barrett drags his hands backward, so close to my ass, but not quite. “Goldilocks, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. If anybody in that godforsaken cult can’t see that, then they’re out of their minds.”

Barrett has a strange way with words. I like the way he talks plainly, and I almost believe him. But I was only chosen in marriage as a punishment. None of the younger men in the church ever gave me a second glance. Which was fine with me because I never thought anything about any of them, either.

I’m not sure what to do with my hands, so I rest them on his upper shoulders, on that triangular muscle at the base of his neck. I try to remember my half-assed anatomy lessons. Trapezius. That’s it. They look like a natural place to hold on, and I desperately need something to hold on to because every new reaction from my body is making me dizzy.

“Before Olivia, Louisa, and I decided things were so bad we needed to leave, I thought polygamy was my only choice. I didn’t want to be with anyone in particular, but I thought these people understood me. This is what my family has done for literally centuries. It’s all I knew. I thought at least it was a safe choice.A familiar choice. I could choose a husband or I could be the strange girl who spent all day picking wildflowers and in the greenhouse making oils and tinctures.”

I’m now unconsciously stroking my thumbs over Barrett’s shoulder and collarbone. His gaze is heated as he replies, “Doesn’t sound strange to me. It’s pretty fuckin’ sexy that you know how to do that shit.”

He makes me blush. No one but my girlfriends ever compliments my intellect.

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