Page 10 of The Source of Storms

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“This is my home, Halja.” He gestured around him. “The only place I’ve ever lived. My family, my inheritance. This steading will become mine. It’s where I always thought I’d raise my own kids, you know? I can’t just… just leave.”

“But you said I was your family. You said that.” I felt the tears threatening and I began to panic. This was all going wrong. So, so wrong.

“I know, I know. And I meant it. I just… Hal, we’re not even married.”

“We could change that though. If that’s important to you, we can change that right away.” I stepped toward him, but he stepped back. The motion hit me like a slap.

“No, Hal. Not like this. This isn’t what I pictured. This isn’t what I want.”

“What do you mean?” I heard the desperation in my own quavering voice. I sounded pathetic.

“This isn’t what I want,” he repeated. “I want something normal, something easy. I want to take my time and build my home here with someone. I don’t want some big, dramatic escape.”

I was stunned into silence. I had not prepared myself for this.

“I’m sorry, Halja. Really, I am. But you just… You’re always in some crisis, you know? You’re always dealing with shit from your family and it’s always some big problem with you. Always so much of a burden. It’s too much. I just don’t want to deal with it anymore. You just… You aren’t what I’m looking for.”

Where his action had struck me before, those words finished the job. Deep, unfettered pain ripped through my ribcage. I felt my heart breaking, every crack, every tear palpable as it did. It was everything I had always feared being. Everything I’d fought not to be –– a burden, a mess, an inconvenience. And straight from the lips of the man I loved.

“I’m sorry, Hal, really. I am.” He shook his head and backed away.

“But you said… You told me I was your family, Sigurd. You don’t just say that to someone. You don’t. You have to mean that.”

He flinched as the tears spilled down my face. “I know. I know, and I’m sorry.”

I didn’t know what to say. I stood dumbfounded in the yard as a light snow began to fall, as Sigurd continued to back away.

“Wait,” I said, and began pulling the hair beads he had so recently given me from my braids.

“No, keep those. Please, they were a gift.”

“I don’t want your gifts!” I yelled. “I don’t want anything from you, take them back.”

“But they’re–”

“Take them!” But he didn’t move to take them from me, so I began throwing them into the mud at his feet, one by one, as I cried.

“Halja, come on, don’t do this.”

“I told you I don’t want them, so come get them!”

He finally walked back over and took the rest from my hand, picking up the few from the mud. “Good luck, Hal,” he said. “Be careful out there. Take care of yourself.”

I choked out a sob as he turned and walked back toward the house.

For a long time I was frozen there, watching him go, until I finally uprooted my boots from the snow and ran to the blue roan. I was overwhelmed with rage and shame. Deep, heavy, idiotic shame. All I wanted was to be far, far away from Sigurd. I yanked up the reins and turned for the gate, urging the horse into a gallop.

Tears streamed down my face as we raced toward the forest. How could I have been so stupid? So shortsighted? Of course he didn’t want to go! Of course he wouldn’t leave his home here for someone like me! Of course he didn’t love me! How could he? How could he ever love someone like me?

The whole scene played over and over in my head. His words, the feelings, the desperation, the loss. I was a burden. I was toomuch. I beat myself with the fresh, sharp memory of it, again and again.

I was coming apart, unraveling at my edges, my seams. All the stories that had made me, the memories that had cobbled me together, were flying away in the wind as I rode. Peeling and shedding in painful, ragged pieces. Dissolving as I fled the false, broken scene of my childhood. I was terrified. I did not know what would be left of me, what would remain at my core, when all this coming apart ended, or if it ever would.

My hair whipped back behind me, braids unraveling and flying loose without the beads to hold them as the shame within me grew more monstrous. I must have been a feral visage, hair, tears, and snow flying as we raced headlong into the coming winter.

CHAPTER THREE

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