She shook her head but still didn’t say anything. I finished off the last of my refried beans and sat back, holding my water glass. I’d demolished my margarita long ago.
“No, I think I’m well hidden here,” she said. “I snuck out in the middle of the night. Not even my parents or my siblings know where I went.”
“Parents and siblings?”
“They’re all in the cult too. They joined when my oldest sister was a kid. My mom got all of us into it. Everyone else seems fine with that lifestyle. Not me. I begged numerous times to leave. To go live a normal life. All that landed me was extra chores and solitary confinement.”
Solitary confinement? It was hard to believe anyone would put their own child through that.
“As long as I don’t go to the police or the news media, or try to contact my family, I’ll be fine,” she said. “They won’t care. People who’ve left before? They’re forgotten almost as soon as they walk out the door.”
Crap. That sucked. I kept my mouth shut, though. Anything I could say would only make her feel worse about her situation.
“So, you escaped and signed up for a mail-order bride program?” I asked.
I’d been curious why women had done that. Four had already come to town and somehow managed to win over my team members. I just knew one thing. Bobbi was pulling the strings of this puppet show from her perch behind the front desk at the Wildwood Valley Inn. Someone needed to stop her before any more women showed up in town.
Or maybe not. If she’d helped this beautiful angel in front of me escape from her situation, how could I be mad? In that case, Bobbi was actually a hero.
“We wrote back and forth for seven months,” she said.
My eyebrows lifted. “Seven months?”
Had Bobbi been at this that long? I wasn’t under the impression any of the guys had been communicating with their brides for more than a few weeks or so. Most of them didn’t evenrealize Bobbi had been messaging on their behalf. At least we all assumed it was Bobbi.
“You told me about all your adventures,” she said. “It seemed so realistic, especially the stuff about your daily grind on the logging crew. The squirrel launching at Jareth’s face, the prank on the new guy with the bottle of urine, Trey chopping the rotisserie chicken in half with a chainsaw…”
Those words froze me. I stared at her, lips parted, jaw gradually lowering until I was gaping. Bobbi wouldn’t have known about any of that unless someone told her. But even that would require the cooperation of someone on the logging crew with me. Someone with a big mouth. I couldn’t think who that would be.
Finley didn’t seem to notice the way I’d gone still. Or maybe she did, and she didn’t care. She kept talking, eyes soft with memories that weren’t really memories—more like imagined versions of what she hoped life might be.
“All our books had to be approved—even the ones we checked out at the library,” she said. “But I’d sneak over to the magazine section when I was there and read about grocery stores and concerts and late-night diners that stayed open until two in the morning. I used to dream about what it would be like to walk down an aisle and choose my own shampoo. Not just the soap we made ourselves.”
Her eyes shimmered. I couldn’t stop staring at her. Not just because she was so beautiful, but because she was so full of life.
“I want to do everything,” she continued. “Go to a movie. Eat cotton candy. Ride a Ferris wheel. Make pancakes at two in the morning because I can. I want to go to one of those coffee shops where they write your name on the cup, and they spell it wrong, and it doesn’t matter because the coffee is hot and the place smells like cinnamon.”
A smile ghosted across her lips.
“I want to dye my hair. Get my ears pierced. Try sushi and hate it. Order dessert first. I want to fall asleep with music playing in my ears and wake up and choose my own clothes and not have to ask permission to walk outside.” Her voice turned quieter. “I want to kiss a man.”
That pulled me straight back to the present. I blinked at her.
“You’ve never…”
She shook her head. “No. I wasn’t allowed to date. And I was lucky, I guess. The elders in our group had favorites. Girls they trained. Groomed. For a long time, I was just too young. They had their hands full with the others.”
My stomach turned. My hands clenched into fists.
“But I knew my time was coming,” she added. “They started watching me differently. Making comments. I was sixteen the first time one of them asked if I’d been ‘protecting my purity.’ I didn’t know what it meant then, but I do now. I didn’t want that to be my first time. I didn’t want that to be my life. They still left me alone…but I’m twenty-three. It was a matter of days before one of them claimed me.”
She looked straight at me, unflinching.
“So I left. And now I’m here. With you. And I feel…” She exhaled. “Safe. For the first time, I feel safe. And I know you didn’t invite me here. I know you didn’t mean to be my… fiancé. But I’m here. And I want…” She bit her lip. “I want you to be my first kiss.”
That soft little request nearly brought me to my knees. I’d kissed plenty of women. I’d never kissed one who looked at me like I was a wish she’d whispered under her breath for years.
“You want me to…?” I dared to prompt.
