He was gone in a flash and Justin stood there with me watching. “We got lucky with him.”
I turned in his arms, not caring that we were in public. “Our son is damn amazing.”
“Hey, don’t cuss here. You’ll get us kicked out before the food is served and it looks like quite the spread.” He tweaked my nose gently. I looked to his face, my eyes tracing the scars that ran down the side of his face from a skiing accident years ago.
This life was not what I’d ever thought I’d have. Normal. Safe. Loving.
I laughed softly—the sound of my own laughter still strange to my ears—and put my head against his chest. He tightened his arms around me. “I talked to Noah earlier. I have to go to California again next week. Hollywood, if you can believe it.”
A sigh slid out of me. “He may be your best friend, but I think lately he’s been trying to see if he can spend more time with you than me and Bear. You cheating on me with him?”
He laughed and shook his head. “His legs aren’t as nice as yours.”
A sigh slid from him, and with it went the mirth. “It’s another promo possibility. The sponsors won’t sign me if I don’t show the right amount of willingness. You know that. And we could use the money. The roof is going to need to be replaced in the spring.”
I did know that. Justin was a world-renowned stunt skier and had more than his fair share of magazine spreads. But . . . he was getting older, and the competition was getting younger. What money he made now had to see us through a very long time.
That or I’d have to explain why I had several million dollars of unmarked bills buried in the barn. Money I took not to spend, but to keep out of my father’s hands. Money I took to punish him more than anything else. Money that I had suspected would be tracked back to us if we used it.
“Don’t worry.” Justin kept his arms around my shoulders. “It won’t be a long trip, and if it goes as planned, I won’t have to do more sponsorships. We’ll be set for life.”
“Are you serious?” The urge to pepper him with questions rushed through me. Why hadn’t he said anything earlier? He grinned at me, the dimples that Bear had inherited showing up through the two-day stubble.
“Trust me, baby. This is the score I’ve been waiting for.”
Score. I snorted softly. As if he were some sort of bad-ass.
The money he’d made through the years was always enough, but barely. Seventy-five thousand was standard for him, and I made sure the foal crop each year paid for itself and then some. Not a lot, but at least I wasn’t taking away from what he made.
“I wanted to surprise you when I came home with the check. Maybe I could cash it and we could roll around on all the bills naked on the bed.” He winked at me and I shook my head, laughing again. Laughter . . . so absent before, and my life was filled with it now.
“You are something else, you know that?” I arched an eyebrow at him.
He grinned down at me. “That’s why you married me, isn’t it? ’Cause I’m a special guy.”
The green myst swirled around the truck and pushed the hulking weight from the edge of the water, out until it was over the depths. The ice cracked under the weight of the truck as it slid, rolling across the shoreline until a weak spot gave. The truck went sideways and down until the entire driver’s side was under water, leaving the passenger side sticking out at an angle. Justin and Bear were on the driver’s side, and the water swirled up around them, filling their side slowly. I blinked through blood running down the side of my head, the smoke and taste of death magic burning my lungs. I reached across for Bear, but I couldn’t move my legs.
Justin wasn’t making any noise; he wasn’t fighting to get out. To get us all out.
“Justin.” I croaked his name out, even though I knew . . . the angle of his neck was one I’d seen too many times, and it was far from natural.
I twisted in my seat, and pushed Justin from my mind because there was nothing I could do for him, and Bear needed me. My son whimpered and reached for me with his right hand, but my seatbelt had tightened, jerking me back against the seat. My left wrist was broken, I was sure of it, but worse, I was pinned by the side door. It had bent inward from one of the revolutions of the truck and had both my legs jammed tightly under the metal.
“Baby, I’m here.” I pushed with my unbroken hand against the metal around me as I reached for him with my left.
“Mama . . .” His whisper faded with each syllable.
“I’m here, Bear.” I stretched for him. Stretched for his hand that he was no longer lifting to me as it flopped into the water filling up around him, circling around his chest, creeping up to his chin where it stopped.
“Bear, Bear, talk to me!” I fought my seatbelt and the metal trapping me, holding me away from my Bear. Panic surged, and I fought to get my hand to my lower back, to my knife. My fingers found the handle and I ripped it out, cut the seatbelt in a single slash, but I was still trapped by my legs.
Removing the seatbelt gave me the inches I needed to grab his arm, so I could circle my hands around his. I pulled him and his body flopped toward me. Flopped. Flopped. Limp. Dying. Words and emotions scattered through me like explosions gone wrong.
My heart. My boy. The skin of my legs tore, as I fought to get to him, so I could do CPR. It wasn’t enough, my movement didn’t free me enough to pull him out.
“Mama . . . it hurts,” he whispered. So softly, slipping away from me. I was going to lose him.
I screamed for him, screamed his name. “Bear, you hang on, baby, hang on!”
The click of a weapon cut through my screams, taking me to my past in an instant, a tendril of green swirling in around my face.
The tip of the gun slid through the front passenger window in front of me. I clamped my mouth shut and swallowed the screams as Justin’s head jumped, a bullet slamming through it. His blood sprayed the water, invisible against the black ink of the lake.
A second click of the weapon, the brush of magic against my skin and I closed my eyes. At least I would be with my boys. With my Bear.
I let a breath out and waited for the sound of the hammer to fall.
There was nothing, just a quiet sloshing of feet and legs through the water, loose chunks of ice bumping against the outside of the truck and then my head exploded with bright white light and shattering pain and my head slid under the dark water.
Chapter Two
Dreams, just dreams. The accident wasn’t real. We had made it home from the Christmas party with no problems, no hint of magic or death. How often had nightmares of losing Justin or Bear visited me over the years? Often enough that I shouldn’t have been surprised that I’d had another.
I told myself that simple and yet so very complex lie as I swam upward out of the mire that was a drugged sleep, the heavy taste of chemicals coating my tongue that screamed I’d been put out and not knocked out. Sleep, but more like the sleep of the dead. No, not dead. Just tired. I let myself live in the lies a little longer.
We must have stayed too late at the party. Had I drank too much? No, that wasn’t possible at a Mormon party. I knew I was lying to myself, but I let the lies stay at the front of my mind because that was safer. That was a better place for them as I struggled to put the pieces together. I needed time to let the truth sink underneath the fog of almost awake, while I still clung to the edges of sleep and the reprieve it held for my fear.