Something Borrowed

Chapter 27

Josh

Josh felt like his skin was drawn too tight over his muscles. Like he'd downed three cups of dark, thick coffee on an empty stomach. Like dark storm clouds were brewing on the horizon. Like the goddamn preacher had just eyed his wife like she was a plate piled high with all his favorite foods.

Amelia scooted across the bench, lifting his arm and tugging it over her shoulders. How did she always know what he needed? Or rather, how did the thing she needed always line up so well with what he needed? He tightened his arm around her and turned his face toward her, pressing a kiss to her temple and lingering for a breath. She always smelled faintly of roses, and the scent leached some of the fire from his veins.

Amelia sighed, twisting slightly to look behind them before settling back against him. "That poor woman," she said finally, her fingers toying restlessly with the hem of his coat.

"Who, Katherine?"

She perked up, twisting beneath his arm to look up at him. "Do you know her? Have you spoken to her? She's never around with the other ladies after services, and I've never seen her anywhere but church. I want to speak with her. She doesn't seem happy, Josh."

He released a humorless laugh, shaking his head. "No, Ames, I don't reckon she's happy at all." His heart lurched when he thought about the Katherine he'd grown up alongside. She'd been small, even for a girl, and so shy he'd wondered if she even knew how to speak. Then his mother had died, and he'd found himself sitting alone outside the church before her service, the burn of his father's belt smarting beneath his shirt, the ache of the man's words wrapped like angry fingers around his heart. She'd sat with him for a while in silence, and then asked if he was alright. Her kindness had created an outlet for his pent-up tears, and he'd broken down in an ugly fashion. She had hugged him and said some nice things about Jesus and Heaven, fate and forgiveness. To date, it was the best sermon he'd ever heard. She ought to have been a preacher, not married one.

"Do you think he hurts her?" Amelia asked, snapping him out of the memories with a painful jolt. "She seemed... I don't know. She seemed so anxious. And the way he talks about women, I can't imagine he makes a kind husband..." she trailed off, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth and staring worriedly at the horizon. She was clearly distraught, tearing herself up about a woman she didn't know.

I love you.

"He does," Josh said, fighting back his own confession, struggling to match his wife's selflessness. He had a hard time thinking about anything other than his own heart, and here she was worrying over someone else's.

"What?" she jerked away from him, scowling. "He does? How do you know? We have to do something!" Her cheeks were flaming red, her eyes glowing as hot as the sun. He'd never been so torn in his life. Ripped in half by remorse over poor Katherine's fate and the blazing, animal desire to lay his wife down in the back of the wagon and see how deep inside her that fire burned.

"Ames..." he sighed and shook his head. "You don't understand..."

"I understand everything I need to!" she exclaimed haughtily, crossing her arms over her increasingly-more-ample chest and glaring at him. "That woman is clearly in distress. You said yourself he hurts her! We need to go to the sheriff, or at least find a way to help her! Perhaps we can buy her a train ticket like you planned to do for me. Give her some money so she can start a new life. Or maybe--"

"Amelia," he cut her off, casting his own glare her way. She shut her mouth but kept scowling. "You honestly don't think we've tried?" he asked, forcing his tone to soften. Begging her to see how much it pained him that he'd met with failure. "She doesn't want to go."