Feels Like Summertime (Lake Fisher 1)

“Yeah, Jake?” she replies. She latches on to my arm.

“We need to get married.”

“What?” Her brow furrows.

“It’s the best way to catch Cole.”

Her eyes avoid mine. “Oh.”

“We’ll set a trap. And you will be the bait.” Surely she understands why this is necessary.

“No,” she says quickly. Then she walks away.

44

Katie

Jake follows me, calling my name as I walk back to the big house.

“Katie! Would you stop?”

He breaks into a run, but I’m moving faster. He grabs my arm and jerks me to a halt.

“Let me go,” I snarl at him as he tries to pull me to him.

Jake stops and stares down at me. “Katie?” he asks, his voice going soft. “Are you…angry with me?”

I cross my arms beneath my breasts and look toward the lake. The sun is about to rise. Jake has spent the whole night searching for Cole, and now his night is ruined. It’s daytime. “Why would I be angry with you, Jake?”

He scratches his head. “Honestly, Katie,” he says, “I have no idea. But if you’ll just tell me, I’ll apologize.”

I poke my finger into his chest so hard that he lifts his hand to rub it. “That was the worst proposal ever,” I say, and then I start to cry.

I’ve had to hold it together on my own for so damn long. And now…now I can’t. I just can’t. I sink down on the front porch steps and drop my head into my hands and sob. Jake sits down tentatively beside me and waits quietly. He tries to put his arm around me, but I scoot to the side and shrug him off.

“Okay,” he whispers, “I’ll just stay over here.” He scoots as far away on the step as he can, pressing his side against the handrails.

Finally, when I can speak, I wipe my nose with the back of my hand and say to him, “You know, when all this started, I thought I deserved it.”

“Nobody deserves—” But I hold up a finger and he bites his lips together.

“I was very happily married. I had everything. I had three beautiful kids, and a husband who loved me. We had a happy home in a nice place. We made enough money to support our family. We loved and we lived and we laughed.” I snort out a crazy little snicker. “And then it all ended. Like a bath that’s warm and bubbly and wonderful, it suddenly went cold. The water ran cold, and then it ran out. And then it was me and my kids and we were trying to survive. Just trying to survive.”

I get up and start to pace.

“I was military, Jake,” I say. “I know how to fight and how to shoot a gun. I could have taken Cole out so many times, but if I did, I’d lose my kids. My kids would be alone, so I couldn’t do that. It absolutely kills me that I had to tuck my tail and run.”

I walk back and forth in front of Jake, and chew on my fingernails between words.

“He thought he had me so many times. He thought I was beaten, and having to pretend to let him win…that killed me too. But by the time I realized how crazy he is, I was already pregnant, and I had another life to protect. I couldn’t knee him in the nuts or bang him over the head with a frying pan. I couldn’t poison him or do any of the other things I really, really wanted to do to him. I spent one night with him, the condom broke, and then wham! I was tied to him for the rest of my life.”

Jake scratches his nose.

I gesture to Jake, and then resume my pacing. “And then there you were, a white knight in swim trunks. You showed up, and you made me do the one thing I didn’t want to do!”

Jake sits quietly.

“You want to know what that one thing was?” I ask him.