Hell Transporter (Between) (9 page)

The day before we had to leave, I was in the bedroom packing half-heartedly. Aiden had been moody and preoccupied all day. He came in from refilling the kindling hopper, his features drawn. He seemed to steel himself for something as he asked, “Will you take a walk with me?” The look on his face unnerved me, but I agreed and followed him outside.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

He stroked my hand but didn’t look up. “Aye. I want to show you something.”

I followed him wordlessly through the woods and up a part of the hillside where I’d never been before. The thick underbrush scratched at my legs and he paused to pull tree branches aside so I could pass through.

“I wish I’d my claymore with me. It would make this fair easier.”

“A claymore?”

A flicker of a smile crossed his face and he gripped both hands over the hilt of an invisible sword, slashing it back and forth in the air. “‘Tis a great sword, nearly as tall as a man, and it takes two hands to wield it proper. I haven’t my broadsword, either, which is smaller than a claymore but larger than a dirk.” He touched the dagger on his belt absently as if to check that it was still there. “I used a claymore against the English on the day of my death.”

I shuddered as I remembered seeing the enemy soldier’s head fly away from his body with one swipe of Aiden’s massive blade. I was personally glad he didn’t have the sword as a physical reminder of that day, but I didn’t tell him so. He helped me step over a fallen log and assured me that it wouldn’t be much farther.

The sound of running water burbled through the trees, but I couldn’t see the source. A whisper of a trail materialized in front of us, which made the going easier. My legs were starting to ache from the climb but I didn’t say anything. A light breeze wrapped around us on what would have been a peaceful hike, were it not for the tension coating Aiden’s stride. When we reached the path’s end, the trees gave way to a thin stream. A small covered bridge with a bench in the center was nestled in the woods, overlooking the trickle of water.

“Wow, it’s beautiful,” I said. He took my hand and led me to the bench. “I’ve come to the cabin every summer since I was born and I’ve never seen this before.”

“She’s a bonnie wee bridge, isn’t she?” A sparrow landed next to the water’s edge, fluffed its feathers and took a bath. Nature enveloped us in a pine-scented embrace. Resting against Aiden’s chest, I looked up under the eve of the covered bridge to find the words ‘Be Still and Know’ etched in the wood.

“Did you do that?” I gestured to the words and he shook his head with a private smile.

“No, but it was exactly what I needed to see when I found it. God’s very clever that way, aye?” The smile faded from his face, though and he took both of my hands in his own.

Something was wrong and I had no idea what it could be. I knew he was stressed about the hell transporter—we both were—but this was different. Unease bit at me and my mind whirled to come up with reasons for that look on his face.

Was he going to tell me he wasn’t coming back to Oregon with me? Was he too afraid to see me get hurt by the hell transporter? Where would he go? I couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from him again. Why would he do that to me after all that we’d been through?

“I need to ask something of you, Lindsey and I do not want to. I have spent a great deal of time trying to find a way around it, but I cannot think of another way.”

My eyes pleaded with him to stay but I swallowed hard and nodded for him to continue.

“When I asked your Da for his blessing, he asked me how I was planning to provide for you. Even though I told him I’d a modest inheritance from Uncle Alex, you know I haven’t any money. And you told me at the start of the summer that I’d need papers to find a job, and I don’t have those, either. I’ve naught but a few coins in my sporran. Well, they might be worth a fair price to a collector, I suppose.” He shrugged and looked down at our linked hands.

“Money isn’t important. We’ll figure something out, just don’t…” The words wouldn’t come out.

“Don’t what, love?” His eyes met mine and my hands started to shake.

“Don’t leave me,” I said in a whisper.

“Oh, Lord in heaven,” he said, pulling me tight against his chest. “You thought…? Lindsey,
mo chridhe
, how could you believe I’d ever…?” He turned to face me then and cupped my cheeks in his hands.

“I will never leave you. There is nothing in this life or the next that could keep me from you. Not school, not your Da, not an entire army of men. As long as I draw breath—and even after—I am yours.”

When his lips touched mine, I wrapped my arms around him and held on tight. The tremors in my chest subsided with his kiss and I allowed myself to breathe again.

“So what did you want to ask me? You had me all worried,” I said when we broke away.

“As I said, I’ll need papers and I can’t get them the honest way, so I will need to find someone to fake them for me.”

“But how? I have no idea how you’d get a fake driver’s license or passport or Social Security Number.”

Sadness crept into his eyes and he shrugged. “Regardless of the century, men who are willing to do wrong for a price can always be found.”

“How would you even know where to look?”

“‘Tis not the finding them that concerns me, but the price.” His gaze rested on my hands. “The only thing I have of any real value… well, ‘tis not truly mine, in fact…” He reached out and twisted my wedding ring, the sun glinting off the gems in the gold band.

My mind flashed to that day in between, where he’d proposed while we swam in the lake. The ring had been passed down to him from Nanny Fraser, his aunt on his mother’s side. When I’d been revived after the accident, the ring was still with me, the only proof I’d had that it wasn’t some massive hallucination. For months, it had been my only connection to him and now we needed it to save us again.

“I wouldn’t ask if there were any other way. Believe me. I know what it means to you. To us.”

I pulled off the ring and put it in his palm, closing his fingers around it.

“Aiden, you don’t have to ask. It’s yours. Everything I have is yours. You’re all that matters to me.”

He trailed his thumb over my cheekbone to my jaw, then leaned forward to kiss me. I wound my fingers through his hair and the tension released from him like a rope unfurling in my hands. His touch was tender at first, but then his kisses became deeper, stronger. When he ran his tongue across my bottom lip, I made small noise of pleasure against his mouth. The scent of him, the sound of the babbling creek beneath us, all of it combined made me want to freeze that moment in time forever.

Breathing hard, he leaned his forehead against mine.

“Merci, ma chèrie. Je t’aime,
”
he said.

“I love you, too.”

After a moment, he leaned back, a grin lighting his eyes. “I made you a wee replacement, in case you said yes.” He put the ring in his sporran and pulled out another, this one made from wood. He’d whittled a small band of pine and engraved it with a looping Celtic design. He slipped it on my finger and I was surprised how perfectly it fit.

“You made this?” I asked.

“Aye, it kept me from going mad the day we were apart.”

So I wasn’t the only one. For some reason, the thought made me smile. I held up my hand in the sunlight, appreciating the workmanship of the ring.

“It’s all going to work out, right?” I asked of the woods at large, my eyes drawn to the scripture engraved under the eave of the covered bridge. Aiden began to pray out loud and my heart joined in fervently. The soft music of the stream and the sunlight streaming down through the trees filled me with peace. I didn’t have any answers, but as we got up to leave, I felt more confident about the future than I had in months.

Chapter 11

A shiver of excitement ran through me as I climbed the stairs of Jamison Hall to my dorm room. Aiden was right behind me, hauling my bags—two in each hand—up the interminable steps to the third floor.

“Two hundred lassies live in this building together?” he asked with a little too much interest, earning a hairy eyebrow in response.

“Mmphm, but only one you need to be concerned with,” I replied and he laughed, helping to dispel my nervousness about him meeting my friends. Jennifer, Stephanie and I had agreed at the end of last year to share a triple dorm room again and I couldn’t wait to see them. Still, introducing them to Aiden was another thing entirely.

I turned the key in the lock, part of me hoping to see one or both of my friends, and part of me hoping the room would be empty. The door was already unlocked, though, and when I pushed it open, it was neither Stephanie nor Jennifer who returned my smile, but Paul.

“Hey, Lindsey! Welcome back. Jen told me she hasn’t heard from you all summer.” Paul seemed exceptionally cheerful and friendly, apparently jazzed that school was starting so he could resume his reign as captain of the basketball team.

“What have you been—“ He stopped short in the middle of his welcome as Aiden followed me into the room.

“Oh, hey. I’m Paul.”

Aiden quickly took his outstretched hand. “Pleased to meet ye, Paul. I’m Aiden MacRae.”

Paul started to laugh and Aiden’s eyebrows went up as if to ask what was funny. “Sorry, I had a vision of Shrek just then. I haven’t ever met a Scottish person before.”

Shrek is a cartoon of an ogre from a movie and he has a Scottish accent.
I sent Aiden a mental image of what Shrek looked like and he smiled, a dimple appearing on one cheek.

“Weel, I am no’ exactly an ogre, but ye’re no’ too far off, in truth,” Aiden responded, laying it on thick. “Ye should have met wee Hamish MacLeod. He was about seven feet tall with arms like clubs and a head made of stone. Aye, he may have been part ogre, come to think of it.”

“Awesome,” Paul responded with a grin, nodding his head.

I gestured to the bottom bunk and Aiden dropped my stuff onto the bed. I grabbed the wardrobe bag and hung it in my allocated sliver of the miniscule closet. Jen was a total shoe freak and her stuff always spilled over into my section so that the shutter-style doors never shut. Steph’s side of the closet was neatly organized with her clothes assembled in descending order from warmest to coldest and from darkest to lightest. Just seeing that made me smile, realizing how much I’d missed my friends in spite of—or maybe because of—their quirks.

While I unzipped a duffle bag, I started to ask Paul about Jen, but was interrupted by a squeal from behind me.

“Lindsey!” A 5’10” rocket of smooth abs and straight blonde hair launched herself into my arms, nearly knocking me over. “You said you were going to email me this summer,” Jen pouted, “but I haven’t heard one—Oh.” She stopped, suddenly noticing Aiden. Her eyes swept over him from his tennis shoes to his blond hair.

“Who are you?” she blurted, blunt as always.

“Oh, sorry,“ I said. “Jennifer Hart, Aiden MacRae.
Aiden’s my, um…” I stammered, not sure what to call him.

“I’m Lindsey’s fiancé.” He took Jen’s hand and bent over it with a light kiss.

Jen’s jaw dropped open and then she whipped around to me, seeking confirmation of this outrageous statement.

Words stuck in my throat so that only a panicked squeak made it past my lips.

I nodded.

“Oh. My. GOD! I don’t believe it! Wow…” She turned back to Aiden, looking him over again with an approving nod, suddenly appraising him in an entirely new way. “Holy crap. I can’t wait until Stephanie gets here. She is going to Flip Out.”

“She’s not the only one,” Paul murmured, looking less than thrilled about the news.

Jen wrinkled her perfect nose in confusion for moment, but then sucked in a sharp breath. “Ohhh...” She dragged out the syllable like the ominous soundtrack to a horror film.” Does Ravi know yet?”

Ravi.

I hadn’t thought of him at all since the school year had ended. One drunken kiss had made him think we were back together, and even though I’d told him my heart belonged to someone else, he’d never understood. The thought of seeing him now—and telling him about Aiden—made my stomach writhe like a ball of snakes.

“They’re going to be here any second,” Paul said. “They were going to come up right after dinner to go to the movie with us.”

“You mean Ravi and Micah?” I asked, barely recognizing my high-pitched voice. “They’re on their way up right now?”

“Not Micah, “ Jen responded. “Mona, Ravi’s new girlfriend. She’s known him for—like, what? A day?—and has been plastered to his side the whole time.”

Jen’s mouth turned down—which was really unattractive, even on Jen—but I barely heard her. Blood pounded in my ears and I saw Aiden out of the corner of my eye, looking confused. A knock sounded on the door and I stifled a cry. My eyes darted around the room, wishing there were someplace I could hide so Ravi wouldn’t see me, at least until I’d had a chance to talk to Aiden.

But it was too late.

“Hey, are you guys ready? We don’t want to be—“ Ravi’s soft Indian accent floated through the door as he opened it, but the words died on his lips when saw me.