Hydraulic Level Five (1) (50 page)

“It’s time for me to go.” Samuel’s tone was tinged in sadness. “I have to be in Denver by noon to board my flight, and I told my parents I’d go to church with them.”

I groaned and shifted against him. “It’s too early. The sun isn’t all the way up.”

“If we wait for the sun to be all the way up, it’ll be noon.”

“Are you afraid to miss your flight?”

“No.” Samuel didn’t put up much of a fight. He turned toward me, propping his head on his hand. “I’d stay here all day with you.”

“Really?”

He lowered bright eyes to mine, brushed his lips against my temple. “Yes.”

I realized, then, all I had to do to keep him in Lyons was ask him to stay. He was serious. And if I were selfish enough to let him quit his book tour, he’d do it for me. Here, then, was my first test of friendship—fight for Samuel’s reputation. If he bailed on his commitments for me, it would cause him immense professional damage. I couldn’t let him do that. Time for a compromise.

“When do you have free time again?”

“Um, let me check.” He glanced at the time on his cell phone—six thirty—and dialed a number. “Caroline? Sorry to bother you so early.”

Oh frick.

“I know that, but still…At the ball diamond. Look, can you please check my schedule over the next few weeks and tell me when I have a couple of days free?…Okay…Right…No, decline that…I’m positive. Block those days…”

My heart thudded, fast and hard. Samuel was going to come back before Rocky Mountain Folks. I nervously tucked a loose curl behind my ear. He pulled the curl out again, playing with it while he talked.

“Yes, I packed yesterday…Yes…No. I’ll be at Mom and Dad’s in a bit…” Samuel glanced up at me, frowning. “Yes, she is. Caro…
Caro
…” He tossed his phone on the blanket, falling back.

“She’s angry?”

“More hurt than angry.”

I folded my arms over his chest, resting my chin there so I could look at him. “That doesn’t give her the right to be rude.”

“I gave her my word on something that I never should have.”

A current of fear lurched through me. “What did you promise her?”

“That we’d try the romance thing once the final
Water Sirens
book was published. But my heart was never in it, and it was over before it even started. It was grossly unfair to her, and I called it off the night of our camping trip. I guess—” He ran an aggravated hand through his hair. “I guess I was at a crossroads in my life and I didn’t know which way to go. Neither direction seemed better than the other, so I just chose
.
If I’d known a third road was open to me, I would have taken it in a heartbeat.”

I noticed for the first time he wasn’t wearing the Rolex Caroline gave him for his birthday. I tried not to smile.

“What’s the third road?”

“The one that you’re on.”

His soft mouth curled and man, did I want to kiss him. I smoothed the hair from his face, relaxing the furrows beneath. “There’s nothing you can do about hurting her, now. Don’t let this spoil our last few minutes together, okay?”

He nodded, his sleep-heavy eyes refusing to leave mine. “I have four days open in the second week of July. Can I see you then?”

“Mm-hmm.” My eyes flicked to his mouth again.
Don’t do it, Kaye. Don’t you force that window open.

“Yes…oh crap.” Molly and I were spelunking that week with a client—the Great West Caving Club. I explained my dilemma to Samuel, struggling to keep my eyes off his mouth.
Don’t kiss him. Where is your resolve, you jellyfish?

“Is caving something a beginner can pick up easily?”

A smile spread across my face. “Absolutely. I’ll help you! If you’re in, of course.”

“No Hector?”

“No Hector.”

“I’m in.” He parted his lips and leveled warm blue eyes on me and, screw it, there went my resolve. I hovered over him, placing a chaste kiss on the corner of his mouth.

“Thank you for giving Neelie and Nicodemus a happy ending,” I murmured. “Knowing they’re somewhere in the Alps, alive and loved…it’s the way it should be.”

“You’re welcome.” His hands froze over my waist. “I’m happy it makes you happy.”

I kissed the other corner of his mouth. “Thank you for wanting me to be happy.”

He grunted in reply and started to move. I shook my head, kissing each of his eyelids.

“And thank you for wanting me, period,” I whispered.

His torn eyes held mine. “Don’t think I’m complaining, but you said
no
to this at the cookout. I’m not—I’m not sure what you want from me, Kaye.”

Crud, I didn’t know if I could answer that. “It’s probably good we’ll have some physical distance between us for a while, give us a chance to get to know each other again. That would be the right thing to do. But then we have Rule Number Two: provide emotional and physical warmth.”

“Don’t forget Rule Number Four: want what is best for each other.”

I brushed a finger along the ridge of his nose. Samuel watched as it slid away.

“What do you want?” he repeated.

“What do I want?”

“Yes.”

Don’t tell him. Don’t string him along.

But you just vowed to be honest with him, you twit.

He’s leaving. You’ll tell him and then he’ll be gone five minutes later.

But that’s just it—he’s leaving for New York. He needs to know before he leaves.

I scrunched my eyes shut and called up my reserves of courage. “I want
you
. A lot. And I should have told you every single day, too—that was just as much my failure as it was yours.” I opened one eye, then the other, not sure what I would find.

He sucked in a breath, his entire body rigid and intent on my next move. “Now tell me what is best for you, Firecracker. Because truthfully, I’m not sure.”

Even though every tingling nerve in my body protested, I rolled off his chest and settled into the crook of his arm. “Friends for now. I think it’s best, don’t you?”

“How so?”

I brushed the tiny white scar between his left thumb and index finger. When he was nine, he’d accidentally put his hand through a window pane after rapping it too hard, because Danita had locked him out of the house.

“I know all of these little marks,” I said wistfully. “Yet there’s so much we don’t know, as manic as we were about each other.”

His arms tightened around me, his only response.

For me, it would never be enough to simply call him “friend,” and I could now see that it wouldn’t be enough for him, either. Samuel was a part of me, as much as the veins in my arms or the muscles in my legs were a part of me. We’d waited this long to suture ourselves together. We could wait a few months for each other, couldn’t we? There was something sublime in the waiting, despite the dysfunction…a painful devotion to each other that spanned time and circumstance.

So, despite “friends for now,” there in the quiet morning of Lyons High’s baseball field, I closed the gap and pressed my lips to his. It was a gentle, careful, goodbye kiss. One that left me aching when I released his bottom lip. One that begged him to wait for me. To wait until our window returned.

As ever, he kissed me back.

Continue reading for a short preview of the upcoming sequel:
Skygods

Skygods

Skydivers, arrogant in their ability to navigate the heavens,
rejects their fragile state and calls themselves gods of the sky…

Chapter 1: Blue
Sky, Black Death

A skydiver’s mantra or greeting:
Enjoy the exhilaration of the open sky,
but never forget the mortal earth below.

Hydraulic Level Five [working title]
Draft 1.22
© Samuel Caulfield Cabral and Aspen Kaye Trilby
22.
An Inheritance and State

T
HREE
M
ILLION
D
OLLARS
. All of it in a trust fund left behind by his dead parents which, now that he is eighteen, is at his disposal. According to the lawyer, the fortune would’ve been nine million if the estate hadn’t been obligated to pay his mother’s debts after she jumped. Not that he wants a dime of it. Caulfield scowls at the memory of the piggish man with squinty eyes and a stupid-looking bowtie that choked his fat neck. He doesn’t need a stranger to remind him his mother had preferred ski slopes, sports cars, and spending sprees in Boston’s Back Bay to her son.

“Caulfield, hit the on-deck circle!” Coach bellows from the opposite end of the dugout. Caulfield scoops up a bat and sprints to the circle for warm-up swings. He has to get his head in the game, his last ever with Bear Creek High. He’s wanted the state title for so long, and now it’s three colossal runs away—so impossible just fifteen minutes ago, yet Bear Creek managed to load the bases in a ninth inning rally.

Bright stadium lights wash the field in white, heightening the exhilaration of the night game. He pushes his hat brim down to shield his eyes from the glare.

“Straighten out that swing, you’re a little wild today.” Caulfield nods to the hitting coach and focuses on the next pitch, clobbering the imaginary ball. “That’s better.”

The odd thing is, baseball has begun to lose its sheen of magic. The University of Colorado, along with several other colleges, offered him baseball scholarships. He turned them all down. The idea of playing ball another four years seems daunting. Really, all he wants to do is plow through the next two years until Aspen graduates from high school, and he can once again see her every day.

She’s up there in the stands, like she always is—screaming his name when he’s up to bat, waving as he takes to the outfield. To her, he’s Caulfield: attentive boyfriend, hell of a ballplayer, and best friend since five. How would she feel about Caulfield: child of a disbarred lawyer and nutcase socialite? Or Caulfield: sack-of-shit millionaire who’s too scared to touch his inheritance, even to buy his girlfriend a reliable ride? Caulfield tears through another swing.

“Number Nine, you’re up!” Caulfield shoulders the barrel as the hitter before him strikes out. A thrill shoots through him every time he hears “Number Nine.” Ted Williams—the Splendid Splinter himself—wore the number nine for two decades in Boston. Someday he’d see that retired number flying high above Fenway Park. Maybe he’ll use his mother’s money to do it and hopes she burns with revulsion, wherever she is. The more he learns of her, the more he can’t stomach thinking of her as “mother.” He should just call her Rachel Caulfield. No, just Rachel.

Caulfield digs one foot into the batter’s box, then the next.
Time to focus. Ninth inning, down two runs. Runner on third, runner on second, runner on first.
He has to hit it deep. The crowd behind him is a roaring machine. He hears Aspen’s voice, and Maria’s and Esteban’s. Zoning them out, he studies the pitcher as he shakes his head once, twice, and wind-up. The ball’s coming in high—too high. He holds his swing.
Crud, slider.

“Strike!”

Coach roars at him to watch for breaking balls, as if he doesn’t already know. He plants his feet, pure fury pulsing through his veins, his heart pounding
Ra-chel…Ra-chel.
Fuck her. Fuck her for distracting him during the biggest game of his life, for keeping him from Fenway Park, and for despising her only child. He hates her money. He swings hard.

Too early.

“Strike!”

“Fuck!” Caulfield growls, earning him a warning glare from the umpire.

“Come on, Caulfield! Get your head out of your ass and in this game!” “This isn’t tee-ball, this is State!” The crowd behind him jeers, and Caulfield knows they will hang, draw and quarter him, then stick his head on the fence post if he screws this up. He narrows his vision to the pitcher, watching his wind-up, the angle of his arm, bracing himself. This one’s coming in low. He holds his swing.