by Jane Kindred
“Lukas, you’re breaking up. I can’t understand you.”
“…hear me? —illie, please —st wait —morrow for…—alk…”
“I’m sorry, the line is cutting out. I’m not getting any of this.”
“…—st sleep on it.”
That much I understood. “I will. Good night, Lukas.” I set the phone down, feeling like I’d been dragged naked over a bed of gravel, and pulled the computer toward me on the coffee table to pop out the DVD.
There was an email notification. Cole. All of a sudden, I had an intense ache to be with Cole, to be in the arms of somebody who knew who I was—just Millie Lang, no secrets between either of us—in or out of bed, though I would always prefer in. Cole was ridiculously good-looking. It had blown me away when he’d drunkenly made a pass at me one night when we were studying anatomy together. I was certain he was gay. He’d talked about men exclusively without any indication he was into women. I figured it was the alcohol talking, and I laughed and told him to sleep it off. But the next day, he’d confessed, blushing like a schoolboy, that he’d had a crush on me for months.
I didn’t want to be anybody’s curiosity fuck or to be the one who’d “converted” her gay friend, but Cole had insisted that wasn’t it. He preferred men, he said. Except when he didn’t.
I opened the email and cringed at his frantic message.
Where the hell are you? You aren’t answering my calls or my emails, and you’re starting to scare me. I googled Jerusalem, California, and there’s no such place. I keep hoping I misheard you. I’m about ready to file a missing person’s report. Please don’t be dead.
I tried dialing him, but the connection wouldn’t go through, and even my text message wouldn’t finish sending. The storm must be wreaking havoc with the signals.
I sent him an immediate reply via email, hoping this at least would go through. I’m not dead. Stop freaking out. I am in Jerusalem, California. You obviously don’t know how to use Google. Besides, I said so in my last email, so you didn’t mishear. I’m at, of all places, the estate of none other than Lukas Strand. It’s a total clusterfuck, and I don’t want to tell you about it over email, but suffice it to say, I didn’t know he’d be here and he didn’t know I’d been hired by his wife to rehabilitate his kid. So, yeah. That happened.
I’m going to try to wrap things up here tomorrow. I just can’t be here with Lukas, no matter how sweet his kid is. It’s raining buckets of ice water—I’m staying in a lighthouse, by the way—and a tree totaled my car, so I might not be able to get out of here as fast as I want to. But stop worrying. I’m fine. And I miss you. Be back as soon as I can and will try again to reach you tomorrow. Me. It was how I always signed off, my abbreviation for Millie, though most people just took it for “me”.
I was exhausted, but the fire I’d lit was still burning strong, so instead of retiring to my bed, I lay down on the couch and pulled Konstantin’s blanket over me without getting undressed. I’d be freezing when the fire burned down, but it was toasty warm in here right now, and I figured the cold later would wake me up and then I could crawl into bed. I curled my arms up to my neck under the blanket, gazed into the fire and thought of Cole.
But I dreamt of Lukas.
* * * * *
We were in the forest again, and Lukas had me by the hand, dragging me swiftly over beds of pine needles and dodging branches.
I tugged back against his grip. “I don’t want to go with you. Where are we going?”
Lukas’s voice was deep and ominous. “We have to get to the Grove.”
“What grove? Aren’t we in a grove?”
“The Grove. It’s where you were born.” We hurried onward, moving too fast to converse. I had a stitch in my side and my feet were aching. I was running barefoot, not sure if I had been before. I stumbled and fell, and Lukas turned back. “I can’t carry you. I shouldn’t even be touching you.”
“I don’t want you to carry me. I don’t want to go the Grove. I’m tired.”
Despite his protest, Lukas reached down and swept me off my feet into his arms. “Sebastian will kill me,” he said. “But we have to get to the Grove.”
“What happens if we don’t get there in time?”
“They’ll burn it to the ground.” Lukas took off running at an impossible pace, holding me like I weighed nothing, and we hurtled through the now shadowy pines like Edward Cullen and Bella Swan, darkness gathering overhead. We were nearly there. I could feel it, like the ground vibrating all around us, urging us on.
Ahead, a stand of redwoods formed a circle around a small clearing, just room enough for the two of us to stand in and move about. Lukas set me on my feet but didn’t let go of me.
Green eyes bore into mine. I knew what he wanted. I wanted it too. Something in the back of my mind told me it was wrong, but he was kissing me, and I breathed him in with a sob of relief. This was where I needed to be. This was where I belonged.
Lukas lowered me to the ground, and we scrambled frantically against the pine needles to undress each other. I slid his pants down, the cloth catching for a moment on his glorious erection and then setting it free.
He knelt over me, holding himself a few inches away, and I squirmed and tried to pull him to me.
“Please, Lukas. I need you.”
“If we do this,” he whispered, “you can’t ever leave.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“Good.” He dropped his weight against me, his cock hard and hot against my thigh. “You were meant for me,” he whispered, and then drove himself against me, opening me, hovering just barely inside. He looked down at me, green eyes flashing with desire.
* * * * *
And then the door banged open, and it was raining hard enough to carry the lighthouse off the cliff, and Konstantin was outside.
Chapter Eight
“Konstantin!” I threw off the blanket and dashed out into the rain pelting the porch. Trees were swaying erratically, branches whipping in the wind, and Konstantin, without crutches, was hobbling down the hillside toward the perilous seaside path.
I plunged after him through the storm, stumbling and sliding in the mud. How had he managed this? He’d reached the top of the path, and I cried out and grabbed hold of his arm, but the ground was too wet and the wind too high, and I swayed and slipped against him. We both went down, and I scrambled to right myself, clutching him with one hand while grappling at the hillside with another and trying to scrabble up on my knees, but the ground beneath us began to move.
We were sliding down the path, Konstantin on his back and me on my stomach trying desperately to stop our momentum, grabbing at any hold, but finding everything I grabbed for tumbling away with the rest of the hillside—and us—toward the ocean. I tried digging my feet into the dirt, but there was no purchase. We tumbled with the sliding hillside onto the landing, slowing for a moment so that I thought we were safe, but the crumbling mud above us thrust heavily against my chest and shoved me backward. My feet were scrabbling at the edge, and I felt nothing but empty space behind them. I threw both arms around Koste and held on, thinking somehow I might protect him from the impact on the rocks below if I could just hold tight.
I spun around as my legs went over and flipped onto my back, bracing for the fall. I screwed my eyes shut and felt the dirt giving way as my ass slid toward the edge, but something tore at my hip and snagged. It let out a sharp cry of disbelief as our unstoppable momentum halted. Konstantin was whimpering against me. My heart pounded painfully, halting breaths lurching from my lungs. When the slide didn’t resume, I risked moving a hair’s breadth. Whatever had caught me was hooked firmly in my belt, but I didn’t know how long it would hold.
“Konstantin,” I gasped. “I need you to climb.”
His voice sounded tiny against me. “I can’t.”
“You have to. Climb like I’m a
ladder. Don’t worry about hurting me. I’ll help you. Just get above me.”
He whimpered again and made a halting movement with his good leg, hooking his heel against my other hip, and then clutched at me tighter when his boot cast slipped off my thigh and swung over empty space.
“You can do it, Koste. Just pull your leg up and dig in your knee.”
“But I’ll smoosh you.”
“It’s okay.” I moved my hands from his waist and back to grip him by the thighs and push him upward. “You can smoosh me. You can do anything you have to. I won’t be angry. If the only place you can put your foot is against my face, you do it.”
Konstantin tried again, kneeing me hard in the stomach, but I tightened my gut and didn’t react.
“Good, Koste. Keep going.” I pushed again, and he clambered over me, panic overriding his fear of trampling me, fists in my hair as he grabbed for purchase, his foot almost crushing my throat and then the heavy boot catching me in the ribs, and finally kicking me in the cheek.
He was crying hard by the time he’d cleared me, sliding down again until he was standing on my shoulders. “I’m sorry, Millie!” he gasped through his tears.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” I managed. “You did good.” I inhaled deeply, catching my breath, and held on to his ankles. “Now you have to keep going. Keep climbing. Go slow. Hold on to whatever you can.”
“But what about you?” he sobbed.
“I’ll follow you, but I can’t until you move up higher.” I gave his ankles a push, and whatever hooked my belt shifted, about to give. Oblivious to my terror, Konstantin climbed, inch by inch. I tilted my head back to watch his progress and then steeled myself to try to turn over once he was high enough.
The sharp thing boring into my hip beneath my belt was a root, and it was bending, but there were others above it more firmly embedded in the hillside. I flipped myself toward the root, gritting my teeth against the sharp pain, and grasped for the ones above my head. The fuckers were slippery. I slid down farther, my hipbones grinding into the rocks at the rim of the ledge. I had to get this.
I drove one hand, half fisted with fingers making claws, like a rake into the hillside, hooking the top of one of the stronger roots. I could feel my fingernails tearing at the quick. As I grasped the roots with the other arm, my belt snapped, and I clung to the ones in my hands as the other broke off with the belt and tumbled into the rain over empty space.
I’m pretty sure I wet myself at that moment, though it was hard to tell with the torrential rain pounding against me and adrenaline surging through my veins. I pulled myself up, scraping my pelvis against the sharp edge, and managed to fall forward, flat against the ledge, into the muddy rubble of what had been the path. My arms were twisted at a painful angle, one wrist hooked inside the web of roots, but I was alive and on relatively solid ground.
Though not solid enough. More pieces of the hillside were tumbling toward me, small chunks of rock striking my cheek. I had to keep moving. I had to make sure Konstantin was safe.
I dragged myself up onto my knees and tugged my wrist free, looking up into the rain to see where he’d gone. I couldn’t see him. My heart nearly stopped. Had he slid past me while I was struggling to turn over? Had he fallen from somewhere else? My breath caught on a sob as I began crawling upward through the mud. An inch forward, two back, slowly, slowly making progress.
“Koste!” I yelled, tears and mud and rain sliding over my cheeks. “Please be okay!”
“Ms. Lang?” Roger’s alarmed voice carried down to me from the top of the cliff, and in a moment I saw him, looking around for something to dig his heels into to come down to me.
“No!” I shouted. “No, it’s not stable. Stay there.”
He grabbed at his sopping hair in conflict. “I’ll get Mr. Strand,” he called down to me. “We’ll get a rope or something.”
I was still climbing, knees and toes jamming into the hillside. There were more roots along the edges of the path from the trees that lined the cliff, and I used them for handholds. “Don’t go!” I gasped as he disappeared from above me. He was my focal point.
Roger popped back into view. “What can I do?”
“Not leave,” I managed. I imagined the network of roots was a chain of hands pulling me upward, and I climbed, keeping my eyes on Roger.
When I got close, he came down anyway, slipping and sliding so that I was sure he’d go barreling down the hill and take me with him, but he managed to reach me and held out his hand, clutching the branch of an overhanging tree for balance. I grabbed his hand, and he pulled hard, surprising me with his strength for a man of his age, and then at last I was in the grass on all fours.
“Koste,” I gasped as he bent to help me up. “Where’s Koste?”
“He’s in the cottage. I was coming up the hill to check in on you because our lights came on, but I saw yours hadn’t, and the phone just rang endlessly.” He helped me to my feet, and I limped with him toward the cottage. “I saw him standing here crying, and I took him back to the cottage, and then I heard you.”
In the open doorway—now flooded with light—Konstantin was huddled with a blanket around him as Roger led me up the steps. I grinned with relief, knowing I must look like a ghoul climbing out of the grave, or maybe a golem, covered in so much mud.
Konstantin began to sob. “I’m sorry, Millie. I didn’t mean it!”
“Sweetie.” I sank to my knees beside him and threw my arms around him. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You were sleepwalking.”
“I stepped on you,” he blubbered.
“It’s okay. You did exactly what I told you to. If you hadn’t, neither of us would have made it back up.” He clung to me, crying uncontrollably, and I rose, lifting him as I stood, though my arms ached like they were on fire, with his legs wrapped around my waist. “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
“I’ll get Mr. Strand,” said Roger as we went inside.
I turned to tell him no, but this was for Konstantin, not me, and Lukas needed to know what had happened to his son. “Thank you, Roger.”
* * * * *
Lukas came, with a woman I didn’t know, finding me scrubbing dirt off Konstantin in the bathroom while he sat on the edge of the tub.
“Holy hell,” said Lukas, shaking his head. He went down on one knee beside the tub, his face as white as bleached bones, and closed his hands around Konstantin’s upper arms. “Koste, what were you doing?”
Konstantin looked down at his feet.
“He was sleepwalking,” I said. “I heard the door open, and I ran after him and found him at the top of the trail. It gave way.”
“Why the hell wasn’t the door locked?”
I cringed at the anger in his voice and the black look. “I thought it was. But it’s easy enough to unlock.” I rinsed out the filthy rag in the warm water I’d run in the tub and reached to wipe at Konstantin’s face, but Lukas grabbed the rag from me.
“I’ll take care of him. He needs a shower, not a mud bath.”
The woman still standing in the doorway put out a hand to me to help me up, a warm smile lighting her face. Silver hair was piled in a loose knot at the back of her head, though her face looked ageless. “I’m Karolina. Lukas thought you might want someone to help you clean up who wasn’t him or Roger.”
Still stunned by Lukas’s anger, I went with her, limping up to the second-floor bathroom with Karolina holding my elbow. I felt like the patient for once, instead of the therapist.
“My God,” she said as she helped me undress. “Do you think anything’s broken?”
I shook my head. “Everything hurts, but not too badly.” I peeled off my filthy jeans while she steadied me, wincing at all the places I hadn’t discovered yet that hurt. I looked like I’d been dragged behind a truck.
She frowned as she saw the gash in my side from the ro
ot that had saved my life. “That doesn’t look good. You need to make sure you get that really clean, and we should get you to a doctor tomorrow to check it out.” I nodded and stepped into the shower, trying not to be self-conscious as she frowned at me. “Maybe you should take a bath instead of a shower. You look like you’re ready to collapse.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I think you’re right. But after I hose myself off, or I’ll just be sitting in mud. I have some bubble bath downstairs, if you wouldn’t mind getting it.”
“Of course.” She smiled and slipped out.
I turned on the water, as hot as I could stand, and let it beat down on me. It hurt like fuck against the bruises and cuts, but it was a good hurt. Mud gushed down the drain while I held my face up to the water letting it pour backward over my hair.
In a few minutes, Karolina was back with the bubbles. “I’ll just leave it here on the counter and get out of your hair,” she said. “As long as you don’t need anything else?”
“Yeah, I’m good. Thanks, Karolina.”
I stood under the water for several minutes just getting the mud out of my hair, and finally gave in to exhaustion and filled the tub, pouring in a ton of bubbles. I realized as I relaxed into the water—as much as I could, given the way everything stung—that I had no idea what time it was.
* * * * *
“Millie.” Karolina was gently shaking me awake. I was still in the bath; it was a wonder I hadn’t drowned myself. A fabulous smell seemed to follow her. “I made you some pancakes,” she said as she helped me out. “Unless you just want to go to bed and rest.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost six.”
“Six?” I exclaimed. “In the morning? How long was I asleep?”
Karolina smiled. “Not that long. We got here around five o’clock.”
I dried off gingerly and pulled on the underwear and baggy T-shirt she’d brought from my room. “I’m starving, actually. I didn’t eat dinner. And they smell way too good to ignore.”