Court laid the little packet down on the outside of the sleeping bag and turned back to face me. He kissed me again, softly, and his body pressed hard against mine.
He stopped kissing me, took my face in his hands as he stared into my eyes. “Adela, it’s okay.” He pulled me in close, nuzzling my neck, right below my ear and whispered, “We don’t have to do anything.”
I sighed. Relief mixed with disappointment flowed from every particle, every molecule, every corpuscle and cell within my body. I wanted to make love with Courtland. But I kept thinking, would this be happening if we weren’t forced into this situation, sharing a sleeping bag and trying to keep warm? If we were back at my ranch tending to Big Blue, would we want this? Would we be doing this? Would we even be together? I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to find the answers as if the darkness held some magical solution to my feelings. I did want this. I did love Court. Through earthquakes and fires, fate had a weird way of making things happen.
“Let’s just lie here and … kiss and stuff,” he said.
“We can do that.”
Court stroked my cheek and lowered his hand back down to my right breast. He kissed me again and moved back to my neck. I pressed my mouth against his shoulder. His skin tasted salty and I exhaled when I realized I had been holding my breath.
Court twisted his fingers in my hair with one hand and massaged my breast with the other. I relaxed and tangled my fingers in his dark silky curls, breathing heavily into his shoulder. Was he really okay about not doing it? I may have been scared—of what I didn’t know—but one thing was for sure, I wasn’t a bit sorry that he wasn’t Max.
~~ Courtland ~~
I had wanted everything, all of this, to be more than perfect for Adela, and I thought I would explode. She was my world. Now and forever and there was nothing, nothing in the world that I wouldn’t do for her. If she didn’t want to do anything more than kiss and a little touchy-feely, then I was down with that. Rolling over onto my back, I tugged her in close as she rested her head in the crook of my shoulder. She was lovely. I stroked her hair, totally amazed that she even let me touch her. “I love you, Adela Castielle,” I whispered. “I will die loving you.”
She squirmed and turned to face me. As our eyes met, she said, “Court, I’m glad you love me because I wouldn’t be laying here beside you if I hadn’t been sure of that. I knew how you felt not just because you told me, but because I feel it, in here.” She placed her hand over her heart. “The way you treat me, your gentle mannerisms, I feel you in my soul. Anybody can say ‘I love you’, but not everybody makes you feel loved … and … all this is good because I feel loved and I … I love you too.”
I closed my eyes, thinking I’d died and gone to heaven. She placed her head back down on my shoulder and I squeezed her tight, kissing the top of her head. “I’m glad. I’m so very glad.”
I loved the feel of her smile against my skin and I wanted to remain like that forever. But as much as I wanted to stay under the sleeping bag with her naked beside me, I knew we had to get up and get dressed and find some food, or we’d end up lying there next to each other dead.
“Are you thirsty? I’m thirsty,” Adela said.
I sat up and reached for the jug of water. It was only half-full and the last we had. I handed her the jug and she drank before passing it back to me. “I’m gonna go check the water faucets. If there’s running water in the tap we can boil it over the fire if need be.”
“If there’s running water, we can take a shower!”
“Yeah, and our clothes are dry now so a shower sounds like a really good idea before we put them back on.”
We were in luck. The shower was cold but clean. Adela stood under the freezing water for about a minute before she couldn’t stand it any longer.
By time I finished in the shower, Adela was sitting by the fire running her hands through her wet hair, fully dressed.
I tugged up my pants. “You stay here. I shouldn’t be too long.” I pulled my shirt down over my head and ran my hand through my wet hair, spraying water all over the floor. “While I’m gone it would be better if you didn’t go out, and don’t answer the door unless it’s me.”
“Who else would it be? It’s not like we’re expecting anybody, nobody lives here, and I doubt anyone is going to come visiting.”
I sat on the floor and pulled on my socks and shoes. “Just in case. You never know.”
“I’ll be fine. You worry too much.”
“Okay.” I stood and tucked the knife in my belt and walked to the door. I hated leaving her alone but I really had no choice.
I opened the door and turned toward her. “Don’t open the door for anyone.”
“Okay, okay, jeez.” She waved her hand at me and I slipped out the door.
It didn’t take me as long as I thought it would to snag another rabbit. I found a secluded little nook to hide in and waited. I ended up only sitting there maybe ten minutes when the brown fluffy little critter came hopping out from the bush right in front of me. Studying me with those big round brown eyes—casting off a little red—almost as if to say, “Okay dude, here I am. Kill me. I’m tasty.” I waited until its head went through the snare, aimed my knife and threw. The rabbit fell over on its side and I walked to it and petted its head. “Thank you.” I yanked out the knife, chopped off the head, and skinned it there before wrapping it in a towel I’d snatched from that demolished kitchen so I wouldn’t leave a bloody trail on my way back to the cabin.
Adela must have stoked up the fire because the room felt warm and cozy even without any furniture in it. Just her being in there was enough as far as I was concerned. “I got another rabbit,” I said, holding it out to her. “Poor little fellow gave his life for us.”
I placed the rabbit on the grill that was already sitting in the fireplace.
~~ Adela ~~
We sat in front of the fire eating rabbit, again. It wasn’t as good this time without the marmalade on it. I thought about Max and wondered where he was. Did he ever return to the cellar or even have any intention of returning? Where would I be right now if I had gone with him instead of staying with Court? Would I be somewhere warm and cozy like this? We might be safe and secure with a large group of people or maybe we’d be lost.
I glanced at Court and as usual, I could swear he read minds, because he said, “Do you wish you were with Max right now?”
“No. Why would you ask me that?”
“Don’t know. You had this far-off look on your face and there’s only one person I know who ever made you look that way, aside from your family.”
Did I really have a specific look when I thought of Max? I hated that Court knew that look and associated it with Max. “Well, I was just wondering if I had gone with Max instead of staying with you if I’d be as cozy as I am right now.”
That made him smile. “I’m glad you’re cozy. We can’t stay here too much longer, though. We need more than an occasional rabbit to eat.”
“We could stay here and make this our home.”
“And what do we do when the real owners come back?”
I shrugged.
“If we stay here we won’t ever find your family.”
He knew what buttons to push, that’s for sure. I wanted to find them more than anything else. God willing, they were still alive. They had to be. I couldn’t allow myself to think otherwise and forced a smile. “That’s true. Ambrosia wants to marry you, so we better find her.”
“Right.”
I studied him as a slow smile curved his lips. He really was magnificent to look at when he smiled, much different from the guy in school everyone avoided, which reminded me. “Court, you never did tell me about how those stupid stories about you got started.”
The smile disappeared as his lips tightened into a straight line. “Why do you want to know that?”
“Just interested, I guess.”
He stared at me for a long, humming minute before answering. “It was Max.”
/> “What? Max?”
“Yeah, Max started the rumor.”
“Are you making that up because you don’t like him? Why would Max do that?”
Court shrugged.
“No, he’s the one that told me he heard that about you. Why would he say he heard it if he made it up?”
“Adela, you are going to believe what you want to believe, no matter what I tell you.”
“No. I want the truth.”
Court stood and walked to the other side of the room and I gaped at him. Why was he blaming Max for starting the rumor? Was it so I would hate Max? “Look, I know you and Max don’t get along. That’s always been obvious to me, but I wasn’t even aware that you two knew each other that well until last week when Max told me about the dog. I just thought he considered you were weird and that was why he always called you a freak. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You think if you tell me it was Max that started that rumor, I will suddenly hate Max, then you would be rid of him and wouldn’t have to worry about me liking him, right?”
“No!”
“What, then?”
“This is why I didn’t want to say anything. I knew you would think that.”
“Then tell me how the rumor started.”
He came back and sat next to me on the floor in front of the fire. He kept his gaze fixed on the flames and began. “When we were younger, from as far back as I can remember Max and I were best friends.”
“You and Max?” I laughed; a stupid move on my part.
Court glanced at me and grimaced.
“Sorry. I just have a hard time picturing you and Max as friends. You’re so different.”
“Are you going to let me tell the story?”
“Yes. Sorry. Go ahead.”
“As I was saying, Max and I were best friends. Our mothers knew each other before we were born and got pregnant around the same time. Max and I are only a couple of months apart me in November and him in January.”
“January nineteenth.”
“Yeah. Anyway, we had been best buds ever since I could remember.”
“November what?”
“What?
“November what? What day in November were you born?”
“Oh, November thirteenth.”
“That’s just next week. You’ll be eighteen?”
“Yeah, I told you that.”
“Hmmm … lucky thirteen.” I smiled. “Okay, go on.”
“We were in fourth grade. I had just found out that my mother had died in a car accident. I was sitting on the front stoop when he came walking up the drive, pulling a dog by a leash. Well, more like yanking the dog. He said he found her and came to show me. I hadn’t told him about my mom yet. I hadn’t really had a chance. I’d been sitting there sort of in a daze and when he got closer, he didn’t even look at me. He had been really excited, you know, and talked on and on about where he found the dog and how he came right over to show me. I couldn’t even tell him about my mom because he talked so fast about how it would be our dog because we shared everything.” He paused and sucked in a deep breath of air. “We even had plans to share you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, we both saw you at the same time the day you moved in and at the very same instant we said ‘dibs,’ a little game we played all the time. Whoever said ‘dibs’ first, well, you know. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this. We decided we would both be your boyfriend.”
I must have had a horrible look on my face because Court shook his head.
“It wasn’t like that. We were kids, okay? We figured it would be fine to share you, we shared everything.” Court smiled briefly then turned serious again.
“I digress. When Max got to my house, it was shortly after the news. He didn’t notice all the extra people—neighbors mostly—that were there. He came running up to the steps I was sitting on, dragging that dog along so hard he was choking the poor thing.
“I told him to ease up on the leash and he ignored me and tugged it again. I yelled at him to ease up again but he kept pulling that poor pup. I grabbed the leash from him and told him he didn’t know how to handle a dog and to let me show him. He called me a half-breed like my mother and told me he’d show me how he handled a stupid Miwok. I had never really heard that term before then, didn’t even know what a half-breed was, but it just sounded bad. My mother was part Miwok. Well, you know that. He took a swing at me but I ducked and came back swinging and hit him square in the eye—gave him a shiner that lasted two weeks.”
“Max told me this story, but I think he left out some of the important parts.”
“Figures. After I punched him, he ran home crying, but left the dog. She was a puppy then.”
“Shiloh?”
“Yeah.” He looked at me and then back at the fire. “I got the dog and Max got the girl.”
Max didn’t get the girl. Max got all the girls, I thought. “I’m sorry about Shiloh.”
“Me too.” He wiped the back of his hand under his nose.
“What about the rumor?”
“Well, because of Shiloh, the fight and the fact I’d said he didn’t know how to handle a dog, he told some of the kids at school I was crazy and had some weird idea I could talk to animals and make them do things. Everybody believed him and kept pestering me to talk to their pets. It soon became a big joke all over school. It’s funny how things like that catch on and, well, you know how cruel kids can be. Soon it wasn’t just kids, but their parents too. They called me a freak because I could make animals do things. I guess I can, but it’s just with kindness. Animals respond to kindness, that’s all.”
“I never thought you were a freak.”
“I thought you did. Everyone else did. That’s why I backed down and didn’t bother to talk to you that first day you came to school. I saw you standing in line and then when Max came by and took your hand and you went with him, I figured it was no use. Max had already convinced you, like everyone else, that I was a crazy freak. It all happened so fast I hadn’t even had a chance to talk to you yet. He knew how much I liked you. We’d talked about you that entire first week after you moved in, trying to decide how we were going to get up the nerve to talk to you and whether or not we should wait until school started. After we fought, he did everything he could to keep you from me.”
“I was a little scared that day, new school and all. I got to know Max the day before school started when he and his parents came by welcoming us to the neighborhood. That’s why I went with him that day in the lunchroom. He was the only person I knew.” I wondered if Court had talked to me that day if I would have become best friends with Max. It’s interesting the way things happen. Which way a butterfly flaps its wing can change the course of its journey. Was life like that? Could just a small gesture or a simple hello change the entire path of three people’s lives? Possibly. I wished Court had said hello to me that day.
“I may have gotten the punch in but Max’s words stung more than that black eye. He was supposed to be my best friend. He didn’t even say he was sorry my mother died when he found out. We never really spoke again after that, at least not pleasantly. I wish I’d had the guts to talk to you that day before Max snatched you away.”
I stared at the fire, trying to comprehend the fact that Max had lied or at lease held back most of the story. All these years, he’d kept this secret from me. Courtland’s words reverberated over and over in my head. “He was supposed to be my best friend.”
Max had betrayed both of us.
“Okay, now for something a little less depressing,” Court said, standing and holding out his hand to me.
I stared at him blankly.
“Come on, there’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.”
I frowned, took his hand and he pulled me up, facing him. “Wipe that frown off your face right now.”
I tried, not sure what he had in mind until he placed my left hand on his shoulder and took my right hand in his left. I grinned as hi
s right hand swung around my waist and we danced, swaying to silence, but Court didn’t seem to care. He waltzed me around the room to some song in his head and I giggled the entire time.
Chapter 32
~~ Adela ~~
We sat on the floor and ate some more rabbit while I considered asking Court to be sure to kill something else next time. Rabbit was better than nothing, though, and nothing is exactly what I’d be eating if I were alone. We decided to take a chance on the tap water and Court filled our cups to the brim. He said he swallowed some in the shower and it tasted fine. I hesitated at first as Mr. Montgomery’s words came back into my head about not drinking the water unless it was boiled first or bottled. Considering how far into the forest we were, though, the chances that the water came from anywhere other than that local water tower Court said he saw were slim. The tap water was probably safe here.
Courtland sat close to the fire. I smiled at the twinkling reflection of the firelight dancing on his face. It made his green eyes sparkle against his tanned skin. His hair was so dark and the front part hung over his forehead. He truly looked like a picture I’d once seen in the Pleasant Ridge local museum of an ancient Miwok warrior. Normally he combed his hair back away from his face, but without any gel or other products, his hair did its own thing and he kept pushing the longer strands back behind his ears.
I instantly thought of my own appearance and ran my fingers through my hair. They got stuck in the back in what I thought were some nasty knots that nothing short of a brush with huge bristles would be able to handle. However, the brush had been in the backpack with the extra clothes and most likely nothing but ashes now.
“Damn.”
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