Spirit Lake

by Christine DeSmet

  The stale air suffocating her, she rushed to a stairwell, stumbling several steps before she realized she was going up and not down.

  Stopping, she floated a hand over her heart to quell its overwrought response to her ragged thoughts. Could love survive for fifteen years in empty spaces?

  Dreaming of what might have been only imprisoned a woman in her own history. I can't still have those kind of feelings for him. I won't allow it.

  With logical thinking back in place, she decided to proceed to the top floor and get this silliness over with.

  She shouldn't have.

  Inside the cavernous, peaked attic room with the porthole window, she found him. And she knew—instinctively—that she was about to walk into deep, deep trouble.

  * * * *

  LIGHT FROM THE lowering sun now poured through the round window onto his shoulders. He slumped over a rickety wood table, his face buried in his hands.

  “Cole?"

  He sat on one of several rusted tubular kitchen chairs, most of which were collecting dust and artful spider webs.

  When he groaned, she rushed to him and gripped his shoulders, thinking the worst. “Are you hurt? Was Rojas here? Let me see. I'll help. I'm sorry about—"

  Snaking out an arm, he startled her, but he used it to rub his face through another moan. She stood still behind him, not daring to breathe hardly, watching with an ache at the way his shaking fingers clawed through his thick, dark hair. Then the same hand, warmed by his face and hair, sought hers at his shoulder, and she obliged, leaning against his back, her fingers entwining with his. The stark neediness in him bound her to him.

  “The other day, when I asked for your help?” he ventured. “I overstepped the bounds between us.” His elbows rested on what looked to her like maps. “It's wrong to want your help with something like this. Go home. I can handle it."

  Stepping back, she folded her arms against both the sudden chill of not being a part of him and her own indignation. “I was worried about you."

  “I've been doing a lot of thinking about you."

  Heat scuttled up her spine, prickling onto her cheeks. “Be careful. You don't control my mind or my will anymore."

  “The drenching in the shop made your point."

  “And I hate the way I turn into a fool around you to make my points. That's not me anymore."

  “Did Kipp only control your heart because he was your father's best buddy?"

  The words scalded. “How dare you—"

  “Ask the truth? The editor showed me several photos from hunting trips they took without you. And then there's David Huber."

  His obvious penchant to play detective on her personal life sparked a whollup of agitation. “Are you doing a thesis on my friends and my dead fiancé? Kipp controlled nothing about me, nor did I control him. Our relationship wasn't like that."

  “And what was it like?"

  She opened her mouth but discovered it was the first time anyone had asked her about it. Not even Una or her mother said much about Kipp. Certainly not David. “It was normal. And how dare you grill me."

  “Normal? That's it?” He turned toward her. His face was beet red.

  “Are you feeling well? What's happened, Cole? You're acting very odd."

  Turning back to smooth the crinkled maps, he muttered, “What's happened?” he repeated. “Do you mean in the last fifteen years or since yesterday? Life moves along in this great big space but there's one thing we have to grab."

  “Grab what? Don't talk weird."

  “I'm not. It's all related. I'm talking about love."

  The air grew stifling. “Whose love? What love?"

  “Did you love Kipp? I mean the bone-rattling kind. The kind that transcends temporal spaces and events in our lives?"

  “Bone-rattling? Transcends? Kipp would have scoffed at such hogwash. I was going to marry him."

  “I suppose love comes in varying degrees. I'm only just learning that, you know. Brother love. Son love. Friend love. Love of truth weaving through it all like some surly snake you can't catch and maybe don't want to."

  She cocked her head. “How long have you been up here? Maybe you've got a fever—"

  “No fever. I discovered why what you and I had once wasn't enough for either of us."

  The blood left her face. After all these years, was he deciding to tell her now that he never really loved her? Or that he believed he did once? That was preposterous. “You're drunk."

  “I rarely drink. Just the champagne after a race."

  “And you always win."

  “Not at love. There was you. Then Stephanie. Lisa wants to get married but I can't seem to figure out if that's only friend-love."

  “Maybe she knows about surly snakes like I do,” she scoffed. “Or, did you forget to—as you say—transcend?"

  His chuckle surprised her. “No. The truth is I didn't know what love was until my brother was taken from me. And I haven't had a moment to think about it until I came back to Dresden, until I saw you. I finally came up here last night to think about it."

  She was stunned. “You waited three days to come up here? Yours and Mike's pirate ship?"

  “I was scared, Laurel. I thought I'd hear his voice. I wasn't sure I was ready to hear him, to see the visions of him and me playing up here, lining up chairs to make seats on our ship, stacking chairs to peer out the window with a dimestore plastic telescope our aunt had bought. We were tough, invincible brothers who wanted nothing more than to sail the seas together when they grew up. Am I crazy? To be afraid of those voices?"

  She stood there for an eternity watching dust motes float across the sunbeam blanketing his shoulders. The only sound was his shallow breathing.

  He rubbed his palms against his eyes, then raked his dark hair. Wrinkles pinched his forehead.

  Finally, she couldn't deny his agony any longer. She went to him, stood behind him and placed a shaky hand on his shoulder, massaging the kinks away, an automatic thing, remembered by her hands after a lifetime apart.

  She whispered, “No, hearing his voice isn't crazy.” She swallowed hard against the rising throb of her heart in her throat. “It's probably the most human, loving thing I've ever heard from you. He was your brother. He'll be your brother forever."

  One of his hands reached back and covered hers. The heated dampness sent the years lost between them crashing into the dust at her feet. It frightened her to be drawn to his grief, yet her heart felt light as a flower in bloom, and against her will it opened to him. Overpowering, his pull was too much for her to refuse.

  He clung to her hand, then edged around to look up at her. His eyes were the liquid darkness of a creekbed hidden under shade.

  She could only find a whisper. “I've never seen you cry."

  His jawline trembled. “How could you stand it, losing Kipp and your father at the same time?"

  And so much else. “I couldn't. For a long time."

  “How much time does this take?"

  “What? Filling in the hole in your heart that's left behind when someone leaves you?” She quaked inside.

  “Hell, yes,” he said, dropping his hand from hers and pushing off suddenly to go to the porthole window. Had he been watching her earlier? She shivered again. He must have.

  In his wake she noticed he'd left behind a small, wood box darkened with age. A wet stain marred its top. His tears. She tried to swallow but her throat had gone dry as paper. She flipped open the box. It held a rainbow of crayon stubs.

  She frowned. “You discovered this box up here?"

  He didn't turn back from the window, just nodded. “Last night."

  “You've been up here ever since?"

  “Couldn't sleep."

  “Because of this box?"

  He took the two long steps back to the table and plucked a crayon out. “He planted these here, on his visit over two weeks back."

  “Planted?” Was this another act? A game?

  “These are my brother's crayons from g
rade school. My mother gave us each a wood box for Christmas when we were six or seven. Who knows what I did with mine, but Mike, he was fastidious to a fault even as a kid. He always shared and watched out for me. When we'd be on a plane for Chile and we'd hit bumpy skies, Mike would open up this box and we'd color like crazy to take our minds off crashing."

  Laurel watched his long, muscled fingers fondle the crayon stubs one by one. The only sound in the attic room was their gentle plop back into the box. She thought about his apparent fear of flying and how he never revealed a weakness to her before this moment. This couldn't be an act.

  “Why would he bring the crayon box here and leave it?"

  He sighed. “A signal that he's watching out for me? He knew if I saw this I'd have to keep going after Rojas no matter how bumpy the ride. Mike knew he'd be killed. He lived for a while, knowing that.” He crushed a crayon in his fist, the pieces dribbling down into the box. “My brother knew he might die and he never asked my help."

  Laurel's stomach twisted but a window in her heart opened further to him. She understood the power of familial love and how it drove people and shaped them. She had been about to marry Kipp—even David—for her father and to bring peace to the family, just as Cole would chase after Rojas for Mike's sake, for his family.

  “Do you want lunch?” The question sounded so insipid it embarrassed her.

  “Not really hungry.” Cole stood staring at her with a forehead furrowed and eyes blinking back tears. “I miss him, Laurel. It's so damn lonely."

  Her heart lurched. “I understand,” she whispered, seeing in her memory loved ones she'd laid to rest, wishing she could see more clearly, recapture their voices more fully, but knowing time helped. She wanted to help Cole understand it all, but how? How to shrink time for him?

  She thought about backing away and running, but he blinked and a teardrop trickled down his whiskery face to his jawline. She rushed to him, wrapping her arms around the tremors racking him.

  Nuzzling her hair, he muttered, “I'll never bother you again, Laurel, but I did love you in my own way, and I need you right now. In every way. You feel good, steady."

  She closed her eyes against her own confusion. She should be angry. Here he was again making promises. Her heart wanted to burst from the ache, and yet her emotions sizzled like never before—even hotter than she remembered with him. This wanting him was wrong, dead wrong and dangerous, but she saw a man fighting for his very breath. For life. For a chance at redemption.

  When his lips caught the shell of her ear, her breathing grew ragged along with her common sense. He needed more than a shoulder to cry on. She wondered if it was possible to make up for lost years during a single moment in a musty attic. She tilted her head, pressed her lips against his neck and drank of his heat.

  “I hated the loneliness, too. I hate it now when I forget to be strong and it steals over me. Cole, it will get better. I promise. The black-and-white world evolves into rainbows eventually. Trust me."

  A large hand tucked her even closer to him. Heat and ice coming together, resistence melting.

  She listened to his heartbeat and to her own voice of reason. He was a lost man driven to find surcease from the ache. She should run to find her hiding places, but her legs would not respond.

  His mouth found hers and she became as lost as he, transcending time with him. His breathing spilled onto her face in jagged rhythms, but she remembered the breeze on a hot summer's day. Her hand caught his long hair, fingers recalling the soft strands of timothy grass cushioning their ardor back then.

  He was a rock to lean into, his chest and shoulders massive, warm and drenched with an inviting earthy, woodland smell. Her soul felt in need of rest against such a rock. Her back arched to close the gap between their bodies.

  A growing thunder of heartbeats echoed within the attic.

  His tongue darted into her mouth, exploring, rendering her to a delicate state, making her want to taste of him more, as if she'd been thirsty all her life and he was a clear, cool stream.

  She attempted to shut the window in her heart she'd opened for him. Dangerous as a storm blowing through, he could turn her heart inside out again, then leave destruction behind for her to clean up.

  She teetered on an abyss.

  He kept pulling her back.

  The heat grew stronger as he deepened the kiss. Her heartbeat raced way beyond normal and into a red zone, and way beyond what she'd ever experienced even with the Cole who lay with her in a meadow. This Cole was different. Strong yet vulnerable. Aching. Wanting her because of that admission. The new awareness of him bowled through her and begged her to take another look.

  His lips skated in a dance across her skin. Feathering a cheekbone. Suckling an earlobe.

  The years washed away and down her arms. Like opening the box of crayons, she could see rainbows again.

  He lowered her with him to the floor, shedding his shirt and managing to push hers only down her shoulders before reaching their destination. When his thumb flicked apart the front hook of her lacy undergarment, heat crashed through her, tainted with the fear of the unknown. Had they ever made love?

  It didn't seem possible.

  This felt like the first time. Delicate. Intense.

  His eyes were like the hawk, his arms like its wings, wide as the horizon and ready to swoop down and lift her into the skies. Laurel quaked inside, an itch taking up residence in her center. She could answer it by running away. Or by staying to explore.

  Cole lowered himself, the hawk riding down on the drafts of jagged breathing to its prey. He nuzzled aside the curtains of hair tickling her shoulders, then the clothing to expose her.

  With doubts and fear trembling below her surface, she hesitated to run, her arms pinned yet in her own clothing. Had he planned it that way?

  “Cole?"

  The hawk trapped his prey by tangling it in the tall, meadow grass. He held it between his talons until it succumbed.

  He whispered, “All these years, I've missed this. I've remembered this."

  Then he lowered himself to suckle a nipple in exquisite torture. The hawk lingered, and when a moan escaped her involuntarily, he flicked his tongue repeatedly across her ever-tightening bud with the power of rapid wings beating at air currents.

  Her heartbeat pounded out of control, her breathing growing so deep that it drew his attention to her heaving breasts. His eyes held a fire in the center of their darkness and yet he waited above her.

  He was offering her the choice. Leap away from the fire and run into the darkness, or give in to the hawk.

  Her soul reminded her how tiring it could be to struggle against the tall meadow grass, how undignified it was to deny the natural order of things. Her heart reminded her of how lonely and empty that house was inside her.

  Did she dare feel this wild again?

  Why, with him now, did she think about believing in a future?

  She drew in air filled with his spice and the memory of clover and sundrenched earth beneath her. She knew the itch threading through her veins now would never go away of its own accord. So like a small bird, Laurel arched her back, and closed her eyes in repose to welcome what her hawk must do. What she wanted.

  In a frenzied capture, they satisfied great hungers. They explored, skin against skin, one heart in syncopation with the other. They borrowed time, not knowing if they could ever be together long enough to pay back this happiness.

  Atop the soft flannel of her blouse and his shirt, in their own nest, Laurel forgot that loving could be dangerous.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  THEIR LOVEMAKING was like a brushfire sweeping to the edge of the lake. What started in tender fury found it had no place to go.

  Both Laurel and Cole disengaged from the last kiss without a word, though Laurel could not quell her ragged heartbeat or stop her eyes from watching him or measuring his every graceful move.

  He tugged on his shirt too quickly, she thought. Her lips c
ould still taste the salt of his skin, the bubbling warmth of the flesh over his pounding heart.

  She struggled to breathe when he reached over to slip the top button on the front of her blouse back into place. His obvious hurry to obliterate any evidence of what they'd done sparked confusion inside Laurel.

  Why had she succumbed? Why did she already wonder if there would be a next time to succumb?

  He'd allowed himself a full range of emotions with her, from sorrow to rage to tender love and tears. When he let down his guard, he was a complicated man. Something she'd never before experienced with him. Certainly not long ago. She was outright attracted to this man. Her body wept to be in his arms. Her mind gloried in the memory of his gutteral whispers, the shared thoughts of needing each other.

  His sigh stirred the air. “I'm sorry. I'll leave right away, get to D.C. and work from there."

  Panic ripped her. He wanted to forget their slip from grace, their taste of each other.

  Her mind raced, confused. What about his brother? The evidence?

  Raking his hair back into place, he averted his gaze from her, then twisting around, took stock of the attic.

  She sensed he hadn't found what he'd come for.

  He reminded her of a lone bear in spring, hungry, thrashing about in the woodland on a search for sustenance, but disoriented with no clear direction. Laurel could not run from that plea for help, even if it was dangerous.

  She had to be honest with him, no matter how much it made her stomach ball into a knot just now. “I took what I needed, too. If you're even thinking about being embarrassed—"

  His soft smile robbed her of breath. She shoved her blouse back into her jeans.

  Adjusting his stance to relieve his bad leg, he said, “There was a time I had no worries. I'd give anything to feel that again."

  The attic smelled musty again, old. It made her tired. Looking into his eyes beseeching her in the soft light, she allowed, “All I am, all I do for my job, is worry. Constant worry is a lonely thing. Find a way out of it."