Under Wraps

by Louisa Keller

Sighing, pretending to be deeply put-upon, I waded in toward him. It was shockingly cold, but he was right—it made a lovely counterpoint to the heat. The Oregon summer was in full force, and the sun streamed down, alighting on our shoulders and upturned faces. I took one last deep breath, and then plunged all the way in, swimming over to him with a perfect butterfly stroke.

  “You know your stuff,” he said when I reached him, sounding surprised.

  “What, you thought billionaires didn’t know how to swim?” I asked, wrinkling my nose at him so he would know I wasn’t being serious.

  “I didn’t think you would know your way around the butterfly,” he countered. “It’s not an easy stroke to learn.”

  “I know that, seeing as I spent the better part of a year trying to master it.”

  “Nice job, Michael Phelps.”

  “I’d like to see you in one of those little Speedos he wears,” I said before I could think better of it. Then I tucked my head down, embarrassed at my own brazenness. The air between us was thick with tension, electricity, potential, but neither of us had yet said exactly what was going on here. This was so, so new for me.

  But Carson took my words in stride, smiling and even having the audacity to splash water at me. Good lord, I was out of my depth here. His ease with our situation intimidated me more than anything else, because I knew that I lacked that effortlessness. Whatever happened, I would be fumbling while he…well, he would be anchoring me, keeping me present. He was such a steady presence.

  “Let’s check out the waterfall,” he said, jerking his head in its direction. The fall splashed merrily down onto a spike of boulders that jutted out of the pool, sending ripples out into the still body of water.

  We swam toward it together, both opting for a modified breast stroke so that we could keep our heads above water, smiling at each other from time to time. The pool was deep, but as we got close enough to feel the misty spray coming off the fall, we found ourselves stepping up onto rocks that emerged from the depths. Carson was a pace ahead of me, scrambling toward the fall, but turned just before stepping under its full force to reach a hand out to me. Smiling, I took his hand—so soft in mine—and let him pull me under the gushing water beside him.

  There is no sensation quite like standing beneath a waterfall. It is humbling, feeling the power of that water, knowing that it could crush you if there were more of it, and that you would be helpless even to surface from the depths below if it chose to shove you down. And then, of course, there is the roar in your ears, the sound of thousands of gallons pounding mercilessly down, blocking out any other sound. You must surrender to it, because it has the upper hand.

  But even the awe and majesty of that waterfall could not cloud out the feeling of Carson’s hand in mine, our fingers twined tightly together, an inexorable pull toward whatever the future held for us. He was my anchor, keeping me tethered exactly where I wanted to be. More than any previous moment, I wanted to kiss him then. I wanted his lips on mine, his tongue in my mouth, his hips nestled against my own, our arms wrapped so tightly around one another that nothing could ever tear us apart. That bald desire gave me the strength to dive into action. I stepped forward, through the fall, pulling Carson along with me. For a moment there was just more water coming down, more deafening roar, but then—

  As I had suspected, there was a little cavern behind the waterfall. We were spat out into it, and all at once the spell was broken. We were back in reality, safe and close in our own private room. Daylight shone through the fall, illuminating the space just enough that we could see each other clearly. I let my eyes fall on Carson’s naked body, and gasped.

  He was beautiful. Not in the way of photoshopped models and airbrushed movie stars. No, Carson was a work of genuine art, sculpted by twenty-eight years on this earth. I had already seen the shape of his body through fitted clothing, but the details—dear god, they were marvelous. Strong abdominals, gorgeous pectorals, a perfect cock nestled between his thighs. And then there were the details I hadn’t expected, but loved just the same—a series of scars dragging across his impeccably tan skin. I reached out for his left shoulder instinctively, wanting to run my fingers alone the scar that followed his collarbone. His breath caught, and for a moment we both stood there, perfectly still, my hand frozen in midair.

  Then I gathered my wits enough to whisper, “May I?”

  Something in his eyes changed then, as we came to an understanding. “Here.” He grabbed my wrist and led my seeking fingers to the raised scar tissue.

  “Broken clavicle?” I asked.

  “Compound fracture,” he murmured.

  “Does it still hurt?”

  “Sometimes.”

  He pulled my wrist down, leading me to the next scar, between two ribs.

  “What is this one from?” I breathed out, letting my fingers dance lightly across it.

  “Chest tube. I had a collapsed lung.”

  “Were you conscious, when they put it in?”

  “Yes.”

  I tapped my finger there gently, wishing that I could pull away that old, remembered pain.

  Then, he was guiding my wrist to the largest scar, starting high up on his chest and extending way down to his lower abdomen.

  “And this one?”

  He squeezed my wrist tightly.

  “Exploratory laparotomy. They ended up removing my spleen.”

  I traced the length of the scar carefully, feeling every fluctuation in the skin.

  “You can live without a spleen?”

  “Yeah. More prone to infection, but it’s not the end of the world.”

  I was willing to bet that whatever had left him with all of these scars had, in some ways, been the end of the world. But I kept quiet, wanting to finish this intimate exploration of his body’s many tribulations.

  We both crouched down to reach the last visible scars, on either side of his right ankle.

  “Another compound fracture?” I guessed.

  He shook his head.

  “Shattered the bone. Took a couple of surgeries to put it back together.”

  My heart ached for him. I wanted so badly to be able to retroactively take his pain away, save him from his own past. Not that he needed rescuing—that was clear. Carson was strong and steady, solid on his own two feet, and he wore his scars without resignation, without shame. They were part of the fabric of his life, of his body.

  There were not enough words in the English language to express what I felt as he led my fingertips across his body, so I didn’t attempt to speak. Instead, I looked right into his eyes, memorizing the layers of green in those flawless irises. He looked straight back, locking our gazes together for an indeterminable amount of time. I could not have said when we moved even closer together, or who instigated the process, but all at once his mouth was on mine.

  The kiss was blissful, the merging of two bodies and minds and souls. We were sheltered from the outside world in our tiny cavern, the waterfall dutifully standing guard. I parted my lips, opening to him, and Carson took the initiative, pushing me onto my back and straddling me. He was warm despite still being damp from our swim, and his body slid against mine deliciously. We lost ourselves in that kiss, time slipping away. And yet, neither of us pressed for more than the persistent motion of lips on lips, the sweet glide of our bodies. I vaguely registered that I was hard—and he was as well—but that seemed to matter very little in light of the emotional strides we were taking. My chest constricted with what could only be called love, absurd as that was. I had known him for less than twenty-four hours. But Carson fit me perfectly in every conceivable way. The fact that he was a man, well that was almost incidental. We were embarking on a journey together that went far beyond lust.

  When we finally pulled apart, panting slightly and grinning at each other, I caught his right ankle between my hands. Pulling it toward me, I kissed along the scars on either side, hoping that I could somehow soothe him. He reached out a hand and ruffled my hair affectionatel
y—something nobody had done since I was a small child.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, his voice soft and lovely.

  “Whatever for?” I asked, setting his foot carefully back down on the cavern floor.

  “For coming into my life.”

  “It was my pleasure.”

  He rolled his eyes, clearly hitting his capacity for earnestness. “Is this the first time you’ve made out with a guy in a hidden cave behind a waterfall?”

  “Carson, this is the first time I have made out with a man. Period.”

  He stared at me, his mouth falling open.

  “Wait a sec—you’ve never…?”

  “I have had exactly one previous relationship, and it was with a woman. When I was younger, in school and at college, I had several casual lovers, all of them female. It never occurred to me to look for anything different.”

  “Holy shit,” Carson said, eyes wide. “That’s…wow. This must be kind of blowing your mind, huh?”

  I shook my head with a small smile. “Not because you are a man.”

  “God,” he said, shaking his head as if to clear it. “I hope the kiss was alright, seeing as I’m officially one hundred percent of the guys you’ve ever kissed.”

  “It was the best kiss I could have possibly imagined,” I told him seriously. His smile brightened, which I figured was the closest Carson ever got to preening.

  “Good, because it kind of rocked my world.”

  Warmth spread through me, a kind of caveman-esque pride at having satisfied him. I could only imagine what it would be like when we actually slept together. If. If we actually slept together. All at once I remembered our current situation, the house full of bickering relatives, the close quarters, the fact that we would only be there for a handful of days before heading back to our homes, three thousand miles apart.

  I’m stuck at Abshire Manor all week with my estranged father and my judgmental stepbrother, I thought, is this really the best time to be falling in love with a man?

  The best time or not, it was happening. I could already see that there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  Flashback

  Denial.

  Anger.

  Bargaining.

  Depression.

  Acceptance.

  The self-help books and social workers make it sound so easy. Like you just have to muscle through each stage of grief and eventually you’ll be okay. You’ll be at peace with your loss.

  That is some serious bullshit.

  Grief is a chronic illness, latching itself onto you and never letting go. It can’t be neatly folded away, shut in a drawer and forgotten about, moved past. It is always with you, lapsing just long enough to lull you into lowering your defenses before it pounces, cutting you off at the knees all over again.

  Sure, things get better over time.

  The sharp knife blade dulls, and you get better at coping. Whatever the hell that means.

  You reach the acceptance stage and understand that they’re really gone. You get to the point where you can think about other things for seconds, minutes, hours, even days at a time.

  But acceptance is a misnomer.

  Because you can never truly accept what was taken from you—not just the people, but the sense of security you used to walk around with, the impression that disaster isn’t lurking around every corner.

  You can never get your innocence back.

  And there is no way to truly accept that.

  There are five stages of grief, that much is true.

  Denial.

  Anger.

  Bargaining.

  Depression.

  Resignation.

  9

  Carson

  We were nearly back to the manor, just out of sight in fact, when I reached out to stop Ainsley.

  “I know it’s kind of unfair to ask this of you,” I said, and his eyes narrowed.

  “What is it, Carson?”

  I heaved a deep sigh.

  “Could we maybe…I dunno, keep this under wraps? At least for now? I don’t want Dom to know just yet. Not until things are a little less rocky between the two of you.”

  He smiled, relieved.

  “Of course. Coming out to Alistair is not exactly on my list of preferred family reunion activities.”

  “Yeah, I get that,” I said. “I mean, sort of. Coming out should happen in your own time. But for the record, he’s super cool about both Dom and I being gay.”

  “He is putting in far more effort with the two of you than he ever put into building a relationship with me,” Ainsley said bitterly. “I doubt he would embrace my bisexuality with the same open arms as your and Dom’s gayness.”

  “Hmm…not that it’s really my place to say it,” I hedged, “but he might deserve just a tiny bit of benefit of the doubt in this case.”

  Ainsley shook his head, looking agitated.

  “Alistair probably avoids incriminating himself by talking about his relationship with Beau and I, but I can assure you that he never deserves the benefit of the doubt from me,” he growled.

  “Uh…feel free to tell me to fuck off, but do you want to elaborate?” I asked.

  “He and my mother—they never wanted children. They wanted heirs.”

  I bit my lip.

  “Sorry, not to be an idiot, but what does that mean?”

  Ainsley shrugged.

  “They weren’t around, Carson. The minute we were out of the womb, we were passed off to a team of highly-trained childcare professionals. If we weren’t with the nanny, we were at boarding school. If we weren’t at boarding school, we were at summer camp. Everything was the best money could buy, but an expensive education and world-class au pairs do not make up for parents who give a shit.”

  I was watching his face carefully as he spoke, and there was pain there, evident in the tightness around his eyes. Tangling our fingers together, I leaned my head against his shoulder.

  “That sounds so lonely,” I muttered.

  “It was,” he agreed. “They abandoned us, Carson. Not financially, but emotionally. And any time I tried to point that out, I was an ungrateful brat, unworthy of the trust fund that was waiting for me.”

  Well, I thought, that explains his theory that his happiness is less important than other people’s.

  “That’s why you spent the money on people in need?” I ventured.

  He nodded.

  “I wanted nothing to do with it. Grudgingly, I accepted the higher education they offered to pay for, but I never spent a cent of the trust fund money until I had invested it and earned it back several times over. I worked through college and business school to pay for my living expenses. Alistair never gave me a damn thing but his money, and he has never showed interest in getting to know me until now. Quite the coincidence, seeing as he is getting older…I suppose he wants a clear conscience before he dies.”

  God.

  I didn’t even know where to start with that.

  Comparing it to my idyllic childhood—no, I couldn’t think about my childhood. Not during such a charged moment.

  “I wish I could make it better,” I said, pressing a kiss against his clothed shoulder.

  “I wish I could make things better for you too,” he replied, kissing the top of my head.

  Fuck, the casual affection felt good. How could this be so good after just a day?

  “You deserve good things, Ainsley.”

  “As do you, Carson.”

  And just as I was about to pull him into a searing kiss, the sound of raised voices came drifting toward us from the back deck.

  Sighing, we pulled apart.

  “Give me a two-minute head start?” I asked, gesturing toward the manor.

  “Good thinking,” Ainsley said, shooting me a beautiful, private smile.

  I was grinning all the way back across the yard.

  It didn’t take long to break up the argument between Dom and Beauregard.

  They were fighting about something stupid—
I couldn’t quite figure out exactly what.

  “Dom,” I said, stepping between them.

  Both sets of eyes snapped to me, and they fell silent.

  “Yeah?” Dom said, looking half guilty, half belligerent.

  “Come upstairs with me. I need to borrow your phone charger,” I said, every inch a command.

  He shot a filthy look at Beauregard, but acquiesced. We walked in silence until we were out of earshot, and then I nudged him in the ribs.

  “Don’t judge me,” Dom muttered, looking down at his shoes.

  “I’m not judging,” I said honestly. “But I’m worried about you—this is completely out of character. I know you’re worried about Sydney, but I think you can lay off the animosity with Ainsley and Beauregard. If anything, you’re making this trip more stressful than it needs to be.”

  He shot me a wounded look.

  “I’m not—”

  “Dom,” I interrupted, “just listen to me for a second. I’m your best friend, I promise I have your best interest in mind, okay?”

  He sighed deeply.

  “Fine.”

  “Alistair is a part of Sydney’s life now, which means he’s a part of your life too. And it looks like he’s trying to include Ainsley and Beauregard in this new life, so I suggest you stop picking fights with them and accept that they’re going to be around. I promise they’re not as bad as you think they are.”

  “Since when do you get all buddy-buddy with people you hardly know?” Dom asked, sounding hurt. “Be on my side here.”

  “I am on your side,” I told him patiently. “There’s nothing to be gained by spending the whole week bickering with them. You will be better off if you just chill out.”

  He shook his head.

  “I don’t know why they get under my skin so easily. I’m normally so calm and collected and shit. Like, last night I was talking with Smith on the phone, and he kept saying how I didn’t sound like myself. This just feels so charged, you know? Like everything they say matters more than it really should.”

  “You’re trying to protect your family,” I said softly. “I know what it feels like to fight for someone you love, Dom. And I know that Sydney’s heart attack affected you deeply. It sounds like you’re just starting to process some of that fear you felt when she was sick, and it’s coming out as anger.”