Heaven Beside You

by Christa Maurice

  “No.”

  Cass leaned her forehead against the steering wheel. She’d never done anything so careless and stupid in her life. Her phone went with her when she walked around the cabins during the off-season in case she got hurt and couldn’t get inside. If the weather was heavy, she didn’t even set foot out the door unless she had to. Her cabin was stocked with enough food to survive for months, if need be. She had spares, backups, and extras of everything she used at the cabin. She even had a shotgun in case of bears and wolves, but when she saw those, she stayed inside and shot pictures instead.

  “It’s not that bad. Is it?” Jason sounded uncertain, which reminded her that, in addition to all her other failings, she wasn’t doing her campground director job and handling the situation.

  “No, it’s not.” She sat up. “I forgot the phone so I can’t call anyone to pull us out. The truck is stuck good so we’re not going to get out on our own. I’ll walk down to Bill’s—”

  “No.”

  Cass looked at him. “No?”

  “You’re not leaving me here while you walk for help by yourself. I’ll go with you.”

  “You’re wearing tennis shoes.”

  Jason shrugged. “It can’t be more than a mile.”

  “Yes, it can. A bit more, in fact.”

  “I can manage.” He reached over and put his arm around her. “It’ll be fun.”

  “It’s half a mile to my house through the grounds.”

  “Really?” His expression brightened.

  “See that gap there on the far end of the valley? My farthest tent site is right on the other side.”

  “Good. We can be home in time for the news.” He jumped out of the truck.

  Scowling, she climbed out her side. The temperature had dropped earlier today when the snow stopped falling. The snow had a crisp crust she would have admired on a pie, but not on the ground. Snow masked the true edges of the pond and right now she couldn’t remember how far it came out. This whole adventure already felt too much like Jack London’s To Build a Fire for her to want to get her feet wet. Jason stamped his feet for warmth. The snow came to his knees and well over hers. What had she been thinking, coming out here today?

  She hadn’t been.

  Since Jason had showed up on her doorstep and made that comment about the long two years, she hadn’t been using logic at all. Sexy rock star, she could have handled. Even sexy flirtatious rock star. But sexy flirtatious wounded rock star had been too much to withstand. A quiet little tryst, leaving the emotions to deal with later, had seemed simple enough.

  It had been like setting a devil’s food cake and a gallon of milk in front of a chocoholic and walking out of the room.

  And now she’d arranged a romantic double suicide for them. How sweet. Someone might find them next week if the wolves didn’t get to them first.

  “Jason, watch out,” she snapped. He hadn’t stuck by her side, but had set off in a straight path down the middle of the valley, heading right for the pond.

  He froze in his tracks.

  “Stay with me. I don’t know where the edge of the water is, and if you get your feet wet you could get frostbite.” She scowled as he backed up three steps and then walked toward her still grinning from ear to ear. “This is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to you, isn’t it?” she accused.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” he replied, and put his arm over her shoulders. “It’s not even the most exciting thing that’s happened to me this week, but it’s pretty darn cool.”

  “I’m not sure what’s so darn cool about being stranded on the mountain in the middle of the winter,” Cass grumbled.

  “I’ve never been out in the woods like this. It’s amazing.” He looked up at the sky, his face bright in the moonlight, and squeezed her shoulders. “I never went camping when I was a kid, and the only snow I had was pretty dirty after the plows went past.”

  “So has building snowmen been a lifelong dream?” Cass fought a smile, but the smile won.

  “I didn’t know what I was missing.”

  The wonder in his voice made her heart ache.

  It was a pretty magical scene. The ski lodge was even hidden around the curve of the mountain. Almost a shame to put cabins here.

  They stepped under the canopy of trees. The clearing of the last tent camping site was visible through the trunks. In the summer, she could hardly see it through the bushes. “You grew up in Indianapolis, didn’t you?” she asked.

  “In the projects. After my dad walked out, Mom didn’t have much money, with five kids to feed.”

  That stopped her in her tracks. Walked out? “I thought your father—”

  Halted two strides ahead of her, he turned back, his face still and pale, as if he waited for her response. “We tell everyone he died. He walked out when I was four. My mother told us he went looking for work. Then one day she got a letter, and she started saying he was dead.”

  “Are you sure?” Cass gasped. She felt stunted and weird, as if she’d been personally attacked by this piece of trivia and left bleeding in the snow.

  “When I was twelve, I found the letter and it said he wasn’t coming back. He had a new family he liked better.” His face could have been made of marble, and he stood with his feet planted wide, as if the mountain might start moving under him like the deck of a ship.

  Her knees gave way. She grabbed a slender birch for support, snapping off a small branch with her glove. She could envision him finding that letter at twelve, all long legs and squeaky voice, being told he wasn’t a good enough for his father to want him. Her father had been such a constant in her life, she couldn’t imagine living without him. He’d held her hand when she’d learned to ice skate, and when she got divorced.

  A shadow fell across him, leaving him faceless as he straightened his shoulders.

  “Jason,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You didn’t do it.”

  No words could bridge the distance that had grown between them. She reached out, releasing her hold on the birch, but her arms weren’t long enough either, so she floundered forward to put her arms around him. His arms came around her, but he held her stiffly, as if he’d prefer to shove her away. Or he expected her to push him away. Squeezing her eyes closed, she pressed her cheek against his chest. His heart pounded. She longed to cradle him in her arms and tell him everything would be all right. That she could make it better.

  But she couldn’t. How could she fix his father walking out on him at four and rejecting him again at twelve, when she couldn’t do anything about Stella dumping him in the national press? She couldn’t even fix the fact that he was standing in the woods in the middle of January wearing shoes that probably still weren’t dry. “I am so sorry, Jason,” she whispered.

  “I don’t know why I told you,” he muttered. “Nobody outside my family knows. Not even Brian.”

  She brushed a shaking hand through his hair. Why hadn’t she made him wear a hat? She wasn’t taking very good care of him at all. “I won’t tell a soul. I promise.”

  On tiptoes, she kissed him. For a moment he resisted the pressure of her lips, then he relented slightly. She shivered so hard that she thought he must be, too. Clutching his shoulders, she tried to draw him to her embrace. She wanted to drag him bodily from his pain, but he wouldn’t move. It hurt to hold him.

  She broke the kiss, rested her forehead on his chest. Her breath came in long deep clouds that rose up around them, mingling with his over their heads. “It’s getting colder by the minute out here,” she told him. “We should get moving before we freeze to death.”

  Jason nodded, and for a heartbeat, didn’t release her, clenched her against his stiff body instead. Then he dropped his arms. Cass swayed back, staying within reach, hoping he would pull her back against him. He didn’t. Aching with a loss she didn’t even understand, she moved away, but she reached back and took his hand, squeezing it until his fingers
closed around hers.

  “Do your sisters know?” she asked as they reached the mouth of the second RV campsite.

  “Probably. We never talked about it.”

  She nodded, watching the ground. “Does your mother know you know?”

  “I don’t know. I happened to be hitting those awkward teenage years when I found the letter, so she probably thought the wearing black and not talking was part of growing up.” Jason pulled his hand away and jammed it in his pockets. She let him go, and he walked behind her, almost in her footsteps.

  “He hasn’t tried to contact you, has he?”

  “I don’t think so. My office handles that stuff and nobody has said anything.”

  Walking along the ridge at the edge of the road, the snow wasn’t as deep under the trees so she didn’t have to bring her feet up as high with each step. Every part of her felt wrung out and tired. Next time she saw her parents, she’d have to hug them and tell Mom and Dad she loved them. In fact, she should hug Ida and Paul and Ben and select other townspeople, while she was at it.

  Cass kept putting one foot in front of the other. She needed to get Jason home and warm. Get him where she could take care of him again, somehow. She could give him her body to blot out the pain of losing a woman he loved, but she could never replace his father.

  A glance back revealed he walked with his head down, hands shoved in his coat pockets. That long ago letter seemed to float in the air above his head. What kind of man would have five children and walk out on them? What kind of man could not be proud of the man his son had become?

  “Almost home,” she said brightly. She reached back and hooked her arm through his elbow. “You want to make popcorn and watch a movie or do you just want to have sex?”

  Jason blinked at her. “No. I think I’ll go to bed. I’m pretty tired tonight.”

  “I don’t have any blankets warmed by the fire this time.”

  “It’s okay.”

  When they reached home and she’d unlocked the front door he went straight for the bedroom, while she checked her messages. Bill Wernick called saying he’d found her truck in the pasture and assumed she’d gotten stuck and walked home. The truck was in his barn with the keys in it, whenever she wanted to come get it. Her mother wanted her to call as soon as she got in because Bill had called them too. Cass heard Jason moving around taking off his clothes and getting ready for bed as she dialed her parents. He’d said he was tired. Too tired for sex. And the clock in the kitchen showed it wasn’t even nine yet.

  “Hello?” her mother answered.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Oh, honey, we were starting to worry. Bill said he found your truck but not you. I was giving you another half hour before I called the state troopers.”

  “I got stuck and forgot my cellphone so I walked home.”

  “That’s fine, honey. We just didn’t know where you were. I started to worry you’d been attacked by wolves or something.”

  And people think I have an overactive imagination. Why would wolves attack me when there’s plenty of deer around who don’t look like they might be packing guns?

  “You didn’t have your rifle with you either, did you?” her mother asked in another show of mind reading.

  “No, but it was fine.” No sounds came from the bedroom. Jason must have already gotten under the covers. She wished she could do something more than hug him, but he didn’t seem to want anything. His father had abandoned him. His father. She couldn’t even imagine it. Both her parents had always been there. And Jason had been lying about his father all his life. He must have been too devastated to tell anyone. Why had he told her? Why had he started planning a house for them, when he didn’t plan on staying past the end of next week? Why was he being so quiet?

  “Honey, are you there?”

  “Sorry, Mom, I was thinking about my cold feet. It was a long walk.” Cass held her breath, waiting for her mother to discover the fib. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t tell the truth. Her mother had already given her blessing to the idea that Cass might sleep with her winter guest and she didn’t know all the details. Probably if her mother knew about Jason’s past, she’d be all for her doing whatever she could to make him feel better.

  “Cold feet? You should get out the hot water bottle to help warm your bed up. Did you make sure your guest was warm?”

  “My guest?” Terror struck her that her mother somehow knew her guest was in her bedroom warming her bed.

  “Bill said he saw two sets of footprints. I thought your guest must have gone with you when you went to see the pasture. I can’t imagine why. It’s just a pasture.”

  Smiling at her mom’s assessment, she crouched in front of the dining room cabinet, digging for her hot water bottle. Just a pasture had Jason open mouthed with wonder, bowled him over, and he’d been all over the world. The hot water bottle lay buried at the bottom of the cabinet, and she snatched it up. “He liked it. He heard us talking at Ida’s and wanted to see it.”

  “He’s probably not used to being cooped up by the winter like this, either. A man like that probably flies off to the Virgin Islands when the weather turns.”

  The hot water bottle slithered out of her fingers and fell on her overly tender, thawing feet. “Ow!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I dropped something on my foot. I’m going to fill up this bottle.”

  “All right, sweetie. You get warmed up and make sure of your guest. Good night. Sleep tight.”

  “Thanks, Mom. Good night.” She couldn’t promise sleeping tight, or at all.

  In the bedroom, Jason lay curled on his side facing away from the fire, buried under the blankets. Cass slid the now full hot water bottle under the covers near his feet. He wasn’t anywhere near sleep, but seemed so intent on pretending, she didn’t disturb him. It had been a long, cold hike.

  She added two large logs to the fire. The fire leaped up, casting troubling shadows on the walls as she slipped off her clothes and draped them over a chair to dry. For a moment she hesitated, fingering the flannel nightgown she hadn’t worn since Jason moved in. She would have welcomed the soft touch of the cloth against her skin now, knowing his sweet caresses would not be coming.

  She turned away from the nightgown and walked around the bed to where Jason had dropped his clothes in a careless heap. The wet cuffs of his jeans had soaked his shirt and sweatshirt already. On the bottom of the pile lay his sopping wet socks. Holding them, she wondered if she should “wake” him and insist he dry his feet, but a glance at his shadowed face stopped her. His feet would dry well enough on the sheets. She draped his clothes on the chair with hers where they would dry and climbed into bed beside him.

  Jason’s familiar weight pulled her to the center of the bed. Usually he slept curled around her, his face buried in her hair. They fit together like two spoons in a drawer, knees and hips curved together, his arm draped across her stomach. Not tonight. How long would it take to learn to fall asleep without the whisper of his breath across her cheek?

  She propped herself on one elbow and tugged the blanket over his shoulder, allowing her hand to trail across his back under the sheet. He didn’t react. Normally he responded to her every touch, even if only to sigh in his sleep. She wished he would roll over and take her in his arms. His strong chest pressed against her back would feel so good right now. But something had torn between them tonight. She slid her hand around his waist as she fitted her knees behind his and curved her hips around his. She pressed her cheek against his shoulder. Breathing his scent, she closed her eyes.

  Chapter 16

  Jason opened his eyes in the dark room. The clock beside the bed said 1:30. The way he felt, he would have invited a hangover. His head rested somewhere warm, soft, and seemingly safe. Without moving and alerting Cass, he discovered he’d twisted around her in his sleep and now had his cheek resting between her breasts. She had her arm draped around his shoulders and her other hand on top
of his head. Her knees hooked over his, trapping him. Getting out of bed without waking her would be tricky, and if he woke her, he’d have to talk to her.

  He didn’t want to talk to anyone now. He wanted to slip away and leave a cheery note saying it had been fun, but he had to get home to take care of some business. Never mind that business would be finding another hideout to finish out his exile and lick his fresh wounds.

  The slow beat of Cass’s heart pulsed under his ear. He’d watched her shadow as she’d undressed by the firelight last night, and for the first time, not been aroused. Even when she climbed into bed and lay naked against him, stroking his back, he hadn’t wanted to roll over and take her.

  He’d wanted to run then, too.

  He closed his eyes, which proved to be a mistake. Eyes closed, he could see the letter in his hands.

  He’d gone into his mother’s room to find some money for milk. She’d been out working and had taken her purse with her, so he went through the pockets of her thin, ragged winter coat and torn raincoat. Finding nothing, he’d pulled down her church purse. Before he found the dollar bills she kept there for her tithe, he found the letter in a side pocket. The paper was soft from handling, the letter dated the day they’d told him his father had died. Every year on that date, Jason went to the church and lit a candle for his father’s soul.

  But according to the thick block letters on this page, his father wasn’t dead. He’d found a woman in Santa Fe he liked better and they were expecting a baby. Too stunned to even tear the letter to shreds, he’d sunk to his knees, reading and rereading it until every inkblot had burned into his mind. His two oldest sisters had been at work, waiting tables to supplement the family income. Connie, the middle child, was out with friends. She wouldn’t have her waitressing job for six more months. Only Tessa had been home, nose in a book, studying for a test. He’d tucked the letter back the way he’d found it and walked out of the house.