Clear to Lift (27 page)

He doesn't rush, doesn't check his watch, doesn't do anything but comfort. I'm in his arms, and god, it feels right. But then I have a devastating thought. He's probably five minutes away from saying, “See you in a few months.” And not only that, I've just put him on the spot. What if he's just being nice right now? What if he's written me off already? Probably. Would make sense.

I pull back just slightly, but he keeps his arms loosely wrapped around my neck. “Will,” I say, lifting my hands to my eyes to wipe them. “I'm sorry. I know this is lousy timing. I know you're leaving. But Rich doesn't understand. He can't understand. I just need to talk … to
you.
”

“Passenger William Cavanaugh, please proceed to Gate C-Ten for boarding,” the voice calls over the PA system. “This is the third call for passenger William Cavanaugh. Please proceed to Gate C-Ten.”

He brings a tentative hand to my face, sweeping a tear-soaked strand of hair away from my cheek. “Are you saying what I think you're saying?”

“I broke my engagement with Rich. I'm saying I need you, Will. Only you. I know that now.”

He swallows, his hand still flush across the side of my face, his fingers gently caressing my skin.

“Passenger William Cavanaugh, This is your final boarding call. Please proceed to Gate C-Ten.”

“Your flight…”

“Come on.” He takes my hand, lacing his fingers through mine, and I swear I'm going to fly. We whisk around the counter to the United Airlines desk, where he flags down an agent.

“My name is Will Cavanaugh. I'm supposed to be on Flight Ten-Sixty, final destination Buenos Aires. Is it possible to take my bags off the flight? I have to reschedule.”

“Let me see what I can do,” the agent responds, lifting the telephone receiver.

“Will, are you sure? I didn't mean for you to do this. I didn't know what to do. I just needed to see you, that's all. To let you know—”

He squeezes my hand. “Shhh,” he says, putting a finger to his lips.

“Yes, Mr. Cavanaugh, we can do that for you. They're taking your bags off now. You can retrieve them in baggage claim.”

“Thank you.”

Wrapping his fingers more firmly through mine, he leads me away from the ticket counter, past the lobby entrance, and around the corner to a deserted baggage claim.

“You canceled your flight,” I say, still in disbelief as he takes my other hand and turns to face me. “This is twice now. Will, you can't—”

“I was only leaving because of you. I couldn't stay. Not with what I was feeling.”

He cups a hand under my chin, letting his thumb skim across my lips, holding there, searching my eyes. He smiles then, and with a look to melt the soul, leans down to kiss me. It's all I can do to stand as his mouth sinks into mine and the world around us disappears. His other hand reaches to my face, cradling it, holding me in the most protective way, even as his kiss deepens.

Who knows how long we stay like this? Who cares? But he does pull back just slightly, breathlessly. “I've wanted to do that for so long.”

I smile, the tears brimming.

His hands remain at the sides of my face, holding my head as he stares into my eyes. “Although, as many times as I envisioned kissing you, it was never in an airport baggage claim,” he says with a small laugh. “Probably the all-time worst place to share a first kiss.”

“It could have been on the moon and I wouldn't have cared.”

His fingers comb back through my hair and he shakes his head. “I was supposed to be sitting alone on a plane right now.”

“I know.” But then my face falls. “I'm just sorry it took something like … well, like what happened to make me realize how stubborn I was being.”

He draws away, letting his hands drop to find mine again. “I'm so sorry about your friend. So very sorry.”

I move my fingers through his, soaking in the reassuring pressure of his hands. “Shane was so capable, Will. So…” So everything. Shouldn't have died. Bottom line.

“I know,” he says.

And that was all anyone ever needed to say.

 

30

“Turn right here,” Will says.

Feather-light snowflakes drift through the headlight beams as I turn in to what appears to be a near-impenetrable wall of evergreens. But then the slimmest of openings is revealed, and a hidden road becomes visible, one without tire tracks, just untouched snow. With the increase in elevation from Reno to June Lake, the rain morphed into sleet, and finally to a quiet snow, the temperature hovering just above freezing.

“This isn't the way to your house,” I say. “Or is it a back way or something?”

“You'll see.”

I drive cautiously on this narrow route that winds and falls, noticeably dropping in elevation. Granted, it's dark now, but I don't see any signs of houses—no driveways or mailboxes—just forest. What I do see are the pinpoint silver twinkles of stars that peek through open slivers of unseen clouds. And I think, how wondrous to experience both the stars and the falling snow in the same moment.

Five minutes after we turn from the main road, Will directs me to park in a small clearing. He removes one of his North Face duffel bags from the back, opens it, and removes a small headlamp. He straps this to his forehead, then slings the duffel over his shoulders, wearing it like a backpack.

“Come on,” he says, holding out his hand.

I'm glad I've worn my hiking boots, as we tromp off in the snow, following the narrow beam from Will's light. We negotiate what feels like a stairway, each step marked with a soft powder crunch, then exit the clearing and turn onto a forest trail, not even wide enough to accommodate us side by side. We thread our way through a stand of bare-branched aspen, and a short minute later emerge into a second clearing, one ringed with stately pines. Shifting ribbons of steam rise from a pool of water in the middle.

“Is this—?”

He smiles.

The pool is part of a larger creek that disappears into the forest on either side, visible because of the steam that floats in sheets above it. Gurgling water spills into the depression in front of us before shooting through a tapered channel, then continuing downward and out of view. This particular pool has human touches, lined with rocks around the sides, flat ones, like patio tiles.

“I thought you might like to see this … you know, at night,” he says, slipping the duffel bag off his shoulders and letting it drop to the ground.

“The star show…” I lift my gaze from the water to the sky, remembering his comment when we soaked in the hot springs near the Mammoth Lakes airport.

“But you need to see it as it was meant to be seen,” he says, switching off his headlamp.

Instantly, we're wrapped in the blackest black, a no-moon-night-over-the-ocean black. I squeeze his hand, because now I can't see
at all.

Except for above, that is. The clouds have parted like curtains. Absent the moon's reflective shine and without any artificial light to wash out the view, the sky shimmers, awash in silver. And maybe it's that we're at altitude, the air thinner, less pollution, but there's a thickness to the starlight, a saturating sense of wonder, possibility.

“Spectacular, isn't it?” he says.

I look up to the sound of his voice, unable to make out his features. “It sort of takes your breath away.”

His hand finds the back of my head, he pulls me to him, and lips so warm press down on mine. His kiss is sensuous, like an ache, the only two people on the planet. Snowflakes alight—pat, pat, pat—on my nose and cheeks, but melt away on contact, my skin rushing with warmth.

He pulls the zipper on my jacket, the sleeves roll off my arms, and he tosses it aside.

“Are we … out here?” I ask.

It's snowing. It's thirty degrees.

“Nope,” he says, shrugging off his own jacket. He follows by lifting his shirt up and over his head. I can't see his chest, but my hands find it, moving over its wide contours. My fingers move at will, exploring, gliding over the washboard abdomen I remember from our first trip to the hot springs.

“Or are we—?”

His hands move to my hips, gathering my shirt, and pulling upward. Somehow he finds the hook to my bra, and that falls next.

I'm about to complete my question when he fits his mouth over mine, and the words die on my tongue—probably because his wraps so wondrously around mine. Snowflakes drop, pitter patter, across my back, but his warm hands smooth over them, gliding down to the dip in my waist. Any thought of the cold evaporates as his fingers slip under the waistband of my pants and circle to the sides, finding my hips.

His fingers stay there, sliding along my hip bones, back and forth in that narrow groove. I press into him, and his hands move lower, every touch searing, sending a burn so deep—

“Will, this is torture!”

His deep laugh fills the night air. “You like that, then.”

“I can't even … I can't even think—”

“That's the idea,” he says, hands now on my pants, unbuttoning them, zipper coming down …

“I know we're supposed to go slow,” I say. “But, this time—”

I almost laugh out loud at the absurdity, realizing I've lived a sex-by-the-numbers existence until now. You do this, then this, next step, next step … Like my entire life up to this point.

He doesn't answer as he removes my boots, then socks—ooh, the rocks are hot, like they were at the springs near Mammoth Lakes. His hands return to my waist, and he pulls my pants down. Down, down, down, and off.

“Will…,” I start, but then I hear the gentle
swish, swish
as he removes the rest of his clothes.

“Just wait,” he whispers.

He must have kneeled, because now his hands glide up my legs and move over my torso. A kiss to my navel. Another just above. His lips press gently against my abdomen, one slow kiss after another, moving sensually upward, until his fingers smooth over my breasts which swell and harden under his touch.

“Oh god, Will—”

He finds my mouth again, and his lips press hard against mine. A guttural sound issues from the back of his throat, his kiss deepening, just as the clouds knit together, closing our picture window to the stars.

I'm pummeled with sensory overload. The wholesome fragrance of him, like earth and pine. The sound of his breath washing across my cheeks, echoing, roaring in my ears. His slow-beating heart pounding as if it were in my own chest. Every touch heightened, every sensation amplified in the all-consuming darkness.

I thought we'd move into the water. I'm sure Will thought the same. A romantic interlude in a hot spring? What could be better? But as the heat explodes between us, my body molded to his … it's too much. The notion of a dip in the spring quickly goes by the wayside as he lowers me to the flat rocks next to the pool, where the sensory overload bumps up one more notch—my backside warm like butter, my front rippling with goose bumps as snowflakes dot across my skin.

“Ooh, it's cold!” I say with a shiver.

“It won't be in just a second.”

I hear him move away. The zip of a zipper. The ripping of paper.

A condom. Thank god he has one.

He moves over me, his body weight settling. Instant warmth.

And in this blackest of black, there's nothing to cling to visually, fostering an intense connection to the warm-blooded being who hovers over me, now in me, all of him, becoming all of me. We move as one, no more holding back, and soar into oblivion.

*   *   *

The clouds pull apart to allow another peek at the cosmos, the stars winking their approval. My head presses firmly into Will's chest, his arm wrapped securely around me, one side of my brain absorbed in the forever of the universe, the other trying to decide if I'm hot or cold.

I burrow my head further, and Will responds by extending his other arm across me and pulling me close for a light kiss on the forehead.

“Cold?” he asks.

“I can't decide, but I think you're tipping the scales toward warmer than colder.”

“We can go, if you want.”

“No, no. I could stay here all night. Just like this.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

“You know…,” he says, shifting. “We
could
stay here, and we wouldn't have to be completely exposed like this. I have my tent in my pack. A sleeping bag, too.”

“I guess you would, wouldn't you? For your trip…”

“So what do you think?”

“I don't know. I've never slept in a tent before.”

I don't need any illumination to know he wears an incredulous look on his face.

“You've
never
been in a tent before?”

“I was an indoor girl, remember?”

“That still does not compute with me.”

“Well, yeah. The closest I got to the outdoors was my aunt Celia's lodge on the Walker River. I thought it was so rugged, staying in a
cabin.
”

I feel his head shaking as his chin brushes the top of my head. “Just gimme a couple minutes.”

A light rummaging sound, and then the light is near-blinding when he twists on his headlamp.

“Here,” he says, handing me my clothes. “We can get dressed first, then put everything together.”

He dresses quickly, then begins to pull things out of his North Face bag. This is followed by the clinking of metal as he snaps aluminum poles together and lays them across the yellow nylon material he has spread on the ground.

I don my clothes, pulling on my boots last, not bothering with the laces. But at least I'm covered now. “May I help you?”

“Sure, you can thread these poles through the loops there,” he says. “They run diagonally and insert into the straps at the ends.”

I oblige, sliding the poles crossways and snapping them into the grommets built into the webbing at each corner. But when I stand back, the tent promptly collapses, twisting awkwardly in the middle.