They came to another open room and she stopped. He curved one of his arms around her waist, pressing his forearm to her stomach.
“There’s should be an emergency kit in a cabinet in here. Flashlights and weather radio, things like that.”
Her hair brushed the stubble on his chin as she turned her head from side to side, trying to figure out where to start. Deciding on a direction, she moved to her left and he followed, keeping her close to him because he liked it. She fit nicely in the curve of his arm.
Remington had always demonstrated his affection for those he cared about through physical contact. But he liked a certain amount of familiarity with a person before he was comfortable holding hands, snuggling, cuddling. Somehow, in the short time he’d known Lydia, she’d reached that emotional place with him already.
Her phone lit up in the dark just as they reached the bank of cabinets on the far left. She answered, seeing Merrick’s name on the screen.
One of these days Remington was going to figure out the nature of their relationship.
Though, maybe it was similar to his own with Lydia. Perhaps Merrick had simply found himself a little in over his head with a gorgeous, intelligent woman. And the conflict was real.
“No, the generators didn’t kick in… Yeah, we’re fine. I’m getting the radio out now….” She pushed an object into Remington’s hand, forcing him to let go of her hip. It was a flashlight. He flicked it on and pointed it away from her face.
“Really?... That sucks… Okay, I’ll text you in the morning…Later.” She pursed her lips as she powered off her phone. “I only have twenty-percent left on my battery and it looks like we’re here until morning.” She crouched down and dug through the open door of the cupboard. Pulling out a weather radio, she set it on the floor and sat in front of it. Remington joined her.
“Merrick said the news reported the road up here getting washed out.”
“Uh, that doesn’t sound good.”
“Eh,” she said noncommittedly, adjusting the knobs and dials through the static. “It happens often enough. We can get back through a different route. But I can’t find it in the dark. It’s an old, unmarked ranger road. So, we’ll have to leave at sunrise. As long as the storm doesn’t get worse.”
Remington sat still, silently watching her face in the flickering lightning and the unflattering yellow glow of the flashlight as she listened to the weather reports. After a while, satisfied with the provided information, she turned the radio off and stood up.
“Might as well get some sleep. C’mon,” she gestured with a hand for him to join her, her tone flat and disconnected.
Oh, she was still mad at him. Interesting.
Remington stood and followed her, the flashlight taking away his need to get too close or hold onto her at all. It deflated him a little.
He remembered seeing the room she led him to in the initial tour. It was a smallish sort of rec room with a tv and two couches.
Lydia sighed as she surveyed their limited sleeping provisions. Remington couldn’t help but notice the defeated slope of her shoulders, the tired line of her jaw. It occurred to him that maybe she wasn’t accustomed to being so take charge. She could do it, for sure, he had just watched it happen. But her energy was fading fast.
“Hey,” he said, unsure where he was going with his words but wanting to fill the air between them with some kind of a bridge.
She turned to him but her eyes remained fixed on his chest. “You can have your pick of the couches. I don’t care either way.”
“Larkin…” He took a step toward her but stopped when her eyes met his.
“Why are you here?” she asked, her eyes sharp and calculating.
“You kidnapped me,” he reminded, trying on a sloppy smile.
Her eyes narrowed at his mouth. “You called me a hypocrite earlier. Not as if it had only just occurred to you, but as if you’d thought about it before. I wouldn’t want to be friends with a hypocrite.” Her voice broke at the end and she shook her head, dropping her gaze to his chest again.
Remington’s chest burned with her words. He resisted the urge to pull her into his arms and hug her until she felt the warmth she created just by being in a room.
“Lydia,” he said softly. “You’re so smart. You see the world in a way I can’t. And I really can’t get enough of it. That’s one of the reasons I keep invading your life. But sometimes… you’re really stupid.”
Her eyebrows played with an adorable frown and he couldn’t stop his smile. “I like arguing with you. I like that you call me on my shit. I have a feeling you’re not used to someone calling you on yours.”
She allowed his words to sink in and he watched as she processed them behind those vivid irises. “You’re right.” Her eyes snapped up to him and her frown deepened. “I don’t like it.”
He laughed out loud and pulled her into his chest with one arm.
“You’re so cute.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head even as her hands pushed against his chest to create space between them. “I’m sorry I was a jerk. I’ll be careful from now on.”
He released her, grinning as he did, relieved to see her mouth was soft again. She picked a couch, sitting on it and then swinging her legs over to lay down. She stared up at the ceiling.
Remington mirrored her on his couch. The thunder rumbled in the distance, getting further away but the rain drummed on the ceiling in a steady pulse.
Lydia began to hum softly. Remington twisted his head to look at her, her eyes were closed, hands folded on top of her stomach in soft repose. He focused on the tune and finally identified the song. Another classic.
Led Zeppelin’s “The Rain Song.”
Remington realized he was staring at Lydia’s face, the curve of her pale cheek in the dark, the pout of her upturned lips. She always looked a little different each time he looked at her. Features he’d seen but hadn’t noticed. If that made sense.
He relaxed onto the couch and turned his face to the ceiling again.
Wondering why hearing her hum this song with the sound of the rain above him, made it better than he remembered.
Chapter 7
Lamps and Flashlights
Remington
“That’s not even remotely accurate to how it works.” She sighed and slid further down in her seat. “You can’t actually make money off doing something you love. It’s not possible.”
Remington jerked his head back and scoffed at the windshield. “See? That’s what most people think, but it is possible.”
“You’re so naïve it’s adorable.” She removed the elastic from her hair and ran a hand through the brunette tangles.
They’d been back on the road for a couple of hours now. Lydia had woken up with a headache and asked Remington if he would drive. She guided them through the muddy backroads until they came back onto the highway.
With a few hundred miles left before they hit the city limit sign, their arguing about life and perceptions had continued.
Remington was hit with a wave of familiarity, but couldn’t place it. It was happening more frequently with Lydia. The more time they spent together, the more she reminded him of something—or someone.
Was it possible they had talked so many circles around each other she was only reminding him of herself?
Either way, she was a distraction.
He’d realized it that morning while she’d been checking the system for errors after the power had come back on. In the near twenty-four hours they’d spent together, Remington had ceased to exist to the rest of the world.
On one hand, he liked that he didn’t have to check-in with anyone when something like last night happened. No one waiting up for him at home, no boxes to check at the end of the day.
But he’d turned his phone on to several missed messages from clients and business partners.
While he lived the life he loved, free to do as he pleased, he also had obligations.
And Lydia’s random adventure had
interfered with his goals.
He glanced to his right.
Yep. She was a distraction.
Complicated, strange, unpredictable, intelligent.
All the makings of a bunny trail he couldn’t afford to follow. He’d need to temper their friendship. Being so often in one another’s space wasn’t healthy.
Not for him.
Definitely not for her.
People… got attached.
Regardless of what she said. All people, in his experience, eventually wanted more.
His knowledge of these facts irritated him. He liked Lydia. He wanted to spend more time with her. But realistically he knew he couldn’t be selfish about this. He had to think of her feelings—or her eventual potential feelings.
And he’d already promised he would never do to another woman’s heart what he’d done to Cressida’s. The one absolute he allowed in his life.
Of course, it would be a whole lot easier to stay away from her if she wasn’t so fucking cool. Her laugh, her hair, her mannerisms... her brain.
“Yes, you can love the money you make, and even convince yourself that you’re happy making it. But eventually it’s just a paycheck and you’re just a lamp.”
“Wait. A lamp? What are you talking about?”
“Can we stop and use the bathroom soon?” She sat up and stretched her arms over her head.
“Sure. After you explain the comment about becoming a lamp.”
She snickered and dropped her arms loosely into her lap. “You’ve never, not once in your life, stopped feeling like a person and started feeling like an inanimate object?”
“A lamp?”
“Yeah. You add to the beauty of the room but you could just as easily be replaced by a newer, shinier lamp.”
Remington rubbed his fingers across his forehead as he thought about her analogy. A lamp. Weird.
More hints into that dicey family dynamic?
For all the time they’d spent together, all the things they’d talked about, he didn’t really know her.
Not in the way people say they know each other.
And yet...
Her energy felt...
Kindred.
But that really wasn’t anything new for him. He often felt a quick connection to people. It was fast and burned hot, until it burned out. He never had a problem with moving on. But others struggled. So he’d come to be more careful with his quick combustion, giving the other person space and time to get to know him first.
Because there was a shit ton to know about him. And not everyone could handle it.
But he didn’t fight it when the ignition switch flipped on their friendship and had progressed full-throttle. Blasting straight past “casual acquaintance” to knowing exactly how to piss the other one off.
That kind of kinship took time…and trust.
But he didn’t know the regular things people know about each other. If she had siblings or if she spoke to her parents. Where she’d gone to school and whether or not she was allergic to strawberries.
But they kept sharing thoughts and ideas he wouldn’t even venture into with friends he’d known since he was a kid.
“A flashlight.” He rubbed a hand down his face, feeling pressure release in his head with his confession but it combined with a sense of self-consciousness of which he wasn't accustomed.
“A flashlight?” she asked.
“Yeah. People can use me to illuminate their life, but then set me down and walk away when they don't need me anymore.”
Too afraid to look at her reaction, Remington kept his gaze fixed forward.
“You're not a flashlight,” she declared.
He cracked a small smile. “Doesn't stop me from feeling like one sometimes.”
“You're a person. Bones and blood and guts. Of that I have no doubt.”
“And are you the expert on such matters? The girl who feels like a lamp?” he teased.
She snorted. “People are funny creatures. We're weak at heart and dense in our insecurities. Stone walls of fakery built around tender dreams. Children who've learned that crying doesn't bring the comfort we desire but the cold reality of the night.”
Shit. Like. This.
This was why when they got back to town, he needed to create space between them. Gaps of reason and rational. Space in between his need to know more about her and her obvious need to be saved.
But for now, he couldn’t stop the conversation and its direction if he wanted to. As if his brain’s thirst for something deeper was controlling his responses.
“And so we stop crying,” he continued the thought, knowing where it picked up next. Because despite his logical deduction of their personal separations, he needed the continued flow of conversation between them. Like completing an electrical circuit. They were separate wires until they connected to the same idea, and then their electrons found flow in both of them simultaneously.
“And begin to identify with objects more so than people,” she said.
“For the safety of it,” he finished.
“It's simple self-preservation. If we can blame others for turning us into things, we think somehow we've kept ourselves safe on the inside.”
“You don't think it works that way?” he asked, picking up on the tension in her voice.
“I used to...” she stared out the window, resting her head against the glass. “Believing and behaving as an object only works for a time. But the bones and blood and guts eventually stop going quietly into the night and you're forced to a reckoning between the two. We’re alive. Despite the forced conditioning to think differently. Just like with the snapdragons…”
Remington shifted in his seat, all the times she’d started to talk about what was behind the walls she used to guard herself flashing through his mind. He held his breath, hoping she’d continue, but not wanting to push.
“Ooh! Gas station on the next exit. Please, can we stop?”
“No problem,” he said, feeling deflated by the subject change. Her thoughts and turn of conversation were entirely too appealing for her own good. He’d have to be more aware of how lost she made him.
The faces of former lovers drifted through his memory unexpectedly. He blinked hard and gripped the steering wheel just a little too tightly as he took the exit ramp.
Not a path he wanted his head to go down with Lydia. The moment it did, she would be lost to him.
For more than the obvious reasons.
He stopped the car at the pump and she was already out and jogging toward the glass door of the building.
Yes, he would need a break when they got back to town.
For both their sakes, but more so for the sake of the friendship he wanted to keep for a very long time.
***
Lydia
Lydia hadn’t been home for a minute before her phone rang.
“Hey, mom,” she answered.
“Where have you been?”
“Good, thanks, how are you?” Lydia asked, ignoring the question. She fell backwards on her mattress and stretched her legs out, pointing her toes. Long car rides always made her sick and cramped. Like being in a fiberglass cage.
“Sam said you were there yesterday. But I called this morning and there was no answer.”
Lydia took a steadying breath, not feeling the peace come back that she had been enjoying the past twenty-four hours.
“I got called into work and just got home now.” She wanted to point out all the obvious things she used to point out futilely in the past—her age, her intelligence, her track record. But none of those things mattered. They never did, but they especially didn’t now.
The silence on the other end of the line meant her mom was considering her answer. Using Merrick as her excuse for not being home would be easy to check.
One of the many benefits of moving to L.A. a year ago.
“Well, I’m glad you’re getting to use your talents,” her mom said softly.
Score another one for Lydia and her g
iant brain. Ugh, she should really send Merrick a gift basket just for existing.
“When will you be home?”
Their conversations never changed. Mom never asked what Lydia was working on or who she was dating. She only wanted to know where she’d been and when she’d be home. It made Lydia’s chest burn and ache like that time she had pneumonia when she was seven.
“I’ll be home for your birthday next month, mom.”
“You know what I mean, Lydia.”
“We’ll go out to lunch and shopping and spend the day together. Just me and you.”
Her mom’s breath hitched over the phone and Lydia felt it in her chest.
“Okay,” followed by a heavy sigh.
Lydia couldn’t feel bad—she wouldn’t. It wasn’t her fault that her mom’s world had gone straight to shit. And it shouldn’t be her duty to fix it.
But the idea of letting her mom fix it on her own hurt like a bruise being continuously pressed.
“Have you been going to the meetings? Like we talked about last time?” Lydia closed her eyes at the long pause that followed her question. It meant no.
The subject changed after that. Her mom spoke swiftly about the small town gossip that made Lydia’s eyes cross and the updates around town before “remembering” she had something in the oven and had to go.
Lydia left her phone charging and made some dinner. She ate standing up in the kitchen, replaying certain moments over the past couple of weeks. Absently, she stroked the stiches on her stomach.
Remington had crashed into her life like a tidal wave.
When she’d dropped him off earlier, there had been a distinct change in their energy. A stillness. For her it was silent contemplation. She didn’t know him well enough to understand his silence. But the shadows in his amber eyes seemed… sad?
He’d held her eyes for several beats. But said nothing. The stranger he still was to her more prominent than he had been.
And beautiful.
But that was his constant—the baseline of his existence.
In Between the Earth and Sky Page 11
