Between Here and the Horizon

by Callie Hart

  Sully considered the meal: pancakes, drowning in maple syrup. Chicken and apple sausages. Eggs, over easy, still hot from the frying pan. He sighed, leaning back against the kitchen counter. “Our mom used to make this for me and Ronan nearly every day whenever we were on vacation,” he said quietly. “She called it the sunshine scramble.”

  I bit my lip, not sure if I should say anything. What the hell, though. It couldn’t hurt to tell him the truth. “Amie calls it that, too. Ronan used to make it for her.”

  Sully stared at the food some more, shifting and twitching like he was extremely uncomfortable.

  “Well. Fuck.” He ran his hand back through his hair, and left it there at the base of his neck, his lips pressed into a tight white line.

  “Let’s just eat, Sully. It doesn’t have to be a thing.”

  “No. You’re right. It doesn’t.” He still looked like he’d had the wind knocked out of him, though. We sat and ate in silence. When we were done, Sully did something that surprised the hell out of me. He stood up, and then he reached out and took me by the hand, making me stand up, too. I thought he was going to escort me out of the house or something—he’d been broody and silent ever since I’d shown him the food—but instead he raised his right hand and he brushed my hair back behind my ear, giving me a complicated smile.

  “I’ve never kissed a girl for the first time without being drunk, y’know?” he said.

  “What? You’re not about to, either.” I tried to step back, embarrassed, too shocked to even believe for a second that he was being serious. He slipped an arm around my waist and stopped me, though.

  “God, Lang. Not much in my life is easy. Just getting out of bed at the moment is a goddamn uphill struggle. Breathing is far more taxing than it should be most days. Don’t go making this difficult, too.” He smiled his reckless smile, dimples locked and loaded, ready to kill, and my chest squeezed tightly. He was being perfectly serious, and I had no idea how to react. I just kind of froze, alarmed and unarmed, caught completely off guard.

  “I—”

  “You don’t want me to kiss you?”

  Slowly, I nodded my head. “I do. At least, I think I—”

  “No more thinking.” He rushed me, bending down to meet me, his mouth crashing into mine, stealing what little breath I had right away. If I’d wanted to react in some way, to fend him off or object, I’d never have had the time. He drew me into him, holding me carefully against his body, his chest pressing up against mine, the buckle of his belt flush with my stomach. His hands were firm and persuasive; it seemed as though he wanted to touch me everywhere, to feel the texture of my skin beneath his fingertips, to revel in the sensation of our bodies aligned so perfectly against one another. The kiss was the kind of kiss that made people wolf whistle in the street. It was spectacular—a ground shaking kiss that would send your head spinning and your knees collapsing out from underneath you. I didn’t know what to do. I had two options: I could shove him away and slap his face hard enough to knock him into next week, or I could go with it and kiss him back.

  I wanted to do both, he had no right to be planting kisses on me out of the blue, slingshotting my sanity into outer space, but then again it really was perfection.

  I kissed him back.

  Winding my arms around his neck, I popped up onto my tiptoes in order to claim his mouth just as feverishly as he was claiming mine. His tongue flicked quickly at mine, and then Sully was cupping my face in his hand, rubbing the pad of his thumb against the swollen flesh of my lips. He drew back, smiling in the most unimaginably nefarious way, like he was plotting my ruin inside that wicked head of his.

  “Your mouth…” he whispered, laughing softly under his breath. “You have no idea how much time I’ve spent fantasizing about your mouth, Lang.”

  “You have? Why?” That was an incredibly naïve question. I knew why he’d been daydreaming about my mouth all too well. Sully looked like he was glad I’d asked, though.

  “Well,” he said, taking a step forward. We were flush up against each other, so I had no choice but to take a small step back at the same time. “Your lips are rather ridiculous. They look so plump and bitable, for fuck’s sake. I’ve imagined trapping them between my teeth more times that I can remember. It’s made staying mad at you really fucking difficult. And just so you know, Lang, every time you lick your lips, every time that tongue of yours darts out of your perfectly formed mouth, I love to imagine what it would feel like to have that tongue of yours licking at the head of my dick. It drives me crazy.”

  I couldn’t believe he just came out and said that so easily. Will and I never spoke about sex. We tried talking dirty to each other a couple of times, but he said it made him feel shitty. Disgusting, even. He felt like he was taking advantage of me.

  Will was the most vanilla guy, in and out of the bedroom, and I already knew deep in my bones that Sully was the polar opposite. He was mint and strawberry, chocolate and pistachio all rolled into one. Where Will was cool as ice, Sully was blazing fire. Where Will was reserved, always too worried about what the neighbors might think, Sully was fiercely determined to lay claim to whatever he wanted, and screw anybody else of what they thought.

  He tangled his fingers up in my hair, twisting it into a messy knot at the nape of my neck, then gently pulling on it, tilting my head back.

  “And this?” he said, slowly tracing the index finger of his free hand down the line of my throat. “Your neck, Lang. Fuck. You have the sexiest neck.”

  “Necks aren’t sexy,” I countered, trying to ignore the erratic tattoo of my heart as it stumbled all over itself in my chest. Fear was bubbling up inside me. The way Sully was handling me was more than sexual; it was vital. My body was humming at his touch, filled with electricity, and every time he grazed his mouth against mine I felt myself soaring higher and higher away from reality.

  I wanted him. He wanted me, too—that was very obvious, given the rock hard erection I could feel pressing into my lower stomach. But this was such a terrible idea. A terrible, terrible idea.

  Sully was Connor and Amie’s uncle. He was crazy, as far as I could tell, and he wanted nothing to do with his brother’s kids. I shouldn’t want him. I couldn’t. Pulling myself away, I gasped in a deep breath, already hating myself. I was balancing on a knife edge. The right look from Sully, the right word, and I would be falling back into his arms. Sure enough, when I looked up at him, the dark, brooding expression on his face was like tinder to a flame; I took three giant steps away from him, until my back hit the wall behind me.

  “Whew. That was pretty stupid,” I said, laughing nervously. “Being locked up in this lighthouse must really be killing you, Sully. If you’re willing to make out with me to stem the boredom, then we should probably think about getting you out of the house as soon as possible.”

  He was walking toward me, chin dipped down, staring at me from under those dark brows of his—Sexy. So goddamn sexy—and I couldn’t help it. Adrenalin fired through me like a bullet leaving a gun, tearing everything apart in its wake. “I’m not bored,” he said slowly, his voice low. “I haven’t been bored for a single second in your company, Lang. From day one, you’ve intrigued me.”

  “Harassed you. I’ve harassed you. You said it yourself.” I was looking over his shoulder, trying to figure out how to slip by him, across the room and out the front door, but it was as if Sully could sense my thoughts. He sidestepped, shaking his head, tutting. “How long do you have left on the island, Lang?” he asked.

  “Three and a half months.” I should have stammered. My speech always let me down when I was nervous, and right now I was terrified. I should have been tripping up over my own tongue at every turn, and yet I somehow got the words out in one go.

  “Three and a half months. Right. So, do you think we should really be wasting any more of the little time we could be spending together?”

  Shock.

  I was in shock.

  Sully looked serious. The intensit
y pouring off him had me reaching for the wall behind me, trying to make sure I didn’t slide down it and collapse into a pool onto the floor. “You know us spending time together in that way isn’t a smart move. On my part, or on yours. You’re right. Three and a half months is such a short amount of time—”

  “It’s enough time to get to know each other.”

  ‘It’s enough time to fall for someone. Hard. And then what? I go back to California, without the children, without a job, and with a broken heart?” I shook my head. “No, Sully. This doesn’t end well.”

  “You don’t know how it ends,” he retorted. “And I can guarantee you, you won’t have fallen for me by the time you leave this place. I won’t let it happen. I can protect you from it.”

  “How?”

  He closed the gap between us again, moving slowly. “By letting you get to know me. By showing you my true colors.” He gently tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, staring at my earlobe like he wanted to feast on it. “And I’ll crank up my asshole super powers to the fiendish setting. That ought to do the trick.”

  I looked up at him defiantly, searching his face. Did he believe his snarky comebacks and his sharp-edged tongue would be enough to hold back the tides of something that already felt unstoppable, like the wave of a tsunami rushing in to shore? I studied his face for a long time, willing myself not to lean into his hand and close my eyes. Sully gave nothing away. His face was blank, his eyes mirrors, only reflecting myself back to me in their dark depths, betraying nothing of him at all. His lips were pressed tightly shut—that was the only thing that gave him away. He was holding his breath.

  Pushing away from the wall, I stooped down and grabbed my purse from the floor, then hurried past him before he could stop me. “I’m sorry, Sully. I have to go.”

  “Lang?”

  I didn’t turn back.

  “Ronan and I fought all the time,” he rushed out. “We raged, and we gouged, and we kicked the living shit out of each other, but through it all we always still loved each other. After what he did with Magda, though…there was no coming back from that. It changed me. I’ll admit I’m not the man I used to be. But you make me feel…fuck.” He stopped, growling under his breath. “You make me feel like I might be able to find that man again, the man I was, before Magda and before Afghanistan, and it scares the shit out of me. I don’t even know if I want to be him again. So…don’t walk away for good. I get it if you have to walk away for now. But make sure you come back, okay? This isn’t done yet and you know it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Snow Angels

  Three days. Then a week. Then two.

  December arrived, and with it snow. Wet, slushy snow that didn’t stick for long and made the roads a nightmare to drive on. Everything felt gray and dismal, especially my mood. Rose commented on my downcast spirit a few times, then gave up trying to figure out what was wrong with me. It was when Amie asked why I was so sad all the time, and was I going to go away like her daddy and her mommy had, that I realized enough was enough. I wasn’t alone anymore. I had two little people to consider, and moping around, feeling sorry for myself because I’d been stupid enough to develop a serious attraction to a man who was essentially poisonous, was only going to make them anxious and unhappy.

  So I cheered the fuck up.

  Connor got a part in the school nativity play. He had two lines, so it didn’t matter that he’d joined the cast at short notice. He rocked the part of Shepherd No. 2, and both Rose and I cried a little when he took a bow at the end of the performance, grinning from ear to ear. I’d never seen him smile. Not like that. Not like he was a normal, trouble-free seven-year-old, playing with his friends, looking forward to Christmas.

  Another week.

  Jerry, the boatman, decided to sail back to the mainland early and didn’t tell anyone he wouldn’t be coming back until the day after Christmas, so the inhabitants of The Causeway were scrambling through the few small grocery stores that remained open on the island, trying to find last minute presents for each other along with ingredients for their holiday dinners.

  Then, Christmas morning. I woke to hear Amie running up and down the hallway outside my room, squealing at the top of her lungs, followed by her brother, who was also yelling and laughing. They burst into my room, giggling like maniacs, half dressed, hair all over the place, both wearing toothy grins and extra cheeky dimples.

  Hurtling themselves at my bed, they jumped up on top of me and proceeded to flail and bounce around, hollering at the top of their lungs. “Snow! Snow! Snow!” Amie dropped to her knees, landing right on top of me. “Get up, Feelya. There’s so much snow outside. We need to go play in it.”

  Sure enough, when I allowed them to drag me, groggy and in sore need of caffeine, to the window, the entire view out of the glass was pure white for as far as the eye could see. There must have been a huge storm in the night, and we’d all slept through it.

  “Can we?” Connor said, looking hopeful. “We’re not even hungry. We don’t need breakfast.”

  “I don’t know about skipping breakfast,” I said, yawning. “But we can definitely go outside and build a snowman first. How about that?”

  They screamed in response. Outside, the world felt fresh and new. It felt like it was holding its breath. Like it was keeping a secret. The huge lawn to the front of the house was a pristine white blanket. Connor and Amie, in pink and green rubber boots, charged at it like wild animals, racing each other, running in circles, pushing each other over, making snow angels on their backs. They dragged me down with them, and I created the most lopsided, shapeless snow angel, which made them both laugh. The three of us lay on our backs in the snow, panting, trying to catch our breath, staring up at the sky, and Connor reached out and took my hand. I’d never forget it. The small, usually unremarkable gesture that had me so close to tears. I squeezed his hand and he pulled away, but he smiled at me as he raced off, whooping and shouting so loud that his voice echoed way off in the distance.

  When the cold set in and the glory of charging around in the snow was no longer enough to distract the children from the lure of the presents waiting for them under the Christmas tree, we headed back to the house. On the doorstep, sitting there, stacked one on top of the other, were three presents all wrapped in matching brown paper.

  “Look!” Amie ran up the steps and picked up the first present, shaking it in her mittened hand. “Santa brought us extras presents!” She held it up to show me.

  “That one’s got an O on it.” Connor took the present—long and narrow—from her, studying the small gift card that was taped to the top of it. “It doesn’t say anything else. I think it’s for you.” He handed the gift to me, and then picked up the one underneath. “This one has a A on it. And this one has a C.” Picking up the largest, bulkiest present from the floor, Connor gave it to his sister, who had to hold it with two hands.

  “Whoa! It’s heavy! Where did they come from?”

  “I don’t know, sweetheart. I think Santa maybe did just forget to drop these off in the night, so he left them here where he knew we would find them.” The presents weren’t there when we came outside earlier, I was sure of it. I spun around, scanning the sprawling lawn and the sweeping driveway that stretched on and on for at least a mile back to the main road, and there, in the distance, I saw him—a tall figure dressed in black, so far off he was barely more than a half a centimeter tall, walking away from the house. Black pants. Black jacket. A black hat, or maybe just very, very dark hair. Plumes of smoke rose up on the figure’s breath, clouding overhead as he grew smaller and smaller, until I couldn’t make him out anymore.

  “Who was that?” Connor asked.

  “I don’t know, buddy. I haven’t got a clue. Come on. How about we head inside and have some oatmeal? I think I’m starting to freeze.” I did know who the mystery figure was, though. It was all too obvious. Sully must have walked right past us playing around on the lawn when he dropped off the presents. He must have sl
ipped by, less than fifty feet away, and none of us had seen him. I slid the small present into my jacket pocket, ushering the children inside, and I couldn’t help but ask myself why. Why would he bother sneaking onto the property to bring the children a present? To bring me a present. After all he’d said, it made no sense that he would go to such extreme lengths, walking so far in the cold, so early in the morning. Why hadn’t he just driven his truck?

  I didn’t get to spend too long analyzing the man’s behavior. Breakfast had to be made, and then the children spent two solid hours ripping open their gifts and playing with their toys. Thankfully I’d had the foresight to order everything for them online weeks earlier, so Jerry’s vanishing act hadn’t affected me in any way.

  Connor and Amie, without meaning to, ended up opening Sully’s presents last.

  For Connor, a beautiful, small telescope, made of brass and maple wood. As soon as he opened the box and took out the complex looking article inside, I knew Sully had made it. You couldn’t buy that kind of craftsmanship anymore. Everything was machine made, but Connor’s telescope was unique, the wood hand-turned and sanded, the workings smooth and breathtaking. Connor held it reverently, eyes round and amazed. “It’s awesome,” he said breathlessly. “So much better than my binoculars. I’ll be able to see the stars with this.”

  “You sure will, buddy.”

  “Best present ever. I can’t wait for it to go dark so I can try it out.”

  Amie’s gift was just as impressive. At first it looked like a box full of random, sanded and varnished pieces of wood. All three of us stood over the open packaging, eyeing the contents with frowns of confusion on our faces until Amie yelped.

  “I know what it is! I know! I know!” She dropped down to the floor and began pulling out the pieces and laying them out in front of her, at which point it dawned on me, too: they were bones. Dinosaur bones. Sully had hand carved her a simplified, to-scale skeleton of what turned out to be (after many hours of playing where-the-heck-does-this-piece-go?) a Velociraptor.