Skygods (Hydraulic #2)

by Sarah Latchaw

  “Samuel,” I hissed, “I am not having this argument with you again.”

  He gave me a playful shake, then turned to Molly. “Have you spoken with any mental illness centers about financial assistance? Derek might be more willing to accept help from a foundation than from people he knows.”

  “Kaye and I have tossed around the idea. And I’m looking into government assistance.”

  “A local charity is your best bet, because Medicaid funding is wrapped in red tape. Then there are always the NAMI fund-raiser walks.” He grabbed a piece of puppy chow from my stock pile and popped one in his mouth. “It’s tragic, the number of people who go without treatment.”

  Molly hummed sadly. “That’s what one of the nurses at the hospital said while I was waiting for Holly’s appointment to finish. She called Holly one of the ‘lucky ones’ because she has family who care enough to help her. Did you know they only have a couple visitors on the floor every day? Out of all those inpatients.”

  “I can’t believe that!” I was woefully unaware of what happened beyond my front door.

  “And get this,” Molly continued. “There was a patient there who talked to me between his fingers because he thought he was the ruler of Saturn, and that’s how gods communicated. Do you know what that nurse told me?”

  I shook my head.

  “They were going to release him the next day. They couldn’t make him stay past three days since he told them he could sleep on a buddy’s couch, had fifty dollars in his checking account, and promised to fill his prescription and make a doctor appointment in a week.”

  “That’s crazy,” Cassady said.

  “That’s how they slip through the cracks,” Samuel explained. I felt him sigh against my neck. “So many unnecessary deaths.”

  “We should just have our own fund-raiser and give the proceeds directly to local clinics for patient assistance,” I muttered. “Then we could avoid the red tape.”

  “Why don’t you?” Samuel asked.

  I craned my neck to look at him. “Organize a fund-raiser?”

  “Sure. You have the financial resources, plus the event planning knowledge.”

  “That’s…that’s a big undertaking,” I stuttered. “I’d need a lot of assistance, and even then…”

  “If you start small, something for friends and family, it would be feasible.”

  “Or, TrilbyJones could donate time and project work as long as we kept careful accounts.” Molly’s eyes filling with excitement. “If we started planning something a year out, it could be extremely successful. A website, TV and radio spots, entertainment.”

  “It would be a great opportunity for some of our clients to show local support,” I added, the wheels cranking in my brain. I pointed at Cassady. “We could even do some cross-promotionals, maybe a benefit auction with ski passes, kayak excursions, that sort of thing.”

  Cassady grimaced. “Wait, wait, wait. What scale of event are we talking here? Bake sale or Planet Bluegrass-sized?”

  Yes. That was it.

  “Planet Bluegrass!” I could kiss Cassady. “Why not have an all-day music festival in Lyons?” Now in full brainstorming mode, I ached for my white board and markers. “There are so many local bands. We could screen groups over the winter and invite them to perform at a music festival, say, next June? They would waive a performance fee in exchange for the free publicity. We could have tents for food concessions, maybe volunteer groups through the high school or the Boy Scouts could help staff—”

  “Child labor, Kaye?” Molly grinned.

  “Merit badges, Molly. Oh! And we could get in touch with several regional music critics and see if they’d be willing to write reviews.”

  Samuel held up his hands, as if to keep our tangible enthusiasm from ricocheting off the tent walls. “I think all of these ideas are admirable. And don’t get me wrong, a large-scale mental health benefit could certainly be successful—with time. If you’ll allow me to be a bit of a downer, though, here’s the truth of it: fundraising for mental health issues is a lot different than children’s charities, disaster relief, other non-profits.

  “People are uncomfortable discussing mental illness, let alone hanging a banner over their business. And getting the crowds out would be tough. Half don’t want to be lumped with a ‘bunch of crazies,’ and the other half are too afraid to out themselves or someone they love.” Red slowly stained his neck. “When it’s local, it’s too close to home. No one wants to know their neighbor might be the one taking mental trips around Saturn.”

  Uncomfortable silence settled into the tent as the excitement that boiled minutes ago fizzled out. Cassady cleared his throat as if to speak, but didn’t know quite what to say. Samuel sighed.

  “Look. All I’m saying is, realistically, it will be tough to find support.”

  At that moment he looked so lost, so sad. I reclaimed his shaking hands and squeezed. “You’d support us, wouldn’t you? Maybe you could write a feature piece or two that national magazines might be interested in running.”

  Samuel met me steady gaze. “I could do that.”

  Cassady and Molly’s mouths dropped open at Samuel’s offer. The tent became so silent, I could hear individual raindrops plopping in puddles outside.

  Molly cleared her throat. “You do realize the equivalent is having J.K. Rowling write our web content?”

  Samuel shrugged, a bit embarrassed. “It could bring attention to your cause, maybe even draw some large donors you wouldn’t reach locally.”

  Molly blinked, surprised. “You’d be willing to attach your name to this? A big-name New York author helping tiny health clinics in the backcountry?”

  “It’s not like he’s a complete stranger, Molly,” I retorted.

  “New York is where I live,” he explained. “But Colorado is my home. I grew up here and I want to help.”

  I pulled his hand, now clammy between mine, up to my mouth and kissed his palm. “We’d love for you to help.”

  Molly, however, was still doubtful. “Don’t get me wrong, Samuel. Your help would be…well…beyond helpful. But here’s the thing. If mental health fund-raisers are really difficult like you said, you can’t back out once we tout your involvement or it would sink us. Completely. It would be horrible for the event, for TrilbyJones, and any of our clients who offer their services. Like ‘Joss Whedon bailing on Comic-Con’ horrible. Because that’s what Water Sirens is, Cabral: the Rocky Mountains’ Buffy.”

  I hid a laugh behind my hand.

  “If I say I’m in, I’m in.” He chuckled. “I’ll help in any way I can, short of setting up a kissing booth next to the face-painting station.”

  I snapped my fingers. “You know, that’s not a bad idea. Forget the bands and the Boy Scouts. Let’s just pimp Samuel out to his female fan base! I bet there are a lot of naughty nixies who would pay big bucks for a minute with the Samuel Caulfield Cabral in a closet.” My lips curling into a smirk. “We could talk to Alan Murphy about publicity—”

  I squealed as Samuel suddenly flung me over his shoulder and my feet brushed the top of the tent.

  “Enough of that, Firecracker. I think it’s your bedtime.” He gripped me tightly around my waist and crouched through the zipper door. Grabbing both pairs of our shoes, he strutted out into the rain. I waved good night to my loving friends, who were laughing so hard, they didn’t bother to wave back.

  Holy Mother of Tom.

  I shrieked. Samuel tossed me on my sleeping bag and dropped to his knees next to me. I ran a hand between his shoulder blades, up into his damp hair, and pulled him down, my hungry mouth reaching for his. He met me hit for hit, our legs tangling around each other.

  He’d been so freaking clever, flooring us all with his offer to help our fund-raiser—even though he probably believed it wouldn’t succeed. I loved him for caring about my friends, about a woman he’d never even met. Frankly, it riled me up. The way he stared at me, eyes of blue fire, lust-clouded and hot and…argh.

 
; I knew, I knew we’d decided to wait just hours ago, that there was a lot of badness between us. But flaming stapler, how was a woman supposed to treat the man she was once married to? Should I pretend I didn’t already know every square inch of his body underneath the sleep clothes he’d worn for modesty’s sake?

  I pecked his neck, and he half laughed, half groaned into my shoulder, his elegant writer’s fingers dancing along my hairline, the bandage over my stitches. My own hands dug into the fabric of his T-shirt and clutched at him, begging for the pressure of his body.

  He obliged.

  “You are an amazing, amazing woman. You have no idea how much I adore you.” He kissed me again. “For wanting to help.”

  “Naïve as I may be,” I murmured, sneaking two hands beneath his shirt and sliding them across his fevered skin.

  “Not naïve. Well, maybe a bit.” He smiled. “I’d call it wholehearted optimism.”

  My lips grazed his sandpaper chin. “But are you sure you’ll have time, with the movies—”

  His hands smoothed my flannel-clad legs and grasped my hips, silencing me. He mischievously nipped a bit of powdered sugar from my chin, grinning as I wiped it with embarrassment.

  “I said I would and I meant it,” he rasped. “This means so much to me, I can’t tell you how much. I just wish…”

  And then his hands, his mouth turned frantic. He dug his fingers into my damp hair, catching the tangles and making me wince.

  “Wish what?” Why was I still talking? Fire shot through my body and my arm flailed, sending the lantern tumbling across the floor and flickering out. Crap. Total blackness. No more blue eyes.

  His hips stilled and he groaned again, his lips pressing against my forehead, my ears, my neck. Hovering over me, he wrapped hands around either side of my head as if he was trying to force some strange current from his fingertips to my brain. “Why can’t you see how strong you are? I wish I could make you see.” He kissed me again, hard, and I tried to kiss him back, but his mouth was too urgent and too consuming and too quick, and left my lips for my skin. He caught my neck again, sucking and biting hard enough to mark me.

  “Why can’t you see how fucking amazing you are?”

  His sudden anguished, angry tone brought me to a jarring halt. What the heck? Samuel never swore like that. I couldn’t see his eyes and, with the darkness, I had the unsettling feeling I was locked with a complete stranger. A flash of greedy hands, cold, hardened eyes flared through my memory and became the hands and eyes of the man above me. The bare New York room. The brunette. Fluttery white cocaine lines.

  I froze.

  He returned to my neck, then back to my mouth and I felt his teeth bite my sensitive lips. I tasted copper on my tongue.

  “Ow! That hurt.” My fingers flew to my bottom lip. Decisive, I pushed against him with my hands and knees. His entire body halted as something in him yanked to awareness and he rolled off of me, scooting several feet across the tent. Harsh breath beat a somber rhythm into the silence. Somehow the silence was more uncomfortable because of it.

  “Care to tell me why you nearly emasculated me with your kneecap?” Samuel ground out.

  Fear still coursed through my body, chased by a strong dose of defensiveness. “Samuel, what’s the matter with you? Keeping up with you is like following a ping-pong match.” I propped myself up on my elbows, twisting to see his black form. The only sounds were the soft thuds of the strengthening rainstorm and heavy breathing as we fought for control.

  But as panic receded, excruciating embarrassment rushed to fill its cavity. I realized for the second time today, I’d demanded something of Samuel that was both exposing and personal, and I hadn’t been prepared to reciprocate.

  I crawled over to him in the dark. Reluctant arms went around me, followed by even more reluctant lips as we struggled to restoke the fires that had burned so brightly a moment before. But that moment was long gone and, with a sigh, Samuel pulled away and retreated to the other side of the tent.

  Several beats later and a world of distance between us, my pounding heart slowed enough for words. “Why do you know so much about taking antidepressants, Samuel? Do you—are you—”

  I heard the rustle of a sleeping bag and I assumed he was settling in for the night. I slid into my sleeping bag and zipped it up to my chin. “Look, I’m sorry I panicked on you. I feel like a skittish virgin all over again and I’m incredibly mortified by it. Can you please talk to me?” I searched for a comfortable position on the cold tent floor before huffing and flopping onto my back. I folded my hands over my stomach and waited.

  “Your birth parents,” I tried again. “That’s why you’re so passionate about mental health issues, isn’t it? Tell me more about them.”

  There was another long stretch of silence, and then I heard more rustling as he moved closer to me.

  “Do you mind if I lay next to you? I swear I won’t touch you,” he said without a trace of cynicism, and my fear and shame melted.

  Finally. I patted the ground until I found the top of Samuel’s sleeping bag. “You’re still too far away.” I tugged him until he shifted to my side. Satisfied, I placed my palm on his waist. His trembling hand slip out of his bag and rested on top of mine.

  “Is this our weekly Q-and-A?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Very well.”

  I rested my head on his bicep, so close I felt puffs of warm, sweet air as he spoke. “My mother came from an old Boston Brahmin family, the Caulfields. Very wealthy, very prominent. Glittering gowns and cars, homes in Beacon Hill and Newport, big Harvard donors—that kind of prominent. Mr. Caulfield was a partner at a law firm, just like his father before him, and his grandfather, all the way back to colonial days.

  “So you can imagine how the family reacted when my mother, only sixteen, stripped down to nothing except for a pair of sheepskin boots at Boston Aquarium’s coral reef exhibit. A lot of school children got an education that day, needless to say.”

  “Oh my.”

  “Yeah. She was nearly torn limb from limb by raging mothers before security shuffled her away. Rachel Caulfield had always been considered a free spirit. Willowy in appearance, fiery in temper. I’ve been told I resemble her quite a lot. Anyway, it was also the early seventies, and it wasn’t the first time a woman was arrested for public nudity,” he said wryly. “Her family didn’t outright disown her. Rather, they washed their hands of her. Tossed her a pile of money every year to keep her out of their hair, under the condition she stay clear of the newspapers.”

  “But she was only sixteen! She was just a minor,” I said, shocked at the coldness of her family.

  He shrugged. “Now you know why I never bothered to contact any of them. I met my grandfather once, when I turned eighteen. Apparently Granddaddy Caulfield had contributed to my trust fund throughout the years and made a special trip to Lyons with a warning to not be as foolish as my mother. He was a bastard. He died a few years after that, and I never once mourned the loss.”

  “I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I wish you’d told me about his visit.”

  “I wish I had, too,” he said quietly.

  “What happened after your mother was cast out?”

  “She was a socialite. Kept up appearances and never interrupted the money flow. Oh, there were parties and men and drugs. But she managed to graduate from high school with honors and stay out of the papers, so the Caulfields looked the other way. Soon after she graduated, I guess she became bored with the monotony of her social circle so the family pulled a ton of strings and got her into Harvard.” He gave a droll little laugh. “She studied Psychology.”

  “Didn’t Alonso do his undergrad at Harvard?”

  “Yes, and my father. They were extremely brilliant, close.”

  My fingers skimmed along his jaw until I found his mouth. To my surprise, it curled into a smile. He kissed my fingers.

  “My father met my mother at a punk rock concert in an underground bar, of all places. Whil
e the rest of the country was crazy for KC and the Sunshine Band, they were Ramones fans.”

  Fitting, I mused, though I didn’t voice it. Perhaps obsession with punk music was genetic, after all. That would explain his undying love for The Clash.

  “Was Alonso a punk rocker, too?” I asked. I laughed a little—I couldn’t help it. The image of straight-laced Señor Cabral as an androgynous sex fiend in a ripped Johnny Rotten T-shirt and safety-pinned pants was irrepressible.

  Samuel laughed a bit, too, as if he could see straight into my head. “No, Papá has always been a José José fan.”

  “So they were punk rockers—and embraced the whole nihilist, anti-establishment identity. Isn’t that odd, considering your mother was a socialite and your father was an immigrant lawyer who rooted for the Red Sox?”

  He hummed. “I’ve reflected on it, what caused them to swing so extremely. A lot of it is due to their respective illnesses, I’m sure. But they were just two very lost people, Kaye. They let undercurrents toss them around and sweep them away instead of fighting for their own path. And when they found each other, they found another person who was willing to justify their behavior, no matter how they lived or what choices they made.”

  “Is that why your father was disbarred?” I asked.

  He gave my hand a small squeeze. “I’m getting there. They eloped two months after they met, and my father gained citizenship. The Caulfields, surprisingly, welcomed the match. Mr. Caulfield immediately took him under his wing with promises of a place at the law firm once he finished law school and passed the bar. I think they believed marriage would calm my mother, and they could keep the pair under their thumbs. The Cabrals were shocked, of course, but they accepted the marriage. All except Dad—Alonso.

  “My mother was extremely charismatic, understand—she charmed the Cabrals on holidays, but it was really only Alonso who spent any time around her. He didn’t trust her smiles or frivolity, and it caused a rift. He hated that his brother turned his back on their heritage for ‘gringo ways.’ For a long time, Alonso blamed the change in his brother’s behavior on my mother’s influence, but since then, he’s come to recognize it might have been early symptoms of clinical depression.”