Skygods (Hydraulic #2)

by Sarah Latchaw

  He held my gaze a long moment, and then let his head fall back, groaning.

  “Truth, Kaye. Can you be ready for the climb by November?”

  “I…yes, if I put time and energy into some day-hikes. But what—”

  “I want you to climb that damned mountain.”

  “What?” I gripped his forearm. “Samuel, no, not after what happened to you. You need me right now, and I can’t just—”

  He rolled his head forward, the blue startling me in its fierceness. “Yes, you can. I see how badly you want to climb the thing. I can’t lock you away in a closet, so I’m going to have to trust you to take care of yourself up there. It’ll be worse for both of us if I hold you back from the things you love.”

  “But I love you, too.”

  I searched his face for a trace of resentment, but found only earnestness. Still, his hand trembled in mine.

  “Samuel.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. Maybe you can use the climb time to think about what you want for us.”

  He was serious. I began to feel lighter, freer as his words sank in. Seven years ago, he never would have uttered them. I grinned like a danged idiot. “Are you telling me to look for the robed old man on the top of the mountain for a bit of wisdom?”

  “Kaye.”

  “Samuel. I don’t think Longs Peak has an old man. Just overzealous thrill-seekers making snow angels and gasping for air.”

  Samuel sighed and released my hand for his chopsticks, and I saw they didn’t quake as he stabbed at his food.

  I teased on. “Climb mountain, you must. Clear, to scale slopes, your mind must be.”

  He pursed his lips, holding in laughter. At last it broke through. Delighted, he reached under the table and dragged my chair closer to his, then wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “What was that?”

  “Yoda, obviously. What wisdom would you share?”

  He kissed my forehead. “Just be safe and be smart, because I won’t lie—I’ll be a mess until you return in one piece.”

  “Well then, I fully expect you to be huffing and puffing next to me while I log some practice time in the Front Range.”

  “That’s exactly where I should be.”

  We hadn’t shared a room since New York. I was left in limbo by Samuel’s desire to date me, court me, whatever he called it. I called it ridiculously cautious. But after dinner, as we walked through our hotel’s creeptastic corridor, he halted me.

  “Stay with me tonight?” he ground out. I hesitated, and he lifted my chin. “No sex. Just your company. Please.”

  I could have cattily reminded him that his year hadn’t passed. I could have thrown his request to “date” me back in his face. But I didn’t, because now wasn’t the time to rehash our fears and failings. I’d brought him home, just as Sofia had requested. So I nodded and took his hand.

  That night, as the radiator hissed and steamed into the blackness…as my fingertips smoothed over the soft hair on his chest, lean muscles, ribs…I realized what the main difference was between fictional Aspen and me. Aspen needed her man for her happiness. Me? I chose to be happy with mine. I was grateful it wasn’t too late to tell him so.

  “Wednesday at nine. Belinda Walker sits down with Water Sirens author Samuel Caulfield Cabral to discuss his startling arrest and a long-kept secret…”

  The radio cut through the quiet of the Campervan as we whooshed through the blackness of the pre-dawn mountains. Our climb team and significant others were scattered about the interior in various stages of sleep, but Jaime fixed that.

  “If I have to hear that twisted publicity hound’s name one more time, I’m going to rip Betty’s stereo system right out of her pretty dashboard,” she growled over the crackling AM station.

  “Hey! I’m sitting right here.” Samuel yanked out his earbuds and scowled at the couple opposite us.

  “I’m talking about Belinda Walker, not you, mental case.”

  “Frickin’-A, Jaime! Quit being such a harpy.”

  She ignored me, like always. “I question any television journalist’s integrity by rule.”

  I turned to Hector, who was all too ingenuously fiddling with a compass beneath the circle of an interior light. “You need to control your woman.”

  “Nuh-uh.” He squinted at the tiny needle. “She’ll put a hex on my balls. Luca, she’s your sister.”

  “Yeah, man, but she’s beaten the crap out of me since I started walking.”

  Molly turned in the front passenger seat and glared at the five of us. She was wearing the pinkest fleece cap I’d ever seen, pom-poms and all, and it took the scary out of her glare. “Will all of you shut up? It’s like I’m chaperoning the Children of the Corn’s field trip bus.”

  “Don’t make me call down He Who Walks Behind the Rows,” Cassady chimed in, all paternal-like. It was an idle threat, considering we were three cars deep in a slow-moving caravan winding into the Rockies.

  Moonlight peeked through the towering canopy of evergreen, casting dappled shadows across the roadside. Growing up in the mountains, I’d never really noticed how tall our trees were, knobby and bare in their “highwater pants” branches. The fat midget trees of New York and Boston left me feeling exposed beneath an open sky. Right now, the sky was clear. Later today, sun would be a welcome addition to our climb and would dry out the sole-sucking mud pits of the trail. Jaime was especially averse to the great outdoors, and I felt bad for leaving Samuel while we climbed the fourteener. Though I’d never tell Samuel, I almost longed for the days of Caroline, the cliff-hucking floozy.

  Almost.

  “Mierda, Jaime, can it!” Luca hissed. Samuel was either a masochist or madly in love with me to willingly stay behind with her at base camp. I hoped for the latter, but it might have been both.

  “So, Cabral, did David Ortiz pay you a visit in the nuthouse?”

  Samuel leveled cool eyes on Jaime. “Nope. But Ted Williams did.”

  Her mouth fell open and she blinked. Then a wide, well-pleased smirk found her dry lips. “Ay. You do have a sense of humor after all.”

  That’s my man.

  We clamored out of Betty and into the biting wind at the base of Longs Peak. My pack was lighter than it was at Paddler’s, when we’d split and stashed our food store. I glanced at Hector’s pack, mysteriously bulkier. He caught me staring, and offered me a sheepish smile. I returned it, then circled the van to find Samuel.

  “Do you have your—”

  “Meds? Yes.”

  I slid my arms around his waist. “I was going to say Taser.”

  “I think I can manage Jaime for a day.” Samuel wrapped his arms around me, and I could feel his warmth even through layers of fleece.

  “I should tell you something about Caulfield,” he whispered in my ear. “Sometimes he’s afraid the woman he loves doesn’t need him, not the way he needs her.” I started to protest, but he shushed me. “He’s afraid he’ll lose her again, but he doesn’t want to seem clingy.”

  “You won’t lose me,” I whispered back.

  He nodded against my cheek. “I’m telling you, so you know. I need you, Kaye.”

  “Samuel…” I pulled back so I could see his face. He was so beautiful, and so worried. “I don’t have to go.”

  “Yes, you do. I want this for you.” He brushed two thumbs along the apples of my cheeks, and I closed my eyes at his gentleness. I could tell he meant every word.

  “I’ll be careful, I promise. And for the record, I need you, too. Symbiosis, remember?” I pecked his cold lips, then leaned in for another, deeper kiss. The heat soon warmed our lips and neither of us wanted to pull away. With a final kiss to the corner of my mouth, Samuel leaned back and smiled, tucking a few loose strands of hair beneath my cap.

  “I trust you.” He lifted a sly eyebrow. “But, just to make sure.” He pulled a thin, red Sharpie marker from his coat pocket, uncapped it, and then brought it to my forehead. “For Hector’s benefit,” he explained as he scrawled something acr
oss my skin.

  Scowling, I ducked to Betty’s side mirror and tried to make out what he’d written. Then my scowl faded, and I was grinning, too:

  I LOVE SAMUEL CABRAL

  I held out my hand for the Sharpie. “May I borrow that, please?”

  Playful eyes met mine as he placed the marker in my open palm. I uncapped it and motioned for Samuel to bend over a bit. Standing on tip-toes, I scrawled my own words across his brown forehead:

  I’M STILL NAUGHTY

  “It says ‘I Love Kaye Trilby,’” I fibbed, hoping I’d be on the trail before he bothered with a mirror.

  He beamed and helped me hoist my pack onto my shoulders. “I’ll wear it proudly. Now go kick that mountain’s butt.”

  As my climbing team hit the pitch black trail and wandered away from base camp, excited thoughts raced through me…

  Odd, how only a few weeks ago, I’d fought like an Amazon to climb Longs Peak; Samuel had been just as fierce. Now the opposite was true.

  But that’s the way real love works, isn’t it? It’s not calculating or conditional, or self-serving. It doesn’t subjugate another to the demands of one’s happiness, but it rejoices when happiness is found. Especially when it’s found hand-in-hand. Real love is placing your unmolded years in the palm of another and, despite circumstance, trusting them to shape it into something exquisite before they return it to you. And then you do the same for them because you love them.

  I’d never loved Samuel more than when I gave up the Longs Peak climb for him…and he gave it right back to me. I absolutely, truly believed—for the first time since I saw Samuel again, his mud-colored hair flopping over his forehead as he signed copy after copy of The Last Other in a Boulder book shop—we would be okay.

  And I didn’t need to scale a snowy mountain to discover what I already knew: I would marry Samuel Cabral.

  Again.

  Continue reading for a short preview of the upcoming sequel: Fourteeners

  Fourteeners

  When a mountain crosses the towering threshold of fourteen thousand feet,

  it is known as a “fourteener.” Fourteeners shadow the twisting spine

  of the Colorado Rockies, and mountaineers,

  in their desire to be “above it all,”

  will face grueling terrain to place these peaks

  on their mantles.

  Chapter 1

  Anchor

  To offer protection against a potentially fatal fall,

  mountaineers will bolt their rope to rock, ice,

  or snow at an anchor point.

  Hydraulic Level Five [working title]

  Draft 1.100

  © Samuel Caulfield Cabral & Aspen Kaye Cabral

  100. Emotivus Drownicus Nixius

  CAULFIELD SEES THE HALF SMILES of his wife.

  Having her safe in their Bear Creek home, rooted to the ground while he writes and she canoes and hikes, works with her art galleries and cave clubs…she has all of her fingers and all of her toes. But she withers in his hands.

  Her mountains have become casual acquaintances—warranting a nod, but never an invite. The top-of-the-line hiking pack he gave her for Christmas collects dust in the closet. Next to it rests his own unused pack, bought in a flash of optimism. Every morning she watches the sun hit their mountains in a blaze of gold. Then, at night, they fall into shadow, and another day has passed in which she refuses to conquer their peaks.

  Ever since the avalanche.

  Their third wedding anniversary is approaching. Three years ago, they promised themselves to each other again, and when they repeat their vows on this date, every year, they say them with the painful knowledge of what it means to forsake those vows. Their anniversary is a time of celebration. But for Aspen, the days preluding it are a bitter token of ice and panic. She marks them alone, from the safety of her desk chair.

  Caulfield subtly asks, “Has H contacted you about another climb?” He dislikes the man on principle, and has long suspected H is in love with his wife, or was, once upon a time. Now H has his own wife, and he no longer watches Aspen with burning eyes.

  Aspen shrugs away his inquiry with a counter question. “How’s the new book coming?” She knows this will shut him up. He feels his manhood shrivel at the mention of that book—the book with great expectations attached to it. The fledgling fantasy series was supposed to be better than his nixies, and critics couldn’t wait to prove those claims wrong. It was lambasted before it hit the shelves. The reviews sit in his brain like his mother’s ancient upright piano: dissonant and immovable.

  “By the standards of his auspicious career, Sea Rovers is a cliché-strangled shipwreck destined for the foreboding depths of dust bins…”

  Still, he’s a storyteller. He sifts through his brain, and seeds of ideas tumble through his fingers where they root on paper. Caulfield writes, not about far-away nixies or water horses, or universally panned pirates. He turns to his beloved Colorado. To the drama of its mountains, where life thrives and dies through sun, and snow, and thin air fourteen thousand feet above the earth.

  “And so, Aspen, my wife,” Caulfield says, “I propose this: I’ll write mountains for you, and we’ll conquer them. As much as I want you in my hands, I will not watch you wither there.”

  Kaye—It’s been a long while since we’ve worked on our book. Are you game? ~Sam

  Sam, I’m game for most anything. Not once have I regretted what I did for that Klondike bar. ~Kaye

  The first time I ever heard “four-by-four” used as a verb was huddled over the breakfast stove at our Longs Peak high camp, between nibbles of freeze-dried food. It was also the first time I’d met someone with a “gold claim in the bush.” Not a euphemism—I asked.

  Dusky pinks of the alpenglow swirled over the rocks, though the air was still as cold as the dead of night. There wasn’t a cloud in sight, but that could change in a heartbeat. Today would be sunny and warm—relatively speaking—for a tundra zone. We watched as early-morning climbers trickled onto the field and others stretched stiff cold limbs out of tents. A pair of park rangers picked their way over boulders, checking ground and weather conditions. I dug through the “marmot-proof” box and handed out a round of granola bars.

  “If you were up in Prince George, you’d just four-by-four those off-roads,” crowed one of our new friends, chewing through a bar. “You don’t bike the forest during moose-calving season.” There was laughter and back-slapping, even though Hector didn’t know what the heck they were talking about. My friend was already half in love with his new climbing buddies, and a part of me was relieved he’d made a new adrenaline junkie connection. I had a feeling my cliff-hucking days were over, unless they involved a brown mop of hair with a Latin flair.

  A heavy boom echoed across the Boulder Field. We stilled, panicked stares flying to the great Diamond slab, then the Keyhole, searching for the beginnings of an avalanche. The loud crackling which followed was too far away to be our snowfield, but the warning was clear. Cassady had been right—warm sunlight after days of snow meant avalanches, and somewhere, a bank of snow had cracked and tumbled down the mountainside.

  Minutes later, one of the rangers—I mentally called him Ranger Rick—barreled over to our campsite, a two-way radio clutched in his hand. “Avalanche at Glacier Gorge, just off the west ridge. Don’t make plans to take the Keyhole approach today.”

  Cassady raised an I told you so eyebrow. Dang it, that was our return route.

  “Was anyone hurt?” I asked.

  He smoothed down his grizzled beard. “Not sure yet. Once the sun’s high, we’ll be seeing lots of slides. Any of you planning to summit today?”

  We all tentatively raised our hands. The ranger grimaced.

  “It’ll be dangerous. Personally, I’d hold off for the next climb.”

  There was a collective groan.

  “Think we could still make the technical on the North Face before the day heats up?” asked Hector. The technical was the most difficult
portion of the climb, where all the vertical rock wall training came in handy.

  Ranger Rick squinted at the massive face, still a midnight blue hulk in the early morning hours. “It’s your risk to take. You’re looking at a good five to six hours minimum, if you decide to do it. That’d put you up there ’round noon. Then there’s the descent.”

  “We’re gonna slide down the Keyhole route for the descent,” said one of the Canadians.

  “Right on.” Hector fist-bumped him. A rabble of butterflies tumbled excitedly in my stomach at the thought of descending after the summit. Sweet Tom, it would be an unbelievable rush. I gazed up the vast snow slope. That summit beckoned me, all craggy ice, thin air, and audacity—a siren song to a woman who battled giants. A bushy-tailed fox picked its way over the snowfield and disappeared into what was left of the night. I stared after its path, mind-boggled. This was the sort of thing I loved about mountaineering—something unexpected defying textbooks, nature. Finding life in the middle of nowhere. A Kit Kat bar tucked away like buried treasure. Huffing over rope and ax, higher and higher until there’s nothing higher than me—physically and emotionally—in a white, windy place in which humans have no business inhabiting.

  I wanted it. Badly.

  Could we summit Longs? We’d have to hoof it, push our bodies hard before the sun turned solid snow to fallible slush. No time for pictures or Kit Kat detours; heck, we’d barely have time to slick on sunscreen and melt snow before we absolutely had to leave.

  Hector’s bright eyes met mine, making the same calculations. He gave me a nod. “Let’s climb it.”

  Acknowledgments

  To my husband and beautiful children: You will always have first claim on my hours and my love. Thank you for your ceaseless support and encouragement.

  To Mom and Dad: You raised me to believe I could achieve most anything with hard work and creativity. Thank you for your guidance.

  To the Kutoskys, Spanglers, Sheeks, Swartzes, Widners, and Joel Nettles: You have helped me to take ownership of my writing and be mindful of for Whom I write. May God bless you.