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Ordinarily, when I woke up at Cedar Cradle Grove, it was to the sound of birds chirping. The Lake St. Clair shoreline was lined by marshy bogs, meadows and woodlands, making it the perfect intersection of two major migratory routes for hundreds of species of birds. Cedar Cradle Grove was built in an odd little forest in the middle of a marsh, where it was not unusual to hear finches, swallows, blue jays, and starlings twitter away the morning silence.
In summer, when Lila and I woke up here, it was to the racket made by the golden-breasted warblers, the black-capped chickadees, and the blood-red cardinals, as they flew in and out of the branches of the tree house. Far away, you could hear the sandpipers, waterfowl and the kingfishers flocking to the low shoreline. Then there were the beauties. Swans. Always calm and serene on the surface, sailing on Lake St. Claire with no one to see the frantic motion of their webbed feet underwater.
But that was in summer and I had never been here in winter.
And, ironically, I had just become Kyle’s Summer.
When I woke to the utter silence, it took me a while to figure out where I was. Suddenly recalling where I was, I looked at the clock. Almost noon. We hadn’t slept until dawn. The last thing I remembered was falling asleep with Kyle’s limbs sheathing me. It had been the most secure feeling of my life.
Warm. Safe. Cherished.
And now I was cold. Raw. Alone.
Where is he?
“Kyle?” My voice was a hoarse croak.
Stretching my arms, I threw off the comforter and looked around the room. There was no sign of him. The other side of the bed was neatly made, as if I had slept alone last night. The door was closed. Even though he was probably in the living room, I felt abandoned. I wasn’t expecting pillow talk, but it would have been nice to wake up in his arms. With a pang of disappointment, I crawled on my knees to the edge of the bed. I stood up and my legs reeled.
The pain.
I groaned. Every inch of me hurt. Last night I had been on such an analgesic high, I hadn’t realized how sore I was. My unused muscles were tender and cramped, my inner thighs chafed, my upper arms tingly, my ribs achy and...how my lips burned. And my breasts—don’t get me started. Sore. Raw. Ouch.
I was to blame, because no matter how many times Kyle wanted to stop for fear of hurting me, I had egged him on. Hot, hot, hot, but painful nocturnal activities.
God, why did I not feel the pain last night?
I hobbled to the attached bathroom and stared at the mirror, dazed at what I saw. There were lilac blotches on my upper arms, my wrists had burn bracelets from Kyle’s fingers, and on my thighs were several tiny, inexplicable scratches. And he had not even been rough! There was a red ring around my mouth from Kyle’s stubble scratching me when he had kissed me a thousand times. Rats.
I had to cover that up with makeup. And ask him to shave. Okay, no. Scratch that. I liked his sexy, stubbly jaw way too much. I just had to get acclimated to him, like the first time I waxed my arms and saw pinpricks of blood in every follicle.
My weedy body sucked.
I was about to take a shower, when a terrifying thought hit me. Had Kyle left? It was too quiet in the cabin. Wrapping a long towel around my body, I flung open the door, walked out to the living room.
“Kyle, are you here?”
Silence.
I made my way to the kitchen.
No one.
The house was as still as a burial chamber. Had Kyle gone out to get more firewood? But all three fireplaces were freshly made and sizzling with plenty of logs by the hearths.
So, where is he?
Feet pounding on the cedar floor, I ran to the door. I was devastated to see his snow-caked boots missing from the mat. My heart muscles contracted.
He left me?
I peeked out through the antique brass peephole and saw no one. It was a clear day with no snow falling and in the downy overnight snow, I saw a fresh set of footprints leading from the doorway to the patio. Had Kyle just left me here, with no warning? Not even a note? Not even a text? Well, my phone got no coverage here, so texting was not possible. Sick to my stomach, I walked to the bedroom and slipped out of the towel. There was no sign of his luggage and even his toiletries were gone from the bathroom. I fumed.
Really, Kyle? One night with me and you run away?
Calm down, Juniper.
Occam’s razor, remember? There has to be a simple explanation.
To prevent myself from going ballistic, I took a few deep breaths and braced myself. I turned on the hot water and took a long shower, fixated on my fears and tears that Kyle had left. I put on my clothes, stood in front of the mirror and over-brushed my hair till it was a glossy sheet of tempered chocolate with caramel drizzles.
Back in the bedroom, I gasped in disbelief. I smelled something burning. Did we burn down Lila’s magnificent treehouse? Terrified, I ran to the living room, which was cloudy with thick smoke. I followed the acrid smell to the kitchen and stopped short.
Kyle was in the kitchen cooking breakfast—no, burning breakfast. The smell of burnt bacon and eggs mingled in the air with the bitter notes of coffee. Through the haze, I saw Kyle by the stove, frustrated and pressing every button on the oven to turn on the exhaust fan.
He did not notice me. I went to the cabinet under the sink and switched on the fan. “Hey, the vent conduit is by the window here.”
He spun around, holding a spatula in one hand and a frying pan in the other. “Hey, Juniper. Hello.”
“Hiya. What in the world are you cooking?” Amused, I reached for the window and unbolted it. A blast of air diffused the smoke.
“I’m sorry, I think I burned the bacon.”
“You think? It smells like roadkill barbecue.”
Ignoring my comment, he sauntered over, kissed the tip of my nose, still holding the frying pan. “Sit. I’m making breakfast for you.”
“Do you need help?”
“Nope,” he said, looking around.
“What do you need? Kyle, I can help.” My hands went to my mouth to force-stop my laughter, when I saw the sad black strips of bacon in the charred pan.
“Just sit. And stop laughing.” He pointed a hand to the stools by the kitchen counter, though the spatula he was waving greatly reduced the dictatorial effect.
Trying to control my snickering, I sat down, elbows on the counter, chin propped up in my palms, like the cherub in Raphael’s Madonna di San Sisto painting. Kyle took out a plate from a cabinet, dumped the blackened bacon on it and set it on the counter by the eggs and toast. My shoulders heaved with a suspicious spurt of hilarity, eliciting a glare from Kyle.
I fake-coughed and punched my chest. “Just choking from smoke inhalation.”
“All right, drama queen. I made coffee. Thought I’d make you bacon and eggs. You did so much cooking yesterday. So I tried. Surprise,” he said with a goofy smile.
“Though it smells like grilled rats, I’m sure it’s delicious.”
“Thanks for pointing out the smell, but I am in full possession of my olfactory senses.”
“Olfactory senses, yes. Other senses I am not so sure about.”
He picked up the coffee pot with a grimace. “Funny girl. I’ll get you coffee.”
Grinning widely, I looked at Kyle’s pathetic but adorable attempts at cooking. The scrambled eggs looked like gooey sand pudding and the bacon had shriveled into strips of carbon. An attempt had been made to toast the bread on a pan, but it was still white and drenched in oil for some unknown reason. Looking down at the spread, I muffled a laugh. “This is a very heroic effort. I’m truly grateful.”
“Yeah, yeah. Your gratitude is overwhelming.”
“And your breakfast is underwhelming.”
“Mills, I will punish you for this.”
I giggled. “Paxton, why’d you have to go and make breakfast? You should’ve waited for the grown up to wake up. Like I said, the first person to perish in a zombie apocalypse will be you.”
“Oh, you think you’re funny and cute?” Coffee pot in hand, Kyle looked frantically for cups in all the cabinets.
“No. I think I’m hilarious and sexy. Second cabinet next to the fridge.”
As he scrambled to get the coffee cups, I sat there in wonder watching the great and glorious Kyle Paxton—CEO of BirdsEye, heir to the Paxton legacy, this six-foot-one tall and muscular, carved-from-marble specimen of a man—reduced to the sum of a comically frazzled Mr. Bean. When I saw him swipe at his glasses (which was usually a nerdy alpha-male gesture that made my heart skip a beat) to wipe the smoke off the lens with the edge of his shirt, I could not help but burst out in peals of laughter.
“Mills are you done?” He gritted his teeth and clenched his jaw.
“Kyle, should we call the fire department or the US Marshalls? We’re out in the boonies, and I wanna make sure you don’t burn the St. Clair forest down. Also, we should call Gordon Ramsey because this looks like Hell’s Kitchen.”
“That’s it, missy.”
In a flash, he placed his glasses back on, put a coffee cup down, walked over, and swiveled my stool around. Dragging me in his arms, he lowered his mouth on mine. I was shocked when his teeth nipped my lower lip and gently bit me a few times. My eyes closed and I panted, but not in pain.
He finally looked up. “Are you done trolling me? At least give me a B-plus for effort.”
“A-plus for effort. F-minus for execution.”
No, don’t stop. More, more, more. Kyle Paxton could make a chewy mealtime of my lips, anytime.
“Last night, you didn’t think my performance merited anything other than an A-plus. As I recall, I was forced into an encore three times.” His lips moved on to bite my ear lobe.
“Well, your report card is all A’s for that. But I wouldn’t say forced.”
Our eyes met, the intensity of his azurite pupils in the clear light shocking. Despite the burnt bacon smell, the friction in the air ignited and I leaned in. Hands on his hips, I kissed him hard and fast, my hands going up under his zipped fleece to explore his chest. But when I caressed his lower abs, he broke our kiss and moved away from me. At his curtness, I blinked and realized I’d been caressing his tattoo. Last night, if I accidently grazed his tattooed flesh, he would brush my hands off, as if it were a live wound, an unhealed laceration.
Chloe was off limits for me, tattoo, memories, tale, death and all.
An imprint of Chloe’s letter and her shadow drifted between us, a ghost walking in and out of the thick walls of the treehouse. I shivered and dropped my hands.
Kyle ran a finger over my mouth, peering at the bumps over it. Voice cracked in concern, he asked, “God, did I hurt you last night?”
“No. I’m fine.” I pushed his fingers away, but his sharp eyes caught the marks on my wrists.
“Hey. What the hell?” He lay my narrow wrists on his palms and examined the red rope lines crisscrossing them. “How in the world? Are you haunted by a serial killer who did this?”
I snatched my wrists away. “Just burn marks from when you kinda handcuffed me with your fingers.”
“What are you made of?”
“Cotton balls and candy canes.”
He shook his head and frowned. “June-Bug, you’ve got no muscle mass. You need to work out.”
“Like you? You work out like an athlete. All narcissists do.”
“All adults do.”
“No, only A-types do.”
“Remind me to take you rock climbing.”
“No thanks. I’ll read a book and wave from far far away.”
“I’m guessing you don’t work out?”
“I walk around the museum. That’s all I have time for.”
“Cardio is fine. But do muscle toning and build resistance, you puny weakling.”
“For you?” I raised an outraged eyebrow and folded my arms.
“No, moron. For you. And enough with the suffragette outrage. I don’t deserve that.”
“I’ll think about it. And yes, you do.”
Rolling his eyes, Kyle sat down and handed me the plate of runny eggs. “I’m sad.”
“Why?” I asked.
“You’re dressed. I was hoping for a little treat after breakfast.”
“If you’d made better breakfast, I might have considered it, but I’m sorry, chef, I can’t reward you for this.”
Laughing and flirting, we salvaged what we could of the breakfast from hell. Munching on my oily toast, I was amazed at the change in Kyle since he had taken me for dinner at the Chrome Fig. More at home in the tree house than in his own home, he enjoyed our yucky breakfast with an ease that was definitely out of character.
For the first time since I’d known him, Kyle was no longer stiff as hammered steel. He had smelted into a mix of happy and carefree, his phone no longer an extension of him. Maybe, I had rusted the engine of his life. I felt a stab of guilt, until I recalled Evan had said Kyle needed to find his soul. And ease was a new state of being for me too, I realized. I was no longer spending every waking hour yoked to gloom and doom about Mom and Cypress.
No longer able to stand the smell of burnt food, I opened all the windows to cross-ventilate the space, even though it was freezing. Once the interior smelled of pine sol and potpourri again, we shut the windows and stood by the fireplace to prevent us from cryogenic freezing. Hands stretched to the fire, I knelt on the fluffy sheepskin rug, shaking. “Sorry, Kyle. You must be missing California weather.”
Without warning, he kneeled behind me, gripped my waist and slammed my body into his. I stiffened, equal parts nervous and excited.
“I miss nothing when I’m with you.”
“Oh.” I arched my neck back to let him kiss it.
“So what’s the plan for today?” He yanked my hair back in a makeshift ponytail with one hand to better access my face.
I was breathless as he nibbled my jaw. “W-what would you like to do?”
“Personally, I’d be happy to get three more encores. Right now, right here. I like this rug. But I think it’s time for a break.”
“Really, Don Juan? The rumors of your reputation are greatly exaggerated. You need a break?” I jeered.
“No, idiot, you do. Seeing your hurt face and wrists reminds me I’m dealing with Bubble Girl.”
My breath hitched. “Hey, I’m game for anything.”
“Me too. Happy to go out. Happy to stay here. Whatever you want, June-Bug.”
“We could relax here, but I’d like to show you this place I love. And then come back and cook dinner.”
“No. Isn’t there a place we can go eat?”
I told him about the few good choices for homey restaurants in the area.
“Perfect. Not that I don’t love your cooking, but I’d rather we spend time together than in the kitchen.”
“I think you may have been permanently scarred by kitchens.” I gave him a playful smile.
“Stop teasing me.” Kyle twisted me, pushed me down on the rug and crashed atop my body. His mouth caught my lips in his and I forgot what I was going to say. After kissing and stroking my entire body, he lifted me up and tore my shirt off. Seeing the bruises on my arms, he froze and shot away from me. “What the hell! Did I do that? Am I an asshole? But I don’t remember being rough. I mean, I was a step below vanilla.”
Not again. I massaged my arms. “It’s not you...I’ll get used to this. To us. Come back.”
When I reached out to grab him he shook his head, his forehead lined in worry. “No, Juniper. Let’s give you a bit of rest. Tonight, okay?”
“Whyyyyy?” Halfheartedly, I put my shirt back on. “Fine. Pansy boy.”
“After what happened to you, how can you say that?”
“Huh? What?”
“That asswipe who hurt you in high school. I can’t stop thinking about that.”
His words made me stiffen like a body in a freezer. “Oh. Drake. That was a long time ago.”
“Just out of curiosity, did the motherfucker ever approach you again?”
“Do we have to talk about this?” I wrapped my arms around my knees and buried my face in my lap.
He sighed. “If you don’t want to, that’s fine. Can you at least tell me...did he try again?”
“Once. After...what he did...I stayed home for a week and when I came back...I stayed with Lila at all times. But one day...Drake found me and shoved me into an empty classroom. He tried to kiss me...I grabbed the pepper spray Lila had given me and sprayed his face. He went nuts. Grabbed a pen and tried to stab my neck, but it was just a graze because he was blinded. I ran out.”
“So he tried to murder you? Why is he not in jail? Is this your Bizarro World talking?”
“No. See?” I arched my neck to show him a thin white scar on my nape. “It was fine. Lila took care of it. Even then, she wanted to be a doctor.”
“Hell, no. It’s not fine.” One of his fingers went over my scar and gently kneaded it. “How did you deal with him after that?”
“Once...after the pepper spray incident, he tried to talk to me...I told him he was hysterical and did not scare me. He was two years older and graduated a few months later.”
“Why do men like that get away with crime? Why did you not report him?”
My lips wobbled as I tried to sort out my latent feelings about Drake. I had filed him in the Do Not Open folder of memory. A long time ago, he used to infuriate me. The cocky way he walked around Rivercreek High School used to outrage me. By now, I was so indifferent to my old pain, it was hard for me to revisit what happened. There was also a futility in seeking justice for a crime that was so long gone from memory and time.
“Because I knew they would have done nothing. There was no penetration, just forced...stuff.”
“Still a violent crime.”
“Kyle, do you know one out of every five girls in America is raped or assaulted?”
He shook his head. “That can’t be right. Maybe like a third world country. Not here.”
“Oh, it is. One out of three in college. It’s like campuses are training grounds for rapists. Most go unreported. And most of the reported rapists don’t spend a day in jail.”
He eased me into talking about what happened to me. It made me realize how all my life I’d brushed over what Drake had done to me. Though the pain had faded, the injury was still there...a live wound under the scabs. It was a violent crime against me, and it did affect me and every decision I had made in my life. Kyle concluded that something had to be done and that maybe he could set up an organization to help assaulted women get free legal help through the Paxton Foundation.
When he started to get curious about Drake and insisted on knowing his last name, I distracted him. “Hey, get up. Put on your warmest clothes. Jacket, hat, scarf, boots, even thermals. We’re going somewhere fun. Well, fun for me...your idea of fun might be different.”
Kyle shook his head. “I had no idea this was even here. What a shocker.”
We were on a schooner sailing on Lake Huron, a few miles off the Michigan shore. We had been cruising for a while and were now passing over what we had come to see. A shipwreck. The schooner had a cabin with a glass-bottom floor—a window inside the ocean. We stood on the steel beams framing the reinforced glass. Just twenty feet below the surface, lay a submerged nineteenth century ship. So perfectly intact was the sunken shipwreck, it was like looking at a ship in a bottle. Except it was real. But felt surreal.
And eerie, like passing over a ghost in the water.
“This was my favorite thing to do with Lila’s family when I was young,” I said with an apologetic smile. “Hope this is okay. I know you had a fun, big-city, luxury weekend in mind...”
He put a finger over my lips. “Don’t finish that idiotic sentence. My idea of fun is spending time with you.”
“Well, you did date Mona Atkins, world famous actress. I mean come on, this must be boring for you.”
I am probably boring for you. Most distilled nerd juice in a human jar.
He stepped behind me, arms banding my waist, chin tucked on my shoulder. “Mona Atkins was not fun. I was not interested in dating her. She and I just...met up at nights in the Chateau Mormont and left before the night was out. We...wait, how did you know about her?”
“When I first met you, I googled you and saw her with you.” Images of Mona Atkins and Kyle—two gorgeous, anatomically perfect, hot and strong bodies—meeting to bang in the night filled the junk folder of my mind.
“Juniper. My June-Bug. Don’t you know what you mean to me?” Fingers on my chin, he tried to twist my face to him, but when I resisted, he dropped his hand.
I bit my lip. Hard. “Was she...was she your first? Summer? Or Winter?”
Kyle gave me a forbidding look. “Stop. Let’s not go there.”
“Fine.”
For a while we stood in silence watching the shipwreck pass beneath us, and I felt the illusion that it was in motion and we were the stationary ones.
Turning to me, Kyle said softly, “I don’t know what brought that on. Stop having doubts about us. Just know, I don’t have fun. Don’t seek it. But with you it’s all I want to do. Every freaking second. Even though your idea of fun is looking at rusty buckets.”
I searched his face and tried to declutter my mind. “Hey, this is national treasure, not a rusty bucket.”
“Yes, ma’am. You’re the rust expert.” He twisted me in a tight embrace.
Just as his lips came down on mine, I saw our tour guide, Marty Marlin, coming down the spiral staircase and I reeled away. “Um. Marty, our guide’s here. Behave, okay?”
“I’ll behave if I feel like it. Not buying his name is Marty Marlin. A giant nautical tour guide named after a giant fish. Something’s fishy there or his mother was psychic,” Kyle said in my ear.
“Shush, Kyle.”
Marty came up to us. “Hullo. Hullo, children. You ready for Captain Marty?”
I beamed. “Yes. And thanks for doing this on such a short notice.”
A crinkle-eyed, smiling man with a long, white beard and jiggly belly, Marty was one red suit away from being Santa Claus. Bizarrely, he wore a nautical coat over what could only be described as striped long johns. His fashion sense did not obstruct the fact that Marty was the top expert on the Great Lakes shipwrecks. Usually these tours did not extend past October due to the icy lakes, but I had been quite persuasive and managed to get us into a private tour. Nosy as usual, when Kyle discovered my plan, he had insisted on hiring our very own schooner and it came with luxury, privacy, champagne, and Marty.
“My pleasure. So below us lies the Misty Thunder. In 1892 this ship was headed to Chicago’s Lake Michigan from Canada.” Marty’s big voice struck the timber walls of the cabin like cannon fire. “It is one of thousands of vessels shipwrecked in the Great Lakes since the seventeenth century.”
Kyle’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Did you say thousands?”
“Yes, my boy. Five thousand, six hundred shipwrecks is the estimate.”
“Insane.” Peering over the window floor, Kyle whistled, and I smiled at his boyish enthusiasm.
“This marvel is a rare intact canal vessel. An underwater museum. Right now we are passing over the ship’s spars and two masts. Oh, look! The foremast hole...right there...a few feet from the bow,” said Marty, his ruddy face lit up in excitement.
“How is it so well preserved?” Kyle asked.
“The ship sank in a stony bay, sheltered from storms and the crushing devastation of ice and cold,” responded Marty.
“It’s so close to the surface,” Kyle observed.
“The lake bottom is shallow near the shore,” Marty said.
Kyle’s gaze followed the movement of a colossal rusty chain floating in the water like a dead anaconda. “That is sad. So many ships. So many dead.”
“But this one’s a miracle. The captain, Miles P. Harrow, made this route hundreds of times in good weather. Unluckily, it was February and parts of the lake were frozen. They hit ice and the Misty Thunder sank. But, most of the crew survived.”
Kyle’s head snapped up. “What? How?”
Marty folded his arms on his barrel belly. “Though ice sank the ship, it was ice that saved them, my boy.”
At Kyle’s confused face, I piped up, “Usually, the lake is semi-frozen, but that night, it was frozen over and the ship got trapped in the ice. The captain ordered the crew to brave the cold. One hundred men walked across two miles of ice and got to the shore. Can you believe that? They got shipwrecked and then walked on ice. That’s why it is called the Icy Miracle.”
Marty looked at me in astonishment. “A history buff, are we?”
“More like an expert,” Kyle said, draping an arm over my shoulders. Basking in his pride, I smiled at him and stiffened when he boldly squeezed my hips with his errant hand. I slapped the hand away, thankful Marty was looking away. Kyle gave me a sinful smile and whispered, “Hey, lady, why do you think I booked the whole schooner?”
“Hey, man, this is a guide boat. Not a pleasure craft,” I whispered back.
“Every craft with you is a pleasure craft. What the hell is a craft, anyway?”
Marty was still talking animatedly so I broke away from Kyle and went over to the sweet but ear-splitting old man. I nodded, conscious of my lover’s amused eyes raking my face.
An hour later, Kyle and I stood outside on the deck by the bowsprit, shivering in the wind. We had been standing there since Kyle had dragged me out and now he was fine-tuning an app on his phone. My teeth couldn’t stop chattering. “Why am I here? It is colder than Alaska’s brass balls.”
“Because. This.” He took a small device from his pocket and laid it on my hand.
“The BeesEye!”
“Yes. Watch.” The app on his phone clicked to a map and the bee hummed.
I giggled as its electric buzz tickled my palm. Tiny drone wings fluttered and I looked up as the bee flew away. “Kyle what are you up to?”
“Behold.” He showed me his phone screen.
The BeesEye hovered over the Misty Thunder. Skimming just inches from the surface of the water, it took a succession of photos of the shipwreck that appeared on the phone in cut-glass clarity. Then Kyle made a video of the wreck.
“This is cool for me to experience firsthand. Some of our drones are used by shipping companies to track vessels and monitor oil spills. Our bees are tiny but deadly fast.”
“Kyle this is amazeballs. You are amazing.” Throwing myself at him, I kissed his mouth, hard.
When I pulled away, he grinned lazily and tucked a finger around my jacket collar and brought me back to him. “You tell me to behave and then you break your word. Kissing game. A kiss for every invention I can find in my jacket.”
“Maybe. If it’s amazeballs,” I said, watching the video of the shipwreck surveillance. Kyle leaned over to kiss me again, but I put a finger on his forehead with a naughty smile. “No invention, no kiss. So who else buys BeesEye? Betrayed wives? The military?”
“With built in infra-red surveillance, the BeesEye is ideal for tight and dark spots. So the film industry, NASA, SpaceX, the armed forces, CIA, the NSA.”
“NSA? Well, that makes me unhappy.”
“Yes, it would, you cute little Marxist.”
“I’m not a Marxist, just a pacifist.”
“Pacifism is a utopian fantasy, June-Bug. Earth is a military industrial complex and we are just sold-out players in it.”
I shook my head. “I just want everyone to be safe.”
“Don’t be sad. As long as war is fought overseas, our people are safe. You are safe.”
“Overseas war for my safety. That’s a bitter pill.”
“If it helps you sleep at night, only two percent of our contracts are military ones.”
The wind picked up and I hid in Kyle’s shoulder. “Can you add an addendum in my contract: Kyle Paxton will no longer assist NSA in their nefarious plot to surveille innocent citizens for the duration of his liaison with Juniper Mills?”
“The NSA is like Santa. It knows when you’re naughty or nice.”
“Perfect. I’m nice and you’re naughty.”
“Hmm. I’m seeing your naughty side this weekend. Finally.”
“I’m late to the party, but I’ll get there.”
He grinned and kissed the top of my puffer jacket hood. “You’re already where I want you to be, naughty girl.”
His husky voice made me shiver (from the inside—this time), so I changed the topic. “Did you invent BeesEye? What’s the process?”
“I come up with the idea, the concept, the algorithms. Then my hardware engineers architect the design and make a prototype.”
“So cool.”
“Look up.” Slowly he navigated the BeesEye drone camera back and we stared up at the descending yellow and black dot in the sky. “Smile. Bee selfie.” Kyle took a photo of us and murmured, “I hope one day Colt’s generation will use BirdsEye products only for peace.”
“What? Oh, the horror. Did I break the hardnosed corporate drone inside you?”
He slipped the device in his pocked, hauled me close and kissed me until I was warm even in the freezing cold.
Kyle and I had an early dinner at my favorite restaurant from when I was a teenager. The Lighthouse was a seafood restaurant in a reclaimed lighthouse by Lake Huron. We shared a large meal of clam chowder, coconut shrimps, and a giant lobster from the artisanal menu.
Dessert at The Lighthouse was an interactive experience and guests were encouraged to go up to the lantern room. Holding key lime pie and crème brûlée plates, Kyle and I walked up the seventy-eight cast iron spiral stairs. We stood on the circular catwalk, taking in the 360-degree views of the lake and frozen flatland. There were two other couples up here, just as lost in their own worlds as we were. Leaning over the iron ledge, Kyle dug into my plate and I was forced into a frisky fight for my dessert. Once we were done eating and the plates taken away, I sank against his chest and we watched the bleak sun set across the bleaker sky.
It had been a perfect day and in keeping with the spirit of—as I was discovering—every second I spent with Kyle. With a sad lump in my throat, I wondered if he knew how much I loved him at that moment in time. Perhaps in the course of our odd liaison, I needed never tell him. To me, it was obvious in the way I looked at him and I knew that, in his own way, he cared for me too.
I am so happy.
But something is missing.
With the eight-hundred-pound gorilla of family and finances on my chest, I usually ruined my present by worrying about the future and regretting my past.
Zen yourself, Juniper.
Shutting my eyes for a second, I made my mind a blank white room, even taking advice from Buddha.
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
Nah. Zen was overrated.
Ready to stir some hornets, I turned to Kyle with an epiphany. “You’ve really mastered the art of living in the present, haven’t you?”
Banding my waist, Kyle towed me closer. “What do you mean by that?”
“That’s what your system is about, isn’t it? There’s no fear things will end badly because you have a set date to finish. There’s no regretting the past as your companions are not allowed to talk about you. That way you control their time and emotions.”
Like a supernatural being, who wants to be worshipped and obeyed.
Unapproachable. Deific.
I felt his jaw lock against my arched neck. “You’re not my companion.” He turned me around to face him, his navy eyes pools of black in the dim light. “You’re my girlfriend.”
Pleased and confused, I gulped. “Isn’t it a bit too early for that?”
“No. It’s true, if you want to put a label on it. I really want to be with you, but I don’t want a messy breakup with you—which is why I have a time stamp on us. And yes, if your pointless habit of psychoanalyzing everything wants to know, perhaps I want to enjoy the present and not worry about the future or regret the past.”
“I always regret my past.”
“We all do, baby. But regret is useless. Until we can time travel.”
“I don’t think I am your girlfriend,” I said. I found it hard to process his label. “Girlfriends don’t get termination dates. I’m not asking for more time together but don’t make it more than it is.”
He frowned. “Juniper, you are wrong.”
“I’m not like you. It’s hard for me to let things...and people go.”
He turned away, his jaw working with unsaid things. “Don’t overthink it,” he said, at last. “That’s the beauty of the system. Just enjoy it while it lasts.”
I wanted to ask Kyle if he already set up his Winter who would start a month after me. Or was he going to find her in the last days with me?
I wasn’t jealous anymore, just sad.
Not because I couldn’t bear to see him with anyone else, but because I could not bear to lose him. The idea of Kyle Paxton no longer in my life was as empty and bleak as the lakeshore down below. It hurt with a physical ache, a visceral pain—like getting your wisdom teeth pulled without anesthesia. I hid my tears and faced the windows. The clouds broke into pieces and snow started to fall, stark white against the big black sky.
“We should get going. It’s starting to snow again.”
He looked puzzled but he nodded and held out a hand. “Sure.”
