Out of the Woods

Chapter Fifteen

Fifteen

Sunlight shines through Caleb’s hair, casting him in a halo of golden light as we stare at each other in our own little bubble of intoxicating anticipation. We’re about eight feet above the water’s surface, standing on top of a large grouping of boulders. The crystal-clear waterhole is probably a good twenty feet wide, fed by a creek and pouring out in the opposite direction downhill. Surrounded by old pines and birch trees and flattened stone, it is a near-perfect oasis.

The only thing that would make it truly perfect is the guarantee that there are no fish in there wanting to nibble at our feet. Because I will absolutely lose my shit if that happens. Caleb did not provide me with any guarantees as to the lack of marine life below when prompted.

“We doing this, Linwood?”

I shriek nervously, laughing nearly hysterically as I look over the edge and take a few steps back.

Caleb’s cocky grin spreads as his eyes dip down to the tie of my bikini string resting on my hip. “C’mon, gorgeous, are you in or out?”

“Ah, yes, okay! Fine!”

“One…” Caleb says as he bends into a running ready position. A boyish smile overtakes his face. “Two…” He turns to me expectantly, flashing his eyes right before…“Three!” We say it together.

Then, we both jump.

It’s a thrilling millisecond before I hear Caleb’s splash and then land myself. The water is colder than I was expecting, but my body has no choice but to adapt as I float up to the surface, smiling at the rush of it all.

“Woo!” Caleb shouts. I spin toward him, slicking my hair back. I watch as he shakes his head like a puppy, his hair sending droplets of water everywhere around him. “A bit nippy,” he says in a god-awful British accent, attempting something similar to Jai’s.

“Just a bit,” I return, in the same accent. I flutter my legs under the water to stay afloat and watch as Caleb dips back under and attempts a handstand, despite the fact that the water is at least twelve feet deep. “I can’t believe you found this spot,” I say when his head pops back up above the surface. “Who knew the outdoors had so much to offer?”

“Don’t tell Win about your newfound appreciation, she’ll never let it go.”

“Oh, never,” I say, giggling just before he dives back into the water, as if he’s attempting to retrieve something from below.

I swim over to where I suspect he’ll surface. When he does, his back facing me, I press myself against him, feeling the warmth of his torso all over my chilled skin. “Hi,” I say softly, wrapping my legs and arms around his shoulders and hips. He rotates within my hold, moving to bring us face-to-face.

“Hi, yourself,” he says as he adjusts me, hoisting my thighs up to rest around his waist instead of his hips. He looks up at me with an innocent, dazed type of grin. It reminds me of the smile he had on the very first morning we woke up in the same bed when his parents were out of town. Some newness. Some hopefulness. Mostly, contentment.

I cannot help but smile at him in return, rubbing my thumb along the deepened lines next to his eyes before tucking a strand of his hair that had fallen against his temple. I admire the tanned skin across his forehead and the faded sunburn along the bridge of his nose that has revealed freckles underneath. I don’t usually see those until late August, and their early appearance is a welcome surprise. Without his glasses on, his eyes appear larger. More vivid as they soften, silently looking up at me like I’m about to reveal the secrets of the universe to him.

It’s been a long time since he has looked at me like that.

Or, maybe, since you’ve noticed, a kind part of my mind tells me.

I place my hand against his cheek, wondering, as it tickles against my palm, how his coarse facial hair would feel against the softest spots of my skin. In an instant, I’m flooded with desire. I long to feel it drag from one hip to the other as he presses kisses along my abdomen. I can’t help but imagine how it would feel lower, too. Along the sensitive patch of skin where my thigh creases and meets the spot where I want him most. I know we have a lot of work we should be doing, but the only thing I’m remotely interested in right now is lying out naked on a rock like a lizard warming in the sun as Caleb devours me.

“Dangerous,” Caleb says, a crooked smirk appearing as he takes hold of my thighs and tugs me up to his hips again, away from where his bathing suit was growing a little too tight.

“You’re just keeping me afloat,” I answer, wearing a mischievous smile. I tighten my thighs along his side to hold myself in place, in hopes of relieving some tension. Our intertwined bodies drift around the swimming hole until Caleb’s back finds the rocky edge. He looks over his shoulder, notices the layers of sediment behind him, and rests an elbow on one of the stone platforms, using his purchase on the ledge as an anchor for us both. His biceps flexes as he adjusts his weight and I feel my lower belly coil in response. God, he looks good out here. So relaxed. So carefree. So sexy.

“Careful, baby,” he coos.

“Hmm?” I think I say, looking at his collarbone where a pool of water has collected. Suddenly, I’m thirsty, and that is the only vessel I’m interested in drinking from.

“That look on your face,” he says, nearly laughing. “You’re looking at me like I’m your next meal.”

I bite down on a grin. “D’ya want to be?”

“This was a bad idea,” Caleb says as if he just realized he brought his wife to a remote, romantic spot far away from company when there’s a no-sex-rule in place. He’s always been a bit endearingly clueless—and it still charms me when I catch the moment he glances suggestively down my body, then checks that no one has decided to follow us out here. I watch the balancing scale in his conscience begin weighing the pros and cons, his eyes shifting side to side as if he’s fighting a losing battle.

It’s nice to be back in his head again. It’s so much quieter there than in my own.

“We’re alone,” I say, pressing my chest harder against him. “And, when’s the last time we fucked like this? Outside…” I whisper, tasting a droplet of water off his throat. “In the water…” I kiss that same spot. “It’ll be fuuun,” I elongate the word, dragging my teeth against him.

“The hot tub on Christmas Eve,” he answers without missing a beat. “I thought I was going to pass out.”

I roll my eyes, huffing a laugh. “Right, but…in a good way?” I ask.

“The rules,” he says, turning toward his rested arm, as if he can’t look at me, or the tits I’ve purposefully squished against his chest. “We shouldn’t even be doing this, ” he says, looking down at the minuscule amount of space left between us. “This feels like sex.”

It’s an oddly sweet sentiment that wrapped up in each other still somewhat clothed, could feel like sex to him after all this time and all the ways we’ve experienced each other’s bodies. “It isn’t, though,” I say coyly as I bring one hand from his shoulder, up his neck, to the base of his hair. I thread my fingers through it, digging into his scalp with my nails in a circular motion until his eyes roll back into his head. “But it could be…”

“You’re playing dirty.” His voice is gruff as he relaxes into my hold.

“What about this…,” I say softly, leaning in to whisper just to see the goosebumps appear across his neck. “We fuck really quick and then do our homework. Just like old times.”

Caleb’s nostrils flare as he opens his eyes on me, an unmistakable look of guilty wanting in his eye. “As you probably recall,” he says, turning us so my ass hits the rock, pinning me there with his hips and hello, his rock-hard dick. “I always made you finish your homework first. And…” He leans in until his beard grazes my neck, and a small moan escapes my lips. “It’s been a very long time since I fucked you quickly, baby. I’m grown now. And a grown man knows how to take his time.”

“I’d be willing to settle for a nice, long fuck,” I tease. “If that’s what you’d prefer.”

“We make our list first,” he says, as he tilts his hips against me exactly where I want him. “Then, if you’re good, we’ll take care of it.” He groans, feeling the way my thighs tense around him as I use the heels of my feet to bring him closer toward me. We’re playing tug-of-war with who’s in charge here, and I plan on winning.

“Take care of what ?” I ask, feigning confusion.

“Baby,” he says, his tongue pushing against his cheek and eyes drifting shut as if he’s about to lose control.

“I’m listening,” I say, rubbing against his hardness where I need him most. It feels good, but not good enough. I arch my back, exposing my tits to the cool air above the surface. My nipples harden against the flimsy material of my bathing suit top, and as I tilt my head to proudly watch Caleb’s resolve slip away, his face only hardens. He glares at my breasts as if he’s offended by them, the muscle in his chin flexing.

Some men are boob guys, and some are ass guys. Then there are men like Caleb, who are whatever-is-closest-to-my-face guys. Even still, two firm hands find my knees and pry them apart. “No, no, nope, nuh-uh…” His voice’s pitch starts low and ends high. Caleb backstrokes away, leaving me alone and wanting.

“Seriously?!” I call out after him, shaking my head as my smile grows.

“C’mon, trouble,” he says, before turning onto his stomach to swim a breaststroke toward shore.

I wish he was stroking my breast, but whatever.

And despite my wounded pride, I’m actually a little impressed at his newfound level of self-control. In high school I could get him to break with just a bite of my pouted bottom lip. It weirdly turns me on more to have to work for it. “But later?” I ask, embarrassingly aware that I just held up a white flag in our little back-and-forth.

I watch the muscles in his back flex as he lifts himself onto the edge. It feels like a taunt. A cruel, muscular taunt. He turns and sits, his legs spread wide, as his feet rest below the water—the picture of collected confidence.

“What has gotten into you?” I ask, beginning to slowly make my way to shore.

He smiles back at me like a warning. A red flashing sign that says he’s got plans for me. I feel the look settle between my legs and tighten my throat, forcing me to swallow. “Maybe,” he says with a throwaway shrug, “I’m not as easily influenced to break the rules as I once was. Maybe you will have to beg for it.”

I lift a brow in challenge toward him before I start to swim. He’s got another thing coming if he thinks I’m going to be the one begging.

I’ll have him on his knees soon enough.

—

My bottom half is wrapped in my towel and my top half is covered by Caleb’s zip-up sweater that he forced me to put on after my attempt to sway him by going topless failed. He put his shirt back on after I claimed his naked torso was equally distracting and creating unproductive working conditions. He’s lounging on top of his towel with his legs out in front of him with the journal on his lap as I sit cross-legged facing him.

We agreed to sit in quiet contemplation for a little while, only breaking the silence to point out a flock of birds in a perfect triangular formation and a cloud drifting overhead that looked distinctly like an old man holding a smoking pipe.

Caleb writes Ten years from now at the top of the page, then looks at me expectantly. There’s a hint of fear in his expression that most people wouldn’t be able to pick up on unless they knew him as well as I did. Which, I’d like to think, no one does.

“Together,” I say, and he writes down still very much married next to a bullet point.

“Same house?” he asks.

I nod, shrugging at the same time. I wouldn’t want to move away from Win, Bo, and August. I also like that we’re not too far from Caleb’s office. His commute is short but it’s just far enough that he’s not running into the office in every spare moment.

“I was actually thinking that we should get something smaller,” Caleb says. “There are too many rooms at our place. Too many places to hide from each other.”

I conceal a shy smile instinctively but force my hand into my lap and let him see it. “Okay, yeah. But I’d want to stay in the same neighborhood. I’d hate to be farther from Gus.”

“She’ll be eleven in ten years, almost twelve,” Caleb says, tapping his pencil against the page. We both shudder at the thought of our sweet baby niece being so much older.

“So, she’ll definitely need a second home nearby,” I add, laughing halfheartedly. “She lucked out in the parents’ department, sure, but no eleven-year-old likes their parents all of the time.”

Caleb writes smaller house, same neighborhood on one line, and then, be present for Gus and any future nieces or nephews underneath.

I like that he gave them their own line almost as much as I like the idea of us downsizing to be in closer quarters. We sit in silence for a few more moments as I imagine all the different avenues I could take, if I would just start walking one. I think of the passage Mom read me so long ago, with the fig tree and the limitless choices. What Mom said afterward, about letting myself fail.The words closer and finally louder than those from a womanwho’d not known me at all, spoken across a café’s table. I think about what Win said, her hopes for me. Mom’s hopes. I think about those two versions of me that Yvonne and I had discussed, and how to satisfy them both.

“I want to go to school…I know that I may not ever be the best or even halfway good enough but…I still want to try. I want to be a writer.”

The corner of Caleb’s lip tips upward as he swallows, as if he’s holding himself back from reacting more. “Yeah?” His voice is so filled with hope, it spurs me on.

“I think so…” I say shyly. “I’ve been thinking a lot about it. About what I wanted before…” Before Mom got sick. Before the Cecelia incident. Before life started making decisions for me.

“I miss writing…I miss that version of me. I think it’s worth trying, even if I fail.”

“That’s great,” he says, writing down Sarah wants to write again. “That’s so, so great, baby.”

“What about you, wonder boy?” I ask, smiling back at him. “Any big plans of your own?”

“Actually…yeah.” He moves the journal into the space between us and sits up straighter. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the company and, well, when I thought about ten years from now I started thinking about what my dad always says…about leaving a legacy.”

Yikes. Legacy, in Cyrus’s dictionary, is code for exorbitant, generational wealth. Hoarding, in other words. I tell myself to keep my expression neutral. To let Caleb finish before pushing back. But are we really that unaligned? I thought, if anything, being away from work would—

“I’d like to set up a charity fund that funnels out of Focal’s profits,” he says confidently. “Also, I was chatting with Henry the other day about their business structure, and it inspired me to make some changes. They profit-share among their staff, so everyone earns about the same from new hires all the way up to owners. It would have to be scaled differently at Focal, given that we’re a team of over fifty, but I think we’d be able to get close to that within ten years’ time if not a hell of a lot sooner.”

I blink at him silently, processing. I don’t think I’ve ever been more in love. “Your dad would lose his ever-loving mind if he found that out. You know that, right?” I ask, my pride blatant. “When you said legacy I thought—”

“How else would I know that I’m doing something right?” he asks, his tone lighthearted but his expression anything but. Caleb, despite years’ worth of reasons to, rarely says anything remotely negative about his father or his business practices.

“That’s a pretty loaded statement,” I say, approaching the subject as gently as I can. “Want to walk me through it?”

Caleb nods, blowing out a long breath. “I’ve spent so long trying to impress a man I don’t want to be like…” His head tilts slightly as his eyes lock on something in the distance. “Being away from work for a few days—being unreachable—has made me recognize how much time I spend caring about shit that just does not matter. ” He says the last few words as if they exhaust him. “I don’t want to look back on my life some day and realize that I prioritized money over people. Or…” He sighs.

“Or?” I ask, after a long, lingering silence.

“Do you remember when my dad missed our graduation?” he asks abruptly.

“Of course,” I answer.

“Well, when my mom told him I was upset, he didn’t call…or text…or even email. He just gave me a thousand dollars without so much as a memo on the check.”

I wince, not having heard that part of the story before. “I’m sorry, Cay.”

“But…” he says, his voice somewhat distant. “Your mom and Aunt June were there. Aunt June switched her shift at work and your mom fought through her pain to climb up the stairs to the auditorium. They brought me flowers like yours and Win’s as if I was theirs too. They cheered when I crossed the stage and applauded louder than anyone else when I finished my valedictorian speech.”

I smile, remembering it fondly. “They were so proud of you,” I say. “I’m pretty sure my mom told everyone within earshot she helped you write your speech.”

Caleb turns to face me, wearing a weary smile. “That meant a lot more than a thousand dollars.” I almost say Of course it did, but I stop myself. I’m in no position to point out a late-blooming realization…. We’re both here to learn.

“But even knowing that, it never made me think twice about throwing money at a problem. Just like my father.” He stares at me with an unspoken apology. “At the fundraiser…I knew, deep down, that it wouldn’t make you feel better, but I did it anyway because—because I wasn’t prioritizing you or your needs. On some level I thought that I could quietly solve the issue…. I thought that would make you move past it. I justified it, just like he did.”

It’s a confirmation of my feelings, but it stings all the same. I look at the boulder’s surface between us as I hear him inhale a shaky breath. “I hate that I did that, Sar,” he says slowly. When I look up, his expression is disgruntled as if he’s disgusted with himself. “I never wanted to be that guy. Where work takes priority. Where money is the answer. Where people and their feelings are easily paid off. I do not want to be that guy and I am so, so sorry.”

“You’re not that guy,” I say simply. “You acted out of character, yes, but…that’s not you.”

“Not anymore,” he vows. “Where I want to be ten years from now is content. Not striving for more. Not trying to fill a bank account in an endless cycle. Not prioritizing anything above you or our life together. I want to restructure the business, downsize our life, and help you figure out what you can do with that brilliant, generous, kind, sharp mind of yours. The legacy I want is that I was the type of guy who would show up for people, cheer people on. The guy who was…present.”

I stare at him, my lips parted, and the breath stolen from my lungs. These are the words I have wanted so badly to hear. This is why we came here. Finally, finally, finally, we’re on the same page.

“And,” he says decidedly, followed by a deep breath, “I want a dog. Something not too active and that doesn’t shed much but…yeah, I want a dog.”

I laugh, partially in disbelief but mostly amazement. “Okay,” I say in a breathy voice, “write it all down.”

And so, he does.