Chapter 14
I don’t see Caleb move, but he’s on me in a minute, wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me under the bathroom doorway.
It’s over before I register the earthquake.
It’s a small one, I think, but Caleb is still pressing me against the jamb with a hand on my hip, the other gripping the upper casing to stabilize us, and he’s hovering over me like we just lived through the big one.
My face is even with his neck, and I’m so close I see the way his pulse riots in the hollow of his throat, and I feel the tension of his fingers as they dig into my skin through my jeans.
I’m stunned still by the realization that this man just dragged me across the room and pinned me against the doorjamb—and I liked it. I really, really liked it.
I thought I was more evolved than that.
I want to tell him everything’s okay. The earthquake was minor; I’ve felt similar ones over the years, and damage is typically minimal. But he’s breathing rapidly and scanning the room. I follow his gaze. Nothing is out of place but a few toppled water bottles on the shelves.
He doesn’t move, so neither do I. I’m a lecher for reacting to his proximity while he’s panicking about the mild tremor. I place a hand on his forearm, trying to center him in the room, where everything’s fine, versus whatever catastrophe is unraveling in his head.
“We’re okay,” I say. Houdini growls in response.
For the first time, Caleb looks at me, and our gazes collide. His eyes are glazed, as if there is a disaster playing out behind them and he can’t see beyond his personal movie screen to focus on reality.
“It was a small one.” My voice comes out like I’m soothing a child.
Caleb blinks, shaking his head slightly, and I register when he comes back into his body, because he moves away and releases me abruptly. I sink against the door casing and exhale, both relieved and disappointed by the new distance.
But just as I get my legs under me again and duck out from the cage of his protection, Houdini jumps on the desk and begins a plaintive howl. I catch a strange sound from outside, and it builds steadily, like kindling catching fire, but louder, more resonant.
“Shit.” Caleb looks up to the ceiling.
“What?” I ask, and we’ve switched places, because I’m panicking and he’s found his calm.
He gathers me back into him, one hand on my neck, the other around my back, and he yanks us down until I’m crouched and he’s kneeling over me like a force field.
A boom rattles the cabin, and Caleb cradles me tighter. He waits another few seconds before he releases me and sits up.
“That was close,” he says.
He moves to the door in hurried strides. He tries to open it, but it doesn’t budge. He presses his shoulder into it, grunting as he barrels into it once, then twice.
“Caleb, what is going on?” My patience is fraying.
Houdini’s howls reach a desperate crescendo. Caleb drags a chair to the door, stepping onto it so he can peer out the clerestory window. He drops his forehead against it, and his breath fogs up the glass.
“That was a huge pine that just came down. And it’s blocking the door.”
“What?” My mouth is dry and my voice shallow, and I need to find some new words.
“I’m pretty sure we’re trapped.”
“At least it didn’t crush us.” I recall that he threw himself on top of me to protect me from it. My body heats from within, remembering the weight of him, but I shiver as the warmth collides with the cool air on my damp skin.
He steps down, grabbing his cell out of his pocket, and I do the same.
I call my mom, but the call fails. “Do you have service? Is there Wi-Fi?”
Caleb fiddles with the light switch. “The power must be out. It’s erratic at best up here.”
I step onto the chair, but I can barely see through the high, narrow window. Branches and leaves are smashed against the dusty glass. I step down to push futilely on the door.
Caleb releases an irritated laugh. “Are you trying to fact-check me? Did you think I was making it up and trying to hold you hostage?” He steps back, looking affronted, before removing his soaked hoodie and dropping it on the chair.
He has on a fitted thermal underneath, a russet color just like his eyes, which are sparking at me in irritation.
“It was just reflex. Like when someone says, ‘What stinks?’ you can’t help but smell it. It’s instinct.”
“Why would you want to smell something that stinks?”
I ignore this. “What now?”
Caleb scans the space and bites his cheek. “I don’t know. The windows don’t open, and they’re way too tight to climb through even if they did. If we shattered one, we’d cut ourselves to hell and get wedged in there anyway.”
“So we’re just what? Stuck here forever?” We’re both drenched. Rain is pummeling the tin roof, and a giant tree is blocking our only exit.
“Yes, Eden. This is our life now, until we run out of water or kill each other.”
I step into the bathroom, looking for an exit route he may have failed to mention, but there are no windows, no doors. We are trapped.
Houdini howls as I lean against the door, and Caleb crawls under the desk to soothe him, whispering in a low register and stroking his back until the dog’s cries soften.
I close my eyes and listen to the rain outside, hoping the sound will settle my panic. But the prattle of raindrops isn’t as comforting in our current predicament as it is when it drifts through my speakers to lull me to sleep in the city. It reinforces that I’m soaked, cold, and helpless.
But I remind myself that I’m not hurt. We have shelter, water, and a bathroom. It’s not the same as the last time I was stuck on this land, even if my overactive nervous system doesn’t believe it.
When I open my eyes, Caleb is standing in front of me. He shoves his hands in his pockets, and I watch the way his jeans dip. I swallow and try to focus on his words.
“People know we’re here. We’re not trapped forever, just until someone comes looking, which won’t be long.”
But hours later, we’re still waiting. Caleb found a box of old camp T-shirts, and we changed out of our wet clothes and into the shirts and beach towels as skirts.
I stayed in my soaked outfit and resisted for an hour but relented when I began shivering uncontrollably and my modesty felt more like a death wish.
I emerged from the bathroom with the blue-striped towel held together with white knuckles.
My shirt is hunter green and made of cheap, stiff cotton.
Caleb’s is bright orange and two sizes too small.
It leaves nothing to the imagination. Well, actually, I still have plenty of imagination to spare, because the way this shirt hugs his biceps is indecent, and it rides up his abdomen to reveal a trail of dark hair along taut skin.
I’m trying really hard not to look. And to his credit, I haven’t noticed him staring at my exposed leg.
The scars have faded, but my calf is smaller on the right, and the scar tissue creates an uneven surface.
I don’t wear shorts or short skirts because I hate the unwanted attention.
Caleb is petrified that the earthquake was just a prelude to something stronger, so he insists we huddle in the corner where there are no tall shelves to crush us. We’re sitting against the far wall with Houdini curled between us.
“So you don’t like earthquakes.” I swallow a bite of a stale granola bar. I’m still reeling from Caleb’s reaction. The instinct to protect me was—I’m not ashamed to admit—hot. But his terror was real.
Caleb scoffs. “Who does?” He strokes Houdini’s back in a soothing rhythm. He loves that silly dog.
Jeff didn’t like animals. Or kids. I told myself it didn’t matter.
As a childless, petless couple, we could go on spontaneous romantic getaways, travel overseas, experience the world.
But we rarely traveled; we were never spontaneous.
I convinced myself that being kid-free meant Jeff would have more love and time for me, but I learned too late that his desire to ration himself was selfish, not generous.
And more importantly, I want a dog. I want kids. I want a man who wants these things. I want a man who knows that love can’t be rationed. It can only be shared.
Caleb leans down and whispers something in Houdini’s ear. It’s unintelligible, but the tone is cajoling and kind, and it makes my heart race.
“How’s a California boy so scared of earthquakes?
” Because, yes, no one likes them. But you live here long enough, you grow accustomed to occasional tremors.
The last big one in San Francisco was before I was born, but I was raised in its shadow—collapsed freeways, condemned buildings, a city punished by a vengeful earth.
“I grew up in Texas.”
“Don’t you have hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods there?” I need to distract myself from the thirst trap that is Caleb soothing his anxiety-ridden dog.
“Yeah, but in a quake, the earth literally gives way. That’s the stuff of horror movies.” Houdini whimpers in his sleep. “See, Houdini agrees.”
I thought it was an old wives’ tale that dogs could sense earthquakes, but after Houdini’s behavior, I’m a believer. I scratch under his ears. “You were trying to warn us, weren’t you, good boy?” He lifts one ear, like he’s answering me.
“There was a quake the night I first came to Grand Trees. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. It scared the crap out of me.”
“You moved here as a teen?” Caleb had told me that in a moment of vulnerability at the hospital.
He said he had nowhere else to go, but Abby said he didn’t speak to his parents because they were terrible, not because they were dead.
What would bring him halfway across the country in search of a new home at such a young age?
He’s quiet for a few moments, while the rain pelts the roof and the wind drags the downed branches against the window. Finally, he says, “Yep.”