Chapter 32
Caspian
“It’s starting.”
The call has me abandoning our drinks and hastening out onto the deck. Ezra is lying flat on his back, a blanket spread out under him. He chuckles when I nearly trip in my hurry to join him.
His hand brushes mine once I settle, a grin on his face I see briefly before looking up at the sky.
It’s dark out, the navy above looking nearly black.
Stars glimmer, so big and bright I could map hundreds, maybe thousands if I wanted.
The moon is only a sliver, a curve of sunlight reflecting off its surface.
But it’s not the stars or the moon I’m looking for now.
Ezra points. “There.”
A streak of light flickers through the dark, followed quickly by another.
We watch in silence for long minutes, the meteor shower its own kind of show.
A spectacular one. There are no horns blaring here.
No busy city noise or light pollution hindering our view.
The air around us is quiet, this place our own little slice of secluded paradise .
Ezra’s voice is hushed. “It’s beautiful.”
I can only nod.
He lets out the softest of sighs, his words sounding the same. “‘For what is more beautiful than heaven?’”
I glance at Ezra in the dark, my eyes acclimated enough now that I can see his features. “Practicing your poetry, Copernicus?”
“My astronomy.” He grins in that way he does. Ezra has more wrinkles on his face than he once did. Some gray in his hair he’s done his absolute best to hide under a pristine dye job. He refuses to admit he’s aging. That we’re aging.
I, on the other hand, don’t much mind it. Not when I’m aging with him.
Yet despite the years that have passed, my friend hasn’t once lost the spark of what makes him…him. To his fans, he remains infamous. The great Ezra Gold.
To me, he’s still just…my Ezra.
Ezra’s expression is soft as his eyes drift over my face in turn.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Just that…sometimes I think heaven is here with you.”
My heart kicks, my chest warm and aching and tight.
He reaches out, his finger tapping a few points on my cheeks and nose. “You carry the stars with you, Gray. Your own constellation I can look at any time I want.”
“My freckles?” I ask hoarsely.
He nods, his brown eyes dark beneath the stars above. His fingers wrap around my own, and he brings my hand up to his mouth, pressing a kiss there. “Love you.”
He says it simply .
It’s not simple at all.
Our hands rest between us as the last of the meteors streak across the sky. My eyes never leave Ezra’s. “More than all the stars.”
“Caspian.”
The voice startles me. Fingers drift across my cheek, one brown-eyed gaze exchanged for another as light assaults my eyes, the twinkling of stars overtaken by the sun high in the sky. It’s such an abrupt shock, I roll over, blinking down at the ground as I find my bearings.
Lee checks in again. “Caspian?”
“Fine,” I tell him, the grass beneath me soft. Far softer than the deck boards. I clear my throat, the lump there left over from before. “Was I out long?”
“A few minutes. Longer than the other times.”
I nod, sitting up, a dried leaf crunching beneath my palm. Lee’s rake is lying on the grass now, the wheelbarrow I’d been using to haul away the first of fall’s dead leaves resting on its side nearby. “Sorry if I scared you.”
A small smile graces his lips, even as concern lingers in his gaze. “I’m used to it. Snack break?”
I nod again, and Lee helps me to stand. Shelly greets us when we walk inside, scaling my chest to wrap around behind my head, her whiskered cheek butting against my own. Lee chuckles, even as I rub the small scratch left behind from Shelly’s climb.
He pours me a glass of juice first, passing it over as I take a seat at the table. Then he sets to work making us a bite. “Want to tell me about it?”
I hum, considering how much to say. “There was…a meteor shower. It was gorgeous.”
Lee raises an eyebrow. “Why do I get the feeling you’re leaving a lot out? ”
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not sure you’re ready to hear it.”
He walks over, setting a plate of crackers and grapes in front of me. I appreciatively eat some of both.
“Let’s recap, shall we?” Lee holds up his hand to tick off his fingers, and my lips twitch.
“In the past month, I’ve learned I have a daughter on the way.
Congratulations to me. I’ve found out you’re a freaking genius who also happens to have visions of the future.
I’ve spent nearly every day apart from my working hours with you because apparently I can’t stand it when you go back to your place.
And my cat now loves you more than she loves me.
I’m fairly certain at this point, nothing you say could shock me. ”
I lick my finger clean, holding Lee’s gaze. “It’s not only the future I see.”
His mouth falls open. “The fuck, Caspian.”
“Told you,” I mutter, downing the last of my juice. Lee follows me when I stand, his hand on my arm halting me in the hall outside the kitchen.
“Explain.”
I bark a laugh, and Shelly goes scrambling off my shoulders. I wince at the tiny claw massage over my back.
Lee isn’t smiling, and I deflate with a heavy breath.
“I see the past, too,” I confirm.
He never lets my arm go, although his grip isn’t remotely tight. “But… You said you have to be there. That’s how it works.”
I nod once.
I can see his gears turning, and I wait, the clock in the hallway ticking quietly. “When you say the past…are you talking about your childhood? ”
“No.”
“Okay… You’re talking about before you were alive?”
“In a way.”
“Oh, fuck.”
Lee sits down right in the narrow hallway. I join him, my back against the opposite wall, our feet side by side. Sunlight drifts in from the back door, lighting the floorboards near my foot.
“Do you see now why I’ve been trying to ease you into it?” I ask.
“How is that possible?”
“How is any of this?”
He blows out a breath. “What have you seen?”
“A lot,” I admit. “Ancient Greece. Migrations across untamed lands. Vikings who sailed the high seas. I’ve seen the Black Death. Colonial America. The beginning of this century.”
He inhales a shuddering breath. “And the future. Do you see farther than this life?”
A beat passes. “Yes.”
“Oh my God.” Lee braces his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor between his feet. I give him time, my heart racing. Finally, he says, “I think I need a minute.”
“I’ll go,” I say, making to stand.
Lee grabs my ankle before I can, his eyes meeting mine. “Stay. Please. I just… I need a minute.”
I nod, settling back down, Lee’s hand around my ankle holding tight. He leans against the wall behind him, his eyes shutting as his head rests back on the wainscoting.
I wonder if he can feel my pulse beneath his thumb. If he knows the beat of it as I know his. If, somewhere deep down, he recognizes my heart. If he feels the pull of it as I’ve felt him all these many years.
It’s torture not to close the gap between us, tenuous as it is. Not to demand he open his eyes and see me. Not to tell him everything, every detail big and small, so he can understand. So he can believe it.
But I can’t tell him all of it. Not yet. There are some things a person needs to feel in their own time. In their own way.
So I sit. And I wait. As I’ve been doing now for weeks.
Lee opens his eyes after what feels like a lifetime. “Someday, you’re going to tell me everything.”
“Yes,” I agree.
“But today isn’t that day, is it?”
I shake my head slowly.
With an exhale, Lee pushes to his feet and holds out his hand. I clasp his palm, and he tugs me upright. His eyes hold mine for a long moment, seeking, searching. Perhaps he can’t see the past or the future as I can. But he can see now. He can see how I feel, surely.
Sometimes I wonder if I can see the same.
Lee heads past me out the door. I follow, making sure Shelly doesn’t escape after us.
He picks up his fallen rake, glancing my way as I right the wheelbarrow. “You really don’t have to help with this, Caspian.”
It’s not the first time he’s said it, but I didn’t listen then, either.
“If I’m living here, doing yardwork and chores isn’t really helping,” I point out. “It’s my responsibility, too.”
He pauses in raking up the last of the leaves. “Are you living here now?”
“You set up the office for me to use. ”
He leans his arm on his rake.
“We sleep a foot apart,” I add.
His lips twitch.
“Lee, you rarely let me leave. You said it yourself. Don’t pretend like you don’t want me here.”
He shakes his head but goes back to raking, amusement lacing his tone. “You’re cheeky.”
“And you’re stubborn. You could admit you kinda like me, you know.”
Lee appears to mull that over, as if it’s something he has to actually consider. “I kinda like you. I guess.”
“A ringing endorsement,” I mutter, smiling when Lee chuckles.
We finish raking the leaves from his yard, the rooftop solar tiles glinting in the waning sun. It’s hard to believe so much of our energy used to come from fossil fuels and processes that were destroying our planet. And before that, we relied on candles and oil lamps to see.
So much has changed.
And so very much is exactly the same.
Lee cooks dinner as he does most every night. He likes it, I’ve found. The process is soothing to him, and I suspect he enjoys it even more now that he has someone other than himself to cook for. I have no problem complimenting his food. And he has no problem whatsoever preening under the praise.
As Lee goes to shower before bed, I take a few minutes to answer my work email.
I’ll be officially starting my job next week, working from home most of the time on the endless specifics that still need to be hammered out in order to send engineers, scientists, bioengineers, doctors, agriculturalists, countless other specialized astronauts, and eventually civilians up into space.
There will be times I’ll need to fly to Command Center.
Possibly even elsewhere if I’m needed somewhere on site.
I don’t mind. Not so long as I can come back here. Back home.
When I find Lee, he’s sitting up in bed, reading a bound book.
He gives me a hint of a smile as I join him, flipping a page.
So much of what I’ve seen of Lee has been inside my own head.
Glimpses of him older, of this house years from now and the child running through its halls.
Pieces of conversation or soft smiles that make my heart ache.
Him in the woods, dropping shakily to one knee as I stand there, helpless to stop what I know is coming.
Watching his heart cease to beat. Feeling his pulse kick back to life under my fingertips.
I’ve known this man in a dream that’s not a dream at all.
But now he’s here in front of me, full of life and warm blood and a mischievousness as he raises an eyebrow that tells me I’ve been caught staring.
I don’t care. I can’t stop. The snapshots I have of him aren’t enough.
I need every moment I can gather. A lifetime of them.
Lee closes his book and sets it aside. His lamp is on, bathing the room in a gentle glow. “Something on your mind?”
“A lot.”
He hums, turning to face me more fully. For as cautious as he’s been, there’s no hiding the way Lee is attuned to me. I move, and he follows. The opposite is also true.
“Tell me one thing on your mind.”
It’s a request, not a demand, but I speak all the same. “So much of my life has been spent elsewhere. And now, I’m here . In this time and this place, living a present I don’t know. I know how it ends. How it began. But I don’t know…this.”
Lee watches me closely, the lack of judgement on his face so unlike what I’ve experienced in my life that I nearly sag with it. “Do you want to know?”
“No,” I admit. “Because then what would be the point in living it? This is my adventure to live. To learn and love and grow. People debate destiny and the linearity of time. They debate free will. But regardless of all that’s set to be, we’re here now.
No matter what end waits over the horizon, every one of our choices matters because we’re living them.
We’re not powerless unless we believe ourselves to be. ”
I can see on his face that Lee doesn’t understand what I’m trying to say. My inhale is shuddery, my heartbeat quick. How do I put it into simple words?
“I’m ecstatic,” I tell him. “Because I’m living now . And I really like where I am.”
He swallows heavily, his eyes roaming over me. “I like that you’re here, too.”
“I know you do.”
“But it scares me.”
“Because of how we met?” I guess.
He nods slowly.
“And if I were anyone else?” I ask, my pulse firing. “Someone you met at a bar or went on a date with?”
He takes his time to answer, the heat in his gaze not of my imagination. “I would want to kiss you.”
My voice comes out at a whisper. “So do that.”
Lee’s eyes hold mine for so long, I expect him to turn away. He doesn’t. His hand comes up to run slowly over my jaw, a brush downward before his fingers trail up again. Goose bumps erupt over my skin as he hooks me, holds me, his thumb near my ear .
The first press of his lips to mine is so soft I barely feel it.
I don’t breathe, waiting for it to come again.
It does. Lee meets my mouth with a soft grunt I can feel in the pit of my stomach.
He sucks in a breath, and I do the same, oxygen invading my lungs, the atoms of my body straining with the singular goal of getting closer to this man.
The one I’ve waited for time and time again.
It’s one thing to know. And completely another to live .
Lee draws back from the kiss on a gasping breath, his forehead pressing to mine. My hand is tangled in his shirt, his still on the side of my head. His voice is hoarse, rough, when he speaks. “Do you believe in fate, Caspian?”
I smile at the question returned to me. He must know the answer, but I give it still. “Yes. Do you?”
“I’m starting to.”