CHAPTER TWENTY
Ezekiel
He tried to open his eyes. He tried to lift his head off the pillow. He was too weak to do both at once so chose not to do either.
“You okay there, EZ?” Sierra called out to him.
It was like she was speaking from the opposite end of a long dark tunnel.
“Did you... Sierra, did you drug me?”
She screeched with laughter and he winced, wrapping the other end of the pillow around his head to cover his ear.
He took a breath; realized he was curled in a fetal position on the edge of Sierra’s bed.
He didn’t remember losing consciousness.
He opened his eyes to Sierra squatting on the floor in front of him, her face inches from his.
“Aww baby boy,” she said, reaching out, stroking his hair off his face. “I didn’t drug you, I did my worst—like you told me to do—and guess where you ended up? The Realm of Sleep, because I fucked you there.”
She took the edge of the sheet covering his shoulders—had she tucked him in?—and dabbed at the moisture on the side of his mouth. He lifted his head and saw the puddle of drool on the pillow.
“Don’t worry about it. I was going to do laundry today any way,” Sierra said.
Standing, she bent over and kissed his temple.
She tried to look sorry for him but she wasn’t. She was gloating.
“Get up and get showered and dressed. We’re late, we have to go to our special place before the sun comes up.”
Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, he watched her leave the room wearing a short green sundress with orange flowers and brown sandals. Her hair was semi-tamed into about ten thick twists all over her head.
How the hell had he slept through all that? He usually woke up when a bug struck his window screen too hard.
Scrubbing his hands over his face he stood.
Memories of Sierra’s lips wrapped around his dick, sucking and licking, hands squeezing. Her desperate shouting, begging and pleading, rang through his head and he grinned. Then he frowned.
Were those her screams or his? For the sake of his manhood—he grabbed his pants and shirt and walked to the bathroom— he decided they were hers.
When he finished showering and dressing, he pulled his hair back into a loose ponytail and searched for Sierra.
She wasn’t in the bedroom, living room, or kitchen.
The front and back doors were still locked so she hadn’t gone outside.
He went into Chupa’s room and found her on the floor, her arms wrapped around her legs as she cried into her knees.
His heart stuttered. He looked around the room; didn’t see Chupa.
“What happened Si?”
“She’s gone. I looked all over the house. I can’t figure out how she got out but she’s gone,” she sobbed.
Lifting her into his arms, he rubbed her back and rocked her side to side until she quieted.
“It’s so stupid,” she said, pulling away and wiping her face. “I was going to let her go when she was healed anyway.”
“We both know you weren’t. You called her your adopted baby, you weren’t planning on letting her go.”
“I loved her.”
“I know you did, Wildflower. You love big and you love hard. You have the kind of love that defies time. And anyone, or anything, worthy of you can get it,” he teased.
“I hoped we were all going to be a family. Me, you, Chupa, and Odin.”
“I know it won’t be the same, but I hope you’ll still want me and Odin.”
She snorted and looked at him like he was crazy. “You are already mine. Did you forget what you said last night.”
“Nah...I remember.”
She laughed. “You don’t remember shit.”
“It’s coming back to me slowly,” he groused.
Sierra’s laughter fell away and she sighed.
“I can’t figure out how she got out.”
“Likely the pet door in the laundry room. Ms. Cassandra had two cats. I thought it had been closed off after she went to nursing home.”
“Maybe she’ll come back to visit someday,” she said, tearing up again.
“You’re her adopted mama, I’m sure she will.”
She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. “You’re so easy to love.”
“I mean...I’m ready to go back to bed when you are.”
“Shit!” She pulled him out the room, grabbed her backpack, tossed him his keys, and opened the front door. “We’ve got to hurry, sunrise is coming!”
“Where we headed?” he asked in the truck as he turned the ignition.
“Go to the same place you parked yesterday.”
Flicking his headlights to bright, he sped down the dark road, the full moon at its zenith urging him to get her where she needed to be in time; for what purpose she wasn’t sharing, but she’d lost the kit, he didn’t want her to lose anything else today. Or ever.
Sierra leaped out of the truck before he’d come to a full stop.
Pulling a flashlight from her bag she grabbed his hand and ran not toward the contamination site but in the direction of the natural pond.
She slowed as they approached his memorial, and dropping her bag outside of the stone circle, she turned the flashlight on him. He lifted his hand to block the light.
“What’s going on, Sierra?”
“Yesterday when I was talking to my dad, before I told him you’d pulled a gun on me?—”
He dropped his head back and groaned. “You’re never gonna stop telling that lie are you?”
“Hell no. It’s a part of our meet-cute now.”
“Am I going to have to fight your father to keep you?”
“You won’t touch my daddy,” she warned.
“I will beat your daddy’s ass if he tries to take you from me. And it’ll be your fault,” he said, forcing back a smile, forcing all emotion from his face.
She frowned in contemplation, hopefully realizing the risks of sharing whatever the hell their meet-cute was.
“Nah,” she said dropping to the ground and pulling out a second flashlight. “I’m not arguing with you. Help me gather more stones please, maybe five or six.”
His heart dropped. Was she going to alter his memorial?
Was she about to prove she was just like every woman he’d dated who always got inside his love then rearranged his life to show him how he wasn’t good enough in some way?
Every muscle in his body clenched.
He took a breath, unclenched his fists first.
He breathed in and told himself not to be reactive. To trust her. To trust himself.
Sierra pulled a folded olive-green sheet out of the bag and placed it on the ground beside his memorial. She then took out a handful of small flat crystals of various hues and some battery operated candles.
Spreading out the sheet, she directed him to place the stones he’d just gathered in a circle along the perimeter on top of the sheet she’d placed a few feet from his memorial.
Taking off her sandals, she stepped onto the sheet and placed the crystals in a smaller circle in the center.
She arranged the candles inside the crystals and they both turned off their flashlights.
The candle light felt warmer, more welcoming of the dark morning.
Standing, Sierra held out her hand, silently inviting him to join her.
Toeing off his shoes, he stepped into the circle with her.
It immediately felt like he’d stepped into a parallel dimension. A bubble in time that was warmer than the cool night beyond.
Sierra held his hands above the circle of candlelight and crystals on the ground. She was trembling. He frowned. Why was she nervous?
“Yesterday I learned that on the same day my parents met, my mother took my father to a clearing in the Sierra Mountains and within twenty-four hours of them meeting they had a kind of handfasting ceremony, binding themselves to each other for the rest of their lives.
“They married a few years later but as far as they were concerned, they were committed to each other from that very first day. I know it’s a strange ask, but…
” She shrugged and smiled uncertainly. “You feel like the rest of my life Ezekiel Evers. If I feel the same to you, I’d like to continue their tradition. ”
“Si, I’ve failed miserably if I gave you the impression that I was ever letting you go. I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to tell you you’re moving to my place for the entire drive here.”
He kissed the soft skin on the back of her hands.
“I was willing to fight your daddy to keep you. That should’ve told you right then that I’m not letting you go. You were mine before you opened that door yesterday morning. We both just had to take the day to find it out. Sierra Rowan, I’m yours for now and always.
“It’s cool your daddy and mama waited years before getting legally married, but I’m not like that, Si.
You got a week to get right with marrying me, maybe two with you just having started your job and all, but I declare it to the night and the rising sun, I love and trust you with my soul. For the rest of our days.”
“I’ve always been free to live my life how I wanted, but I feel you’ve freed something in me, Ezekiel Evers. Like I’ve finally found a place to call home and it’s with you. I want to share my love, my body, my weirdness with you for the rest of my life. And I will sing you beautiful songs.”
“And I will play music for you to move to.”
She leaned closer and he kissed her over the circle of light as the first rays of daybreak lightened the sky.
“Ase,” he said, as his grandfather would, and stepped around the crystal circle.
He stripped them both naked and made love to Sierra on the ground within the circle of their promises of love and forever.
As she lay sleeping with her head on his arm, with him stroking her abdomen, he looked up.
The mother vixen, not fully corporeal, trotted past them in their circle of stones and paused to gaze at him. She dipped her head slightly before continuing on her journey, disappearing—literally—into the sunlight.
He didn’t have answers for what he saw, but he knew that like him, the mother vixen would always be tied to this land, to its healing, to its growth and prosperity.
Later today he would make a new memorial at the vixen’s gravesite as well.
She felt like something ancient but she also felt like a part of him.
He didn’t have the answers, maybe he never would, but he had his heart now, the other part of his soul, and he would hold on to her for as long as life allowed.