Chapter 13 - Sierra
Thirteen
Sierra
Biased I may be, but I think the event is an incredible success.
A local band called Midnight Bloom strums acoustic covers of romantic songs while guests dine on truffle oil appetizers, fresh pasta, and cheesecake.
Seth and Emily came to help out and take turns leading small groups into the cave, while I hand out and light candles for each of the guests.
There is even a marriage proposal in the cavern, and they agree to let us post some of the pictures we took on our social media.
By the end of the night, I am bursting with pride. Not just for what I contributed, but for what Logan has accomplished.
My eyes keep finding him as the event winds down. He’s everywhere—directing the caterers to pack extra food for the homeless shelter, checking in with the lighting team, and making sure the vendors leave with all their items.
My breath quickens as I watch him shake hands with the band, then hug Seth and Emily.
Although he’s never said, I can tell that his family is who he really wants to impress, and more pride blooms in my chest. He’s the man of the hour, and I can tell he knows it by the way he is carrying himself. He looks self-assured. Confident.
It’s really sexy.
As sexy as he was in that shower. God, that shower. The image of him has been burned into my retinas. Logan, skin wet, water pouring down his defined chest and back, his biceps flexing as he washed his hair. I can feel myself blushing just thinking about it.
God, what came over me to suggest it? Seven years later, and I am still that girl.
Good girls do not invite their bosses to take a shower with them, whatever the reason.
It was by far the most outrageous stunt I have ever pulled.
Well, the second most outrageous. What is up with how I behave in Sagebrush?
There must be something in the water here that triggers my bad-girl DNA.
Or worse, maybe Sagebrush has nothing to do with it.
I have a bad habit of poking at the plentiful mottled splotches all over my legs and arms that I earn from climbing, testing to see if the obvious bruise hurts.
It always does. That’s what this feels like—pressing down hard, testing to see if we still feel this attraction or not.
Shocker when, at least for me, I really, really do.
When we were dating before, I was the same. Prodding, poking, pushing Logan until he dragged me away to either yell or sex me up. I wanted to see what he would do. I liked how powerful it made me feel, the chaos I would spin. And now I was slipping into bad habits.
I know better. But I can’t seem to stop.
Speaking of dredging up my wanton history, I can’t avoid speaking to Emily any longer.
Not after she graciously let me borrow a dress and heels for this event.
Seven years ago, Emily did not mince words, and from what Seth and Logan say about her, she hasn’t changed.
If anyone were to voice an opinion about my sordid past, it would be her.
I finish packing away all the candle supplies, carefully separating out the melted candles and their paper holders. Then I steel myself for approaching her and Logan, the box of candles in front of me like a shield.
“I just wanted to thank you in person for letting me borrow your dress and heels,” I say to Emily. Quick and to the point would be best. It’s hard to call someone a skank if you hit them with kindness first. “These are beautiful, and I really appreciate them.”
“Yes, thank you, Emily,” Logan jumps in.
Emily blinks, then gives Logan a look that says really? My heart sinks.
“You look great in them,” she says finally. “Keep them.”
“Oh, I couldn’t—” I protest as my face grows hot. Does she really think she can’t wash off whatever taint I gave these? Washing machines are miracle workers for blood stains and other grime; I’m sure they can rinse off whatever eau-de-tart scent I leave behind.
“Yes, you can. The dress looks like it was meant to be yours.” Her eyes glint with something I can’t read.
Is she mocking me? “Honestly, I won’t miss it at all,” she continues, but her gaze stays on Logan.
“It’s the weirdest thing—I don’t even remember buying that dress or the shoes. Or even trying them on—”
Logan claps his hands together. “Right, that’s settled. Let’s go check on the caterers, Sierra.” He grabs my hand and pulls me away.
“Thanks again, Emily!” I call over my shoulder as he tows me along like a tugboat.
“Well?” he asks when we’re clear. He drops my hand, and I immediately miss it. “What did you think?”
“Emily must really—oh, the event?” I correct myself at his puzzled expression. “It went so well, Logan.”
He grins, euphoria and relief easing the tension in his face. “Right? Man, I can’t believe it’s over, though. Months of planning…” He snaps his fingers. “Just like that. But I’m very pleased with how it turned out. Everything going okay for you?”
It was, but now that recklessness is rising within me again. The water—it must be the water. I need to switch to bottled Evian or something.
“Everything except for one thing.” I trace one of the half-melted candles. “You didn’t get to see the cave with the candles lit.” I scoop up a candle and light it. I am playing with fire, and I don’t care. The flame flickers tentatively, like the hope inside me that he’ll say yes.
“Oh, well…” He glances toward the teardown.
“Come on, Logan. Let’s sneak off for a few minutes. No one will notice. Don’t you deserve a moment to bask in your own triumph?”
He takes the candle, his fingers brushing mine. Feeling bold, I reach for his other hand. His palm is warm and smooth. I shiver pleasantly when his fingers twine with mine, the calluses on his fingertips rubbing against the back of my hand.
“Come on,” I whisper. “It’ll be like old times.”
He lets me lead him toward the cave entrance. The gate—a wide, iron lattice—is propped open. Logan takes the box from me and pulls another candle out, deftly lighting it before handing it back to me. He sets the box aside and gestures for me to enter first.
We step inside. My breath catches when his hand finds mine again in the dark.
We move down a narrow passage, then descend a flight of stone stairs until the space opens into a vast cavern.
The cave glows in the soft yellow light of the candles.
Sheets upon sheets of flowstone surround us, while the limestone stalactites sparkle and shift like they’re alive.
The effect creates a sense of movement and privacy, like hiding in the shade of a weeping willow made of stone.
“This is the main chamber,” Logan explains. “The Cathedral. This place always feels sacred to me. Timeless. It makes me feel meaningless in the best way.”
“What do you mean?” I whisper. Logan is right; it feels like I’m in a church.
“Sometimes my shortcomings feel so big that they’ll always control me.
I spend so much time, day after day, hour after hour, battling myself and failing over and over again.
” The candlelight flickers against his face, accenting the hollows in his throat as he swallows.
“But here are thousands, or even millions, of years of existence right in front of us. I’m barely a blip in this cave’s history.
I may never be able to overcome everything wrong with me.
I probably won’t. And it’s okay.” He sighs, but it doesn’t sound unhappy. “Here it doesn’t matter.”
It doesn’t matter. I ponder that as I continue to take in the beauty in front of us.
Conceptually, I think I understand what he means.
Constantly beating myself up over what I did in the past and all the imperfections I can’t seem to defeat does seem self-aggrandizing in the grand scheme of the universe.
But in reality? How on earth can any of us stop?
A bit of melted wax drops onto my finger, bringing me back to the present. I hiss in pain.
The sound rouses Logan from his ruminating too. “Let me see.”
“I’m fine,” I say, but hold out my finger anyway.
He gently removes the hardened wax, then blows on the burn. My heart melts a little like my candle.
“These are getting too dangerous. We should have put the wax guards back on,” he says. “Let’s blow them out. You can experience how dark a cave can be.”
The last thing I see is his lips as he purses them to blow out our light. I gasp as we disappear into complete pitch blackness.
It’s like we don’t exist. I can’t see Logan, and I can’t see any part of myself. I wait, straining my eyes, hoping for one small glimpse of him, of not being alone in this blank, unforgiving world, but my eyes never adjust to the dark.
My lips tremble, and my eyes fill with tears I can’t explain. “Logan?”
Then his strong arms wrap around me, and now all of me is a candle, melting into him.
“I’m here,” he whispers.
The words tug painfully on my heart. There’s a feather-light touch against my hair, and for one indulgent moment, I let myself imagine he’s placing kisses there.
I want him to be doing that so badly, I’m shaking, but I can’t see for sure.
Even one small beam of light would reveal so much, but I’m suddenly terrified of that too.
Instead, I focus on his strong, steady heartbeat against my ear, and I press a kiss against that sound. It isn’t enough.
“Come on,” Logan says finally, his voice sounding deeper and rougher than usual. “We should get back.”
We pull out our phones to use as flashlights.
“Not to be a modern-day sad sack, but I can’t imagine what they did before cell phones,” I say to distract from the fact that I have tears in my eyes.
“It’s pitch-black in here! I’d be so freaked out that my candle or lantern would burn out, I’d probably hide matches in all my pockets and up my sleeves like some bad magician, just in case. ”
“Catching on fire does seem slightly less scary than being lost in the dark,” Logan says. “And you would learn a practical magic trick.”
“Remember in middle school when you learned—Oh, shit. Is the gate closed?”
Iron bars stretch across the narrow entrance of the cave. A big padlock hangs in the corner, locked.
“Hello?” I call out. “We’re here!”
Silence.
We both check our phones.
“Not even an SOS,” Logan mutters, stretching his arm through the gate. “Let me see if I can get a bar—” His phone slips, clattering against the stone below. “Oh, fuck.”
I hand him mine.
“Let’s save this one,” he says. “No reason to sacrifice two phones to the cave gods.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “How did they not know we were in here?”
Logan curses. “I parked behind that boulder, remember? Emily and Seth must not have seen the truck when they locked up.”
“Oh, no. Oh, no!” I kick off my heels and start climbing the cave wall around the gate, my fingers and toes searching for holds in the rough depressions. “Maybe I can fit through the gap at the top—”
“Whoa there, spider monkey!” Logan grabs me around the waist and pulls me back down.
I slide down his hard body. The rough fabric of his slacks brushes the back of my bare thighs—my dress must have ridden up. Oops. I tug my dress back into place.
“The last thing we need is you getting stuck in the bars.”
I squint at the gap again. It does look tight. That would certainly make this scenario more likely to turn into a full-fledged disaster.
My mind pivots and whirls, quickly cataloging and assessing alternatives and solutions. “Is there another way out?”
Logan laughs. “You’re wearing heels and a dress, and we don’t have caving gear. Even if we got out through one of the other entrances, we’d have to hike over the mountain in the dark. For miles.”
I flash my light around, checking for any emergency satellite phones, spare keys, tools. Paper bags for panic huffing. Nothing. Oh! The box of candles with lighters. That’s good. I can remove getting lost or falling in the dark from the disaster risk list.
“Surely, Seth will realize something’s wrong when we don’t come back home?” I ask.
“Maybe? He might think we went somewhere afterwards to celebrate. He may not realize until tomorrow morning that we never came back.” Logan snaps his fingers. “Seth has a cavern tour scheduled for ten tomorrow morning. We won’t be stuck here forever.”
“Okay, that’s something. We’ll only have to survive the night.” My mind continues to churn through my survival checklist. Water and food we can do without—those take days and weeks before they become critical. Shelter on the other hand…
A cool breeze drifts through the opening. I shiver. “We may have to go deeper into the cave,” I tell him. “It’s like, consistently seventy degrees in there, right? What about…creatures? Bats?”
“Bats are migratory. It’s too cold now for most of the bat species, and the year-round ones like to hang out at the west entrance.”
“Okay, we can check rabies off the disaster list.” I sigh. “I’m so sorry, Logan.”
“Come on,” Logan says. “I know a place.”