“I mean,” he said with slow purpose before he left. “That you and Michael are not siblings. The two of you are not related at all.”
Right after he said that, he pushed the door open and walked out into the street, leaving me to sit in sheer astonishment alone.
5
My head was spinning as I raced to tell the others. I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth fast enough, but then once I did, I didn’t know what else to say. Michael and Adam both stared at me as we sat on the couch in front of the silent and empty fireplace.
Adam’s expression looked almost disappointed as if he was hoping that any chance Michael and I had of being together had died and been buried. But it was Michael’s face that held my stare relentlessly. His eyes were practically bursting with hope, but he was careful to measure his reaction out of fear that it wasn’t true.
“How could Rob know that I’m not your brother,” he said skeptically.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “But I do know Rob, and I know that he wouldn’t have told me unless he was absolutely positive.”
“She’s right,” Adam agreed. “Rob is the kind of good boy scout that wouldn’t just toss that around without being able to prove it in some way. As much as I hate to admit it, if Rob says you guys aren’t siblings, then you can believe it to be true. He must have found something out.”
I could see the flicker in Michael’s eyes, as if he wanted to reach over and grab me right here and now and carry me off to bed. It had been too long since we’d been able to truly be intimate with each other and the amount of pent-up angst that we had both been feeling had reached a torturous level. But there were other matters at hand, and so he pushed the desire down and took a few slow and steady, deep breaths. I could see it though—the relief that coated his face. I felt it too. And I almost didn’t want to think about anything else. But Rob was still in trouble and we had to help him.
“What are we going to do about Rob?” I asked.
Michael’s brow furrowed and the muscles in his jaw tightened.
“Well I think we can all agree that we now know he’s in real trouble,” he said.
“But if he won’t talk to any of us, and we have no idea what actually happened to him,” Adam said, “then how in the world are we supposed to figure out what kind of trouble he’s in? It’s not as if we can infiltrate the police station.”
“We have to keep going with our previous plan,” Michael answered. “We need to look for the place that he marked on the map.”
We had all the supplies we needed to be able to venture out into the wilderness of the mountains again. We had at least enough to last us for a few days, and since it was almost evening and Michael thought it would be best to try to keep our trekking during the daytime hours when it wasn’t so frigid, we decided to head out first thing in the morning. As much as Michael and I both wanted to breathe a sigh of relief at the discovery that we don’t have anything standing in the way of being intimate with each other anymore, all three of us decided to sleep in the living room on the couch after an evening of packing up supplies and brainstorming all possible ideas that we had about the current situation. Adam started a fire and Michael and I cozied up under the blanket on the couch.
As soon as Michael wrapped his arms round me, I could feel his chest heave out an exhaled sigh that I felt inside my bones. The feeling of his arms around me and my body leaning pressed against his, was the feeling of pure, unadulterated and blissful home. He pressed his lips against the side of my head and kissed my hair just above my temple as I turned my cheek to nuzzle against his chest. Even if we weren’t going to share a heated and passionate moment tonight—this was enough. Knowing that we had each other, and could still have each other, and being here wrapped up in him, was what I had been longing for ever since this whole needless worrying about our relationship had started.
After the fire was going and the room started to get cozy, Adam came to join us on the couch, and I pulled a corner of the blanket over to share with him.
“It’s going to be cold out there for the next few nights,” Adam sighed as he stared into the hot flames. “Might as well soak up all this cozy warmth while we can.”
The three of us laid together and between the heat in the room and the relaxing sound of the crackling fire, we were all soundly asleep within a matter of moments.
I wasn’t surprised when I had a dream about Rob, especially not after my interactions with him earlier in the day, and the fact that he was the main focus of our current worries. But I was a little surprised about the context of the dream.
In my dream, Rob was fully decked out in his police gear, except not the normal daily cop gear. It looked like he was wearing some kind of riot gear with a thick bullet-proof vest and the kind of helmets with built-in microphones that cops sometimes wear when they’re getting ready to raid a place. I tried to talk to him, but he was too busy talking into his headset to hear me.
It was strange, because I didn’t see any imminent danger. No bad guys or guns or even a house that was getting raided. Instead, we were in the middle of the forest, standing just outside the mouth of a small cave. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around aside from Rob and I, although I could hear muffled voices coming from out of his headset. Rob kept turning back to look at the cave as if he was expecting someone or something to come out of it. Or maybe he was trying to protect something that was inside of it. I was getting ready to put my hand on his shoulder to try and get his attention and ask him again what was going on. But as soon as my fingers touched him, I woke up from my dream without any answers.
I could tell that it wasn’t morning yet by the darkness that hung outside the windows of the cabin. Michael and Adam were both still comfortably asleep, and I must not have jumped at all when I woke up because Michael’s arms were still wrapped around me. As much as I knew I should get more rest before morning, and as much as I tried to go back to sleep, I just couldn’t. So instead I laid there with my eyes wide open and mesmerized in a sort of zone-like trance by the dwindling fire.
When morning arrived, and the guys woke up, I was exhausted but ready to go.
When we set out, the sun was shining through the treetops and making the snow on the ground look like it was glittering. It was a thick layer of snow that covered the floor of the forests and crunched under our feet, making my boots stick in the holes that my footsteps made. It made the hike longer and more tedious as we fought to pull each step out of the snow. The trek was long and marking the way to the spot on the map was difficult. Fortunately, Michael was great at navigation, and Adam was somehow able to decipher the little symbols on the map. Together they made a pretty good team of keeping us on track. When the sun started to go down, we all started to get cold and hungry and weary.
“Let’s set up the tent here for the night,” Michael suggested as he pointed to a clearing up ahead. “We’ll make camp, start a fire and cook some food. Then we can get some rest and continue on in the morning.”
Adam nodded and we all tossed our backpacks on the ground once we reached the clearing. Michael set up the tent and Adam unpacked some of the food we brought and started the fire.
“Not that camping with you guys isn’t fun,” I teased, “but it is getting a little old spending so many nights in the cold winter with only a tent and blanket to stay warm.”
Adam chuckled. “Yeah, I much prefer the roaring fireplace to this pile of sticks.”
He got the fire started and then set off to find some larger pieces of wood to keep it going through the night.
“Don’t get lost this time,” Michael taunted.
“I didn’t get lost the last time,” Adam retorted with a shake of his head.
As soon as the tent was up, I unpacked a blanket from my pack, and Michael and I went inside to get warmed up a bit.
“Adam must be freezing out there getting wood,” I said as Michael zipped the tent closed to keep the cold air out.
“He’ll be fine once he gets back and sits by the fire,” Michael said.
“What do you think we’re going to find when we reach that mark on the map?” I asked as I cuddled up against his chest.
“I’m not sure, but whatever it is, I hope it gives us some answers.”
