Love Untold

Love Untold: Chapter 39

Love Untold:  Chapter 39


An icy chill ran down Reese’s back.  He’d done many foolish things in his life -- the mountain climbing, the skydiving, the windsurfing in shark-infested waters...any extreme sport he could get his body into, because he was Reese Jackson, extremist extraordinaire...he thought of himself as the X-Games version of Evil Knievil  -- but he never thought he’d be insane enough to fall in love with a woman he’d never met, never seen in real life, who never even existed, and then sign up for that stupid reality show, I Want To Marry A Jock, in hopes of finding such woman.

“Why do you ask?” he inquired David with a thick voice.  Five years ago, he started having these dreams about a stunningly beautiful woman with auburn curls, solid blue eyes, a heart-stopping smile and this perchance for throwing things at him in his dream, and for many of the past years, they consumed him, ate away at his very core because he yearned for someone his mind made up just to torture him.  He tried finding her, but he didn’t even have a name to go on...just her face, and her smile, and the strong pull towards her.  

He devoted his life to living on the edge, becoming the dare devil that everyone asked for and turned to when they needed to draw crowds to their events.  Since the day he turned eighteen -- many years ago -- he’d made a name for himself as a celebrity of sorts.  However, he wasn’t rich by any definition of the word, considering how his insurance ate through his finances like a chocoholic in the Hershey’s factory.  But that didn’t bother him much.  For now he was alive and relatively happy.  

Reese had bungy-jumped off of almost every tall bridge in the country.  He’d sky-dived out of hot-air balloons.  He’d performed with the leading trick-cyclists, skateboarders, snowboarders, and rock climbers around the world.  And whenever the adrenaline became too much -- or the fear almost unbearable -- he’d close his eyes, see her face, and he was okay.  Somewhere deep inside himself, he knew that he’d live to see the day when he could meet that woman.  But then he roped his career with that stupid show and after that disaster, he stopped thinking there was a woman out there for him, searching and dreaming of him like he’d been dreaming of her.  Now, all he wanted was some peace and quiet.  

One good thing came out of it all.  He found a brother he never knew he had.  David had been adopted as a baby because their mother was only a teenager when she had him.  She never spoke of it until David saw him on television -- his wife had this obsession with reality shows -- and contacted him.  David knew Reese was his brother.  It was impossible not to see the resemblance.  They could almost be twins, if not for the age difference.  

But David had this thing about his family.  He was so protective of them, not wanting them connected with the Reese Jackson that the world knew and hounded, he insisted that no one know they were brothers, other than immediate family.  Which was just fine with Reese.  Keeping his private life as just that -- private -- was something he wanted to get back to.  And he didn’t want David and his family to endure the media circus Reese himself had to evade on a daily basis.

David’s answer brought Reese back to the here and now, “Because I think I might have just met her.”

“Who?”

“Don’t be a smartass.  You know exactly who I mean.”

Reese smiled at his phone attached to his bike frame.  He and David had only known each other for about a year, but that didn’t matter.  They were brothers, and they acted like it.  Yet, because only they and their closest families knew that they found each other, they kept their secret closely guarded.  There wasn’t a day that didn’t go by without Reese getting fan mail from bride-wannabe’s after he sent that petty, selfish, bitchy gold digger from I Want To Marry A Jock home packing once the reality show ended.  And now every single woman in America thought they had what he wanted.

All he wanted was a nameless dream.

“Listen, I’m not in the mood,” Reese said to David as he mounted back on his bike and started down the mountain’s incline at a slower rate than he preferred.  “If you’re gonna tell me you met the woman of my dreams, then you can stuff a sock into it.  She doesn’t exist; you told me so yourself, so stop with the practical jokes.”

“Not even if I tell you she’s been dreaming about you, too?”

Reese stared at his phone and forgot to pay attention to what he was doing.  He hit a rock and flew over the handlebars into a thicket of brush.  “Son of a bitch!”

“Reese!  What the hell did you just do?!”  His brother shouted through the phone’s speaker, but Reese could only lie there and let the stars blink until his vision cleared.  “Reese!  Answer me!  I don’t know where the hell you’re at, but I’ll send a rescue squad after you anyway!”

Reese chuckled and crawled over to his bike.  “I’m here,” he moaned, rubbing his scraped elbow.  “And I’m up in Three Sisters Park, biking....alone for the first time in weeks, and I’d like to keep it that way.”  He righted his bike and scanned it.  No damage, thank goodness.  He’d hate to carry it down the trail to his Jeep.

“That’s up by Denver, right?”

“Close by,” Reese said.  “Why?”

“Hey, can you scout a resort for me while you’re up there?  Hilltop Resort, you ever hear of it?”

“Nope, but that doesn’t mean anything.  I stay away from those kinds of places, you know.  Too many single ladies around.”

“Well, think you can take a look around and see if it’s legit?  We’ve got to find another place to stay during this Special Olympics convention in a few weeks.”

Reese decided to walk his bike down a ways instead of trying to ride and talk to David at the same time.  It was safer.  He’d hate to think what his insurance guy would say when he claimed another emergency room visit.  “What happened to the usual place?”

“Burned,” David groaned.  “They’re comping us for the inconvenience,but that doesn’t get us in another place, and I’m not staying downtown.  I’m bringing Jennifer and the kids, and we’re planning to use part of the week as some vacation time.”

“Alright, sure.  Where’s this place again?”

David rattled off the address to Hilltop Resort, and Reese was glad his brother forgot why he called to tell him about his dream woman...until David said, “So...about this woman I met...you want her name?”

Reese sighed.  “No.  I just want to forget all about all that and jump off a cliff or something.”

“You’d do that anyway,” David reminded him, but he shut up about the woman.  “So, you still planning to join us during the convention.  I called the resort and the owner said she had some out-of-the-way cabins.  You can stay in one of those if you’re scared of getting mauled.”

“Gee, thanks.  I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

David said his good-bye and hung up.  Reese stared up at the blue sky between the thick foliage of the pine trees around him.  The same clear blue as the eyes of the woman from his dreams.

Damn it.  Now, he’d be thinking of her the rest of the day and wondering why he chickened out by saying he didn’t want to know David’s mystery woman’s name.

It was just as well.  She was probably just another nutcase...like him.

*****

It was nearing midnight when Chrissie walked into her house that night.  Dena was there, feeding Stinker.  “You’re back,” she said, surprised.  “You didn’t call.  What happened?”

“Nothing,” Chrissie sighed, throwing her keys on the kitchen counter and kicking her suitcase to a corner.  “Just like you said, it was a dead end.  He’s not Race, and he doesn’t have a brother.”

Dena drew Chrissie into a hug.  “I’m sorry, sis.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

They held each other for a while, and Stinker rubbed against Chrissie’s leg.  She bent down to cradle him in her arms, remembering how her cat took so easily to Race in her dreams.  It was enough to send her into another fit of tears, if she hadn’t cried during the flight and the drive back to her house.  Emotionally and physically exhausted, she just wanted to go to bed and never wake up.  But that would mean disappointing her sister and her mother, and she didn’t have it in her to do that.  She had to live...even if that was all it was -- living.

“So...” Dena bit on her lip and looked apprehensive.  “What are you going to do?”

Chrissie gave her sister a small smile.  “I’m going to erase every file on David Elliot from my computer, get my anti-crazy pills refilled so I can wake up in the mornings without bawling my eyes out, and go to work tomorrow.  I’m done.  It’s over, just like I promised.”

“Chris...”

“No,” she stopped Dena, “It’s over.  I’m moving on.  But one good thing came from this craziness.  After doing all that research on David Elliot, I know what to do with Mom’s hotel now.  She’s rejected every idea I’ve thrown at her because she doesn’t want to change what Daddy did with the place, but I think she’ll go for this one.”

“Yeah, which is?”

“A sports theme,” Chrissie said, nuzzling Stinker.  “Daddy loved winter sports, the skiing, the boarding, the snowball fights...I’ll turn it into The Place to go for the extremists who come up the mountain for the adrenaline rush and fun and not the partying.”

Dena nodded, musing about that.  “I think she might actually go for that.”  She looked at her sister, hugging her cantankerous cat and grunted.  “Ain’t we two peas in a pod?  Two single, attractive women at our ages?  Neither of us able to find Mr. Right.  At least you know what yours looks like.”

Chrissie grinned, feeling better already.  “I don’t know, D...I think I know what your dream man looks like, too.”

Dena’s eyes got wide.  “You dreamed about mine?  Why didn’t you tell me?  Is he handsome?  Dark, dangerous?  Sexy with tattoos?”

Chrissie screwed up her face.  “You find that attractive?  Gross.”

Dena shrugged.  “Hey, I like my men a little rough around the edges.”

“You might change your mind if you saw the man I saw,” Chrissie said and winked as she set Stinker down on the floor.

“Now, you’re just being cruel.  You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”

“Nope.”

“Well, then...going back to Mom and her resort, she called.”

Chrissie, on her way out of the kitchen to go take a shower and then climb into bed, halted in her tracks.  “Did you tell her where I went?”

“No, but I think she suspects something happened.  She wanted to know who David Elliot is and why you told him he could lodge half his employees for a convention during her off-season.  You want to explain that to me?”

Chrissie exhaled.  She honestly didn’t think Mr. Elliot would act so quickly, and she’d have time to talk to her mother about it.  Mom liked the peace of the early summer when her resort wasn’t full and she could take some time off for herself, mainly wondering through the baby departments of stores and imagining all she could buy if she had grandchildren.  Chrissie wouldn’t be surprised if her mother already had a closet full of junk for one of her daughter’s nursery.  Of course, since the accident, she stopped hounding Chrissie, but Chrissie suspected their mother asked Dena when she would settle down.

Waving at Dena to follow her to the other side of the house, she related her whole afternoon with Mr. Elliot, hoping that once she got it all out, she’d be able to put it behind her.

Her dreams that night wouldn’t let her.

*****

Chrissie dove into her work with a vengeance.  Over the next several days, she tried to take control of her life again, with only minor success.  Whenever Race or David entered her mind, she shoved them aside and focused on new clients, new designs, and her plan to make over Mom’s ski resort, but the strain of bearing her grief showed in her eyes and in her voice.  Everyone noticed, and no one could do or say anything to maker her feel better.  Chrissie did the only thing she could think of to stay sane.  She erected a barrier -- a stone wall -- around her heart, keeping the pain and torment inside, building them up to inhuman levels until crumbling cracks threatened to rip her apart...and yet, she hung on.

The only thing she couldn’t blockade, she couldn’t control, was her sleepwalking.  Just like in her coma dream, she became a person of the night, and it scared her.  Dena -- though already living with her -- kept watch over Chrissie during the nighttime hours as well as the day, and Chrissie never went a day without telling her sister how much that meant to her.  She honestly didn’t know what she would have done otherwise.

Dena told her the things she did at night -- dancing to “Lay It Down,” pigging out on junk food, crying, the temper tantrums, all of it -- but Chrissie refused to admit she needed some extra help.  She could act normal during the day.  However when nighttime came, she still lived the dream, and Dena finally dragged her -- kicking and screaming -- to a psychiatrist.

Dr. Sebastian Gray turned out to be Dr. Nathaniel Stone, and Chrissie didn’t even bother deterring Dena from drooling over the man.  She was too tired to care at that point, and yet, she was happy -- and depressed -- to see that there were more aspects of her coma dream that were real.  Chrissie, herself, got a little dazed at how much Dr. Stone resembled Dr. Gray.  And all the sessions accomplished were to send her right back into oblivion and second-guessing herself.  She found Brian, and now Dr. Stone/Dr. Gray...so was Race really out there somewhere?  Was she deceiving herself by forcing her mind to ignore fate?  Had David Elliot lied to her about having a brother?  Or was this just another coincidence of gargantuan proportions?

She just didn’t know anymore.  

A shell of herself, that’s all that was left of Chrissie Hill as the weeks drifted by slowly.  After giving up on Dr. Stone, life had become a continuum of hours awake, hours asleep, and hours of sleepwalking.  If her sister had been worried all those months when Chrissie tried to find Race, she was doubly concerned now that Chrissie stopped searching.  Because Chrissie stopped everything else, except work.  She stopped eating right -- living off of coffee and Twinkies -- and she stopped smiling and crying and showing any emotion but the calm, creepy composure of a woman just breathing through the day.

As the weeks passed and her twenty-ninth birthday approached, Chrissie had sunk into a work-consumed depression.  According to her dream, she should have met the love of her life, married him, and in another year, be pregnant with his child.  It wasn’t going to happen.  It was too late.  She had to move forward, look ahead, get on with her life, and all those mantras that chanted in her head during the day until she felt like ending it all.  Nighttime was a different story, and the only reason she continued to live.  At night, she was with Race.  At night, she could be in his arms and see his smile and his dimples, and feel that love again.  But the dreams, the sleepwalking, the restlessness, the loneliness created a separation in her...there were two Chrissie Hill’s now.

And both were tired of the other.

Day Chrissie and Night Chrissie were so fed up with each other, that when the note came in her mail...both Chrissie’s snapped, and she couldn’t breathe and fought for breath and fell to her knees, staring bug-eyed at the words on the note until she turned as blue as her eyes and passed out on her front porch.

He dreams of you, too.