Tomorrow
by Serataja
-Chapter 4-
Meditations on the Abyss, Part 4
Sam woke after dozing for a couple of minutes. She felt warm and content. Maybe she was not getting a cold after all. Maybe the cold had been scared off by the kiss. She chuckled at the thought and felt Jack's hand tighten around hers.
"Hey," he said. It was the first word he had spoken since they set out from Anchorage an hour ago. It had been a good silence. You can say a lot without words if you hold a person's hand in your own.
"Hey yourself," she said, reaching over and running her fingers through his hair. He made a low, half-choked sound.
"Sam…" he started to say, and she could almost see the thoughts, about what consequences this could have, running through his brain.
She rested her hand on his shoulder, waiting. When he didn't say anything, she started to stroke his neck with her fingers. He smiled, heaving a deep, contented sigh that made her heart ache. He seemed so hungry for her touch, like a starving man in the desert.
There were a thousand questions in Sam's mind, but she decided they could all wait until later. She didn't want to spoil the moment; she didn't want to spoil the one time they could be together. This was today, and tomorrow would take care of tomorrow.
000
Sam woke from an uneasy sleep. She could feel Jack's hand on her forehead. He had stopped the car and turned on the overhead lights. Around them there was only darkness. It would have been scary if she had been alone. With him she didn't want to be anywhere else.
"How are you feeling?" he whispered.
Her mouth was parched and her throat hurt. She swallowed painfully.
"Not so good," she said.
"You were moaning in your sleep and you're hot to the touch. I think you're running a fever."
Sam groaned. That was the last thing she needed. Jack gave her a bottle of water and she drank in small sips.
"My throat's really painful," she told him. Now she wished she had bought some medicine back at the drugstore. She hadn't thought it necessary at the time.
"I have some aspirin in my room in Crossville." He checked his watch. "Another half hour if all goes well."
"I'll be all right until then."
He cupped her face in his hands and looked at her with undisguised tenderness.
"I'm sorry, Jack," she said.
"For what?"
"For not being a help, but a burden."
"You're no burden," he said, his fingers caressing her cheek.
"I hope I didn't infect you… earlier…"
"I'll be fine. I don't fall ill easily."
He pondered if the way he felt about her could be considered an illness. He was smitten like there was no tomorrow. He was falling deeper every passing minute.
He released their seatbelts and put his arms around her. She snuggled into him, trembling.
"Are you still cold?" he asked alarmed.
"It's the fever," she responded in a drowsy voice.
After a while he released her, pulling the blanket tighter around her, with a determined frown on his face. He had to get her to Crossville and into a proper bed, but he worried about their accommodations. There was no hotel in Crossville and he was staying in the guesthouse behind the local church. There was a room for her, too, but everything was pretty basic, and he doubted how effective the heating was. It was not the right place for taking care of her.
000
Jack saw the tree in good time and brought the car to a stop. It had fallen across the road, and was effectively blocking passage. There was no way around - with a steep slope, couple of trees on one side, and the woods on the other - and it was too big to be moved. He climbed out of the car and went to inspect it. There was dirt on the road and Jack suspected that the tree had been the victim of a minor landslide. It had been raining a lot this last week of August and now that September was coming there was more to expect. Already he had been confronted with lots of mud, and he was glad he had insisted on buying the rubber boots for Sam,even if she didn't think were necessary.
He went back to the car and got in. Sam was looking at him with eyes glazed by fever.
"Ever hear of Murphy's law?" she asked.
"Who hasn't?" he muttered. "It's the one law that never fails."
The chill was creeping into the car and he shut the door to keep it out. It was so cold outside he could see his breath condensing.
"Okay, here's the plan," he said.
"Oh, you've got a plan. That's good."
"Do I detect surprise?" he asked.
"Not at all. I know you will save me."
"Well, I'll give it a try…"
"Very reassuring."
"Hey, don't trample on the guy in the shining armor."
He was laughing. She put a hand on his arm, gently rubbing it over the wool of the sweater.
"I never heard you laugh before tonight. Sometimes you smile…a little. But you never laugh."
"I can laugh."
"Tell me what I can do to make you laugh more."
He didn't answer, just averted his eyes for a moment. Finally he said:
"Now about the plan…"
"I'm all ears."
He pointed out into the darkness, where the woods were sloping downward, toward the river.
"We're not that far from Crossville. If we go down through the woods here, we'll come to a trail that'll lead us to a small tributary of the Cross River. It's easy to get across, and after that it's open fields until we reach the church and the guesthouse. Maybe a mile - mile and a half? It's a shortcut. If we stay on the road it'll be much longer."
"How do you know?"
"It's the trail that leads to the cabin where Felicia's family was killed. The minister showed me."
"Well, I guess we just have to do this."
"Are you up to this? We could wait until morning, but it'll be another couple of hours," Jack said.
"No, I don't want to spend more time in this car. If you could get me to a real bed that would be great."
Her eyes were searching his and his breath nearly stopped.
"Yes, that would be great," he said. "I would never take advantage of a sick woman, though."
"What I'm not up to now, I might be up to in a day or two."
He stared at her for a while and saw the uncertainty grow in her eyes. Finally she said:
"I haven't totally misread you, have I? Because if I have, I-"
"No, you haven't misread anything."
"Then…"
"Sam, if I…if we do this, I'm going to lose you."
She drew the blanket closer around her. The fever was still rising. With it came something she could only describe as a loosening up of emotion. She wanted this man so badly. She liked everything about him, even the bad moods. Her husband Gary had been prone to bad moods, too, though for different reasons. When he got angry she had always been afraid of him. She couldn't imagine ever being afraid of Jack Malone. Jack, for all the different aspects of his character she had seen over the past year, was at the core of his being a gentle, noble man.
Sam felt the tears stinging in her eyes. She crossed her arms over her chest, easing back against the door of the car.
"Why?" she asked.
"I'm not sure this is the right place for a discussion like that."
"I'm not going to discuss," she whispered, feeling a traitorous tear slip down her cheek, "I just want to know."
His face took on the dark look it sometimes wore when things were getting to him.
"You're not anybody's mistress," he finally said.
She didn't say anything, trying to suppress the tears, knowing she would eventually fail. Damn fever.
He sighed. "And I don't want you to be mine. It'll end up making us both unhappy. Sooner or later, probably sooner, I'll lose you." He stared at her face. "I'm going to lose you anyway, aren't I? I don't have anything to offer."
She didn't answer to that either. She knew he was right and didn't want to acknowledge it. There was a part of her that would settle for being his mistress,or his lover, or whatever, because she couldn't have anything else. But it wouldn't work in the long run. Not the way she felt about him.
Samantha Spade was a strong woman,and she hated being weak and not in control. She had truly loved Gary. When she had gotten pregnant, 18 years old and barely a month after they had gotten married, he had been terrified. At first she hadn't worried about it. The pregnancy was inconvenient, and they had agreed before the marriage they would wait for a while, but now it couldn't be changed – or so she had thought. Two days later, Gary had come to her with the idea of an abortion. She had laughed at him. He had been eloquent and insistent, and she had become angry. Over the next few weeks he had talked about it again and again. He didn't say right out that he wanted to finish his education first and didn't want to support a family just now. He had been more subtle, using her love for him, slowly eroding her sense of what was right. He knew her and he knew what buttons to press. In the end she had given in, telling herself that they were really too young, that it was really too soon, that she had to do this for him and that she always could have children later.
It had been the biggest mistake of her life. Not only had she lost the child, she had lost him, too. Her feelings after the abortion had taken her by surprise. She had been angry and directed most of that anger at herself. Then she noticed that her love for him was beginning to slip away. She couldn't stand to be touched by him any more, and she realized her anger against him was taking a less obvious road. He had been helpless, and she had not been able to repair the damage that had been done.
She didn't want to do anything that could damage her love for Jack Malone. And she knew that if she became his lover, in the end her love for him might slip away, the way it had done with Gary.
"I can't leave my family," Jack said.
'I wouldn't want you to', she had wanted to say but she stopped and bit her lip. It would be a lie, and that frightened her. How could she have these feelings? For the first time in her life Sam realized that love could be a horrible and selfish thing. Or maybe it was infatuation and not love. She thought back to the case she had been working on before she came to Alaska.
Lowering her head, she started to cry.
Jack was reaching out for her.
"Please, don't," she said between sobs.
He was trying to touch her anyway, but she pushed him away. He could do nothing but sit there and watch her cry.
Jack realized that he hadn't been fair to her. He was making her suffer by being torn in one direction one minute and in another the next. He would have to make a decision. Damn - he didn't usually have this much trouble deciding on something. Furious with himself he rubbed his hands over his face.
000
It started to rain. Big drops, splashing on the windscreen, washing the dirt from the road.
Sam had stopped crying. She was exhausted, flushed by the fever and the tears. If she hadn't been sick, she would never have gone that emotional on him. She wished she had a cocoon that she could crawl into, away from the world, away from him.
"Sam?"
"I don't want to talk." She didn't even open her eyes.
Jack almost smiled. In his experience women always wanted to talk. She was probably no different, saying one thing, wanting another. He decided he would just let her talk for a while if she wanted to. It would make her feel better and assure him that, in whatever way he had wounded her, it would soon heal and it was not that serious.
He opened the car door a crack. The rain was heavy and freezing cold. There was no hope of making it back to Crossville before it stopped. He shut the door and turned back to Sam, ready to hear what she had to say about love, life and how he had hurt her feelings.
She had fallen asleep.
Her face looked naked and vulnerable.
Jack felt as if he was falling.
He wanted to turn back the clock to that first day he had met her and tell Paula Van Doren that he didn't want her in the team, tell her that he needed someone else.
He wanted her to do something that would trivialize what he felt for her, make it less serious, shallow.
He watched her sleep. After a while the feeling of falling ceased.
He had crashed.
Hard.
It was truly his point of no return.
TBC