Until Tomorrow

  Everheart Books Edition

  Copyright © 2014 Abbie Williams

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This edition is published by arrangement with Abbie Williams

  everheartbooks.com

  First electronic edition

  Created and distributed by Everheart Books, a division of Central Avenue Marketing Ltd.

  UNTIL TOMORROW

  ISBN 978-1-77168-029-5

  Published in Canada with international distribution.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Michelle Halket

  Cover Photography: Courtesy & Copyright iStock: PetarPaunchev

  Until tomorrow, when I can find you in time, wait for me.

  Until Tomorrow

  Chapter One

  Bozeman, MT - August, 2013

  Six days had passed. My heart was still beating, oddly, as it hurt so much inside of me that I was surprised it was able to keep functioning. I felt as though the events of the past week had hardened it to cement and dropped it from a great distance, to shatter here beside the hospital bed in which the man I loved more than my own life lay unmoving.

  Case, I thought painfully, smoothing my fingers over his hair, reassuring myself that he felt warm; in my nightmares he grew cold and I woke with screams ripping up my throat.

  “Baby, I’m here,” I told him again, as I would continue to tell him until he woke. I had spoken to him almost continually, praying to all the powers that be that he could somehow hear me; I wanted so badly for him to know that I was near, that I would stay right beside him, that he would never be alone. I said, “I love you and I’m here. I will never leave your side, I swear to you.”

  When my worst thoughts trickled through my defenses, as they were doing more frequently, my insides ached as though scrubbed with a sanding brush, exposed and raw, unimaginably painful. I was exhausted, sick with fear, but I would not be moved from his side. The hospital staff had been referring to me as ‘Mrs. Spicer,’ assuming that Case was my husband, and I had not corrected them; I would be his wife as soon as he awoke. I could not let myself think otherwise.

  The only thing that comforted me to some extent, that helped me to hang on to my sanity, was imagining how Case would respond if he could hear my words. I pictured his rich-auburn eyes, open and full of love and promise. I thought repeatedly of the way he held me close to his chest at night and how I always rested my cheek just at the juncture of his neck and left shoulder, where I could feel his heart beating and smell the scent of him. After we made love but before we fell asleep, he always stroked his fingers through my long curly hair, holding me securely to him, our legs braided together, and we would whisper about our future.

  Now my hair was burned away and he was unconscious. If anything happened to him, if he didn’t make it, as I had been warned was a possibility, I would be finished. I knew this to my soul. I would not go on without him. He had been intubated for surgery directly after arriving at the hospital six days ago, in addition to the ventilator that was currently breathing for him, lifting his chest up and down with regularity. The tube had only a day since been removed from his throat and he had been slowly weaned from the drug that had been sedating him – the nurses warned me that if he had come awake with the breathing tube in place, the natural reaction was panic and he would likely have attempted to rip it out; now, only the ventilator continued to cover his nose and mouth, giving him oxygen, and he would either waken – or he would not.

  I felt each and every breath that I took as I watched his chest rise and fall, hideously plagued by these odds.

  Case, wake up. Come back to me, oh please, come back to me. I’m here and I need you so much. I love you so much. Please, come back to me…

  It’s all right, sweetheart, don’t worry so, he would say. I could hear his deep voice so clearly. My sweet Patricia, it’s all right.

  “Case,” I said, holding his right hand gently within both of mine. He was bandaged from knuckles to elbows on both arms, where he had been burned saving our animals, in the monstrous fire that had consumed our barn a week ago; his back was also raw and scraped, evidence of me dragging him across the rough floor. I had not returned home to Jalesville, and our house, since that night; Clark and Al kept me informed of any developments. The Rawleys were caring for all of our animals: our horses Cider and Buck, our dogs Mutt and Tiny, our two cats, three chickens and one rabbit.

  All of them had survived the fire, all because Case was the incredible, selfless man he was – a man who would risk himself, unconditionally, for who and what he loved. I studied his motionless face in the here and now, the sounds of the machines breathing for him and constantly monitoring him having long since faded to the background of my mind, and forced every ounce of my will upon him, begging him to wake. I whispered his full name, “Charles Shea Spicer. I love you, do you hear me? I love you with all my heart. And I’m right here. I won’t leave your side, not ever.”

  Terrible thoughts broke through before I could stop them.

  What if the past few weeks are all the time we’re allowed together? We’ve been so completely happy. I didn’t dare to take it for granted. Oh God, don’t let this be all. We just found each other.

  “Case,” I said again, my voice hoarse, determined to shut out my horrible fears. I told him, “I still haven’t heard how you got your nickname. Remember, you promised to tell me? I’m sitting here thinking how much I’m going to love being Mrs. Charles Spicer.” I studied his face, letting my eyes track all over his familiar features, holding his hand. He had beautiful strong hands, which he used to cradle his guitar and his fiddle with graceful expertise, hands that so tenderly stroked my bare skin. My lips trembling, I told him again, “Sweetheart, you saved all of them. Cider and Buck, they’re all right. You saved them. Now you just have to come back to me. Please, Case, please come back to me. I need you, oh God, I need you.”

  I thought, unwittingly, my mind yanked towards darkness, of all of the years he had loved me when I’d been far away, oblivious to it and to the strength of what he felt. It had been back in 2006, at my sister Camille’s wedding, that Case first told me how he felt. I had been young and arrogant, unimpressed by his earnest words at the time; it wasn’t until this past summer, seven long years later, that I came west to his hometown for a summer job and realized just how much we were meant to be together. I had never realized I could love someone so fiercely, that I was capable of feeling so much. It was all Case – he had shown me this; somehow I was lucky enough that he had gifted me with his heart, that his feelings for me had remained as strong as ever.

  Because you’ve been together before now. You’ve loved him in other places, other times.

  I drew a slow breath as I held these strange certainties in my mind; I knew, on some level even more deeply-rooted than instinct, that Case’s soul and mine were linked – that they belonged to one another in ways I couldn’t fully understand. I also knew that we had not been allowed to be together in every life, and my soul seemed to shrivel inside of me at this notion. The life I could recall most was perhaps the last time we’d been allowed to find each other, when his name had been Cole Spicer.

  It seems crazy, I know. But it’s real.

  “I promise you I will find out who did this to us,” I told Case. “If it was that bastard Yancy, I will personally nail shut his coffin.�
��

  I reeled a little at what I’d just said; it was as though the words had been spoken by someone other than myself. In the quiet, nighttime hospital room, alone with Case, I vowed, “I will find out.”

  Derrick Yancy.

  My lips curled in loathing at the simple thought of his name, the man whose hand had surely been responsible (even if he hadn’t actually struck the match) for the fire that had leveled our barn, which had led to Case being trapped in this goddamn fucking hospital bed. Yancy, whose company had swept into Jalesville just last winter after the closing of a local coal plant, Highland Power, put a third of Jalesville out of work. The company, Capital Overland, had purchased thousands of acres of Jalesville and its surrounding area, and was still poised like an absurdly large and vicious vulture to sink its talons.

  I had spent the past summer fighting Capital Overland with the help of my employer, dear friend and fellow lawyer, Al Howe. We had been mildly successful in stealing sales from the company, much to the fury of Derrick Yancy, whose powerful father owned Yancy Corps, the parent company of Capital Overland, both based in Chicago.

  Derrick, who was the second of two sons and possessed of a carefully-hidden inferiority complex, had been living in Miles City while he worked his considerable wiles on the nearby town of Jalesville. He’d been far more successful in making sales before I’d arrived to oppose his interests; I knew he hated me, though this hatred was tinged with something that I knew Derrick could not successfully explain, even if he tried. He and I were horribly connected in ways I didn’t fully understand yet, either.

  You were once his wife.

  This understanding made my stomach curdle like milk long past its due date, but I suspected it was true, just as I knew Case and I had been together before this life. Derrick and I had been married – at some point in the past, in another set of lives. And, based on my horrific nightmares, it had not been a happy union.

  “Case, I wish I could sing for you,” I told him, trying desperately to steer my thoughts in a better direction. “I know if it was me lying there, and you sitting here, you’d be singing for me. The sound of you singing makes me feel safer than just about anything in the world, did you know that?” I reached to stroke his hair again, his beautiful red-gold hair that I knew his mother had given him. Melinda Spicer had died long ago, but had first gifted her son with her gorgeous coloring, her sweet, tender nature – and her ability to sing. I said softly, “Maybe if I sang it would wake you up. Because it would be so terrible that you’d have to wake up to tease me. To tell me to shut the hell up and quit ruining the song.”

  Tears leaked over my face and I swiped them on my shoulder, unwilling to remove my hands from Case. I let my thoughts backtrack to the evening before the fire, less than a week ago, though I felt that since then my soul had aged in a way that could only be measured in centuries. It had been an evening of revelation – I had just discovered there was a connection between Chicago lawyer Ron Turnbull and the Yancys’ company, a heinous, under-the-table connection whose extent I still didn’t fully understand. Further, my father, also a lawyer, had shown up in Montana that night, as though conjured by an ill-wish. He’d traveled from Chicago to appear directly upon mine and Case’s doorstep, furious and more than ready to confront me about refusing the offer of a ground-level job at Turnbull and Hinckley, Attorneys-at-Law, in downtown Chicago.

  I was willing to concede that it had rightly been a shock to my father, Jackson Gordon, who had indeed funded my seven years’ worth of education, including three years of law school at Northwestern College, with the expectation that I would fulfill his idea of my destiny, working as a corporate lawyer in Chicago. Would I have eventually earned well over six figures and owned a high-rise condo, had I returned to the city? Perhaps. Would I ever go back and change how things had worked out?

  Not for anything. Not for money or power or influence. Not for a goddamn thing.

  Dad had left in a controlled rage that night, and I’d had every intention of calling him later, when he was even fractionally more reasonable. I closed my eyes for a second now, picturing the inside of the little trailer where I lived with Case – our happiness since I’d finally admitted to Case that I was in love with him had been so vivid, so tangible and exquisite that I could hardly explain in words.

  Case had carried me to our room that evening, at my request, after Dad had driven away in a flurry of dusty tires. I’d begged Case to play me the beautiful, haunting song that he’d written for me seven years ago, the one he bowed so sweetly on his fiddle. And he’d done so, both of us sitting on our bed, our little full-size bed that barely held the two of us, upon which we’d made so much love that the mattress practically sagged in the center. I sat watching Case stroke the bow over the strings, my heart aching with love for him, and when he’d finished, he’d carefully set aside the centuries-old instrument and smiled his slow, heated smile at me.

  I dove into his arms, taking him flat to the bed with the force of my happiness. He gathered me close, settling me comfortably over his chest, his long legs bent, my hips cradled between his thighs. Grinning at me, he tucked long strands of curly hair behind my ears, letting his fingertips trace my jaw. My hands were in his hair, smoothing over the softness of it, and his eyelids lowered a little, in pleasure.

  “That feels so good,” he murmured, his deep voice that sent warm shivers scattering through my entire body.

  “I love you,” I told him, soft and intent. “I love hearing you play.”

  “I love you too, baby. And I especially love that you’re so naked right now,” he said in return, still grinning, his hands all over me as I sprawled atop him.

  “Are there varying degrees of nakedness?” I teased, my nipples round and firm against the soft cotton of his t-shirt, my breasts pressed to his strong chest. I had been wearing his robe after getting out of the tub earlier in the evening; currently, it lay crumpled on the floor in the hallway.

  He let both hands trail with deliberate intent down along my spine. I shivered and goosebumps skimmed over my flesh at the heat of passion in his eyes. Anticipation rippled along my every nerve ending and seemed to spontaneously ignite between my legs.

  “Hell yes,” he said softly, moving both hands to clutch my hips, straightening his legs to settle me in the best possible spot. He explained, “You’re just so deliciously naked when you’re naked. No woman could be more naked than you…”

  I giggled, tipping to kiss his lips, sweet and lush, before teasing, “That doesn’t even make sense…” My hands were busy unzipping and yanking down his jeans; we shifted apart for just a second, so Case could tug the t-shirt over his head and fling it to the edge of the room.

  “It makes perfect sense,” he said in defense, catching me firmly back into his arms before reclaiming my mouth with his incredible kisses. He groaned against my lips, in deep satisfaction, as I shifted to straddle his hard cock, taking him completely inside of me in one smooth motion.

  “Oh God,” I whispered, shuddering with the huge, hard pleasure of him, bracing my hands on his broad chest as I took up a steady rhythm with my hips. “Case…you feel so good…”

  “So naked…” he murmured, his eyes blazing with heat.

  Our loving was so indescribably amazing, so natural. I craved Case so much that I was sometime startled at the depths of my longing – I had never realized I was capable of loving someone so much, of needing someone so completely.

  “It’s all you,” I whispered for the countless time, my hands upon him, praying that he could hear me. He had not so much as stirred since being placed in this bed. I knew that beneath the hospital gown was the small incision and subsequent stitches that were left behind from the emergency surgery on a heart valve. The doctor had told me he was lucky – that had been the exact word she’d used – that the defect had been caught early. That it could have manifested as something much more life-threatening down the road. And I knew that wasn’t just a guess – Case’s mother had died
much too young, from a similar heart defect. But right now his lungs were the major issue of concern, as they’d been compromised by the smoke he’d inhaled.

  Please let us have our lives together. Oh God, please. I will do anything. Anything. This can’t be all the time we’ll have together. Oh God, please…

  Maybe that’s all that you deserve, I thought then, the insidious horror sneaking back, and a sob burned its way up my throat. My chest felt tight with the onslaught of a panic attack, a monster of one; I wasn’t a stranger to these, as I’d experienced them in my law school days, but this was different. This was so much worse that it wasn’t even comparable.

  Tish, calm down, I tried to tell myself, but I could hardly breathe. There was a roaring through my mind and I felt once-removed from reality, as though I was sitting right beside my own body. But I would not let go of Case. I could not. I clung to my point of contact with him, holding to his forearm.

  “Hey,” someone said then, as though speaking from inside a cave. I felt hands around my shoulders and a voice near my ear. He said again, more sharply, “Hey! Tish, it’s all right.”

  I recognized Marshall’s voice.

  “It’s all right,” he repeated.

  “It’s not…all right,” I gasped out, my teeth chattering. “Oh God…”

  Instead of freaking out, Marshall drew a chair near mine and pressed one hand firmly to my back, rubbing briskly in small circles. He kept repeating that it would be all right in a way that oddly reminded me of how Case talked to our horses when they were agitated; at last, this distracted me enough to be able to breathe again.

  “I can’t bear this,” I whispered, my eyes blurred with tears. I felt so sick with fear that it was an effort just to speak.

  “Tish, you gotta sleep,” he said, studying me frankly. Marshall Rawley was one of Case’s best friends, and Case considered all five of the Rawley boys his brothers. Their father Clark Rawley and his wife Faye, before she’d been killed in a car accident, had both helped to raise Case and his younger brother Gus; their own biological father, Owen Spicer, had been an incapable and often violent drunk, even worse after the death of his wife Melinda left him a widower with two young boys.