tired yet? ||cashby||

Chapter 24 [Final]

I sat down in the grass, watching him climb. After a while, it was too far for us to talk, or else we'd have been shouting. Sitting in the dark beside the barn was scary to me. Drowned in a sea of shadows, my eyes kept playing tricks on me. Everywhere I looked, my stomach lurched. So, intently, I focused the flashlight on Austin, slowly getting smaller with the distance increase. Every so often, he'd wave down at me. I frowned. I didn't like this. Why did he have to be so damn into it? Anything that he didn't know. Any adventure.

"Alan!" he yelled down. "Get up here!"

I wasn't sure what to do. But, sitting in the wet grass and thinking, I supposed he was a lot heavier than me. If he'd made it up, so could I. Plus, I trusted him. That was strange. Trust. It almost made me feel stupid, like I'd listen to anything he said. But if I could put my body in his hands and trust him, I could put my life in his hands.

Not that any of this was life or death. Just a rusty old ladder on a silo. It wasn't even that far up.

Trying to be courageous, I gripped the first bar with my foot, hoisting myself up. With a little difficulty, I tucked the flashlight into my back pocket for safe keeping and started scaling the ladder. Avoiding the one broken rung, I looked up into the night sky and I climbed. The moon cast light through a cloud, blurry and silvery yellow. It's incandescence was almost enchanting, as I found it hard to pull my eyes from the beautiful sight. My love waited ahead; squinting, even though, I couldn't see him. Where was he? Sucking my breath in, I held tight to the ladder and reached around back, grabbing the flashlight. Haphazardly swinging it upwards, the light shined, and, to my great confusion, he was gone.

"Austin!" I called, palms sweating. "Austin!"

His head poked out of a door ten feet above me, adjacent to the ladder, that I had not seen. Scaring the crap out of me.

"Jesus!" I cursed.

"Get up here you big baby."

"I'm gonna kick your ass!" I growled playfully, hightailing it up there with new found motivation. I must've been 40 feet in the air, but lacked heart to look down. I'd learned at this point during our adventures that looking back was never a good option.

As I approached the place, I looked inside the silo. It was some kind of loft; a sturdy floor with bales of hay.

"Is it safe?" I asked, shining my light inside. Austin was sitting up against one of the bales.

"Yeah. Put that away." Sighing, I switched it off and shakily climbed into the little door, his hands gripping mine and pulling me through. Tumbling into Austin's lap, he laughed at me, gorgeous bell tones ringing out into the night. I looked up at him in happiness, warmth filling my gut. Light shone down on us; curiously, I looked up. The roof of the silo above us was dilapidated, thatched and rethatched, but still covered in large, gaping holes. The moonlight trickled in through them, gracing our skin with its silver touch.

The tiny freckles on his skin seemed to compliment the shimmers in his deep brown eyes. My breath was nearly taken away. Still resting on his thigh, my eyes flicked to his lips. With the force of a kitten, I leaned in, brushing my mouth against his. Our hands slowly found their way together, fingers interlacing as tongues went wandering. It was hard believe that looking at him still made my stomach flip so hard. My hand released one of his, only to wander up his hip gently. For a moment, his soft, wet lips parted from mine. Hot breath danced on my skin as he spoke.

"I'm not going to do you in here. The loft floorboards would break."

Sighing for the ruined romance, I moved away and sat beside him, leaning on the hay bale. His chuckle rang out against the wooden walls. A small part of me was worried for the stability of the silo. Another was worried for how close we were to the house. I knew it was dangerous to leave his car parked in the driveway at night; if, for any reason anyone came outside, they'd see it. Of course, at first they wouldn't think of me. But once they saw I was missing from bed, that'd be the end of it.