Loving Caspar Read online

  Loving Caspar

  A Fuel & Flame Standalone Novel

  Rea Winters

  LOVING CASPAR Copyright © 2020 by REA WINTERS. All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

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

  Hello, my fellow sapphites!

  Welcome to Orelancia, a contemporary alternate universe.

  Please enjoy your stay.

  Orelan Creole

  Terms & Slang

  Ladda (n.), fella (n.) – a woman with an overtly masculine physique and/or preferred style; lad, fello are the equivalents used for men; guy is gender-neutral.

  Shaequas (n.) – a person with a feminine physique and/or preferred style.

  Shiqua (n.) – a young girl; also acts as a formal endearment akin to ‘my dear.’

  Boi (n.) – young, typically underaged butch girls or an adult butch girl who is acting childishly.

  Aobe, -aobe (n.) – boss, leader, superior, master; a formal respectful addressment primarily used by servants and laborers toward their employers or people of a higher financial status than themselves.

  Phala (n.) – another word for ‘dildo,’ which in the beginning of their invention in Orelan, would be crafted from wood dipped in clay or wax and kept on tables, windowsills, and mantles to dry.

  Keep it slick – an expression about female libido equivalent to ‘get it up’ for males.

  Have the steel – an expression akin to ‘have the gall.’

  Ancesti (n.) – ancestors, synonymous with ‘the Heavens,’ as it’s believed that when people die, their souls are carried to a paradise-like spiritual plane where the ancestors who liberated Orelancia take care of those who join them in the afterlife.

  Qua & Ka – Twin Deities of Orelancian spirituality. Kaqua’ne is an expression akin to ‘oh hell,’ ‘no way,’ ‘oh god,’ ‘oh god no,’ etc.

  The Big Stallion – nickname of the state Furst York in the northeast.

  Calafia/Cala – a large west coast state.

  Indo – people who predominately descend from the Indigenous people of America.

  Zhu – people of predominantly Chinese and Southeast Asian descent.

  Afrikan – people of predominantly West African and Caribbean descent.

  Euromutt – people of predominantly European-descent, typically mixed with two or more of the European nations that first occupied America: England, Spain, France, and Portugal.

  Location: Town or City, State – Province, Region (Intercardinal Direction)

  CONTENTS

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Epilogue

  Author Note

  Chapter One

  CEDAMIRE, ASHINGTON – SALISH, ORESHIRE (NW) – Septembre 2018 LR

  She laughed in her face again.

  Caspar must’ve said something funny without realizing. Wouldn’t be the first time. Usually, she’d just let it go, but curiosity prevailed today.

  “Why is that funny?”

  A slight curl at the corner of her lips indicated an attempt to smile. She wanted to laugh, too. But then, the Zhu girl’s amused grin faltered, her monolid hazel eyes growing wide.

  “Wait, you were serious?”

  Natalie Becker wasn’t dense by any stretch, leading Caspar to conclude she only pretended to be sometimes to spare her feelings. She might’ve considered it a nice gesture if she was the type to appreciate being deceived. Scoffing away the faint smile on her face, she set her expression back to neutral.

  “Never mind.”

  Natalie furrowed her dark brows, sat up shaking her head and scoured the crumpled sheets for her bra and blouse. While scanning the floor for jeans, she flipped bleach blonde hair over her shoulder and glanced up at Cas with her gaze narrowed.

  “You are not seriously mad?”

  “No.”

  Natalie chuckled at the clear hint of defensiveness in the woman’s husky voice. Wearing a devious smirk, the lanky girl crawled up the bed and straddled the large Indo woman’s lap, running her manicured nails down rippling abs where a sheen of sweat from their afternoon delight still made her olive complexion glow.

  “Oh, don’t pout. It’s just…my life is full as it is. I have two kids and…and—"

  “An asshole wife.”

  “It’s complicated right now, but yes, that too. Oh c’mon! Does Caspar Adami honestly want to be a part of all that? I mean, what’re we gonna do? Hike the Granada and have Sunday picnics in a meadow? Have candlelit dinners at Cosmos? Game night with the kids? You don’t want that. It doesn’t suit you.”

  “That so?”

  Natalie shrugged, playing with the crinkly ends of Caspar’s jaw-length black hair.

  “It hasn’t for as long as I’ve known you and you’re the same now as you’ve always been. That’s what I like about you, about coming up here. Our time together is my break from the world. A world that you, thankfully, need no part of.”

  “What is it for me then?” A genuine question. Even she couldn’t be sure.

  “That’s easy. The closest thing to a relationship a ladda like you will ever get. You’re welcome.”

  “Right.” Caspar captured Natalie’s wrists before she could fiddle with the iron key fixed to a skinny black rope above her bare breasts.

  “But hey,” Natalie continued. “If the quiet is starting to make you a little stir crazy, just get a dog. They’re perfect company for you big lone wolf types.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Natalie’s fair complexion turned a light shade of pink as she giggled at Caspar’s expense. She gave the grumpy ladda’s plump wide lips a peck, then hopped off her lap and shimmied into her own jeans. Caspar wouldn’t move until her car pulled down the trail through the woods. She couldn’t say what came over her. She didn’t want to play stepmomma to the kids of an old high school hook up. And being out in public, e
specially in Cedamire, was its own special brand of hell. She couldn’t understand what possessed her to want to pretend otherwise, so she buried the gnawing in her chest that had driven her to ask Natalie Becker, of all people, to stay over and have dinner with her.

  She’d grown used to suffocating silence. Found ways to push through it, reasons to breathe anyway. Reasons like molding and engraving stone as a carver mason, shadowboxing in the backyard, jogging narrow hiking paths, or swimming in a small lake that she was lucky enough to have all to herself, and…well, remembering to eat, drink, and sleep before and after. That was a typical day for Caspar Adami.

  And today was supposed to be no different. So, she showered, pulled on a pair of dark jeans, a white sports bra and matching t-shirt, then shuffled from the back rooms to an open kitchen and restarted her day with home cooked lunch.

  On the outside, the house looked its age, having been built by her grandparents in their twenties. But inside, the polished cherry wood foundation, steel fixtures, and marble accents in every room of the house made it as cozy and modern as any apartment worth a pretty penny in the city. That had been her mother’s doing.

  Chea Adami had inherited everything in her parents’ names upon their deaths shortly after her eighteenth birthday. Almost a year later, she’d become in desperate need of an escape from modern society, so she sold the house in the suburbs, put someone else in charge of running the family business, and turned their cabin house into a twenty-first century castle deep in the evergreen fortress surrounding their pacific northwestern town.

  A stranger might assume Caspar Adami was a thirty-something loner hiding from a troubled past, like something out of an action film. Her six-foot-two frame, long squarish jaw, and lean muscular build coupled with an outwardly cold demeanor had always made her appear older and harder than she was. Then there was the way she lived. Alone in a big house in the woods. It raised brows even among the locals, most of whom had her pegged as something more sinister than a troubled loner since she was thirteen. In reality, though, she was just an anxious twenty-four-year-old with the hooded stormy green eyes of a scared and lonely kid, dwelling in her past to hide from an uncertain future.

  The phone mounted on a wall in the kitchen rang. Cas answered on the fourth ring, but said nothing.

  “Hello? Chea…” giggling “Shh, guys shut up, I have to sing the thing. Chea Adami, come to the phone, come and make her soul my own—”

  “No, it’s ‘my soul,’ say my.”

  “Jackass!”

  “Guys, shh!”

  “Just cut to the end, go, go!”

  “Chea-Chea-Chea-Ce—"

  Caspar slammed the phone back on the hook.

  Cedamire was a town that fed on rumors, legends, and ghost stories. The ones surrounding her mother’s death led to a lot of calls during the fall, what with Halloween just a couple of months away. Ask for the woman by name five times, so the legend went, and she would appear over the summoner’s bed with a bent neck or some such nonsense. Tragedy seemed to be the only thing that made the town interesting for the people who couldn’t be bothered to leave it.

  The phone rang again and Caspar snatched it off the hook on the second ring, ready to spit venom.

  “Hey there, Cassie boi,” an old man greeted.

  She sighed through her nose, letting the tension roll off her shoulders.

  “Hello, Uncle.”

  “Still coming down tonight? All I need to hear is yes.”

  Running a rough hand through her hair, she paused. “I don’t know.”

  “So that’s a yes, then. See ya in a few hours.”

  The line went dead before she could protest further. “Kaqua’ne,” she cursed under her breath. With a sigh of resignation, she went back to her bedroom, threw on some boots and grabbed a dark denim jacket off the rack on her way out the front door.

  Chapter Two

  Pulling on her jacket, Cas lumbered through raw slabs of stone and mechanical clutter to the electric truck outside the garage. She kept the radio off and left the window down as she drove through the evergreens, finding the strong scent and crisp air on her skin soothing.

  She took a left turn off the forest trail onto the highway and had a good fifteen minutes to herself before picket fence neighborhoods and novelty shops surrounded her at every turn. The Square – Cedamire’s downtown area – was several blocks of bars and diners on one side and family owned services on the other. Adam & Hammer towered among them. The corner property was made up of two buildings. The stout, two-floor administrative office was in charge of taking orders from clientele and delegating projects to the masons, while the long and tall garage adjacent to it was where the carvers & engravers crafted everything from tombstones and outdoor furnishings to personalized jewelry and other knickknacks.

  Despite being named after their surname, Adam & Hammer hadn’t actually been managed by anyone in the Adami family in decades. Today, that had to change.

  Caspar parked in the alley behind the Admin Office and used her mother’s key to go in through the back door. Party music thumped through the walls from above and footsteps and voices echoed on the stairwell behind a metal door. Hoping to avoid everyone, Cas moved quickly down the hall to the manager’s office, closing and locking the door behind her.

  “Hey, kiddo.”

  She startled and cursed under her breath, clicking her teeth.

  A short and portly man with a full head of wispy white hair sat behind the desk with his arms behind his head, smug and amused. His deep brown skin brought out the colors in his loud Hawaiian shirt. Dressed in white cargo shorts and brown sandals, George Davenport was more than ready for retirement.

  “Thought you could sneak past me, didn’t ya? C’mere, you.”

  He stood at just under Caspar’s chest and lunged into a bear hug, then tilted his head back to get a good look at her.

  “By the grace of Qua, either you’re getting taller or I’m getting smaller, Cassie.”

  “I made you this.” Getting straight to the point, Cas held out a short wooden box with a polished finish and a gold trim.

  “Hey, a cigar box. Those my initials? Oh, this is great. How long it take you to make, huh?”

  “Not long. Happy Retirement.” She congratulated with zero zeal then made a stiff turn to leave, but the old man grabbed her arm before she could run away.

  “Hey, hold on, kiddo. Sit down a minute. We need to talk. Have a drink with me. You are old enough for the hard stuff, right?”

  “By four years now.”

  “Twenty-four years…man, time goes right over the head, don’t it?”

  George poured them each a bourbon, then perched on the edge of the desk while Caspar took the guest chair.

  “Now listen careful, Cas. I know you’re nervous about taking over here, but I promise you it’ll be fine. And yes, you have to do it. Your mother wanted you to head this place one day, told me so herself.”

  “But she didn’t do it.”

  “She couldn’t. And you know why. I took over for her as a favor to her father. He wasn’t around to ask me, but the man was my best friend. I know that’s what he would’ve wanted and it’s what your mom needed at the time. Now, we gotta make sure you step up to the plate for her. I can understand feeling like maybe you don’t owe her any favors, considering…y’know.” He squinted his beady eyes at Cas, sighing and shrugging.

  Cas fidgeted against the ache in her chest and placed her untouched bourbon on the desk.

  “It’s not that. I just…I don’t know anything about running a business.”

  “But you know this business. If memory serves, you spent almost every summer in that garage with the crew, learning new techniques and showing them a thing or two. And I believe I have you down on a file somewhere as a freelance carver.”

  “I do orders to keep busy. That won’t make me a good boss.”

  “For now, just focus on being the boss. Being good at it can come later.”

  Ge
orge held up his glass. After a begrudged sigh, Cas joined him, then a burst of loud cheering and an increased tempo above grabbed their attention.

  George snorted. “Those kids. Not sure if they’re happy for me or just happy I won’t be here to breath down their necks anymore.”

  “I’m sure they’ll miss you, especially when The Freak comes in telling them what to do.”

  “Hey, c’mon. A lot of people have grown up since then.”

  “Yet, I still get calls same time every year. Kids daring each other to say my mom’s name a few times so her ghost’ll show up and give them a scare. Wonder who gave them that idea.”

  George polished off his and Caspar’s drinks, hissing through the burn. “Alright so, maybe not a lot of people out there, but the ones in here will show you nothing but respect. At least during work hours. After that, you’re on your own. Not that you mind that a bit, I imagine. But hey, remember this, will ya?” He shook his stubby finger at her. “No smacking around the employees, alright? I don’t care how smart lipped they get. You’re not some punk kid anymore. You’re at that age where there could be serious consequences to punching somebody’s lights out over a couple of bad jokes. Consequences that Sergeant Taylor won’t be able to cut you a break on ‘cause they’ll be above his paygrade. Speaking of, you ought to talk to him about these calls.”

  “No use. Nothing he can do. No point bothering him.”

  “Or be bothered by him, ey?”

  Cas shrugged, cracking the faintest smirk. “I can handle it on my own.”

  “Oy, are you just like your mother. Only you’ve still got the chance to take the steps she didn’t. In business and in life.”

  George poured them each another bourbon, filling the glasses a touch higher than before. An ache of confliction rippled through Cas’ heart upon noticing the thin sheen of tears in the cheery old man’s eyes.

  “Man, time really does fly, don’t it? I’m gonna miss this place, you know? And I’ll miss you, too, grumpypants. But you’ll be okay, won’t you, Cassie?”

  Though it felt like a vain attempt, Cas picked up her glass and held it to his with confidence, hoping to ease his underlying worry.