by Roni Loren
She stepped closer. “How about we chalk up what just happened to late-night thunderstorm madness? Our adrenaline was running high after that fall, and we let it bleed into…other things. I can move on if you can. We can pretend this never happened.”
His brows lifted. “Yeah, ’cause that’ll be easy.”
She grinned, glad to hear she wasn’t that forgettable. “You know what I mean. I don’t want to quit this new thing just because… I don’t even know how to label it. Because we’re attracted to each other and you don’t want to get involved with anyone?”
He exhaled and shook his head. “That sounds so lame.”
“No,” she assured him. “I mean, it’s your right to have whatever reasons you have. Plus, I told you my life is busy, too. This was probably a bad idea on both sides. I have the biggest presentation of my life on Thursday night, and if all goes as it should, I’m going to be launching a program that will suck up even more of my limited free time. If what we were doing had continued, I’d probably be the one looking like a jerk because I’m going to be buried by the end of this week and won’t be calling anyone for a chat or going out for a date. Just getting in these workouts is going to be enough of a challenge.”
“Right.” Some of the tension left his face. “What kind of program are you launching?”
Her shoulders relaxed, glad to be back on familiar footing. Work she could talk about. That was much easier than discussing the kissing and the touching and the way she’d wanted to be naked with him immediately. “It’s a school-violence prevention program that I want to implement in the local districts.”
His gaze jumped up to meet hers. “School violence?”
“Yeah.” She grabbed her sweatshirt from where she’d left it. “That’s my research specialty. I’m a forensic psychologist, so I’ve spent years on the why’s, the causes. Now it’s time to put it all together and hopefully use the information for prevention.”
“Prevention.”
“Yes. That’s my ultimate goal. I was a Long Acre survivor, and I lost my sister in the attack, so it’s basically what I’ve dedicated my career to so far.” She pulled the hoodie over her head, her excitement about finally getting this program ready to launch making her ramble. “My program would focus on the isolation and insecurity risk factors and use a three-pronged approach to connect students to at least one mentor in the school or community, one older student with similar interests, and one extracurricular activity that focused on the individual’s strengths. Based on all the research I’ve done, I really think this could be a game changer.”
She turned back to Lucas, expecting that he’d checked out of her long explanation, but instead, he had gone pale and was staring at her. “You lost your sister at Long Acre?”
Her enthusiasm flattened at the catch in his voice. She was used to all varieties of reactions when people found out about her history, but Lucas looked downright shaken. “Yeah, I’m sorry. I say it so often now when I’m presenting my research that I forget how it can sound when I say it offhandedly like that.”
Lucas was still staring at her, stricken, but he managed to finally say, “I’m so sorry.”
She took a deep breath. “Me too, but I can’t change what happened.” The old memory flashed, a sliver of the moon shining, black metal, the sound click-clack echoing. She shoved the scene away. “All I can do is work my ass off to prevent things like that from continuing to happen. I need this presentation to go off without a hitch and then I can do that.”
“Right.” His stance had gone wooden, his fingers tightly balled into fists at his sides. “That’s…admirable.”
Admirable. She hated that word. “Thanks.” She’d made them both uncomfortable with the serious talk. Time to free them from this conversation and this confusing night. “Well, I better get going. I have to drive back to Long Acre, and it’s going to take a while with all this rain.”
“You still live there?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
“Yeah. My parents wanted me to stay close, so I did, but on nights like this, I wish I lived here in town.” She cocked her head toward the locker rooms. “I’m going to get changed.”
He nodded. “I’ll grab your shoes off the platform.”
“Thanks.” She stepped forward and reached for his arm, giving it a squeeze. “And thanks for tonight. I know it got weird, but before that, it was fun.”
Lucas’s throat worked and his arm muscles were stiff beneath her fingers. “Drive safe.”
She was going to say more when she came back to retrieve her shoes from him, clear the now-foggy air between them so that the next workout session wouldn’t be awkward, but he was nowhere to be found. When she headed to the main entrance, her shoes and socks were by the door with an umbrella that wasn’t broken. Frowning, she grabbed everything and headed out alone.
When she got to her car and plugged her phone into the charger, the rain still pattering against her windshield, her phone dinged with a text message. She’d already messaged her parents before arriving so it wouldn’t be them, but when she turned over the phone, she wasn’t surprised to see Kincaid’s name.
How’d it go?
Wasn’t that the question of the hour? Taryn leaned her head against the steering wheel, replaying all that had happened tonight. How the hell was she supposed to answer that? Difficult. Fun. Scary. Sexy. Awkward. In that order.
After a few seconds, she lifted her head and typed the only thing she could think of that described it all.
Not boring.
Chapter
Ten
Shaw pounded his fist against the apartment door, his heart beating so hard that his ribs were hurting. “Rivers, it’s me. Open up.”
He’d tried to call Rivers on the way home, but his friend hadn’t answered his phone. He could be sleeping, but there was no way Shaw could go downstairs to his own apartment right now. He’d end up packing all his shit and driving away tonight. He couldn’t do that to Rivers, not with the business just opening, but right now, that felt like the only goddamned solution. Panic was crawling over his skin like an army of termites eating away at him.
When he knocked on the door again, it swung open, revealing his friend wearing a scowl and bedhead. “Dude, what the hell? Are you on fire? Because if you’re banging on my door like this for any other—”
Shaw didn’t let him finish. “You didn’t answer your phone,” he growled as he shouldered past his friend, making Rivers turn sideways to grant him entry. He headed into the living room, which was dimly lit by the TV, and switched on a lamp. “Shut the door. We need to talk.”
Rivers opened his mouth as if he were going to tell Shaw to fuck off, but something in Shaw’s expression must’ve tipped him off that this was serious. He scrubbed a hand over his face, probably clearing the cobwebs of sleep, and shut the door. “What’s going on?”
“Taryn.”
Rivers sank onto the bright-blue armchair next to his couch and turned off the TV. “Taryn. Things didn’t go well tonight?”
Shaw scoffed at the understatement. “I kissed her.”
Rivers’s face lit up. “Holy shit. That’s fantastic!”
“No.” Shaw began to pace like a caged animal, his mind going too fast for him to stand still. “No, it’s not. It’s a complete fucking disaster.”
Rivers looked unmoved. “Are we really freaking out about a kiss right now? Come on, Shaw, it’s about time—”
“She’s a Long Acre survivor,” he spat out, the words like glass cutting his tongue.
Rivers stared at him as if he hadn’t heard the words. “Wait. What?”
“Oh, it gets worse.” Taryn’s words kept running around in his head on a hyperspeed loop. “She lost her sister in the attack. Her sister, man. Probably at the hand of my fucking brother. And I kissed her. Did more than that.” He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes.
“Jesus.”
When Shaw lowered his hands, Rivers’s face reflected Shaw’s shock. “You didn’t recognize her name? I thought you had them memorized.”
Shaw grimaced. After the attack, he’d forced himself to memorize the names of his brother’s victims as a kind of penance. It was the only way he could make himself accept the reality of what had happened, that those lives were gone. He’d used the rest of his college fund to make anonymous donations in each of their names. “I didn’t learn the names of the survivors, and I haven’t watched any coverage of it since the day it happened. I didn’t even catch Taryn’s last name.”
Rivers reached out and grabbed his phone off the side table, opening something and reading it. After a second, he said, “It’s Landry.”
Shaw’s mind scrolled through the long list of names that were forever imprinted on his psyche—an alphabetical line of tombstones. Landry. The name was right there. “Nia Landry. That was her sister.” Shaw raked his hands through his hair, the panic trying to fully take over. “I’m going to be sick.”
“Shaw.”
“If she figures out who I am…” And that he’d kissed her and joked with her and almost slept with her. “I need to leave.”
“No, you don’t.” Rivers blew out a breath, his gaze wary. “I’m not gonna lie. This is horrible, but if she hasn’t figured out who you are already, she probably won’t. We just have to get you out of the situation immediately. We’ll come up with something. I’ll assign her to another trainer or I’ll take her on. I’ll schedule you opposite her sessions. Avoid contact completely.”
Shaw laced his hands behind his head, squeezing his skull, trying to breathe. Taryn had lost her sister. Taryn, that soulful singer up onstage singing her heart out, the woman who’d teased and joked with him tonight, was once a high school girl who had watched her friends and sibling be gunned down in front of her. She was dedicating her life to finding ways to prevent others from going through that. She was an amazing woman. And he had let her kiss the man partly responsible for all that heartbreak in her life.
That last fact wouldn’t hurt her if she didn’t know. He couldn’t cause her additional pain and let her figure out who she’d spent the evening with. “She can’t know.”
“She won’t,” Rivers said, sounding more confident than he looked. “I’ll make sure of it.”
Shaw leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.
Rivers was quiet for a long moment and then said, “Thank God you didn’t sleep with her.”
“Yeah.” Thank God. Because he had been well on the way there. They’d been riding a bullet train leading straight to the couch in his office, but when she’d called out the name Lucas with such pleading, his entire libido had flattened like roadkill. Lucas. She didn’t even know his name. He didn’t have the right to touch her, to hear those sounds from her, to make her feel good. He was a liar.
No. Now he was so much more than that.
He was her nightmare.
* * *
Early Thursday evening, Taryn’s whole body was humming as though she’d been plugged into an electrical outlet. Her mind was running through her presentation, her lips moving with the unspoken words, and her feet paced along the perimeter of the building where the school board held its meetings. The floor would be hers in a few minutes. Her presentation equipment was being set up inside.
You’ve got this. The mini pep talk kept playing through her head. She had no problem speaking in front of people. She did it every day teaching her classes, but she’d never had so much riding on one talk. All her work, all that research, the years she’d spent buried in this topic had come down to this. Information without action was just words on a page.
She’d already laid the groundwork. She’d built a relationship with the school-board vice president and had communicated regularly with two of the trustees. The details of her program had already been sent to all the board members. She’d been told how much they loved the idea of her program. She’d only exchanged one email with the president, but he’d seemed really positive about it, too. Money had been allocated for school-violence prevention this year, and they were just waiting to award it. This meeting was going to be a formality.
Still, she wanted to nail it. The board meetings were broadcast live on the web, and she wanted the community to support the program, too, to know where their tax dollars were going. She wanted this to be a movement, something they could pilot here in Austin and then spread to the rest of the country. She wanted this to be the spark that would light the fires.
You’ve got this.
She closed her eyes, stopping her pacing, and went through the list of her most compelling statistics in her head. Mental health numbers about teens and mood disorders. Warning signs that had been present before the majority of school shootings. The compelling research on social connections and self-esteem. The effects of adult mentors.
Someone tapped her shoulder and she yelped, her eyes popping open. She whirled around. “What the heck?”
Kincaid smiled, Liv and Rebecca standing there with her. “Someone call the doctor. The professor is talking to herself.”
Taryn put her hand over her beating heart, then she grinned. “What are y’all doing here?”
Liv tilted her head, her dark ponytail swishing behind her. “As if we’d miss this.” She stepped forward and gave Taryn a tight hug. “This is your big moment, chica!”
Taryn hugged her friend back, and then Rebecca and Kincaid came in for their own quick embraces. Taryn laughed. “I can’t believe y’all are going to subject yourselves to a school-board meeting. I have to warn you. They’re about as exciting as watching C-SPAN.”
Kincaid nodded, expression solemn. “This should prove how much we love you because I’m missing The Real Housewives for this.”
Taryn laughed. “I’m truly honored.”
“Are you ready?” Rebecca asked. She was still in her lawyer gear, a tailored gray suit and a crisp black blouse, but she’d pulled her red hair down from the twist or bun it’d been in, and it was curling around her shoulders. “Do you need us to be a practice audience?”
“Thanks, I think I’m good.” Taryn patted the bag looped over her shoulder. “And if I get lost, I have all my notes in here. Most of this stuff is burned into my brain at this point.”
Rebecca reached out and squeezed Taryn’s hand. “You’re going to rock this. I read through your program last week, and it’s amazing, Taryn. Really. This will save lives.”
Taryn took a deep breath, the words sinking into her. “God, I hope so.” Her phone buzzed, the reminder alarm warning her it was time to go inside. “That’s my cue.”
Her friends all gave her one last quick hug and then let her go ahead so she could get set up inside. She hadn’t asked or expected them to come, but knowing they were going to be sitting behind her in that room, supporting her, believing in her… Well, it meant a lot. She took one more steadying breath as she made her way through the entry hall, then pulled her shoulders back and strolled into the large room with confidence.
The members of the school board were on a raised stage at a curved table. This was the building usually used for school theater productions so the acoustics provided a steady murmur from the voices of the people in the room. The board members were talking among themselves, the microphones turned off, and a thin guy with glasses was hooking up Taryn’s laptop, which she’d dropped off earlier, to a podium at the front of the center aisle so her presentation would project onto the screen. There were some people in the audience but not many. These meetings didn’t attract a lot of attention unless something newsworthy had happened.
Taryn wasn’t newsworthy at this point. For that, she was actually thankful.
She made her way down the main aisle to the podium, facing the board members as if she were presenting to a court, and pulled her notes out. She set everyth
ing up the way she wanted it and then took a seat in the first row to wait for her name to be called. She tried to make eye contact with the vice president, Regina, a petite Hispanic woman with shoulder-length hair and a bright-purple blouse, but no one was looking her way. They were all too busy whispering.
Once the meeting was called into session, the group got through the formalities quickly and then introduced Taryn. There were a few light claps from the audience, and Taryn didn’t have to look back to know they were courtesy of her friends. She stood, pasted on a confident smile, and made her way to the podium.
A shiver of nerves went through her as all the board members’ eyes turned toward her, but she rolled her shoulders back and pushed her nerves away. This was it. This was what she’d been waiting for.
All right, Nia, here we go. This one’s for you, baby girl.
Taryn started off strong, citing her memorized statistics and the findings of her research. Her passion for the topic was making her heart pound and her words come out with an urgency she hadn’t planned. Emotion was beating beneath each word, but she kept it on a leash. This was about facts. Research. Proof. If she cried, they might dismiss her, discount her. She needed to be the professor today, not the victim.
She got to her last slide, which was a beautiful chart she’d put together with all the risk factors and how they connected to each other. Damn, she loved a chart. She used a laser pointer to walk them through it, proud of how ironclad her numbers were. When she was done, she smiled, pleased with the fact that she hadn’t teared up, her voice hadn’t cracked, and she’d gotten all the vital points across.
I did it.
But when Taryn turned from the screen to look at the board members and no one said anything, that burst of confidence faltered, a runner stumbling along the path. She took a sip from the water bottle someone had put on the podium for her and cleared her throat. “I can take questions now if any of you have them. I also have plans for how to best do the rollout and the breakdown of costs if you’d like to see those.”