Light Within Me

by Fall, Carly

  Then why did she feel like a teenage girl who had just been asked to her prom? And why did she feel like meeting Noah was something very significant in her life? Something that would have a deep impact?

  She checked her bedside clock, and even though it was only 8:00 p.m., she decided to turn in. She had a feeling it would take her a while to go to sleep with her mind spinning with thoughts of Noah.

  The dinner invitation had been a shock to her, crossing boundaries of work versus social interaction and all that. Not that she was very good at respecting those unseen boundaries. She had dated a few cops, so those type of work versus social boundaries were a bit blurry due to her simple basic need and desire to connect with someone.

  And she definitely felt a connection with Noah.

  But if she were honest with herself, she had only dated those cops because they had asked her out, and she was desperate to have something to break up the loneliness and monotony in her life. She had never held any interest in them. But when Noah offered to take her to dinner, it led her to believe that the interview would continue at the steakhouse. A professional meeting that would continue over dinner.

  Well, it hadn’t remained professional, and frankly, that had been perfectly fine with her. Boundaries, like some rules, were made to be broken.

  She remembered the way the candlelight had hit his face, showing off those damn cheekbones she wished she had. His eyes were an onyx color in the restaurant, so deeply black they would have been scary on anyone else. They looked like pools of never ending . . . she didn’t know what. Like a never-ending black universe. She remembered gazing up at the sky when she was young after her mother died. She imagined that somewhere up in the darkness was heaven, and if she thought hard enough, if she stared long enough, her mom would be able to hear her thoughts.

  In later years, when she felt so disconnected from everyone, she had looked into that never-ending blackness and wished she could be swooped away to another planet by another species that she was certain lived out there. She sometimes wanted to escape, to flee her life and start over somewhere far away.

  That was what Noah’s eyes reminded her of—the deep, never-ending blackness of the universe. She found them beautiful, mysterious, and wondrous, just like she did the night sky.

  As far as Noah was concerned, the term “easy on the eyes” was the understatement of the year.

  She hadn’t noticed when he took control of the conversation, but loved the way he seemed to hang on her every word as he peppered her with questions. As if what she had to say was life-or-death important. No man had ever listened to her like that, and she found herself wanting more. It was only until she had gotten home that she realized she really didn’t know anything about him. He always steered the conversation back to her.

  What she said when she called him was true—she didn’t realize until she was on her way home that he had only answered two of her questions. She needed something for the paper by Friday, and she was counting on this feature piece. Shaking her head, she scolded herself. She needed to quit with the whole female-swooning thing and get down to business. But she hadn’t felt this good, or this excited, by anything since she had been awarded a partial college scholarship.

  While in her sophomore class in high school, she had decided that she wanted to be a writer. Her teacher had been kind and supportive of Abby’s efforts, and Abby responded well. She loved writing because she could take the thoughts and worlds she created in her mind and put them to paper, thereby transporting herself out of her reality and into a place where she was in charge of the characters, the surroundings, and what happened in the stories she created. It was an escape from the feelings and insecurities of her life. Later when she discovered journalism, she focused on that. Her need for discovering the truth, whether in her own life or in someone else’s, became very important to her.

  But back to Noah.

  She decided to swoon some more.

  The way he had touched her face had been so gentle, yet its impact had floored her. She rolled over in bed and brought her fingers to her cheek. Noah obviously wasn’t too concerned about the work versus social boundaries either.

  She flipped over again, landing on her stomach. As she stared at the clock, she decided that tomorrow would be all about the interview. She needed this piece for her Friday deadline. Tomorrow she would not be the giddy schoolgirl she felt like now. She would be the professional writer for the city newspaper doing a feature on an interesting figure in their city. The piece that would hopefully save her job because there certainly wasn’t a Plan B. She was living paycheck to paycheck and trying to pay down her debt from college. In a nutshell, if she lost her job, she would most likely have to declare bankruptcy. Either that or become a greeter at Walmart until she found something else. That thought made her cringe.

  Her resolve set, she closed her eyes. After a few minutes, she felt her cat jump up on the bed.

  “Hi, Neptune,” she whispered as the big black cat curled up on her back and began to purr. She decided he needed to go on a diet because him sleeping on her was becoming uncomfortable.

  But tomorrow she would get her story, and that was all there was to it. Fancy dinners didn’t mean squat. The big good-looking man was simply a means to getting food on her table and keeping a roof over her head. It was nothing more.

  The thing that bothered her, or interested her—take your pick—was that she was still certain she had seen him somewhere, but she couldn’t figure it out to save her life. And there was the underlying feeling of a connection to him. It wasn’t only that she thought she had seen him somewhere, but the fact that she felt as if she knew him.

  But she didn’t know him.

  She knew she couldn’t possibly know someone after spending three hours with them, especially when she was the one who had done most of the talking. The whole connection thing was ridiculous, but she couldn’t deny it.

  An hour later, she was staring at the ceiling when her phone rang. She answered without bothering to see who it was.

  “Abby, it’s Noah.”

  She smiled so wide she thought her face would crack. “Hi.”

  There was a beat of silence, then he said, “Listen, something’s come up for me in the morning. Can I push our meeting back until eleven?”

  “Um, sure. That’ll work. You’ll just need to talk fast so I can make it to my afternoon meetings.”

  He chuckled. “Okay. I’ll talk fast.”

  Abby didn’t want to hang up, but she kept reminding herself about professional boundaries. “What’re you up to tonight?” she blurted, closing her eyes.

  “Just doing a little business, a little research. You?”

  She smiled into the darkness. “Not much. Just . . . sitting here with my cat.” She half-expected him to hang up with that brilliance. She sounded like some lonely woman with self-trappings of staying at home because she had nowhere else to be.

  Oops.

  She was.

  Just her and the cat. But she reminded herself it didn’t matter what he thought of her because it would be a purely professional relationship, despite all that B.S. about feeling a connection to him and feeling like she already knew him. She needed to get his story, save her job, and keep a roof over her head.

  There was another small span of silence, but oddly, it wasn’t uncomfortable.

  “So, what do you prefer, Abby? Coke or Pepsi?”

  Abby laughed. “Pepsi, definitely Pepsi.”

  Chapter 13

  The Colonist whistled softly as he looked at the house he was about to break into. The adrenaline flowed freely through him, making his very being vibrate with anticipation. His senses were heightened, his mind buzzed.

  He felt alive.

  The woman living in the house—first name Stacy, last name Boss, middle initial A., age thirty-five, five foot four, one hundred ninety pounds—was going to die tonight.

  She, of course, had no idea.

  As far as Stacy was concern
ed, she would wake up tomorrow at 6:00 a.m., get ready for her job as a bank teller at the Bank of Carson, and spend her day as she did every other day. She would chitchat with customers, count money, take a longer lunch than she was allowed, repeat everything except the lunch in the afternoon, and go home.

  Once home, Stacy would have three glasses of bourbon and Coke. She didn’t eat dinner, but would have a bag of potato chips instead. She would watch TV, and since today was Tuesday, she would watch the O’Reilly Factor, Real Housewives of somewhere, and then the eleven o’clock news.

  The Colonist figured she deserved to die just for watching the obnoxiousness of Housewives. He did, however, enjoy O’Reilly every now and then.

  At eleven thirty, she would go into her bathroom and spend approximately fifteen minutes getting ready for bed. She would emerge, check the locks on the back door to the house, as well as the front door. She would turn off the TV and all the lights except the one over the kitchen sink and head to bed. Unfortunately, he didn’t know what days of the week she used the pink vibrator she kept in the nightstand.

  Humans were so fucking predictable.

  If asked, he could recite her patterns for any day of the week. He knew her TV schedule, the names of the people she ate lunch with at work, and how much she was paid. She loved having bacon and eggs in the morning, and drank three cups of coffee with hazelnut-flavored creamer before she left for work.

  He knew she had been divorced for eight months and four days, and she hadn’t had a date in two months. Her black hair color was fake; she used Clairol number 47, or was it 48? He wanted to remind her about the dry cleaning she needed to pick up, but really, what would be the point? She wouldn’t need the clothes in . . . approximately forty-five minutes. No, she would be dead in bed while wearing her blue nightgown, her throat nicely slit, and he would be flying higher than the moon.

  Chapter 14

  Noah was struggling to pull his boot on when the phone rang. He smiled when he saw it was Abby.

  At first, he thought she was going to cancel by the hesitancy in her voice, and there was a small part of him that wished she would. They had talked until three in morning about a lot of everything, some of nothing, and communication between them flowed freely. He not only thought Abby was the prettiest thing he had seen in forever, but he liked her personality as well. She was the whole package as far as he was concerned.

  They had started out with the Pepsi versus Coke debate the previous night on the phone, and moved into a bit of light politics, and then cake-flavoring preferences.

  “Strawberry is, by far, the best,” she had said, and he had disagreed wholeheartedly.

  “Strawberry-flavored cake may be the most god-awful cake ever. Ever, Abby! Who wants fruit on and in their cake? Cake is all about the sugar, not nutrition. Give me chocolate any day.”

  A few hours later, the conversation had turned to random questions again.

  “Favorite movie of the ‘90s,” he asked quietly.

  “Hmmm . . . I would have to go with either The Matrix or Pulp Fiction. Terminator 2 was pretty good too,” she said sleepily. “My turn now. Favorite planet.”

  Noah had been lying in bed half-asleep, but not wanting to hang up the phone. But his eyes had flown open at the question, and a jolt raced through him as he wondered if she knew what he was.

  After a moment of silence, she said, “Noah? Are you still there?”

  “I’m here,” he said, fully awake. There was a small part of him that wanted to tell her about SR44 and its beauty and wonderment, and how much he missed it. But he knew she meant this solar system.

  “I have to go with Pluto,” he said.

  “But Pluto’s not considered a planet anymore.”

  “I know. That poor little bastard totally got the short end of the stick on that one. I always root for the underdogs.”

  He found himself liking Abby more and more, and frankly, it scared him a little bit. He had never developed feelings for a human female before—hell, any female—and his own personal code of work and no pleasure was slowly eroding.

  He imagined her on the other end of the phone, her teeth trapping her lower lip, maybe a little crease on her brow.

  He really wanted to kiss those lips. They looked like little pink pillows. He wondered if she was dressed yet, and he felt an erection about to make an appearance.

  Right.

  Okay.

  Get out of your own head and get back to what she was saying.

  When she explained that her car wouldn’t start, relief washed through him. Yeah, there was the small part that wanted her to cancel, but the rest of him would have been highly disappointed. She asked him to pick her up.

  Noah didn’t hesitate to say yes, but did say he was running a little late. She gave him the address to her apartment.

  Noah pulled up to the curb of Abby’s apartment in his black Mercedes Benz SLK convertible and double-checked the address. It was an older house painted white with green trim that had been converted into what looked like four apartments—two on the top and two on the bottom. Each apartment had a huge picture window. As he walked up the path sandwiched by patches of grass on each side, he cringed when he saw that her apartment was on the bottom. So bad for safety reasons. There were too many awful people looking to do awful things, both in his species and hers. She needed better protection than this.

  He shook his head and rang the bell. A buzz sounded, and he heard a click as the lock was set free. He turned the knob and went into a foyer done in white tile and white paint. The door to the right opened, and there she was.

  Her hair was piled on top of her head in a loose ponytail, and her long legs were hugged by a pair of faded jeans. She wore a simple white button-down shirt again and a pair of sandals. She looked fabulous.

  “Hi,” she said, smiling.

  He smiled back. “Hi.”

  Just then, a huge black cat bolted out the door and began running between his ankles, back and forth. Then it started purring. Loudly.

  “Neptune!” she scolded. “Get back in here!”

  The cat, of course, ignored her. She stepped out and reached down for him, but he meowed and jumped out of her grasp. Noah bent down, picked up the cat, and held it to his chest while scratching behind its ears. Neptune shut his eyes and purred louder.

  “Seems like someone likes you quite a bit,” Abby said as she stepped aside to let Noah into her apartment. Most animals did like him. He didn’t know if they sensed he wasn’t fully human or what the deal was, but he had never met a dog or cat that he didn’t get along with.

  Noah didn’t say anything as he took in her living space. Everything was white, or a version of white, as was the foyer. It was light and airy. To his right was a small, tidy kitchen and dining area. He imagined Hudson going mental, trying to cook in such a small space. Her couch was a light brown color, and an old second-hand coffee table held a few magazines. White mesh curtains covered the huge window, offering close-to-zero privacy. In front of him was a small hallway with a couple of doors, which he assumed was the bedroom and maybe a closet or two.

  He put Neptune down and turned around to look at Abby. He hadn’t been imagining her subtle beauty. He watched as she tucked some hair that had come loose from her ponytail behind her ear, and he admired the freckles over her cheeks and nose. He absolutely loved that her beauty was natural and not painted on.

  “Ready?” she said, grabbing her bag.

  “Sure.” He let his eyes leave her face and looked around the small space. He liked being here, seeing her things and the way she lived. Yet, he didn’t want to answer the questions she had lined up for him. At all. So, he was in a dilemma. He didn’t want to leave her, but he sure as shit didn’t want to speak about himself. His eyes moved to the big window. It was a pretty day.

  Springtime in northern Nevada could be wonderful. The tulips were starting to creep out of the ground, and the air had lost that bitter feeling. You could actually feel the sun warming yo
ur bones and heating your skin. It was a perfect day for a ride up to Lake Tahoe in a convertible Mercedes. He had only been up there once before, when he had worked on a murder case for four days straight. That was about ten years ago, but the absolute beauty of Lake Tahoe had been forever burned in his mind. Maybe they could head up for a little lunch, a little sun, a walk on the beach . . .

  “Let’s go,” he said, smiling.

  “Okay.” She started talking about the wonderful omelets the sandwich shop served in the mornings. “If we get there soon, we can get one of those instead of lunch.”

  “Let’s go somewhere else. The day’s too pretty to waste.” Then he remembered the meetings she had in the afternoon. “Can you cancel your meetings? Call in sick or something?”

  “Um . . . well, where would we go?” Her brow furrowed in deep thought. “And what about the interview?”

  “For a drive. I was thinking Lake Tahoe. Maybe some lunch, a walk on one of the beaches. And I’ll answer your questions.”

  Noah watched her face light up.

  “I think I just developed a stomachache,” she said.

  Noah smiled widely. “Better call in sick then, Abby. That shit can be contagious.”

  Chapter 15

  They flew down Highway 395 at a somewhat reasonable speed, the top down on the Mercedes. As they turned right up Mount Rose Highway, the road became embedded in a wall of forest with houses interspersed and hiding throughout. The air became crisper and cleaner and smelled like pine. Abby closed her eyes, tilted her face upward, and let the sun play across her face as it bounced in and out of the trees.

  Noah looked over at her and almost lost control of the car. She was beautiful to begin with, but sitting there like that, with her face turned up to the sun, she was astounding. It was as if she belonged to the forest, the sun, the springtime mountain air. She smiled slightly as if she were enjoying her own private joke, and her skin glowed as her hair flew all around her face. Watch the road, buddy.