by Rian Kelley
Would she hold it against him?
The moment stretches between them, thins the air in the truck cabin, makes her eyes feel dry and gritty as she strains to find an answer they can both live with.
He’s sorry for it, whatever he did, she tells herself. She’s known all along that Truman runs deeper than any other guy she’s met. He feels deeper, for others around him. In his most difficult moment, Truman changed for the better.
It would matter to her if he hurt someone. She would worry about what it did to Truman and what it did to the injured, but she wouldn’t judge him for it.
Her answer must show in her eyes, because the tension falls away from Truman’s face and his lips part on a breath.
He was holding his breath, waiting for her answer, she realizes. It was that important to him.
He leans into the space between them. His hand, warm and calloused, curves around the back of her neck and he nudges her closer. Citrus scent and moss green flecks in his eyes, those are her last coherent thoughts before his lips press against hers in a slow, breathless, electric kiss. He pulls back slightly, and then sinks deeper into the kiss, moving her lips apart with his, touching his tongue to hers.
She feels his mouth everywhere, like a current running over her skin. She pushes her hands into his hair; the cool strands flow like water between her fingers. Her heart stumbles and slams against her chest.
The rap on the driver’s side window splits them apart faster than a bucket of cold water. Truman turns his body, blocking her view of the interloper, but also his view of her. Which is probably a good thing. When Genny glances down, she discovers that the sheer fabric of her bra isn’t up to the job of protecting her modesty. She folds her arms over her chest.
“Is Ms. Vout in the car with you, Sir?”
Truman nods, then says in a thick voice, “Yes, she is.”
“I need to make a match with the ID,” the man explains, sounding apologetic.
Truman glances over his shoulder, his eyes running from the top of her head, over her face, down her chest to her folded arms. His lips thin and he looks about to refuse the man’s request so Genny takes some initiative. She pops her head over Truman’s shoulder and smiles at the guard.
“Hi, Cece,” Genny greets the older man.
“Genny,” the guard returns, smiling warmly. “Good to see you again. You keeping up your grades?”
“Of course.” She presses a hand to Truman’s shoulder but he won’t budge. “My father won’t have it any other way.”
“He’s a good man,” CeCe says, and hands Genny’s VIP pass through the window. “Good luck tonight.”
He steps back and waves them in.
Genny falls back into her seat but is close enough to hear Truman mutter, “’Good luck.’ Yeah. I’m going to need it.”
“No, you’re not. Remember, you’re my savior.”
This time the idea makes her chuckle and even the memory of having to be saved isn’t as potent. In fact, she could pretty much smile while walking through flowing lava at this point.
When Truman turns his head and regards her, Genny is suddenly floundering in the intensity of his eyes. She notices his skin is still slightly flushed from their kiss.
“Just so we’re clear on this: Tonight is a date. And my parents, when you do meet them, will love you.”
Chapter Thirteen
Genny’s father is quick to realize that she and Truman are more than merely Superman and Lois Lane impersonators. He doesn’t seem to like it, either. They’re standing on the field, in front of the dug-out before the game, and her father is warming up, swinging the bat a few times, then pausing with the tip against the side of his cleat as he gazes long and thoughtfully at them. There are only ten feet between them so Genny finally says, “Dad, stop ogling us.”
Her father hates that word, which is why she used it. There aren’t many restaurants he can go to without being recognized and either approached by strangers or ogled like he’s on exhibit. She watches the frown draw his eyebrows together and feels Truman’s body tense beside her.
“Genny,” Truman whispers a warning.
Her father drops the bat and approaches them in three long strides. He already thanked Truman twice for “saving his little girl.” Now he stands in front of them, so close a nickel
couldn’t be wedged in the space between the tips of their shoes, and says, “What you’re feeling, Genny, is gratitude. It’s often mistaken for something more,” he spares Truman a withering glance, “when an extreme situation is involved.”
Her father attended several sessions with a shrink when his stardom began spoiling his personal life. But she doesn’t bring this up. Instead, Genny stares at him with a bland expression, as if to say, ‘That was a definite foul, but no harm done.’
“I’m not taking advantage of your daughter, Sir,” Truman says.
“Yeah?” Her father is openly skeptical. “I have your word on that?”
“Yes, you do,” Truman returns solemnly.
Her father takes a step back. He turns his head and shoots a wad of chew into the green, then he levels Truman with a stare that would scorch toast. “What does your word mean to me, Truman?”
“Right now, nothing.” Truman maintains eye contact with her father.
“You think you’ll have a chance to improve that?”
“Maybe. I hope so.” He glances at Genny. “It’s really up to your daughter, Sir.”
“Yes it is. Remember that.” He steps back and assumes a batting stance. He swings through it a few times, empty-handed, then straightens out his body and asks, “Do they have baseball where you come from, Truman?”
“Scotland? No, Sir.”
Her father grimaces like he’s in real pain.
“Really?”
“Soccer and rugby,” Truman assures him. “And golf, of course.”
Earlier, at her father’s request, Truman spoke about his parents and what his father does for a living—designs and manufactures professional caliber golf clubs. He brings it up again.
“I hear there’s a corporation planning a golf course in Napa Valley. That your dad?”
Truman nods. “He’s running into a few problems with zoning and ordinances. They haven’t broken ground yet.”
“We could use another good course around here,” her father says.
Men are coming in from the outfield. One of the coaches is calling off names and marking on a clipboard. Genny slips her hand into the crook of Truman’s arm and gives him a tug.
“Come on,” she says. “Time to go.”
Her father stops their forward progress.
“Are you sitting in the box tonight?”
Genny shakes her head. “Usual seats,” she says.
“Wait for me.” Then he regards Truman and says, grudgingly, “I take Genny to dinner after the game. You’re welcome to join us.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
“Good luck, dad,” Genny calls as she walks off the field. She makes it to the tunnel without looking back.
“Are you trying to ditch me?” Truman’s voice is light and easy.
She stops and turns so that she can investigate the reason for his change in temperament. He’s grinning hugely, like he just won the keys to the kingdom.
“What happened to the nerves?” she asked.
“What nerves?”
“You know, the ‘will I die tonight’ kind.”
He shrugs. “I passed. I think. I mean, your father invited me to dinner.”
“Yeah.” She frowns when she thinks about that.
“What? You don’t want me to go?”
“No, I want you to go. It’s just odd that he invited you. He doesn’t seem to like you very much. Not yet,” she hurries to add when the tension from earlier revisits his face.
“Thanks, Gen.”
“Sorry.” Her father was a lot nicer to Hunter, but then Genny and Hunter were just friends for a long time. And Hunter did break up with her a few day
s ago. “I think you’re paying Hunter’s ticket.”
“What?”
She slips through a door and into a stairwell that leads up. The lighting is bad here and the air smells of stale sweat.
“My father doesn’t trust you. Yet.”
“I have to earn that.”
“Yes.”
“That’s OK. That’s the way it should be.”
She pauses on the top step and gazes down at him. “Are there a set of rules I should know about?”
He smiles and it’s the only radiance in the well. Beyond the door, which is locked to the outside, she feels the press of voices.
“So you can go about breaking them?” he asks.
She considers that comment and feels justified in saying, “I’m not in the habit of breaking rules.”
His eyes turn doubtful.
“Name three rules I’ve broken,” she challenges.
“Easy.” He raises a hand and starts the count. “Today, you showed up for class late and rather than a contrite attitude, you invited the teacher to punish you. Two, you stole your father’s car and crashed it—that’s probably three or more rules shattered right there.” He raises a third finger. “You dated your best friend.”
Genny digests this, looking for an argument. Two of them are mistakes more than actual, written-in-the-book rules, but he has a point.
“Being late to class is a minor infraction,” Genny says.
She turns and pushes through the door, Truman’s victorious laughter following her.
Chapter Fourteen
They have front row seats, between dug out and home plate. Her father also keeps a box, but Genny likes being in the open air, surrounded by the smells—peanuts, steamy hotdogs and mustard—and the sounds—cheering, berating fans and the occasional calls from the players to their teammates.
When they’re seated, and Truman has purchased three hotdogs, two Cokes, two bags of peanuts and wrangled a promise from the kid with the ice cream cart to come back in an hour, Genny turns to him and says,
“Baseball is a very slow sport.”
“It’s as much mental as it is physical,” Truman agrees.
“You studied up, did you?” she teases lightly.
“Of course. I thought there might be a quiz.”
His face is all seriousness and Genny has to bite her lip so she doesn’t laugh aloud.
“Well,” she says, “it might help at dinner if you’re able
to lay out a few of my father’s more famous statistics.”
“Seventy-six home runs in a single season. More RBI’s than any other player in history, too.”
“Great,” Genny says. “But what I was getting at with the slow comment is that this is the perfect time to talk. Bare our souls. Confess.”
He looks at her blankly.
“It’s not fair that you know everything about me and I know very little about you.”
“I doubt I know everything about you.”
“Close. All the bad stuff, anyway.”
“If crashing your father’s car and walking into traffic is the worst you’ve done, then you have nothing to worry about.”
“What do you have to worry about?”
He sighs. “Not here, OK? Give me a little more time to wow you before I bare my soul.”
“Remember what I said about walking blind,” she prompts. She barely recognizes herself in this moment, but all the better. The old Genny would have gone peaceably, trusting
human nature or the alignment of the stars to make things right. “I won’t do it.”
She wishes she trusted herself a little more. She wishes she trusted more completely Truman’s feelings. But she just broke up with Hunter. That and her absolute lack of romantic experience are working against her.
“I don’t expect you to.” He pauses to think it through and picks absently at his bag of peanuts, then offers, “How about half now and half on Sunday?”
“Sunday?” she purses her lips as she considers his offer.
“We can drive out of the city, have a picnic, and talk all about me,” he entices.
“You’re stalling again.”
“Definitely.”
“You’re not going to call and cancel Sunday?”
“Never.”
“OK. Half now.”
His first words reveal little, but still manage to make her forget all about breathing.
“I didn’t just know about you before I came to Fraser,” he admits. “I knew you.” His eyes are intense, seeking understanding, but Genny is shaking her head.
“Until that night, in front of the bookstore—“
“We never met. You’re right,” he agrees and struggles for words, finally settling on, “Remember when you accused me of reading your mind?”
She feels her heart flutter in her throat. It makes her voice breathy. “You said you can’t.”
But really, she sensed something from the beginning. Some kind of osmosis from him. He was too comfortable with her. He knew too much about her. He seems to know her mind and her heart with stunning accuracy. And still, they’ve only known each other three days.
“That’s right. I can’t get into your mind. I don’t know how you feel about me or anything else. But I do see things. It’s called precognition. Most people think it’s limited to the ability to know that something is going to happen. In my case, what I see are images, isolated with very little to connect them to real time. And what I see as often doesn’t happen as does.”
“You’re psychic?”
“No. I can’t tell the future. Not really. There are too many variables that change the outcomes. And most of the time, what I see makes no sense to me at all. They’re just pictures with no sound.”
“What do you see?”
“Faces. Events. I see people talking but can’t hear their words. I see things happen to them.”
“What kinds of things?” She wants specific examples. Details that will root her in his reality.
“Last week I saw my sister in a wedding dress. I watched her exchange vows.”
Genny feels the surprise flare in her eyes. “Are you going to tell her?”
Truman laughs. “I had to. She made me swear, years ago, that I would tell her if it ever came to me. But that doesn’t mean what I saw will come to pass. She knows that.”
Because there are variables. . .
“The future is in flux,” she mumbles, trying to process all that he’s telling her.
“Exactly.”
“And you’re family’s OK with this? Your—“
“Ability. Gift,” he offers, trying to help her out. “Yes. They worried about it at first. They didn’t want me to be different. I didn’t want to be different. But as far as precognition goes, I have a pretty mild form of it. Definitely something I can live with.”
She nods and remains silent as her brain sifts through the new information.
“Are you OK with this?” he asks.
“Sure.” But she’s hears the frayed edges of doubt in her voice.
“I’ve seen more of you than anyone else,” he confides.
That catches her attention and she looks at him, tries to see beyond his calm demeanor to what really stirs beneath his surface. “Why?” It’s barely a whisper.
“Destiny?” he poses. “Just another way of putting two people from different corners of the world in the same place at the same time.”
It rings true, in that part of her where instinct nests with reason.
“What have you seen? Of me?”
He smiles. “You playing possum. That was the first time I saw you.”
“Details,” she demands.
“You didn’t want to go with your mother to some fancy party—that part’s a guess. What I saw was you rubbing your cheeks raw and then jumping into bed when she knocked on your door.”
“Last year,” Genny identifies. “The spring fashion show.” She gazes at him, her eyes wide, but demands, “More.”
“You and your dad swinging in trees.” His mouth is curved in a sweet smile. “It looked like maybe you were in a jungle?”
“Belize. We weren’t swinging really. We were riding rope.”
At his quizzical look, she says, “It’s a sport, I guess. We went caving too. Did you see that?”
“No. I don’t see everything.” Then he frowns and says, “Your father is a strong man. With quick reflexes.”
Genny’s pulley snapped and she dangled more than a hundred feet above the jungle floor until her father could get to her.
“You’re drawn to danger.” His observation is part challenge.
Genny ignores the comment. “Anything else?”
“Free running,” he says.
“Last night,” she admits. “I almost slid off that peaked roof.”
But he’s shaking his head. “No. The roof is flat. You stumble. . .fall. . .”
But this confuses Genny. Other than the night before, she’s never had an accident. “No,” she says. “I’ve never fallen.”
His face grows somber, his eyes that deep brown-green shade of troubled thoughts.
“This is something that could happen,” she realizes.
“Maybe. Like I said, outcomes change.”
“How?”
“Maybe you never go free running again,” he tries.
Genny’s lips twist doubtfully. “Or?”
“You choose one direction over another. The phone rings before you leave and you stop to answer it. It rains and you decide to watch TV instead.”
“Something that simple?”
He nods.
And then she realizes, “You saw me get hit by that SUV,” she says. “That first night. That’s why you were at the book store.”
“Yes.”
And that discovery leads to an even more disturbing one: “The roof,” she begins. “The free running. Is that why you’re with me? You saw me falling and you’re hanging around now so that you can save me?”
“No, Genny. That’s not why I’m with you. If my only concern was keeping you alive, I would spend my evenings on the rooftops.”
That sounds reasonable, but a sliver of doubt remains, and she worries it as she would a splinter.
“Genny,” he says, and he drops his bag of peanuts on the seat beside him and reaches for her. His palm curls around her cheek and forces her to meet his gaze. “Something this strong, this immediate, it has to exist on both ends.”