Tru Love (First Love Book 1)

by Rian Kelley

  The reasonable side of her brain argues that she’s not a daredevil. She’s watched free runners vault between buildings, adding an Eagle Flip or a Wall Eye to the move. She doesn’t do that. She imposes very strict limits on herself. It’s not so much the rush of leaping eight or ten or even twelve feet across a street with no net that lures her, but the freedom up here and, for a moment, the ability to defy gravity and float between realities.

  Up here, the air she breathes is helium.

  She loves it like fish love water.

  She’s safer free running than she is downhill skiing. She’s probably safer up here than she is driving to school every morning.

  She stands with her hands on her hips, measuring with her eyes the distance between where her feet are planted and the edge of the roof, where she’ll push off, like a diver from a board, and then the distance from this building to the next. Seven feet. Definitely no more than that. Easy. And well within her rules.

  And if she knows her own capabilities and refuses to reach beyond them, doesn’t that make her sensible? A person she can trust?

  She begins a trot, long strides and a pace just fast enough it will elevate her when needed, but not rush the experience. And she’s just about talked herself into believing she can handle her relationship with Truman, even as it grows deeper, when she’s caught by the sound of his voice. It tugs at her awareness, even as her feet pound the roof.

  And awareness of Truman means the absence of reason.

  There has to be balance. She needs to find it.

  “Genny.”

  His voice is insistent, alarmed. It’s all around her, possibly a scream torn from his lips. And real. He’s here. Behind her. Close. Her skin reacts as usual, turning warm and so sensitive that the air feels like silk. But she’s committed—just two strides before she makes the edge. She has to jump. She lifts her knees, believing she’ll touch the balls of her feet to the ledge before propelling herself through the air, only her ankle tears through something that feels like barbed wire, sharp and cutting through her skin; strong enough it slows her, breaks her stride, causes her to stumble.

  She hits the roof with her shoulder and skids to the very edge of it. The concrete shaves away her sleeve and a layer of skin. Her hands reach, grab, come up empty. In a moment of stunning clarity, she is dangling over the building, watching below her as a couple climb into their car; a man jogs the alley with his dog; a girl, probably Genny’s age, twists her hair into a pony tail then hops on her bike.

  Images of life.

  Momentum moves her further, until her ribs and then her hips drop over the edge. She grabs at the eaves, expects her body to somersault, anticipates the lofty feel of air and nothing else; her mind shudders, caught in the currents of terror.

  The fall.

  But it doesn’t happen. She comes to a complete stop, so sudden that the air explodes from her chest.

  It sounds like a gunshot.

  The wind rips through her hair, strips the shirt from her shoulders, takes hold of her hands and pulls.

  Below, the girl rides off on her bicycle. The dog barks.

  Genny’s heart kicks in, expanding her lungs.

  Life burns on a wick.

  The hands on her ankles contract.

  She chokes on her first breath.

  Truman.

  The warmth of his body calms the shrieking in her blood.

  “Genny.”

  His breath is harsh, fast, whistling through his teeth. He falls back from the edge and she flows with him, coming to rest in his arms.

  Saved. She didn’t want that, to need it. But hindsight is a hundred percent. And almost dying is defining, immediate, revealing.

  In his arms, she’s more emotion than common sense and reason seldom exists as more than a whisper.

  But Truman is her anchor; and Genny his wings.

  They complement each other. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

  No one person a sun or a shooting star.

  She pulls back and looks into his face. Light. The kind that makes Genny think of true weightlessness, of the slant of a bird’s wings at two o’clock. And she realizes that redemption is another form of flying.

  “Genny.”

  His breath is warm on her face, his lips are strong and brief on hers. And proof of life.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Genny sits at the kitchen table, her shoulders pressed into the chair, listening to her mother sum up all the reasons she gave for why Genny isn’t ready for sex. She watches Genevieve Senior pace the floor, her heels clicking on the marble, her hands cutting through the air in gestures that make Genny think of a drowning woman.

  Genny’s pacing herself, too. She’s going to tell her mom she already arrived at that conclusion herself, but if the declaration comes too soon, her mother will think it’s lip service. If it comes too late, she’ll think Genny is resistant to the idea.

  She thinks about Serena and the conversation she had with her mother. It didn’t go as smoothly as this one. Serena confessed all and her mother cried. She yelled some, too, then she prayed. But she didn’t forbid Serena from seeing Victor and in the two weeks since the Big Scare, as they’re now calling it, Serena got a job. She wants a little more space and independence from Victor. Serena’s mother approves.

  “And so maybe you should get a job, too,” her mother suggests.

  “Huh?” Genny lost focus so the last comment is a surprise.

  “I think Serena is on to something good,” her mom reasons. “Learn from her, Genny,” she advises.

  “I have to get a job because Serena could have been pregnant?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s the connection?”

  “I don’t want there to be a connection,” her mother answers. “Besides, you’re seventeen. You should work.”

  “What happened to ‘You’re not getting a job until you graduate from college?’”

  “I think I’ve protected you from too much.”

  “Aren’t you trying to protect me right now?”

  From raging hormones.

  Her mother frowns. “A paper cut heals a lot faster than a teen pregnancy.”

  Serena’s filing at a law office.

  “Were you scared, mom, when you found out you were pregnant with me?”

  “Scared enough it kept me up at night,” she admits. “But not for the reasons you’re suggesting. Teen pregnancy is scary because your whole life changes. You have no way to support yourself or your baby. I was twenty-seven when I was pregnant with you. I had money. A career. And your father. Your father was a grown man with the emotional and financial stability needed to help raise a child. While Truman seems more mature than other seventeen year old boys, he’s still unemployed.”

  “You know, dad is still available.”

  That comment causes her mom to pause and then blush.

  “Been there done that.”

  But her protest is weak and Genny tells her so.

  “Your father and I were over a long time ago,” she says.

  “Maybe.” But Genny doesn’t believe it. “You still have feelings for him. Regrets. And he’s never settled down.”

  “We’re not the type of people who settle down,” her mother points out. “We never were.”

  “I mean. He goes through girlfriends by the season and you’re all business all the time.” Genny tips her head to the side and challenges her mother, “When was the last time you had a date?”

  “What?”

  “A date is when a man and a woman go someplace together and have fun.”

  “If you’re lucky,” her mother mumbles, then says, “I know what a date is, Genny, and how did you suddenly become an expert on the subject?” Her mother’s frown deepens. “And you changed the subject. We were talking about you and Truman and slowing down.”

  “We’re already moving forward with the blinding speed of a snail,” Genny admits.

  And though she sounds like she’s co
mplaining, she’s really comfortable now letting Truman guide them. He has more experience and a track record for making good decisions. And he has staying power.

  The day after he saved Genny’s life a third and final time—

  he hasn’t had any more premonitions of her demise—he showed up at her front door, putting to rest Genny’s worries about misplaced emotions.

  Her mother’s face smoothes out. “You sound disgruntled.”

  “A little.” Though mostly for show.

  “So Truman’s setting the pace?”

  “Yes, and I’m trusting him.” Because I’m still learning to trust myself. “I’ve made some bad decisions in the past and Truman has more experience with dating than I do.”

  Her mother nods. “Sounds reasonable, but those decisions are in the past. You have a long string of good, before and after the incident with your father’s car.”

  “And the ticket for free running,” Genny reminds her.

  She hasn’t told her mother about almost dying last week. That she nearly tumbled off an apartment building downtown and if Truman wasn’t close by, if he didn’t see it coming and then set out to save her from herself, her mother would not be sitting at the kitchen table fretting about teen pregnancy.

  “Past,” her mom says. “You haven’t been doing that again, have you?”

  Genny shrugs and the scab on her shoulder shrieks. “I’ve been up there a few times since,” she admits.

  “Genny! You promised to stay away from danger.”

  “I haven’t broken my promise,” Genny insists. She didn’t see the torn fencing that night. She couldn’t have planned for it. Still, she’s clipped her wings. If she touches the sky again, it’ll be in pure daylight. “I know where to draw the line.”

  Hearing herself say the words, the feel of them in her heart, where she knows herself best, rings true. She does know where to draw the line. She’s done it a lot of times.

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “Because I am a good kid,” Genny says. “I never knowingly jump into danger.”

  “Knowledge is powerful,” her mother agrees.

  The doorbell rings.

  “Truman?” her mother asks.

  “Yes. We’re going bowling.”

  “Bowling?” Her mother’s mouth lifts with surprise.

  “Yes. Neither one of us have been before.” Genny stands and starts walking toward the front of the house. “You want to come?”

  Her mother follows her as far as the living room. “I’ve never bowled,” she says.

  Genny reaches the front door, but turns and glimpses her mom through the arch to the living room. She’s leaning against the back of the sofa, her mouth puckered as she considers Genny’s offer.

  “So we’ll be three fools in borrowed shoes.”

  Her mother’s nose wrinkles at that.

  “We could invite dad, too,” Genny suggests.

  “Your father has trophies,” she says, and smiles at some memory. “He’ll cream us all.”

  “I don’t mind losing.”

  Genny opens the door, no longer surprised when the sight of Truman steals her breath. She doesn’t need to look through his gift to know, either, that their future together is something real.

  The End.