by Alisha Rai
“We’ll take turns.”
“Fine.”
She leaned her head against the wall, staring out the window. “Fine.”
~ * ~
“Did you hear something?”
“It was the wind.”
“Oh.” Genevieve turned back to the book in her hands. She’d curled up on the floor next to the chair, a big mistake since it reminded her of their tumultuous lovemaking, and tried to take her mind off their mutual problem.
She reread the page she was on, but gave up after the second sentence blurred. She set it facedown in her lap and did her best to pretend she wasn’t studying her protector.
Despite his coldness all day, that’s exactly what he’d set himself up to be. He sat propped up against the wall, the handgun clenched in his hand, peering out the window. Except for a quick trip to the bathroom, he hadn’t moved.
The tension of their careful politeness and distance added to the stress of the horrible situation they were in. Genevieve had an idea of what civilians in war-torn countries might feel like. Every so often, a volley of gunshots peppered the sturdy cabin from the front, bouncing off the logs. None had penetrated the two windows yet, but it was only a matter of time. They had taken to crawling along the floor if they needed to move, to avoid any stray bullets.
Alex had fired just a few times, when he thought he had a bead on the guy. Though he had curtly mentioned it sounded like there was only one shooter, as the shots were coming from one direction, he said the guy was too deep in the woods to see him. He didn’t want to waste their ammunition. Plus, he said the guy might get stupid if he thought they didn’t have much in the way of weapons.
It was a smart plan, though Genevieve’s first instinct was to go in with guns blazing. He was right though; the shooter had a number of places to hide while they had none.
They hadn’t spoken much, whatever conversation they had stilted and tense. Genevieve was aware he was mad. Meanwhile, she wanted to cut out her own tongue for what she’d said to him. Deep down, she knew she hadn’t just wounded his pride. The man was sweet and tender, and more than a little romantic. It seemed as though he’d really fallen for the person he thought she was. He had no idea though. It was best this way, best to make a clean break.
So why did she hurt so much too?
She licked her lips and ventured some conversation into the silence. “It’s been quiet. What do you think the guy’s plan is?”
He rested his head against the wall. “I don’t know. Can you check the phone?”
They’d been checking every hour, and though she was certain it wouldn’t do any good now, she checked again anyway. “Dead.” She walked hunched over to the fridge and removed her pitcher of iced tea. “Do you want something to drink?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
His politeness was grating and she straightened, out of direct range of the windows. With more force than she intended, she set her glass on the counter and filled it up, then drank it in a few gulps.
“I hope Barney’s okay.” The stray thought slipped out of her mouth. She’d gotten too used to talking to Alex. It seemed natural to blurt out her worries.
“The horse?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sure he’s fine.”
His tone didn’t invite any further conversation, but still she tried. “I wish I could check on him. What if he’s—?”
“You are not going outside.”
She had no intention of waltzing outside, but his command scraped along her independent soul. Genevieve glared at him. He returned her gaze, the remoteness in his face chilling her. “I’d appreciate it, as a favor to the man you’re currently fucking, if you’d promise me to exercise some caution for the remainder of our time together. After this is over, you can do whatever you want with all the other lunatics with guns running amok down here. Hell, maybe one of them can even service you when I’m gone.”
Oh, ouch. Having words thrown back in your face was never a good thing, and Genevieve acknowledged the hit with only a slight flinch. If he expected her to fly into a rage or burst into tears, he was going to be surprised. She was almost relieved the other shoe had dropped. What could she say? She was a fair person, and the first to admit she deserved much, much worse than a snide comment in response to her childish behavior and words.
He was still watching her, but she didn’t really know what else to say. She wasn’t about to engage and make this more of a farce. So she returned to her place by the armchair and picked up her book.
Her eyesight blurred, the words dancing in front of her. She frowned and looked up. Her breath caught. Alex’s physical form had become buried under layers of colors. Holy crap, had her full powers returned?
She couldn’t ignore the tempting lure of his aura and she bathed in it. The arousal at the topmost level was easily brushed aside. She didn’t need to see his aura to know that he wanted her, though it was nice to have some proof of how deep his lust went. The hurt underneath it tugged her heartstrings. The pink of his injuries was expected, and she gave it a cursory glance, relieved to see that it looked very faint. To experiment, she gave a few tugs at that layer in critical areas she felt may help him. The pink flared purple for a second. She heard and felt his physical body flinch.
But it was the base layer that called to her. When she reached it, her breath just about stopped.
Christ, blue. It was so damn blue. She’d never seen anything so beautiful and clear. She wanted to roll herself up in his soul, bathe in its beauty.
And he had called her an angel? According to this, he was about two steps away from serious wings. Purity had nothing to do with sexual matters or prayer. It was the basic, bone-deep soul a person was born with. Alex was so pure, her eyes were hurting.
Her instincts had been dead on. Unless she was reading him wrong, and she’d never read anyone wrong, this was one hell of a man. She felt…a bit humbled, frankly, that he had wanted her to the degree that he did.
And he was hers. There was no getting around the way her brain was clamoring for what she was seeing right now. Whether she was worthy of him or not…holy crap, what had she thrown away?
As quickly as it had come, the colors vanished, and she had to blink to bring the here and now back into focus. Everything looked a bit dull and washed out after that little acid trip.
Well. Now she certainly had some thinking to do.
11
Genevieve wasn’t going to be sleeping tonight. Alex didn’t blame her, he was uptight as well. They’d pushed the mattress up against the wall farthest from the windows, right next to the frame of the bed. It was just an illusion of safety, Alex knew. She was sitting on the mattress, scribbling something into a notebook.
The sex from last night, combined with the adrenaline-pumping terror of Genevieve in danger, had just about wiped him out physically. When he’d heard that gunshot, he’d gotten a heavy dose of the PTSD that had kept him from returning to work after Jerry’d been killed. He’d frozen, completely useless for a critical minute. It could have cost Genevieve her life.
A showdown might very well come to a head pretty soon, so he needed to rest. With the phones out, they had no way of calling for help. Sure, if someone had managed to make it up the roads to them, perhaps the police weren’t far behind but that meant his search party had to a) still be looking for him and b) looking in the right place.
He was getting too old for this crap.
Alex pursed his lips, his gaze drawn to Genevieve. He was still smarting over her words from earlier. The fact that it was her defense mechanism didn’t matter. Combined with his terror, the things she’d said had triggered his, oh yeah, well screw you reflex.
For the past few hours he’d been sitting here trying to list every single one of her damn faults.
One, she was secretive as hell.
Maybe she has a reason for it.
Two, she was prickly to the point of being irritating.
You like her sassiness.
She’s not prickly in bed.
Three, the things she’d said had hurt him.
You’re a pussy. Your expectations that she would fall in love with you in the space of a week are ridiculous.
Yeah, but the kicker was, he’d fallen for her, hard. Alex had never been a big believer in love at first sight. But with Genevieve the impossible became possible. If something as magical as her powers could exist, the entire universe opened up, a blank slate of anything goes.
Something bigger than both of them must be out there, something that had brought him to her. He’d never thought of himself as a romantic, but when he’d seen her, he’d known they were meant to be together.
Unfortunately, she clearly didn’t feel the same way. Alex leaned his head against the wall, looking into the darkness. His heart ached at the thought of never seeing Genevieve again.
Of course, he’d take never seeing her again if he knew she was alive and safe somewhere in the world. They were in such a dire situation here, a recovering invalid and a young woman against a trigger-happy gunman. Not good.
As if she heard his thoughts, Genevieve stirred. He spared a glance to find her reaching under the frame of her bed and withdrawing a large box of some sort. They’d left only one candle burning, in an attempt to keep their visible silhouettes to a minimum, so he couldn’t see very clearly. As tempted as he was to ask her what the box was, his pride had him keeping silent. Let her tell him if she wanted to. He didn’t need the scraps.
Nonetheless, his heart sped and his ears perked up when she crawled over to where he sat. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”
“I just realized I could die pretty soon.”
His heart seized, the thin layer of ice he’d drawn around himself cracking at her pragmatic announcement. “The hell you will.” Even if Genevieve didn’t return his love, he’d be damned if he lost her. No matter what he had to do.
“I’m not stupid. Anyway, I don’t have a will or anything. So I wrote down what I want, and I’d like you to sign it as a witness. I don’t know how legal that is, but I figure it’s better than nothing. Just in case, I’m going to tell you too.”
Like a child, he wanted to plug his fingers in his ears and hum. “Please don’t tell me this.”
Her hand rested on his arm. A little zing of warmth flooded into his system. How could she not feel as intensely about him as he did about her? “I have to. This is important. I spread my mom’s ashes around this place.”
He focused on the outdoor landscape. “You want the same thing?”
“No.”
The word was so emphatic, he couldn’t help but look at her. Her eyes shone in the darkness, the whites very visible. “I don’t want to be anywhere near here after I die. I don’t care what happens with my ashes, but I don’t want them here.”
“Why do you live here if you hate it?”
Instead of telling him off for asking her a personal question, she smiled slightly. To his surprise, she answered. “Penance.” Before he could ask her to elaborate, she opened the box in her hands. “These things are important to me, and I’ve written there that I want them cremated with me.”
He didn’t speak, though his curiosity was itching. As if she knew, she picked up the item on top. It was a small rag doll, the kind women used to make by hand. His mother had one of them from her own childhood stored away somewhere. Genevieve’s doll was missing an eye and wore a faded terrycloth dress. “This was the doll I carried around when I was little. Her name’s Betty Lou. When I was seven, I accidentally bleached her dress and cried because I was sure she wouldn’t be pretty anymore. So Mom made a new one out of an old towel. She said she would buy me a new doll when we went to town, but I loved this one so much, I wouldn’t let her.”
She placed the doll gently back in the box. She held up a pressed flower encased in plastic. “This was the first rose I ever saw, when I was five. My mom said I carried it around in my pocket because I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. She planted rosebushes in the backyard for me, but after she died, I guess I didn’t take care of them right, ’cause they all died.”
Next, Genevieve stroked her fingers over a folded-up swatch of material. “My mother had to sell my grandma’s wedding dress. I wasn’t born yet. But she cut off a tiny scrap so I would have something of it.”
Tears were streaming down Genevieve’s cheeks, but she didn’t seem to realize. Alex noticed, though, and his heart was breaking. “It sounds as though she loved you a lot. You should speak of her more often, honor that love.”
“You don’t even know how much she loved me.” She withdrew a piece of paper from the bottom of the box. “This is the last picture I have of her.”
The Polaroid showed an older woman who looked remarkably like Genevieve, only more frail, her eyes sunken, her hair thinning. She sat on a knitted blanket outside. The woman in the photo stared at the photographer with a tenderness that shone through the print and brought a lump to his throat. Thin and wasted, she had the same look his grandmother had worn in the final stages of Alzheimer’s, a kind of resignation and helplessness that conveyed death was near. “She’s as beautiful as you.” Alex passed the photo back to Genevieve, who lowered it with reverence back to the box. The click of the lid closing was very loud in the silent room.
She cleared her throat and handed the notebook and pen over to him. “Can you sign this, please?”
As much as he hated the idea, Alex couldn’t deny the woman anything, and he signed before he glanced over the document. Besides her post-death wishes, which he still couldn’t even begin to consider, she’d also listed a quick rundown of her assets, which were pitifully bare; the cabin and a bank account, which she had left to some man, a friend, Alex remembered her telling him about, and her horse, which she left to…
“You want to leave me your horse?”
“And money for his upkeep.”
Ahh, yes, he saw that as well. “Why are you leaving me your horse?” Forget the fact that if she died, he didn’t think he’d be alive. God as his witness, the only way she wouldn’t be alive was if someone shot through him first.
Her eyes were shadowed, her gaze steady. “I don’t care about the cabin or the money in my account. I love my horse.”
His poor brain tried to make sense of her convoluted female logic, but he was tired and strung out. Fortunately, she continued to speak. “I didn’t mean what I said earlier. I’m sorry, and I want to apologize.”
His heart melted. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. You were tense.”
“It wasn’t nice. The truth is, if I had met you a few years ago, I would have said you were my dream man. You’re so perfect and gentle and kind.”
As nice as it sounded he had to interject. “I’m hardly perfect. You want to know why I was in such a bad mood? ’Cause I’m terrified I won’t be able to protect you.”
She paused. “What?”
“When you said you were lucky because you had me here…I’m no one you want on your team. After my partner died, the reason I couldn’t return to work was because of the flashbacks. Hell, I could barely leave my apartment. I’d hear a car backfiring, or hear someone who sounded the slightest bit like Jerry, and I’d crumble.”
“Post-traumatic stress disorder,” she murmured.
“Yeah. Only I knew I couldn’t get diagnosed, or I’d have a tough time working anywhere in law enforcement. So I pretended I was okay, faked my way through therapy and my brother did his best to find me a job where I wouldn’t have to deal with anything that would set me off.”
He knew that the shame he felt was written all over his face. “I really thought I was getting better. But when I heard those gunshots outside? I froze. Flat-out froze, even though I knew you must be out there and in danger.”
“That’s understandable.”
“No. It’s not. What kind of a cop am I? Hell, what kind of a man am I?”
“I think you’re a very good man. Look at you. You aren’t cowering
under the bed, are you?”
He forced himself to admit the truth that cut into the very base of his machismo. “I’m scared.”
“You’d be stupid not to be. The fact that you’re still willing and ready to face gunfire when you’ve got a mental block against it means that you’re far braver than you’re letting yourself believe you are.” She hesitated. “Trust me when I say this; you don’t have the soul of a coward or a weakling. I can see it.”
Alex blinked. “What?”
“Your aura. It’s beautiful. Except for my mother, I’ve never seen one like it.”
He was startled. “You can see auras? You didn’t mention that.”
“I haven’t done it in a long time. I didn’t think I was able to until tonight.”
Huh. He glanced down at himself, half expecting to see something floating around his body. “Does it mean I’m surrounded by a bunch of colors?”
“Something like that. It’s a bit more complex, but it’s tough to explain. Anyway, you have the soul of a natural-born caretaker.” She shook her head. “You know, I hate to be so blunt…”
“Why stop now?”
“Ha-ha. Anyway, have you ever thought of getting out of law enforcement?”
He shook his head. “All my life, all I ever wanted to be was like my father. I’m never going to be a hero like him, but I don’t know what else to do if I’m not a cop.”
“Well, whatever. Rest assured, I know for a fact how good you are. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Trust me when I say that in this relationship, the problem isn’t with you, it’s with me. I’m the reason it would never work out.”
“Genevieve…”
She surprised him by hugging him. “You tempt me. God, I want nothing more than to be with you.”
“Sweetheart, there’s no way you can make me believe that I’m any better than—”
She gave a short laugh. “You have no idea. Please, just hold me for a while.”
Not quite sure what else to do or say, he tugged her closer and did just that.
