More Than This: Contemporary Christian Romance Novel

by Stallings, Staci

  Half a block down and not knowing how much longer they would have together, she tilted her head to look up at him. “So, does your heroine know she’s being followed?”

  His gaze snapped to hers in surprise. “What?”

  She smiled because she knew that had gotten his attention. She swung her gaze back to the sidewalk with a shrug. “I mean, the story would be totally different if she knows, right?”

  A step and another. Hands stuffed in pockets, his gaze had gone back out in front of them, and for a moment she thought he might not reply.

  Finally he exhaled. “Well, now I think I may have more trouble than that.”

  That intrigued her and puzzled her. “Oh? How so?”

  “I think I may know the next book.”

  The thought thudded into her. “The next book? I thought you were writing this one.”

  “So did I.”

  Okay. Now she was completely confused. “Mind explaining that?”

  Jake sighed, long and slow. “Well, I just saw her. In the library.”

  “O-kay…”

  “Not her, her. Exactly. I don’t know. It’s weird.”

  Well, Liz wasn’t going to disagree with that, but she wanted to hear just the same. “Explain the ‘you saw her’ part. She walked in? Her? Or someone who looked like her?”

  He squinted into the question. “It must’ve been someone who looked like her.”

  Yeah, because she’s not real! But Liz kept that to herself.

  “But then my mind, it just kind of… took off.”

  She wanted to follow, but she really wasn’t. “And?”

  He glanced down at her, clearly trying to surmise how weird to be with her. “And then she went upstairs to get this book that has this secret code in it.”

  “A secret code?” Liz shook out of that, trying to keep her voice interested and not freaked out. “Did she find the book?”

  His shrug was barely there. “I don’t know. Some guy pulled a gun on her before I found out.”

  “A gun?” Liz let out a breath and laughed. “Wow. This chick doesn’t mess around.”

  A moment and Jake laughed with her. “She’s always getting into some kind of a jam, that’s for sure.”

  A step and then another.

  Liz glanced up at him again, now more intrigued than frightened. “So, do you have these… visions… often?”

  “Sometimes.” His gaze found the concrete at their feet. “Okay. A lot.” Now he looked like he wanted to hide again; however, they were in the middle of a New York sidewalk, so hiding wasn’t exactly an option. He glanced down at her. “I used to use them to put myself to sleep. I’d find one, dream it up, whatever. Then I’d hit play, and watch it in my mind until I went to sleep.” His shrug pulled up the shoulders of his deep wool coat. “Now, I don’t know. They just… come. I try to get some of them written down. Not that they’re any good. I just wish I could keep ahold of them, you know? Make them into a movie I could watch over and over. Weird, huh?”

  But Liz shook her head. “No, not weird. Intriguing, maybe but not weird.”

  At her apartment building, they turned together and headed inside. It was warmer than the chilly November weather outside.

  Liz never even considered letting him go. “Okay, you get these visions, and they tell you stories.”

  He nodded, suddenly looking not wholly comfortable with the conversation.

  “Do they come like all together, like a whole story, or just bits and pieces?”

  “Bits and pieces mostly. I get some of this story and some of that one. That’s what makes writing so hard. Well, one of the things.” He leaned on the wall watching her unlock her apartment.

  “Oh, yeah? One of the things?” She got the door opened and pushed into the darkness beyond. At the coat rack, she shed her backpack and the coat, barely getting them onto the hooks. “What are the others?”

  He sighed, clearly hesitating with his coat; however, she turned, waiting for him to also come in from the cold. After only a second he complied. “Oh, a lot of things.”

  She put her arms over her stomach and waited for him to remove his coat. “Name one.”

  “Rules.” Shrugging out of the coat, he held it for a second as if he might in fact not stay, and then he reached up and hung it there.

  Rules? That didn’t tell her much. “What kind of rules? Grammar rules?”

  “Yeah, those too.” Looking like a pull toy with one missing wheel, he followed her to the couch, where they each took a side. “But this writing group I’m in has all these rules about everything.”

  “Like?”

  “Backstory and point of view and not using was. I mean how do you write a whole story without using was?”

  Lifting her eyebrows, she shook her head. “I have no idea. What do they have against was?”

  He laughed. “I have no idea.” He drifted out of the laugh. “I just want to write my stories, you know? I want to tell the stories that come up in my head, but when I try, then I run into all of these reasons what I’m writing isn’t good enough.”

  “Good enough?”

  His shrug was sad. “For them. The editors. The world.”

  Liz considered her next words very carefully. She knew what they had done to him last time. “Well, would you consider letting a friend read it even if the world never gets to?”

  Jake’s gaze had fallen between them, and her heart fell with it. He looked just this side of crying. Gently she reached across the expanse of space to lay her hand on his.

  “Hey.” The syllable was soft. “I’m not saying you have to, just that…” She sat back, letting the words wind between them. “I’d like to sometime… if you don’t mind.” Why she felt so drawn to him, so responsible for not hurting him, so protective, she couldn’t adequately explain. There was just something about him that was at once so mysterious and yet so vulnerable. He looked like a little kid, all alone on a playground when all the other kids had someone to play with. “You know, I really liked hearing about her. Jasmine, right? I mean that whole book with the secret code in it thing. That’s cool stuff. Do you think the book was really there, or had the guy with the gun taken it?”

  Somehow Jake hadn’t realized she would be at all interested in his made-up, fantasy world, and at the question, his gaze jerked up to hers to see if she was teasing him. She didn’t look like it. He thought through the dream or the vision or whatever it was.

  Jake scratched the five o’clock shadow that never really left as he thought into the vision. “I don’t know. I really think he was waiting there for her.”

  “He knew she was coming?”

  “No. Not like he knew she was coming, but maybe he was part of the secret society too. Or he knew what the book was and what it could do if the right person came for it.”

  “Oh, so he was guarding the book?”

  “Yeah, or maybe he was just waiting for someone who came to ask about the book so he could kill them.”

  “Well, which is it?” Liz leaned forward, toward him, as if he held the secret to life. “How do we find out?”

  His eyebrows arched. “We?”

  “Well, yeah. You can’t just leave me hanging with a girl in a library and a guy with a gun pointed at her.”

  Jake dug into the vision. “Well, it wasn’t really pointed at her.”

  “Huh? I thought it was.”

  “So did I, but now that I think about it, he was holding it up— like someone who was there to protect her.”

  That threw new intrigue into her face. “Or to protect the book. Did he say anything? Anything that would tell us what his intentions were?”

  “‘Ms. Van Ongevalle, follow me.’ That’s what he said.”

  “Van…?” she stumbled on the name.

  “That’s Jasmine’s last name.”

  “Oh. Well, how did he know her last name?”

  He stopped, not at all sure. “I don’t know.”

  “Okay. But he wants her to follow him?
Where?”

  “To the back. There’s a secret door behind a stack of books.”

  “Wait!” Liz jumped up and ran for the door where she grabbed her notebook and pen from her backpack and raced back. She bounced onto the couch. “We need to get this down, so when you get to the computer, it’s not gone.”

  Fear burst through him as he looked at her. What was he doing telling her all of this? This was nuts.

  “Seriously,” she said, her pen poised as her gaze found him. “Okay. He takes her to a secret room behind the shelves. And what’s back there? Knives? Guns? The society? What?”

  Feeling a little strange but much less so than he would ever have thought, he shut off the concern of what she would think of him and let the vision take over. “More books.”

  “More books.” She wrote that down. “What are they?”

  And then, for no reason he could really explain, he simply let go and started telling the story as it came to him. It really was like it was just playing out on a television in front of him. Details, scenes, what they said, Jasmine how she looked, and the book. It amazed even him at how easily it all flowed from his mind. He didn’t censor it, didn’t edit or question. He just let it come. It was like breathing for the first time ever.

  Hours later they were still sitting on the couch. The light from outside had long ago faded, and they had resorted to using the little lamp on the end table. Together, they had been immersed in a tangled web of secrecy and lies so deeply that neither had thought to so much as move since Liz had turned the light on. Jasmine was still alive although just how neither could say. She’d had quite a day.

  Jake let a tired yawn take over his body, and he stretched far beyond the couch. Shaking out of the story, he came back to reality. It was much like waking from an actual dream.

  “Do they always come like that?” Liz asked as she sat, notebook still opened, looking at him.

  “No, not like that. Not most of the time.” He sat forward, glad for the stretch and for the company. He anchored his elbows on his knees and fought another yawn. How could he be so tired from just sitting there all day? Spinning his wrist, he was surprised at the time— nearly ten o’clock. “Oh, man! I didn’t realize it was so late.” He stood, knowing he had far overstayed his welcome. “I’m sorry. I really should get going. You haven’t even eaten supper yet.”

  She didn’t stand quite so quickly, and when she did, it was reluctantly, pulling on the bottom of her shirt and pitching the notebook to the couch where she had sat. “You know, you really don’t have to go.” Reaching up, she scratched the back of her head. “I mean, you’ve got to eat too. If you…”

  Pleasant surprise danced through Jake. Was she hinting what he hoped she was? They’d been together almost seven hours, and she still wasn’t ready to get rid of him? “I’d hate to take advantage.”

  Her shrug was courtesy of having her hands in her back pockets. “What advantage? I was just going to have a grilled cheese sandwich and some soup.”

  “Ooo. Wow. Grilled cheese and soup?” he asked, teasing. He put his hands together and rubbed them. “How could I pass that up?”

  She smiled at him hopefully. “You can’t?”

  “You sure you don’t mind?”

  “It’s grilled cheese. Are you sure you don’t?”

  Preparing supper together was more fun than preparing supper had a right to be. Liz couldn’t decide how this had all become so easy. He stood at the stove over the little skillet, flipping the bread, looking like he was making a masterpiece instead of grilled cheese. For her part, she emptied the soup into a pan, turned it on, and started setting the table.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t get anything read of your books,” he called from the kitchen as she stood over the table, wondering how soup and grilled cheese could feel so intimate and romantic. Maybe she should get the candles out. Then she laughed at her own insanity.

  “No, I had fun writing.” She went back into the kitchen and sucked in a fistful of air at the sight of him, standing there over her stove. “Are the other two books that intense?”

  “They try to be, but it’s a lot harder than it looks.” He flipped one piece of bread and barely caught it with the pan.

  “You look kind of dangerous there.” Laughing, she grabbed two glasses out of the cabinet. “Remember, we have to eat those things.”

  “What fun is cooking if you have to do it the boring way?”

  With a lift of her eyebrows, she gazed at him skeptically. “The boring way?”

  “Yeah, you know. Stir the beans. Check the bread. It’s a lot more fun if you put some style into it.”

  Strangely, she would never have pictured him cooking with style when he was ensconced in his little corner at the coffee shop. There, he had looked sullen and sour on life. Here, he looked as alive as an electric wire. “Do you always put some style into it? Even when you’re alone?”

  His gaze came over to hers, and there was a touch of sadness there. “Yeah, but it’s not nearly as much fun.”

  With a nod, she went back out to the dining room. She knew exactly what he meant. When she came back to the kitchen, he was putting the finishing touches on the cheese sandwiches. Man, she liked that sight. She could stand there and watch him forever. “So, what’s next for Jasmine? Is she going to make it to the FBI with what she knows?”

  “Well, that depends. Is this in the first 100 pages or the last?”

  “I don’t know. I thought you knew.”

  “I never know. I just kind of grab on and hold on, praying she doesn’t sling me off of the train.”

  Liz laughed. “It’s so weird.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve always thought about writing a book, but in my imagination it was never quite like that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s like… I always thought you would sit down and plot the whole thing all the way through to make sure things fit together before you started.”

  “Some people do.”

  “Why don’t you?” She really wanted to know. The whole thing had her fascinated beyond reason.

  He shrugged as he placed the two perfectly made cheese sandwiches on a plate and cut them into diagonal halves. “Not my style. I like not knowing.”

  “Yeah, but doesn’t that drive you nuts? I mean there have to be times when you don’t even know what happens next.”

  “Sometimes.”

  She grabbed the soup pan and a ladle and followed him into the dining room.

  “And sometimes I get to a place, and it’s like, ‘Great. Now what?’ But I think if I tried to write the other way— the plotting thing, I’d get bored silly, and what’s the point of writing if you can’t have some fun with it?”

  Liz sat, enthralled with the passion he spoke about writing. She’d never felt that way about anything— save possibly for the Literacy Center, and even that, she wasn’t yet sure about.

  When they were seated, he didn’t reach for anything. Instead, his gaze slid over to her. “Do you want to pray?”

  That he remembered slammed into her. “Sure.” Bending her head, she felt him do the same. It made all the words jam up into her throat. “Dear God, thank You for today. Please bless this food. Thank You for leading us as You have today. Please bless us and guide us from this moment forward. Amen.”

  “Amen,” he said, and it sounded like a stamp on the prayer. A moment and he looked up at her. “So, how’s school going? Did you pass that test?”

  And just like that, they spent another hour talking and enjoying each other’s company.

  By eleven-thirty, Jake knew he had to leave though to be honest, he really didn’t want to. This had been the most magical day of his entire life. As she followed him to the door, walking him out, he fought with his nerves and his mind. It kept sliding around the edges of things he knew he shouldn’t be thinking about. At the door, he grabbed up his coat and slid it on. “Well, thanks. I had a really good time today.”

&n
bsp; “Yeah.” She sounded a little breathless as if the short walk had squeezed all of the air out of her.

  Coat on, he turned to her, his back to the door. How could he say good-bye? Better yet, how should he? Was a kiss out of the question? But if he started, could he stop?

  “Oh!” Suddenly, she gasped and spun back for the room.

  That shocked the thoughts right out of his head. His gaze followed her as his mind questioned where she was going. At the couch, she pulled up the notebook and headed back to him. Man, he liked everything about watching her do that.

  “You’re going to need this.” She held the notebook out to him.

  However, he just stared at it. “I can’t take your notebook. You need it.”

  “It’s my extra one. Seriously. Take it.” She pushed it closer to him, and although he knew somehow he should explain it to her, he couldn’t risk upsetting her. Not after today. Not after sitting with her and letting her into his weird world.

  Carefully he accepted it and nodded. “Thanks.”

  “No. Thank you.” Her gaze was on the notebook rather than on him. A moment and it slipped up to his. “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”

  He couldn’t stop the smile. “Me, too.”

  The notebook now transferred, she slipped her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. “Um, so what are you doing tomorrow?”

  Surprise came again. “Tomorrow?”

  “Yeah. I just thought… you know, if you weren’t doing anything…”

  Pure astonishment smashed into him. Was she serious?

  “I mean if you don’t want to…” She looked like she might honestly think that was possible.

  He stepped only one step closer to her. “Tell you what. You come up with something, and we’ll do it.”

  Her eyes went wide. “Anything?”

  His smile widened, filling his heart. “Anything. Your choice.”

  When she nodded, it started small and then grew more solid. “Okay. What about say like ten or something?”

  “Ten it is. I’ll be here.”

  “Cool.” And strangely, she looked like she really meant it.

  “Thanks for today.” Jake bent only halfway to brush a kiss on her cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”