Chapter Eight

Brody

Something's changed in her. But what?

I studied Lindsey the following morning, trying to gauge the difference in her from what I remembered from yesterday to what I was seeing now. She smiled freely. A lightness in her step made me think she was about to dance. She cooked me bacon and eggs, informing me I needed the protein.

"If I didn't know better," I said slowly, sitting at the kitchen table with my coffee, "I'd say you got laid last night."

Lindsey sent me an amused glance. "Typical male. Sex is all you think about."

"Not all. Sometimes we wonder what's gotten into our neighbors."

"Like whose dick is into whose pussy?"

I snorted, almost spilling my coffee. "Not quite."

"Just eat your breakfast and quit trying to psychoanalyze me."

I ate my breakfast with a hunger I hadn't felt for a while and watched Lindsey. No matter how she deflected, I knew something had changed. I also noticed that as I watched TV, Lindsey actually worked on her computer. As in, her writing. I dared not disturb her and listened as she busily typed in her small office just off the TV room.

As my pain had lessened with all the sleep I'd slept, I refused my morning pain killer. My mind refreshingly clear, I pondered the change in her even as I watched an action flick. Then it hit me. Like a bolt of lightning from a blue sky, I knew what had changed.

Lindsey had decided to stay in this house, in this town. Whatever she feared, she feared it no longer.

A weight was now gone from her shoulders.

I recognized it, as I'd felt that feeling myself not so very long ago.

Thusly, I no longer needed to milk the situation in order to stay in her house. I could return to my own without the fear she'd vanish in the night.

Using the end of the movie as an excuse, I stood, stronger on my feet than I'd had since Austin lobbed a Molotov cocktail through my window. In her office behind her, I rested both of my hands on her shoulders.

"You've decided to stay," I murmured. "Right?"

Lindsey stopped typing. "I guess so."

"Whatever is out there is still out there. Right?"

"Yeah."

I spun her chair so that she faced me. "I'm right beside you, girl. All the way."

Lindsey avoided my eyes. "You might get hurt."

"I've been hurt." I touched my left cheek, drawing her attention back to my face. "Not just my body, though it has plenty of scars. My heart has its scars, my soul once crying out in torment. Nothing can be worse than that."

"I can't have your pain on my conscience."

I knelt beside her chair. "That's not your decision."

"It should be."

Bending my head, I kissed her knuckles, one set after the other. "It's out of your beautiful, graceful hands. Deal with it."

"You're a bastard."

Lifting my face, I smiled. "Deal with that, too. Consider me one of those nasty sticker things, the ones that you step on, and its thorn is buried in your foot forever."

Lindsey chuckled. "What a royal pain."

"Yep, that's me."

"You don't know what you're getting into."

"Nor do I care. I'm at your side all the way. Or, in your foot." I grinned. "If you prefer that analogy."

Lindsey cupped my jaws in her hands, gazing deeply into my eyes. "I can fight my own battles."

"Good god, you're a stubborn woman." Grimacing, I got to my feet. "I know you can fight. I know you think you're protecting me. Get over yourself, and let's have some lunch. I'm starving. And you're driving."

"What? I've got work –"

"Suck it up, buttercup. Grab your keys."

Lindsey drove us to the same diner, and the same hostess sat us at a table. She eyed my facial scar as though I'd grown cloven hooves and horns, but she set menus before us and departed hastily. I saw no sign of Austin Rivers nor his sidekick, and absently wondered if Lindsey was correct. He finally believed I never took his dope.

"I've got a decent credit score," I mused, chewing on a straw from my water glass. "I should get a new ride."

"Do you still have a job?"

"So far. My boss hasn't fired me. I should get back to the job site, anyway."

Lindsey nodded toward my right arm. "Can you construct with that wound?"

"Oh, yeah. I'm the supervisor. I tell peons what to do."

"Then get with it." She grinned at me. "Someone's gotta work around here."

We ate our burgers in comfortable camaraderie, talked, smiled, and occasionally laughed. I enjoyed the sight of her smile. Easy. Carefree. Confident. A smile I might fall in love with if I got careless. Lindsey owned a face I could look at for days on end and never grow tired of the looking.

By the way she looked at me, perhaps she felt the same.

"I have to get back to work," Lindsey said as she finished her meal. "I promised my client I'd have this project for him this evening."

She picked up the check, only to have me snatch it from her fingers. "I'm buying."

"Whatever, man. Let's go."

I paid the ticket, then walked on newly healed feet beside her to her car. "I'll go back to work tomorrow," I commented as we crossed the parking lot.

Before she unlocked her sedan, Lindsey seized my chin in her fingers, inspecting my wound closely. She then grabbed my wrist and examined my arm also. "I think you should wait another day."

"I'm good, Doc," I said cheerfully. "Hardly hurts at all."

She unlocked the car, then got in behind the wheel. "And Austin?"

"Gone to sell his dope to the local junkies. Probably forgot all about me by now."

"Let's hope so."

Her hand on the back of my seat, Lindsey carefully backed the car from its parking slot.

The silver pickup sped toward us from nowhere and slammed into the sedan's rear.

The car spun sickeningly, tires squealing. The grinding smash of metal against metal screeched in my ears. My head whipped around on my neck, making it crack. I'm dead.

***

"Hit and run," the cop said. "No witnesses."

He eyed us as Lindsey and I sat on the curb, constantly stared at by passersby and looky-loos hoping to see blood running down the gutter. "Did you see the vehicle?"

Lindsey shook her head. "It happened too fast. I just caught a blur from the corner of my eye."

"All I saw was a silver truck," I added, rubbing my sore neck. "Maybe a Ford, but I can't be sure."

He gestured with the hand not hooked into his duty belt. "What happened there?"

"Lost an argument."

He and his partner exchanged a long look but dropped the matter. As both Lindsey and I waived medical care, the responding EMTs loaded their gear back into the ambulance, waved to the cops, then drove away. The firetruck that also answered the call of an accident lumbered slowly into traffic, shutting off its strobes.

Lindsey rubbed her face with both palms. "Now what do I do? My car is totaled."

The truck's impact on the right rear quarter panel had smashed in the frame and the wheel. Broken glass twinkled on the asphalt. The front where we'd been sitting when the truck hit had remained intact, and the car's airbags had saved us from serious injury. All in all, we'd gotten lucky. Had the truck struck us broadside, I might now be dead.

"Insurance," the cop commented blandly. "That's why you have it."

"Yeah." Lindsey blew out a sharp gust and scraped her hair back. "Thanks."

The officers ambled away, ostensibly to watch for the tow truck. I nudged Lindsey with my shoulder. "How're you feeling?"

"Outside of royally pissed off?"

"Yeah."

"Just sore. No big deal."

I pursed my lips, watching traffic pass by. "I don't know that Rivers did this."

"Doesn't seem like his style, does it?"

"Not really. Drive by shooting, sure. Hit and run, not so much."

She sighed deeply. "Just a shit accident. Just my luck."

"I shouldn't say it as it's so trite." I smiled. "I'll say it, anyway. Could've been a lot worse."

"I hate trite. It's a dirty word."

"So it is."

In due course, the tow truck arrived and started to load the sedan onto its bed. I stood stiffly, helped Lindsey up, then strode toward the driver. "Can we get a lift?"

"Sure."

In time, her car was loaded, and we three climbed into the cab of his tow truck. A tight fit for three people, and the driver himself owned an ample gut, but we didn't have far to go. Fortunately. As he stopped the truck outside our houses, the driver handed Lindsey his card.

"This is where your car will be. Let the insurance adjuster know."

"I will. Thanks for the ride."

We descended from the crowded cab, and Lindsey stood on the sidewalk, watching him take her car away. "Dammit," she muttered. "This sucks rocks."

"I know. Come on. I hear the wine bottle calling us."

Her head down, she trudged in my wake as I strode up her driveway to her front door. Once inside, I poured wine for us both, and half-listened as she called her insurance company. I handed her glass to her, then stepped onto her rear deck to sit and sip.

"They're authorizing a rental," she said, sitting beside me. "I won't be stranded without a ride."

"That's good."

In companionable silence, we sat together. I didn't know what she was thinking, but I had to wonder why events in our lives seemed to be driving us together. As if there was some universal force at play, pushing us into needing one another. If so, why?

"Do you believe in fate?" I asked.

"I don't know," Lindsey replied, shooting me a sharp glance. "Why do you ask?"

"I was just wondering why we're being pushed into one another's arms."

"Are we?" Lindsey sipped from her glass.

"Seems that way."

She shook her head. "I don't think so. It's just bad luck. Yours in that Austin thinks you stole from him, mine in my car getting trashed. Shit happens."

I rubbed my sore neck. "All at once?"

"Now I'll be trite. When it rains it pours."

"Yuck. That was really trite."

"God save us from cliches."

Small kids in the yard behind Lindsey's fence yelled and shrieked, laughing, the sound carrying to us clearly. "Do you want kids?"

Lindsey chuckled. "That's quite the topic change. Yeah. Someday. If I ever find Mr. Right."

"How would you know him if you saw him?" I watched her face closely as she sipped from her glass and pondered her answer.

"You know," she replied at last. "When you meet someone, something clicks. Your gut tells you immediately that this person could be the one."

"We clicked that day we met," I commented. "I felt it. Didn't you?"

Lindsey nodded slowly. "Yeah."

"So maybe we're fated."

"Fated?"

"To be together." I reached across the short distance between us and lightly touched the back of her hand. "Fated mates."

I was glad to see she failed to flinch away. "I'm not sure I believe that much, Brody. That I'd move across the country to live in a house next door to someone I'm destined to be with."

"Can't be a coincidence we clicked the moment we met." I drank my wine, wondering if I was blowing smoke up both our asses. "Something to think about."

"You go ahead. Me, I'm not so sure I can fall in love again."

Ah, a clue to her past. Interesting. "I thought that, too, once," I said slowly, listening to the kids. "I once loved and lost. But life goes on, eh?"

"There you go with the trite again." Lindsey half smiled. "As a writer, that offends my sensibilities."

"Then I shall endeavor to cease and desist with the cliches. Meanwhile, you have a deadline." I swallowed the last of my wine. "Get to work while I cook dinner."