Color of Love (35 page)

Leah smiled wryly. “See? You do begin to understand.”

Jason actually blushed and stared into his coffee, his hands circling the cup tightly. “I’m sorry.”

Leah shrugged. “What for? For being honest enough to try with me? For being honest enough to come here tonight and admit you’d gotten in way over your head?” She looked into Jason’s face, into the expressive eyes with their depth of feelings, much more honest than most people. Through them she might have been able to see into his soul, to explore the depth of his being, to fall into an abyss of caring from which she might never return. …

Her gaze dropped for an erotic moment to his mouth. She remembered passion that had been pure, surprising, unrestrained with no consideration beyond mutual need. That’s when it had been just the two of them without the rest of the world—an impossible situation, as she’d always known. Leah sipped her coffee and felt her throat closing in again. She didn’t want to cry now. She didn’t want it to matter this much.

“I’m sorry, too. I knew it would come to this,” she whispered. She was afraid to talk louder because her voice would lose its strength, or her strength would fall apart.

Jason stared intently at her. “To this? What?” he asked, frowning.

“The end.
Fini
… good-bye.”

“Good-bye …” he repeated blankly. Jason reached across the table and grabbed her wrist, almost causing Leah to spill her coffee. “Wait a minute! Look, I came to tell you I finally realized what you were trying to say to me way back at the start, that a relationship between us would be hard and there’s a lot against it. I came to tell you you were absolutely right. But I didn’t come here to say good-bye.” His voice was urgent, almost angry. “I took a lot of shit from the guys at the precinct. Even Joe had a lot to say about you and me.”

“I’m not surprised,” Leah said. “Joe, of all people, would have a lot to say.”

“Joe’s my partner,” Jason responded angrily, shaking Leah’s arm in his agitation. “He’s my friend and I have to depend on him like nobody else. Maybe I lost a friend, someone who couldn’t stomach the thought …”

Leah tried to pull her arm free. “That’s the way it is sometimes. So what do you want? That I should apologize to you?” she asked bitterly.

“I just want you to hear me and to understand …”

Leah finally freed her arm. “Nobody understands better than me, Jason. If I hadn’t understood, we never would have gotten past last September. There never would have been New Year’s Eve.”

Jason looked defeated and just sat looking remorsefully at Leah. “I’m not like the others.”

“Well, neither am I. But the world still treats me and sees me as just another nigger, and Jason, you’re from that world.”

“Doesn’t it mean anything to you at all that I didn’t treat you that way? Yeah, I got confused. I even got angry. I got suspicious as hell. What the hell is a nigger anyway? Can you explain it to me?”

Leah suddenly stood up, her chair scraping across the tiled kitchen floor. Jason quickly stood as well and reached for her again.

“Can you?” he asked again, desperate in his desire to reach the bottom of their differences.

“It depends on your point of view.”

“Leah …” Jason said loudly, holding her arms and forcing her to look into his face. His fingers pressed tightly into her arms, and Leah squirmed. “I haven’t got one!”

The pressure of his hands hurt. That combined with the stress of their meeting worked to bring Leah’s anxiety to the surface. She felt tears begin to fill her eyes.

“Jason, just go. We were both better off the night of the party. It’s over between us and you’ll soon forget. She tried to walk past him, but he held her steadfastly.

“Dammit! I don’t want to forget. I don’t want to walk away.”

“Then forget what you and I want. Look at the odds. Do you really want to continue being an outcast because of me? It is worth losing friends and family?”

“Maybe it is.”

Leah’s eyes widened as she saw stubbornness stiffening Jason’s body. “Then you’re crazy.”

“I’m not just going to walk away. …”

Silence fell between them. Tension clumped the muscles in Leah’s stomach. This was a challenge. This was a gauntlet being thrown down, and it threw her off guard. Somehow it was now being directed at her. Her heart pounded.

“Then I’ll walk away.”

Jason quickly blocked the entrance to the kitchen. “Don’t run!”

Slowly Leah’s head came up. This was the third time she’d been accused of running away. How convenient of everyone to forget that she had taken a stand at the very beginning. That she had put everything on the line and stood her ground because she believed in Jason. She was livid.

“I’m not running!” she said tightly.

She got mad because Jason was standing in her way. She reached up both fists and slammed him in his chest. “I’m not running, I’m not running …” she shouted. She forced her way past Jason and headed for the living room.

“Then where the hell are you going? And if all of this is just bullshit, then why are you crying?”

Leah stopped in the middle of the living room, realizing that there was no place else to go. She whipped around to face Jason, her face distorted and anguished and wet with tears. Her arms raised in supplication as she sobbed.

“Because … because I don’t know what you want from me. Why can’t you just let it be? Why did you even bother coming tonight? Go away and leave me alone.”

“Leah, listen to me,” Jason said softly, very slowly approaching her, but afraid that she would once again go into a tirade. Jason swallowed away his own emotion because he had a sudden realization. Leah had not once blamed him for anything. She had just not dared to expect anything of him. She had been taught too strong a lesson, and she had never been sure she could trust him with her feelings. He took even more care trying to reach out to her. Leah was like a wild animal poised for flight, and Jason didn’t want her to run away from him.

“Listen …” he coaxed.

Leah stood breathing hard, angry that she had lost control and Jason was still confronting her. She was tired. She was weary of having to be careful, of not being allowed to feel what she really felt. She closed her eyes.

Jason gently touched her shoulders. Cautiously he lifted his hands to touch Leah’s neck and then they framed her face. Her skin was damp and hot. It instantly reminded him of how pliant and feminine Leah always felt against him. She grabbed Jason’s wrists but didn’t try to pull away, or to shake his hands off.

“What do you want from me?” she croaked.

Jason’s eyes roamed over the features of her face. He knew every facet of it, all her expressions, and he could read her better than he had thought. Even now he suddenly could see beyond this moment into a realm of possibilities that seemed both fearful and exciting. For whatever reason, Leah had touched him deep inside. Jason knew that he couldn’t walk away. He didn’t want to.

“I want you,” he answered seriously. “I just want another chance with you.”

Jason then closed her slowly into the circle of his arms as if he was afraid she’d start to fight him again. Leah accepted him stiffly, her arms straight down at her sides and her forehead resting on his chest. Tentatively Jason stroked her back and slowly she relaxed. He took a deep breath and let it out. The tension in his shoulders and neck began to loosen. His chest tingled from where Leah had pounded him, but the memory only made him smile. He felt as if he’d finally gotten an impossibly heavy door open, and had quickly passed through. Now he was on the other side into freedom.

Leah realized that some questions truly have no answers. She didn’t understand why things are the way they are; they just are. She might believe in things, trust in people, and it was because of nothing more than instinct. Yet if she couldn’t trust her instincts, then she had nothing to go on at all.

At the moment it made as much sense as anything else she’d thought recently. Even in this instant she recognized that she and Jason had weathered a hurricane and survived better than they might have hoped for. Despite everything he had come back. And he had stayed.

Leah was curled up beside him on the sofa. His jacket and baseball cap had been discarded on the floor. It had taken a while for her to calm down, and even now not much more had been said.

Jason hadn’t really known what he was going to say to her when he’d arrived earlier. There had just been this urgency to face her and see if they still had a chance.

“Jason …” she began drowsily. “Please don’t make any promises.”

His thumb was stroking the side of her neck and jaw. He sighed. “All right. I promise not to make any promises.”

“I’m serious. They’re too difficult to keep.”

“I know,” he agreed. “I don’t know where this is going.”

“Then you know as much as I do. At least now we’re even.”

He turned his head to glance down at her. “As far as I was concerned, we were always even.”

“Uh-uh.” Leah disagreed. “You had the upper hand. You may not have realized it, but you did. White men do.”

Jason chuckled silently and shook his head in disbelief.

“Right from the beginning we were headed into troubled waters. I knew that if things got too rough I’d probably drown, and you’d backstroke your way to safety,” Leah murmured dryly.

“But you didn’t say no,” Jason reminded her softly.

Leah was quiet for a long time. “I guess I didn’t really want to say no.”

“Even though you were scared?”

She nodded against his chest. “Even though I was scared.”

Jason considered that. “Do you realize that I’m scared, too?” he asked.

Leah frowned thoughtfully. “No. I guess I never thought of that. You know, you can still walk away.”

“I can’t. I finally realized that you’re important to me.”

“You have other women,” Leah said smoothly.

“I don’t suppose it would do any good to say they’re just friends. How about being my main squeeze?” He grinned, nuzzling her cheek with his nose. Then he angled his head down and pressed his mouth to hers. There was an instant charge, as if they were kissing for the first time. Jason closed his eyes and his mouth became more intimate and possessive as she responded to him. He could feel the heat begin to rise in his body. He groaned deep in his chest.

“You don’t feel any different.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I wondered how you’d be in bed. You know why? Because you were so slender and your breasts were small. Your legs were long and your hands warm and delicate. I kept thinking of your hands and how they would feel on my chest, how tight your legs would wrap around my hips—”

“Jason …” Leah exclaimed in shock.

His fingers pressed to her lips to silence her. “Your eyes show you care, and your smile starts from here,”—he touched her brow—“and goes right to here”—and her chin. “I wanted to make love with you because I felt safe. That’s pretty much how I wanted you to feel with me, Leah.” He studied her closely, his brows furrowing, and he ran a finger firmly down the side of her face. “I can’t do a damn thing about your being black, so I’m not going to worry about it.”

“It does matter, Jason. Don’t pretend like you don’t see it. That’s how we got in trouble in the first place, not dealing with it. Whether we like it or not, the world is color-coded, and that probably won’t change in our lifetime. Swimming upstream is hard.”

Jason grew sober and thoughtful. He massaged her neck, and tensed his jaw. “Then I guess we deal with it. I need you, Leah. It took a long time for me to see that, and maybe I was just scared of the responsibility. But the bottom line is I’m not anymore.”

Leah stared at him, amazed at Jason’s admission. “So what am I to be to you? Another friend? Another lover?”

“The one and only.”

Leah didn’t ask the obvious next question. She wasn’t going to try to divine the future. She was hoping it would surprise her.

Jason took hold of her hand. “Did you tell your father about us?” he asked carefully.

Leah glanced briefly at him, somehow not surprised he’d known that she’d gone to visit her father in Chicago. “Yes, I did.”

“What did he say?”

“He was careful not to say how he felt. I don’t think he’s exactly happy about us, but it has nothing to do with you personally, Jason. My father just doesn’t want to see me get hurt.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“But you can’t protect me from getting hurt, either,” she said ruefully. Slowly she sat up and faced him. “What happens now?” she inquired softly.

Jason looked at her and smiled. He stroked her hair and trailed a finger from her throat down into the opening of the shirt, into the valley between her breasts.

“We tell everyone else to go to hell. We stop worrying about what other people think and hope they choke on their hatred. We try to be honest with each other and let the chips fall where they may.” He released Leah and stood up, retrieving his jacket and cap.

“Right now I’m going to work. I’ll catch a bad guy or two and keep the streets of the city safe for liberty and other forms of democracy,” he said flippantly. He turned to Leah and snaked an arm around her waist, hugging her to his side. Together they headed toward the front door.

“We take one day at a time and forget the crap. Let’s not look for trouble, but let’s not run away from it, either. What do you think?”

“It sounds pretty simple.”

They stopped behind the door and faced each other. “It does, doesn’t it?” He opened the door and under the entrance light he caught the shadows on Leah’s face, the sparkle of her dark eyes, wide and questioning. Jason lifted her chin and planted a kiss on her mouth. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back when I get off duty,” he whispered, and then closed the door between them.

G
AIL NOTICED THE CHANGE
in her sister. She knew that Leah had heard from Jason.

She felt she’d lost the battle for her sister’s soul, and a white devil had captured it and held it fast. Leah had always listened to her in the past, always accepted her sister’s advice and guidance. And Gail had always enjoyed the privileges that came with being the elder. She recognized that Leah had changed the balance, and now they were both equal. She heard all about the resurrection of the relationship with Jason, and endured Leah’s buoyed spirits.