Tru Love (9 page)

He shakes his head. “You’re more than that. You’re strong and
sunny
.” She feels her eyebrows shoot skyward and opens her mouth to protest, but he doesn’t let her. “You are, Genny. You have a kind of light about you, the kind of thinking that makes anything possible. Like starting This Old Rag.”

              Free prom dresses for girls who can’t afford one. She did that with her mother.

              “That was easy,” she says. “My mom was a super model. She
makes
dresses.”

              But he’s shaking his head. “But you didn’t have to do it. You wanted to do it. And I want that kind of light in my life.”

Why? Because he sees a lot of darkness?

She frowns. “How did you find out about that anyway? The net?”

“It sucks being the child of the rich
and
famous, doesn’t it? It’s impossible to stay out of the papers.”

“Not when you’re quiet. I only show up now when I’m out with my mom or my dad, doing something official.”

“Official?”

The bell rings before Genny can bore him with the details of fall fashion shows and the ESPN Sportsmen Awards.

“You’ll let me walk you to class?” he asks. “I promise to remember that you’re not a sheep.” He smiles and it takes the sting out of the words. “Whatever that means.”

              “It means I will not go blindly.”

              He nods, but the smile grows into a full grin. “Go where?”

              She taps his chest, directly over his heart. “Here.”

Chapter Twelve

              Truman drives a Toyota Tundra, brand new and with all the bells and whistles. Genny leans into the leather captain’s chair, which actually swivels so she can set it at an angel that makes staring at him easier—she chooses discretion and keeps it pointing north. He has a stereo with a six setting CD changer and amplified speakers positioned at the back of the cabin. It’s green—the color of the Scottish ocean when it’s all stirred up, he tells her—and the bed is equipped with a tow bar.

              “We like to camp,” he explains, as they pull out of the student parking lot and into traffic. “But nothing too rustic. In fact, my mom won’t leave civilization behind at all. We tow a camper and a generator. She gets her TV, internet and, of course, her cell phone.”

              “Why go at all?” Genny asks.

              “To please us,” Truman says. “My father and I like to get away from it all. We hike, river kayak, and get in a lot of fishing while she stays behind ‘plugged in’.

              He smiles fondly.

              “You like your parents,” she observes.

              “Of course.”

              “Some kids don’t.”

              “You do.”

              “Yes. I’m lucky. My parents are pretty cool. They make an effort.” She thinks of her mother, this morning, patiently cutting and gluing Genny’s life into a keepsake and the message her father left on her cell phone two days ago, when he was told Genny was missing from school—she could hear the nerves fluttering in his voice. “They love me.”

              “What is your father going to think of me?” Truman asks and Genny turns so she can watch his profile. He seems tense. He isn’t smiling. He draws a deep breath that makes his shoulders lift. For a brief moment her face rested on his shoulder, her lips close enough to kiss his neck. Maybe they brushed his skin. She was too shocked, and not yet aware of him as she is now, to remember if that happened, but she has his warm, citrusy scent stamped forever on her senses.

              He turns toward her and his eyes lock with hers, flare when

they read what she’s thinking, turn to fire before he’s back to watching the road.

              “Damn,” he mutters. “Damn.”

              She turns so that she’s gazing out the windshield. They’re close to the Bay and she cracks her window to let in the salt air and, hopefully, some common sense. After a moment, she manages a throaty, “You’re worried?”

              “About your father? Hell, yes. I’ve seen him on TV,” Truman stresses. “He’s Paul Bunyan incarnated.”

              “But a softie.”

              “With you, maybe.”

              “Usually.”

  Not after she wrecked his car. She scared him and he reacted, grounding her for the entire length of her probation—eight months. She totally ruined her freshman year of school, losing out on the fall and spring dances, and refusing summer invitations. Her mother allowed her visitors—Hunter and Serena only—but she had to be home by three pm and wasn’t allowed back out until the next morning, when she was
escorted
to school.

Worse, she lost her father’s trust and had to prove herself to him. One mistake can really screw up your life. She’s grateful she could fix hers. But it took work. Her father wasn’t taking any chances, so her weekends with him were long and mostly quiet hours. He prowled around the condo, babysitting her. After three months, and not one appearance from one of his lady friends at the dinner table, Genny felt like she was drowning in a trough of silence. She promised, if he gave her the chance, that she would be friendly to his dates. She would try to like them.

What followed was four months of role-playing, not of the Dungeon and Dragon variety, but the Barbie meets Ken and his little girl Skipper kind. She saved her opinions until after she was alone with her father, and then she rated his dates for him, detailed their good and bad points. She found only one woman whom she genuinely thought had promise. He didn’t always listen to her. He let that one walk away.

              She wonders if Truman ever dated a girl with a criminal record. Well, maybe not criminal—her offense was juvenile and it’ll be wiped off her record the day she turns eighteen, but still.

              “So?” Truman presses.

              “What?”

              She got tangled up in her thoughts and forgot about Truman and his anxiety, which, when she steals a peek at him, seems to have increased a notch or two.

              “Your father, Genny,” he reminds her. “Will he tie me to the spit and roast me over the coals?”

              “You’re being ridiculous.” So much so, Genny starts to laugh. And it feels good. The heavy thoughts splinter and fall away and she feels light enough to float.

              “Are you enjoying yourself?”

              She ignores the snipe in his tone and says. “Can’t you tell?”

              He gazes at her, his eyebrows drawn over his nose in frustration. Genny grins at him.

              “Take it easy,” she advises. “Right now, he thinks you walk on water.” He looks confused until she says, “You saved my life, remember?”

              His white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel loosens. “Yeah,” he agrees. ”That’s right.”

She lets that go. It still makes her skin tight, thinking about how fragile her life really is, but she has a more pressing matter to clear up.

“It doesn’t seem to bother you,” she says, “that I stole my father’s car and turned it into a toaster.”

“It bothers me that you could have been killed,” he says. He shakes his head, looking for clarity. “I’m surprised you walked away from it without a scratch.”

              “I have a juvenile record,” she states, lifting her chin as she challenges him.

              “You made a bad decision. Big deal. Isn’t that what being a teenager is about—
learning
to make good decisions?” he answers, unruffled.

              “If we start dating, you’ll have to introduce me to your parents as ‘Genny Vout, daughter of super model and super slugger, known best for grand theft auto.’”

              He laughs and claps a hand against the steering wheel. “Now you’re being ridiculous.”

              “I don’t feel ridiculous,” she mutters. Sometimes she feels like a criminal. Like right now, when she’s wondering if she’s

good enough for Truman.

“One bad decision doesn’t define a person.” He says, and spares her a glance. “Don’t you think?”

              For about five minutes, when she was trapped inside the Porsche and not sure of what she hit, she worried it was another car, that she hurt someone, maybe even killed another person. Before the fire fighters arrived and cut her out of the twisted metal that closed around her like a glove, her mind went deep into that place full of claws and talons.

              “It was horrible,” he says. “I can see it in your eyes.”

              “I thought I killed someone,” she admits.

              “And you felt badly about it.”

             
Still do.
“That’s an understatement.”

              “A truly bad person doesn’t look back,” he reveals. “He doesn’t feel remorse or empathy; he doesn’t shed a tear.”

              She shed plenty of those. And when the judge decided she shouldn’t be trusted behind the wheel until the age of majority, she silently agreed.

              And that’s why her parents know they did a good job with her, in spite of the evidence. Because she cried about it in her sleep; because she sought, on her own, a way to make it right and volunteered a full year for MADD, though she wasn’t drinking the night she took her father’s car, or ever had more than a sip from her mother’s wine glass on occasion.

She had a long string of good deeds behind her before she even felt the warm heaviness of her father’s car key in her hand, and a long string since. She tries to remember that.

              “Why did you take the car?” Truman wants to know.

              Genny settles back in her seat and watches the buildings as they pass by. They’re close now. She can see the lip of the coliseum in the skyline.

              “Have you ever felt, I don’t know, like nothing can catch you? Like you’re untouchable?”

              He nods. “I think it’s a phenomenon known exclusively to children of the rich. We pretty much get what we want, when we want it. It makes us feel like we have superpowers that make us stronger, faster, sometimes better than average.”

              So he’s thought about it too.

              “Yeah. But that night, my father was coming down on me pretty hard about my behavior with his new girlfriend. And he was right. I was rude to all of his girlfriends, mostly because they weren’t my mom. Sometimes because they lacked any evidence of a brain. Take it from me, the blond bimbo really does exist.

“My father was being reasonable. He wanted me to give them a fair chance and, if possible, not itemize for them all the reasons I thought a relationship wouldn’t work out between them.

“I excused myself from the table. I think I was really trying to get away from myself, because I knew, even then, that I was behaving badly, but when I walked into the kitchen his car keys were resting on the counter like an invitation. I slipped them into my pocket. The rest was easy. Well, maybe not the transmission. It took me several blocks before I was able to move without stalling.”

              She tries to shake the memories and looks for a distraction.

              “Tell me about some of your bad decisions,” she says.

              “What makes you think I have more than one?”

              “You’re a guy,” she says. “You mature at a much slower pace.”

              “Do I look immature to you?”

              No. And he acts way too grown up, too. “You’re avoiding.”

              “We’re here.”

              He pulls into the line for VIP parking and Genny searches  her purse for her pass. It’s a team ID, with her name and face plastered on it along with the logo and her father’s name typed in as “
Father of the minor child.”

             
She hands it over and then presses, “We have time for one. A small one,” she tacks on when his eyes get that brooding look.

              “What if I’m not as lucky as you, Genny?” he returns. “If I didn’t get a chance to learn from my mistake before I hurt someone?”

              Genny loses herself in the throbbing heaviness of his voice, in the appeal in his eyes.
What if he hurt someone?

             
“Would that matter to you? Would that change the way you feel about me?”

             
Would she hold it against him?

             
The moment stretches between them, thins the air in the truck cabin, makes her eyes feel dry and gritty as she strains to find an answer they can both live with.

He’s sorry for it, whatever he did, she tells herself. She’s known all along that Truman runs deeper than any other guy she’s met. He
feels
deeper, for others around him. In his most difficult moment, Truman changed for the better.

              It would matter to her if he hurt someone. She would worry about what it did to Truman and what it did to the injured, but she wouldn’t judge him for it.

              Her answer must show in her eyes, because the tension falls away from Truman’s face and his lips part on a breath.

              He was holding his breath, waiting for her answer, she realizes. It was that important to him.

              He leans into the space between them. His hand, warm and calloused, curves around the back of her neck and he nudges her closer. Citrus scent and moss green flecks in his eyes, those are her last coherent thoughts before his lips press against hers in a slow, breathless, electric kiss. He pulls back slightly, and then sinks deeper into the kiss, moving her lips apart with his, touching his tongue to hers.

She feels his mouth everywhere, like a current running over her skin. She pushes her hands into his hair; the cool strands flow like water between her fingers. Her heart stumbles and slams against her chest.

The rap on the driver’s side window splits them apart faster than a bucket of cold water. Truman turns his body, blocking her view of the interloper, but also his view of her. Which is probably a good thing. When Genny glances down, she discovers that the sheer fabric of her bra isn’t up to the job of protecting her modesty. She folds her arms over her chest.

              “Is Ms. Vout in the car with you, Sir?”

              Truman nods, then says in a thick voice, “Yes, she is.”

              “I need to make a match with the ID,” the man explains, sounding apologetic.

              Truman glances over his shoulder, his eyes running from the top of her head, over her face, down her chest to her folded arms. His lips thin and he looks about to refuse the man’s request so Genny takes some initiative. She pops her head over Truman’s shoulder and smiles at the guard.