Chapter 7 #2
Trudy is roughly the age my mother would have been, so in her late sixties, like Mary.
She’s a robust woman with ebony skin, and her current hairstyle is a short cut with sharp bangs.
Because she exited the passenger side of the vehicle, I squint in the direction of the driver’s side, curious about who else is joining us today.
Trudy greets Cort and Vale first since they stand closest to the drive.
My gaze, however, is aimed at Trudy’s car, like I can’t seem to look away until I know who drove her and Simon here. The pull to that vehicle is unsettling, pleasantly eerie. Like the air almost crackles, yet it’s a perfectly sun-filled day.
Must be the heat, I decide, until a feminine form finally slips from the driver’s side, standing tall and curvy in all the right ways with a ponytail of wild, dark curls on the top of her head.
I’m frozen in place, watching as she shuts the door, and then approaches where Trudy stands near Vale and Cortland.
Large, dark sunglasses cover her eyes, while she wears bib overalls with a skin-tone tank top underneath. She looks like a fucking supermodel. The air around her says don’t speak to me. And yet, without seeing her eyes, I already know what they look like.
Mercury and magic, and haunting, because I haven’t been able to get them out of my head for three long months.
Three months where I’ve been kicking myself for not asking her if I could come into her hotel room. If I could have her real name and her phone number.
Three months where I still feel her lips against mine.
Three months of imagining all the ways she’d press against me, beneath me, above me. With my hands on her hips, like my palms were made to fit there.
“Vale, I don’t know if you remember my niece, Tallulah.”
My head swivels from the tongue-tying beauty to Trudy Wallace and back.
What?
Tallulah? How close the name is to the nickname I’d given her . . . Delilah. When she’d called me Samson at first and ended the night calling me Superman.
Hell, her voice has been haunting me as well, saying things she didn’t say, like she wanted me to invite me into her room, wanted me inside her body.
Eventually, I feel my toes and move my feet, crunching over the gravel to approach this new collection of guests.
Vale is hugging Trudy while I stand just off Cort’s left side.
While I’ve finally been able to move closer to them, the one thing that refuses to shift is my gaze. From her. Tallulah.
“Stone,” my sister says, at the same time as Tallulah looks in my direction and quietly gasps. Her lush lips separate only for a brief moment before she slowly removes her sunglasses.
The resemblance to Trudy is non-existent, aside from their similar jet-black hair. Tallulah is almost willowy on top with wider hips. Her eyes are shaped differently, sharp and silver compared to the warm, rich brown of Trudy’s. And her lips are deeply pursed.
Remaining stuck in place, like a deep-rooted weed, my tongue is knotted, my eyes transfixed, until she catches on them and immediately looks away.
Stricken.
Like a baseball bat to the gut, I feel the hit.
What the hell was that expression all about?
Finally, I find my manners and move my feet again, stepping toward this surprising, stunning, puzzling newcomer.
“Um. Hey. Welcome to my home.” I sound like a fucking robot as I extend a hand, equally robotic in action, when I’ve had my lips on hers. When I’ve already felt the warmth of her palms and the curve of her hips.
When she finally sets her hand in mine, we don’t shake as much as hold our hands together. Wrapping my fingers tighter around hers, a sense of rightness circles me.
She’s here. This is her. Destiny did not fail me.
Only, her hand lies limp in mine, like I’m holding a dead fish.
What the hell?
I apply more pressure, almost refusing to let go until she looks at me, meets my eyes again.
Except she doesn’t. She blatantly refuses to look at me, instead glancing around me like I’m not standing here, holding her hand, squeezing, straining for her attention.
What am I missing?
“The name is Taxi,” she corrects her aunt in a bored tone, like she’s been forced to greet me, and doesn’t like the introduction. Like we’ve never met. Like she’s never seen me before and isn’t seeing me now.
Somewhere behind Taxi, Trudy scoffs, then chides, “Tallulah Alexander.”
Tallulah’s gaze flings back to me. “Nice to meet you.” The afterthought to her aunt’s scolding suggests she’d rather spit in my eye.
Taken aback, I blink as I stutter, “Yeah, nice to meet you.” The sound of my own voice is unrecognizable. Monotone. Flat.
Trudy chuckles. “You two have met, you just don’t remember.”
A breath catches in my throat, and I choke. Of course I remember. One does not forget kissing Tallulah Alexander. Taxi.
How does Trudy Wallace know we’ve met? Did Tallulah—Taxi—tell her about me? About us? And if Trudy knows, why is Taxi acting like it never happened?
“She was the one always running around the yard, causing chaos as a child, painting my shed a nifty shade of purple with green accents.” Trudy chuckles. “Never knew where she got the paint. Or the energy.”
“Aunt Trudy,” Taxi groans, her hand tightening in mine for a split second, holding on like she’s grounding herself.
I chuckle at the thought of her younger, wild spirit. Sun-kissed skin. Dark, flowing hair. Fierce energy. Totally unstoppable. That spunk she might have had as a child? I see it in her now and it makes her utterly magnetic.
So magnetic that I’m still holding her hand.
“Beautiful,” I whisper aloud, picturing it; her in her element, painting buildings, expressing her love of art.
Taxi drops my hand and slips her sunglasses back on her face to shield her eyes, but I don’t miss a tremor in them before she tucks them into the deep pockets of her bib overalls.
She glances around me once more, like I’m a door instead of a window.
“Heard there’s a baseball game. Are we going to play ball or what?
” Her voice lifts, rising like when I met her in that Knoxville bar, and she practically shouted a name.
Samson. The raised cadence is a distraction I instantly remember and recall how it led to a momentary game, only I’m not part of this new match.
Irritation takes over. An itch that demands to be scratched. Just what the fuck is she playing at here? Why is she acting so cold? What is she doing in Sterling Falls? And why, if I apparently know her, did I not recognize her in Knoxville?
“Oh, we’re going to play alright.”
Because dammit, I want to know where she’s been all this time. And more importantly, why I feel this visceral need to know more about her when she so clearly wants nothing to do with me.
I step aside and wave my arm, inviting her to step forward. The second she does, I step up behind her, as close as I can get.
“So, it’s Taxi?”
She doesn’t respond. Head high, hands in her pockets, she acts like I’m not a shadow at her back, trailing behind her, chasing her.
“Why are you here?” That itch for knowledge is darn near painful. “Or better yet, why are you acting like this?”
Without acknowledging me, Taxi walks right up to Clay, like she’s assigning herself a spot on his team.
Glancing at my brother, his eyes widen at her brazen approach. I’m certain he can read my face. A question that’s become a theme is blinking in his gaze like a neon light.
What the hell is going on?
Have I entered an episode of Twilight Zone? Maybe I’ve been beamed up into an alternate universe?
First Cortland Haven and half his family are in my yard.
Then Trudy and her grandson.
And now this. Tallulah Alexander and her cold shoulder.
Definitely feels like a second Ice Age on this planet.