Chapter Fourteen #2
“Freeze,” she repeated, feeling memories from a high school science class nudge the back of her brain. Fight, flight, or freeze. The body’s response to stress. “I’d forgotten about that one.”
“Don’t blame you. It’s the worst of your options.”
Amanda sat down again. “I don’t recall that explanation from science class.”
“Think of it like this,” he suggested. “If you can’t fight or flee, then you’re paralyzed.”
She did have the tendency to freeze up, but that had always played second fiddle to leaving or inflicting bodily harm.
“But you don’t freeze? Then you’re doing better than say…I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Bambi.”
“What?” Her forehead scrunched.
“Jeez.” He scrutinized her. “Who doesn’t know Bambi?”
“I do!”
He laughed. “Think about deer. When they run out onto the road, a car comes, and they see headlights. Some run. Others freeze. Freezing never works out.”
“You made your point.” She side-eyed him. “But now I can’t shake the possibility of Disney horror movies. Bambi versus traffic.”
He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “I didn’t think you were going to jump because I pushed you about the past.” He stared up at the sky, then held her gaze again. “But, I was concerned, and…I wasn’t ready to leave.”
Doubt and desire wound up her back. Amanda’s eyes dropped to the edge of the building instead of the man by her side. The drop was less daunting than the way he looked at her.
Pigeons squawked. They took off and re-landed. She watched them settle, then summoned courage to look at him again. “You said something about recognizing me.”
He moved a hand to bat her words away, then stared at the city. “Forget I said it.”
Amanda rolled her lips together and wanted to tell him more. She wasn’t sure how much or what she was capable of putting into words. “Have you ever wanted to be someone else?”
He leaned forward and rested his arms on a barrier wire, then tilted his head her way. “I wanted to be a video game tester when I was a kid.”
Amanda laughed.
“I’m serious.”
He cleared his throat and shrugged as though Titan’s towers weighed his shoulders to the ground. “There was a time when I wished I could’ve switched places with someone.”
The heaviness of his sadness didn’t need to be explained.
Even as he tried to hide the pain, his burden made itself known.
Amanda wanted to comfort him. To touch his shoulder, to offer a hug.
But the rules she lived by, the ones that protected the world from her…
they didn’t take into account another person’s pain and burden.
Dylan would’ve called her out on that—and he was probably the only person who would’ve been able to get her to see how selfish her behavior had been.
“I wish I could’ve switched places with someone, too,” she admitted. “Though, now that I think about it, I don’t think they would’ve been happy with…” Tears welled. She shook her emotion away. “I only meant to tell you that sometimes I think everything would be better if I wasn’t me.”
He inhaled and held it for a long time, letting his somberness evaporate. “You mean right now?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
The man tilted his head toward her. “Why?”
Amanda knotted her fingers in her lap and wasn’t sure how to elaborate without opening a flood of questions. “Anonymity would be easier for me.”
With a half-hitched grin, he shook his head. “I don’t know a thing about you, and trust me, you’re not making my life easy.”
“Hey.”
“But I like it,” he continued, “and I like you.”
Her eyes peeled. “You don’t even know me.”
“I’ve been trying, if you haven’t noticed.” He grinned in a way that made her heart skip. “That okay with you?”
She blushed and nodded, not trusting her voice.
“All right then. Good to know.” He repositioned. “What do you want to do?”
“With you?”
“Yeah.” He wriggled his eyebrows, intensifying the heat in her cheeks, but he playfully back-pedaled. “In general.”
She had no idea what possibilities could exist if she took a chance on him. I want to…make a friend? Jump him in the stairwell? Was there a middle ground that she couldn’t see? Amanda scanned the rooftop like she’d missed a billboard sign. “I don’t know how.”
“Unless you were someone else,” he offered.
She nodded. “I know that doesn’t make sense.”
“Let me see if I understand what you want.” His low voice reverberated down her spine, and she shivered. His eyes danced, tightening at the corners as though he were imagining the possibilities of what she might want. “It’d be easier for you to go out with me if you weren’t you.”
“Exactly.” A nameless night out! But wow, that sounded shady. “I mean …” Her ears and cheeks flamed. “What I meant was—”
“Hang on. I have an idea for you to consider.”
She couldn’t blame him if he propositioned her to go jump in bed. If he read between the lines, he might see that as what she wanted.
“What if you stay you,” he suggested, “but we stick to your no-name rule?”
“Really?” Her nerves pulsed with the possibility of opening herself up—actually being herself—without repercussions and preconceived assumptions.
Arousal poured through her veins, and this had to be too good to be true.
Her stomach plummeted. “Wait, I want to be clear,” she faltered, hoping she wouldn’t see disappointment.
“I don’t want a booty call. That’s not—”
“I want dinner.” His smoldering expression teased. “Though I like where your mind jumped—”
“It didn’t!” Oh, she was a liar.
“Trust me.” The corners of his lips curled subtly. “My mind’s jumped there more than I should admit to you.”
Amanda fought to find the right words. Any words. Then she couldn’t stop them. “Why would you agree to an anonymous date?”
“Because you’re beautiful, and I like the way your eyes light up when you see me.”
Amanda curled her finger into the small of her throat.
“Because you know about LIDAR cameras and know the secret way to force Boss Man to walk on eggshells.”
This man was too much to be true. She laughed, wanting to cry.
Smooth and confident, everything that she wasn’t, he slid to her side. “I want to know why you think you have to hide and what it’d take to convince you that you can trust me.”
She swallowed hard. “That’s a lot.”
“It’s just dinner.” He waited, watching, protective and circumspect, reminding her of the few patient people she had in her life.
“Dinner.” She nodded, shocked that he’d suggested terms that she could accept.
She pressed her hand against the drumming pulse in her throat and met his white-hot gaze, almost convincing her that he craved her touch as much as she wanted his.
This was trust, and it was an aphrodisiac unlike anything she’d experienced.
Amanda smiled. “You’re something else, you know that? ”
“Actually, I’m Hagan.” He held out his hand.
“No!” Hadn’t she just swooned over trust?
“I never said I didn’t want to be me.”
True, but … “That wasn’t fair.”
“I have a feeling you know that better than most.” He waited for her to shake his hand.
Amanda wanted to protest. Compromise had no place when it came to personal and professional situations. But instead of recounting her rules or freaking out, she said his name and shook his hand.