Outside The Lines:: Third Person Narration (27 page)

Her heart beat hard in her chest.
 
She realized she was breathing fast, as if she’d been running. It was all she could hear, her labored breath in the silent, empty office. It was so loud, she could hardly focus.
   

She dropped the pen. It made an insignificant plastic click as it hit the desk. She clasped her head between her palms and stared down at the papers, willing herself to focus, to think, to
work
, dammit.

She couldn’t.
 
She couldn’t make it happen.

Sheer will had failed her.

Sheer will was the cobweb of her life, the strongest stuff in the world.
 

But not tonight. Not after Johnny had said,
“No, not you.”

She tipped forward slowly, as if the front of her had suddenly become too heavy to hold up anymore. She rested her forehead on the desk, atop the files and stacks of papers with all their important, illegible numbers and closed her eyes.

Sheer will had failed her, and Johnny had bailed on her.

The latter should not have had such an effect. Being bailed on was old news.
 
The most predictable routine of her life, the endless melody, the thing she’d been trained for since the day she was born.
 
Parents of all varieties, friends who went by all sorts of names, blue-eyed Patrick O’Faolain and his snowy seduction and shady past; it was a parade of the people who’d left.
 

She was the girl born to be left behind.

So why did
this
one hurt so much?

It was ridiculous, really. Pointless. Completely out of line. She and Johnny had never had any agreement except that he would show her how to bang her head in pleasure.

Well, he’d sure kept his end of the bargain.

Forehead still resting on the files, she breathed down into the papers, steaming up her face.

It wasn’t all bad, though, right?
 
She’d learned she was capable of something more than numbers.
 
That was good, wasn’t it?
 
Now she knew she was capable of headbanging sex and getting her heart broke.
 

Her cheeks were damp from her exhalations.
 
Maybe I should have just stuck with work,
she thought dismally. In the end, she hadn’t even gone skiing.

She lifted her head as if a voice had spoken.

No, wait. That was wrong. No way was she going to let this end like that.
 

She
was
going skiing.
 

She sat up straight in her chair. She was
absolutely
going skiing.

She was going skiing
right now
.
 

She got up from her desk and began shoving files back into their locked compartments with abandon. She put an R in the S section.
 
She didn’t care.
 
She could do anything she wanted, including misfile.
 
She laughed, feeling giddy.
 
Sad, almost heartbroken, but giddy.
 
Like little bubbles were rising up inside her.
 
They’d done that, together, Johnny and her.
 
Popped her cork, so to speak.
 
And now he wasn’t going to stick around to drink the good stuff?
 

Fine. Juliette was.

She locked the office door and ripped the Gone Fishing sign off as she went by, flinging it behind her. She marched to the stairwell and slammed open the heavy fire door.
 
She didn’t have time to wait for the elevator; she was going skiing.
 

And this time, she was spending the night.

Chapter Eighteen

SWEAT STREAKED down Johnny’s face and chest. It trickled in rivulets down his sides and dampened his groin, made his feet hot. But no matter how much he sweated, no matter how hard he pushed himself, three hours of a dawn work out still hadn’t brought relief.

Usually a hard workout exorcised a few demons. Or at least shoved them back into purgatory. Exercise calmed him, centered him, turned off his brain.
 
It was his meditation, his t’ai chi, his self-annihilation.
 

But right now, as the sun rose on the city, he was agitated, all inside himself, and it wasn’t because of the judge, and it wasn’t because of Dan. It was because of Juliette Jauntie.

Fuck.

He showered and stared out the window, looking down over the city below.

He was starting to get tired of this window.

Going up to the mountains to find Juliette had been a mistake. Suggesting a drink with her had been stupid. In fact, coming within ten feet of her was a complete error of judgment. He should have known. She was everything he’d said: a volcano; a fire in search of a spark; an enclave of honesty in a dirty, cheating world.
 

A big fucking hassle.
 

And he wasn’t interested.

He stared down through the window as dawn glowed over the city.
 
A man didn’t drive four hours to meet someone for work if he wasn’t interested.
 
Even Johnny couldn’t convince himself of that lie, and he’d lived a lot of lies in his life.
 

A man didn’t stare at the doorway a woman had walked out of for half an hour, hoping that maybe, fucking maybe, she’d come back.

Women like Jauntie didn’t come back.

And she’d been right.
 
About everything. Everything she’d said, or guessed at, or surmised. On the money. Like an arrow.
 
Like she’d gone
inside
him.

Fuck.

He shoved his fingers through his hair and swung around.
 
He’d meant what he’d said to her—that he didn’t need to be psychoanalyzed and he wasn’t scared. But he very much needed someone to understand him, to see through the solid wall of him. As Juliette had.
 

He hadn’t known he had that need.
 

He didn’t want to have that need.
 

It was a weakness. Dangerous.
 

He straightened, suddenly angry.
   

But what the fuck?
 
Wasn’t his last name Danger?
 

In which case, what was he waiting for?
 
Because if Juliette wasn’t dangerous to everything he’d spent his hard-armored life building up, he didn’t know what was.

In fact, if he looked at it that way, she was just about perfect.

JULIETTE WENT back up to the Destiny Falls Resort, because it seemed important to revisit the past.
 
Exorcise it.
 
Stamp a new pattern on it.
 

Also, they had a lot of bunny hills.

She drove the Danger Enterprises company car. Probably shouldn’t have done that.
 

She pulled into the parking lot mid-morning.
 
This time, the sign about her destiny awaiting her had a charming ring.
 
Almost.
 

Okay, it was actually still a little creepy.

She got a room at the lodge, the last one available she was told, a nice one, maybe a little too nice, but it was all they had this close to New Years. She didn’t care. It could have cost a thousand dollars.
 
She was taking it.
 
Nothing but an avalanche could stop her from skiing and spending the night.

Her heart raced a little at the thought of avalanches.
 

She rented ski equipment, then signed up for her first ever ski lesson, voluntarily paying money to have someone tell her what to do.
 

Amazing.
 

With an hour to spare before the lesson, she milled around her Very Nice Room for about three minutes, then decided to take a quick peek at the gym and pool. Just the gym. And the pool. Not the banquet hall on the same floor.
   

But when she stepped out of the elevators she stopped short and stared at the banquet doors.
 
She didn’t know how long she stood there; long enough for the elevator to ding softly behind her and deposit another group of workout clad people.

She stepped to the side to let them pass, and when the landing was empty again, she walked to the doors of the banquet hall and put her hand out.

If they were locked, it was a sign. Even though she didn’t believe in signs.
 

It was unlocked.
 

She pulled the heavy door open. It was silent and empty inside, too early in the day to be in use.
 
Bright sunlight poured though the windows, lighting the whole room up.
 
She walked over to them and looked out.
 

The mountains were tall and beautiful, blindingly white. A sharp blue sky curved overhead and the sun lit everything like a stage.
 
Below, on the wide, snowy path leading to the lodge, herds of brightly clad people moved, skiing and falling and laughing and calling to each other.
 

Juliette slowly leaned her forehead against the window, watching these people in their confusing, alluring, indecipherable dance of relationship.
 

She suddenly felt rotten. She was going skiing, they were having relationships.
 
It seemed that all the other humans possessed some skill, some ability, that Juliette simply didn’t have.

Just give it some time
, she counseled herself.
 
She’d feel okay again.
 
One day.
 
She’d just brushed too close to it, that’s all.
 
The desire, the hurt, it would fade.
 

It wasn’t a terribly consoling thought.
 

In fact, it was a little like getting punched in the stomach.
 
But there was nothing to be done about it, so she’d do what she was best at, press on, keep her head down, work relentlessly, and…and….

And there was Johnny.
 
Coming up the path.

A wave of chills washed up, then down, her chest.

He moved between the packs of people, stepping around them, heading relentlessly toward the door, toward the lodge.

Toward Juliette.
 

Her jaw fell. Her heart leapt. Her breath got short. Then it stopped entirely. She straightened sharply, staring down.

As if it were a movie, Johnny looked up and saw her through the window. He stopped short.
 

They stared at each other.
 
People bustled by him but he didn’t move out of the center of the flattened snowy path.
 
He just stared up at Juliette like she was a star in the sky.

Me?,
she mouthed, touching her fingertips to her chest.

He lifted his hand and pointed at her.

It was like an arrow. She felt pierced by possibility. She closed her eyes.
 
When she opened them, he was gone.
 

She waited, staring down at all the bright, happy people who maybe, possibly, did
not
have something she didn’t have.