Taking a Shot (12 page)

“That’s nice,” she said in that tinkling, dreamy kind of way she had, but it didn’t seem as if she was blowing me off or putting an end to the conversation. She just really thought it was nice, I guess. She glanced down at the clock on my dashboard. “Maybe we should start heading—”

She cut herself off so suddenly and her eyes got so wide that I shot my head up to see what had upset her. A little sports car had zipped in front of a pickup truck to get off at the exit where Noelle’s car was broken down. The truck driver lost control, and we could only watch—almost in slow motion—as he crashed into her car.

It burst into flames on contact.

Thank fuck I’d gotten her away from there.

THEY ALWAYS TALK
about how your life flashes before your eyes right before you die, how you see all the important moments zipping by one at a time.

That was close, and yet not close at all, to what I was experiencing. This was watching my entire life, or what was left of it, go up in flames. I didn’t think I was going to die—we were far enough away from the wreck, so we weren’t going to be hurt by the smoke or fire—but everything inside me felt like it was melting from the heat of the blaze and dripping right out through the tips of my toes.

It was one of the most surreal things I’d ever experienced in my life, and it took me right back to the day I’d gotten the call that my parents had died. I’d been a freshman in college, and the call came from a neighbor who’d been watching my two teenaged brothers while my parents came to visit me for the weekend. They never made it to the dorm. For that matter, they never got out of Oregon.

Both then and now, nothing felt real. I pinched my forearm to bring myself back to the present.

“Oh, thank God,” Liam said next to me.

He said it like a fervent prayer, but I wasn’t so sure I was capable of being thankful. Not right now. Not when I knew all the things that were burning inside my car and that I would never see them again. Not when I was trying to catalog the memories those things were attached to since I would no longer have the physical reminders.

He leaned back in his seat, visibly shaking as he turned to look at me, his eyes scanning my face as though he was seeing a ghost, as though he was seeing someone from his past and not me. He’d only known me for a grand total of fifteen minutes. There couldn’t be any big, emotional attachment to me worthy of the way he was looking at me. It was unnerving. “Thank God I got you away from there,” he said softly.

I was still alive, of course. There was that. And life wasn’t any small matter. I nodded because I couldn’t seem to find my voice, and I clutched my purse even closer to me, feeling its meager contents brushing against my fingertips through the threadbare fabric. This was all I had left. My almost-empty pocketbook, the wallet-sized photo album that they’d found in Dad’s pockets, the keys to my now burnt-to-a-crisp car, and Mom’s wedding ring. Other than the clothes on my back and the jacket I had almost left in the passenger seat of my car, this was it. Well, this and my brothers, but they were both far away from here and oblivious to all that I’d lost in the last few months. All that
we’d
lost.

“I… Wow,” Liam said. He dragged a hand down over his face, his palm scraping against his five-o’clock shadow. “I never expected… Are you okay?”

I was fine. As fine as anyone could be after watching something like that. I smiled, determined to look for the positive, and I gave him a confident nod. Getting caught up in negativity never helped anyone.

“You’re not all right,” he said when I remained silent. “You’re smiling, but you can’t be all right. Not after—” He reached awkwardly over the center console as though he wanted to hold my hand but then pulled his arm back to rest in his lap. “Sorry. I just don’t know what to do…how to help.”

Flashing lights filled the highway surrounding my flaming car—police cars, a fire truck, an ambulance—and that somehow helped to calm me down, to slow my pulse and think about things rationally. I didn’t know what to do, either, but I would figure it out. I always did, and this couldn’t be any different—even if it
felt
different.

“It’s okay,” I told him. I laughed this time, because I didn’t believe in letting myself get too down. Yeah, my car and just about everything I owned were gone, but I was alive, and I might not have been if not for this man’s thoughtfulness. “Thank you for stopping to help me.”

“How can you possibly be laughing at a time like this?” He let out a little chuckle of his own and shook his head. “You’re so unlike anyone I’ve ever met before.”

“I’m laughing because I’m alive, and that’s thanks to you. I would have been sitting in my car and waiting for it to cool off if you hadn’t convinced me to leave. I would be dead. Or at least dying.” Death by barbeque didn’t sound too appealing.

“Thank God you didn’t think I was a serial killer.” Liam shifted in his seat so he could face me more fully. The yellow lights shining over the parking lot illuminated him in an odd glow, making him look older than I’d thought he was when I’d first seen him jogging toward me on the highway—maybe in his mid-thirties. He had neat, shortly cropped dark hair and eyes I could only guess were brown. There was something incredibly appealing about him, with the strong set of his jaw and the fullness of his lips. Something that made my chest flutter. This wasn’t the time for silly flutters, though.

It was his eyes, more than anything, that drew my notice. They were old—much older than the rest of him—like they’d seen too much to stay youthful.

That made sense based on what I’d felt when he was trying to convince me to leave my car. There had been something more urgent in his request, and I’d known it wasn’t about me. Just like I knew he was seeing someone else when he looked at me now. I couldn’t put my finger on what made me sure, but that wasn’t all that uncommon. I’d always had these hunches about people, a sixth sense or whatever you want to call it, where I could feel a lot more from people than most others could. More than what they wanted anyone to know a lot of the time.

I was fairly sure that was how Liam would feel about it. I didn’t think he wanted anyone to know he had this big hole inside him, but it was big enough to almost overwhelm me, a giant, empty ball of ache, gnawing at him from his center. It was definitely big enough to make me forget about my own problems for a little while. I’d had a big hurt inside me a few years ago, too, when Mom and Dad had died. I’d been nineteen then and had suddenly become a mom to my brothers. I was twenty-four now.

I knew that kind of pain. I hated when anyone else had to feel like that. It made me want to find a way to suck all that hurt out of them and pull it inside myself, because I knew I could find a way to get rid of it.

He smiled at me, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He still looked anxious, with his eyebrows pinched together and his jaw set in a tight line. “Let me take you for coffee. I need something to help me calm down after that. God knows you probably do, too.”

“Shouldn’t we talk to the police?”

“Oh.” His eyes flickered back to the highway and all the emergency vehicles. They’d managed to contain the fire. Only a small stream of black smoke was still billowing up above all the headlights and emergency lights filling the road. Then he met my gaze again. “They have enough going on over there without us. They can call if they need to talk to you. Let’s get coffee.”

They couldn’t call, though, because I didn’t have a phone, and the address the car was registered under wasn’t mine anymore. They wouldn’t be able to find me very easily. I didn’t even know where I would go now. Not until I could get a job. I’d looked into some homeless shelters when the bank foreclosed, but there was no guarantee that any of them would have a bed. That was why I’d been sleeping in my car.

“All right,” I conceded. I didn’t know how to tell Liam all of that without making him feel sorry for me. That wasn’t what he needed right now. Besides, I could spare a few dollars for a coffee with him since I wouldn’t need to pay for gas or car insurance anymore.

Liam started the engine and carefully pulled out of the parking lot. He drove a few blocks before turning into the parking lot at a nearby Starbucks.

After he shut off the ignition, he turned to me with a questioning look. “I didn’t think—Do you need to call someone? Hell, was your phone in the car? Should I take you home so your family doesn’t worry?”

“No, I—” I wasn’t quite sure how to explain that my home had burned up right in front of our eyes, so I just shook my head. “There’s no one I need to call. It’ll be fine for a little while. Let’s go have coffee.”

“You’re sure?”

I nodded, sliding my shoes onto my feet, even though that was the furthest thing from the truth. But my brothers, Ethan and Chris, didn’t even know I’d lost the house yet. I’d sort it all out before they finished their semester at college. I’d have somewhere for them to come home to. Then I could explain things. Granted, I didn’t know how I would get a job and a place to live in such a short amount of time when I hadn’t managed it in the last several months, but that wasn’t the important part. I’d figure it out.

Liam gave me another nod, and then he got out of the car. I’d barely unbuckled and opened my door before he’d come all the way around and was standing there to help me out. I wasn’t sure what to do with that, but when he held out his hand for me, this time I took it.

His hand was big and warm, and it enveloped mine completely. It was comforting, like my favorite blanket, the one Mom crocheted for me years ago. I’d been sleeping with it on top of me lately. Not anymore. It was gone now, too.

Instead of taking me to the counter so we could order, he found a quiet table with two chairs in a corner near the windows and urged me to sit.

“What can I bring you?”

“Oh.” I sat down and pulled my purse onto my lap, keeping it close. “Hot chocolate?” I said, digging through my bag to pull out my wallet. It had been forever since I’d splurged on something as decadent as that.

His lips quirked up into a grin. “Hot chocolate. You’ve got it.” Then he turned and walked away before I could even get my wallet free.

A minute later Liam came back and passed a cup across the table to me. “I got you extra whipped cream. I figured you could use it after a night like tonight.”

He had that right. I wrapped my hand around the hot cup and took a slow sip. “Thank you,” I said, pushing the few dollars I’d dug out across the table toward him.

He shook his head and slid the bills back toward me. “My treat. It’s the least I can do…” He took the lid off his own cup of black coffee and took a sip as well.

“Thank you again,” I said, marveling that anyone could drink coffee without adding cream and sugar to it. It was far too bitter for me that way. “You drink it black? That’ll put hair on your chest.” I shocked myself that I’d said it. I hadn’t been thinking about anything but what Dad had always told me and my brothers any time we wanted to drink coffee.

“I’ve already got hair on my chest,” Liam teased, and he winked at me. “I’m not too worried about it.” Then he took another swallow, letting out a hiss at the heat after he got it down.

I was blushing before I could stop it. Mainly because as soon as he’d said it, my eyes had gone to his chest and my mind had started thinking about how broad and muscled it was. I didn’t have any business gawking and thinking about him like that. He was a very kind man who’d saved my life and bought me cocoa, not someone whose bones were available for jumping. I didn’t even know where to begin with the whole bone-jumping thing. In order to hide my embarrassment, I took a bigger drink from my cocoa than I should have, and in the process I nearly burned the roof of my mouth.

“Careful,” he said, but again he sounded like he was teasing me. “It’s hot.”

I let my mouth cool off for a second. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t… I didn’t—” I didn’t have the first clue how to say what I was thinking.

He gave me a questioning look and then shook his head. “Please don’t apologize for flirting with me. It’s been too long, and it feels too damn good.”

Flirting
with him? Was I? If I was, it hadn’t been intentional. God, I was so clueless sometimes. My face felt ten times hotter than my mouth had from the hot chocolate, and I couldn’t look at him. Did that mean he was flirting with me, too?

“Why has it been too long?” I asked when I finally found my voice again. He was a professional athlete, after all. Surely there were women who would flirt with him just because of that. And when you added how gorgeous he was into the equation…