Pride swells in my chest, but it’s followed a moment later by a looming dark dropping feeling.
“You won’t lie to me, will you, Tanner?” I murmur. “You won’t trick me?”
He glances at me, coming to stop at a red light. I have to force my mind into crazy gymnastics to convince myself that it was only yesterday he was giving me a ride home from class. So much has happened since then, it feels like a lifetime ago, and yet here I am, the day after, my world changed and ready to be brave—or to try and be brave.
What if I’m not good enough?
But last night I was, and when he shot his seed onto my chest, I felt a flurry of excitement and victory.
He didn’t fake that, did he?
Self-doubts are difficult to banish so easily.
And in the cold light of morning, last night has once again taken on a dreamlike quality.
“I will never lie to you,” he says firmly, holding my gaze. “I promise.”
We pause as we watch the pedestrians crossing the road, a lance of fear spearing into me when I think of Dirk out in the city somewhere, looking for Kaitlyn, and by association me.
Plus he told Tanner that he wasn’t going to forget the headbutt … so is Tanner in his crosshairs, too?
At least Kaitlyn and Gizmo are safe in the high rise apartment.
The high rise apartment.
How has life gotten so crazy so quickly?
The lights change and Tanner inches us forward, gliding toward the bridge that will carry us over to the cafe where I work. Even if it’s a longer distance between the new apartment and the old one, it’s still quicker, because I don’t have to rely on public transport.
“Tess,” Tanner murmurs. “Who tricked you?”
I feel my veins freezing as anxiety swarms through me.
“What?” I whisper.
“You asked me not to trick you – and I never will – but I can’t help but think there must’ve been something to prompt you saying that. I wouldn’t be a writer if I couldn’t spot things like that … well, I suppose having writer’s block calls that into question, but you get the point.”
I reach across and lay my hand on his forearm, feeling the indomitable muscle through the fabric of his suit jacket. “You’ll write again, Tanner. I know you will. You just need a little … I don’t know, nudge? Like if I put a gun to your head and told you to write, you’d be able to do it.”
“Yeah, I’m sure I would,” he smirks. “I’d write, Put that gun down before I punish you. Don’t forget I’m still your teacher.”
A shiver dances through me, usurping the fear and ruling my body with a deeper sense of lust.
“Okay, fine,” I say, laughing. “But you get the point.”
“I don’t know what it is,” he sighs, somehow exuding confidence and power even while revealing this slight vulnerability. “The words used to flow through me. I never even had to think about it. I’d just sit down and write, sink into a flow state, I suppose you’d call it.”
He sighs, turning the corner onto the bridge, the sun moving over the metal framework like a spotlight, glistening as cars glide here and there, and the city beyond it, and the sky beyond that, blue and cloudless and seemingly never ending.
“Now it’s like there’s this—well, this block inside of me.”
“Maybe you should go and see someone,” I murmur.
He snorts. “I’m seeing you. That’s good enough for me. Anyway, you changed the subject, you sneaky sexy devil. We were talking about you.”
Tricks.
I pick at the dashboard, staring into the road.
Tanner doesn’t prompt me, just continues to drive with his smooth movements, not pressuring me to go past beyond my comfort zone before I’m ready. Like last night when we explored the avenues of our desire without rushing to the destination.
“I’m an orphan,” I say.
“I’m sorry.” He glances at me, face tight. “That’s an awful thing.”
He didn’t even know you were an orphan.
It strikes me that this connection we’re forming is wholly separate to us as modern day people. It’s like there are two versions of us, the primal and the surface, and the primal doesn’t care about the regular things that make up a relationship. The primal cares about my womb and his seed, the urgent compulsion to fuse and create a life worth living.
But there’s time to get to know each other, to overlay the foundation of our indisputable want with the human connection.
I shake my head, tugging myself from my thoughts.
“I was raised in a series of orphanages and there was this one older guy, well, he wasn’t right in the head. I know how that sounds. Not very politically correct in this day and age. But do you know how people say pick the wings off a fly to describe somebody who’s a little, err, on the edge?”