Tuesday Tales – Address – Free Falling
Welcome back to Tuesday Tales! This weeks prompt is Address.
Back with Free Falling again. Over half done (I think) with this one, and loving it as much as the rest of Lake Point.
This week Ryan and Logan end up on a sort of unplanned date. Logan has just revealed some heavy details about his past, and Ryan has been moved by the events. So she decides to show him something:
“Come on.” She rose and tugged on his hand. “The air’s too thick in here. Come on.”
“What?” He furrowed his brow, possibly confused by the sudden change. “Where?”
“You’ll see. Come on.” With a grin, she dragged him from the coffee shop and out onto the square. When he headed toward her truck, she tugged him the other direction. Over his protests, she dragged him across the square, past the second hand clothes shop, past the antique store Past Overs and into the alley just beyond.
“Ryan?”
“Patience, Logan. And trust.”
He grunted at the last word, but his protest stopped.
She took the small victory as she led him back through the next side street and darted across the silent street into the funeral homes parking lot. “Right back here.” She pulled him around the fence into the tree line behind it. They crept through to a small opening she’d discovered a while back. She plopped down onto the bed of pine needles and patted the space beside her.
“What are we doing?” Despite the skepticism lingering in his tone, his lips bore the distinct curve of a smile.
“Enjoying the quiet.” She leaned closer and whispered. “With these pines, the stone fence, and the privacy fence on that side, this place is one of the quietest in Lake Point.”
“One of?”
“Hush and listen.”
“To what?”
“Hush.” This time he listened, and she happily lay back on the bed of needles. She sighed and closed her eyes. A breeze stirred the trees above, lending a slight rustle to the quiet night and helping to block any external noise.
His hand touched her shin, but remained there as the silence settled over both of them. After a few minutes he lay back on the needles beside her, a soft sigh slipping from his lips.
“We’re never so aware of the constant hum of our existence until it’s gone.”
“Do you come here often?”
“Not as often as my other favorite spot, but this does in a pinch when I’m in town.”
“Where’s your favorite?” He turned to look at her. In the faint light his eyes glittered, and his hand laced with hers.
“Oh, that’s as secret as my library.”
“You won’t show me?”
“That’s something you have to earn.”
“Then why show me this one?”
“I thought you needed it.” She turned toward him, studying the lines of his face in the dim light. At the rate she was going, she was going to do something she never let herself do, she was going to fall for him. “When you unload something like that, you need to find yourself again.”
“How would you know?”
“My life wasn’t all sunshine and roses and happy family. I know.” She set her hand on his shoulder, using her fingertips to trace the lines of muscle.
“I showed you mine.”
She laughed. “You used the same logic with the library. Sorry, but it’s a story for another day, another time.”
“Fuck. Time.” He tapped his watch, the glow lighting his features briefly. A sigh escaped and he lay back. “I thought it was later. I thought I was late getting Sher.”
“How long do you have?”
“About twenty minutes still.”
“Then let’s get you back to your girl.”
“And then what?” His hand tightened on hers. “Are you done here? With me? I do have a daughter.”
“A fact I’m well aware of.” She squeezed his hand right back. “I told you, coffee and no promises.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“That means for the sake of your daughter we are going to play this by ear. I don’t know what’s going to happen, and you’re going to have to accept that getting into anything means you don’t know what will happen. You can’t know what will happen. Address the elephant in the room.”
“She asked me if we were dating.”
“The elephant.”
“Are we?”
She chuckled and flopped back to stare at the pine canopy above them. “I think against my better judgment we’ll go with yes, but I still can’t make any promises. We’ll go a step at a time and if you tell Noah—”
“I’d rather cut my dick off.”
“Oh, good. That’s the threat I was going to make.”
*~*
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