Mind Games - Page 205
“Oh, how typical.” Rubbing hard on her hand, she turned away from him again. “How utterly childish and typical.”
“That’s what I thought.”
She didn’t turn as he started for the door, just clasped her hands together.
“G minor seventh isn’t a number, it’s a musical chord. But clever.”
When he stopped dead, she turned again. She didn’t look furious now. She looked tired, just tired.
“You want more? That little scar on your hip?” She tapped her fingers on her own hip, then started rubbing her hand again. “You got it crawling under a chain-link fence, a broken one, and one of the—what is it, spokes? Whatever, it caught you there. You could’ve used a couple stitches, but you couldn’t tell your mother because you and Scott and … Henry weren’t supposed to poke around the old, abandoned house. You were nine, and you’ve still never told her that one.”
It took him several shocked seconds to find his voice. “How the hell did you know that?”
“I touched you there, the first time we were together, and I was so open, so unguarded, I saw you, I saw the little boy. I don’t look, I don’t. It’s rude and I was raised better, but I just … my defenses were down, and I saw.”
Tears came again, faster now. “It’s a gift, and I respect it, value it. It doesn’t make me a freak or—or some demon seed. I don’t use it to hurt people, or to pry or for my own gain. I didn’t mean to use it that day, but Bray wanted that truck so much. He was so upset, and he’s such a good boy, and I got careless. I just didn’t think, and then you said those things to me, about me, and you wouldn’t listen. I didn’t know how to explain, not then, and you wouldn’t have listened or believed me, not then.”
After scrubbing her hands over her face, she left them covering it. “Go. Just go. I don’t want to know what you think. I don’t want to know.”
“I think you should sit down.”
“Don’t tell me what I should do.”
“Okay, but I need to sit down.”
“Sit, stand, stay, go. I don’t care. I’m not some sideshow here for your amazement and amusement. I have a gift, one that runs through the women in my family. Tall, rangy builds run in my family. Neither of those make me evil.”
Setting the photos down, he sat because he needed to catch his breath. “Who said anything about evil?”
“That would be a boy in college—my first time, as I got a late start in that area. I told him because I had feelings for him, and I’d slept with him, and I thought …
“He didn’t react well. The people he told ran the usual gamut from You’re a freak to How about telling me the questions on the test coming up.”
“Listen, I—”
She rolled right over him.
“It was painful, and demoralizing. I nearly ran home after that, but I stuck. Kept to myself more, was a lot more careful. It’s my gift, it’s my business. I don’t have to share it.”
“How long have you been able to … know stuff?”
“Always. What difference does it make?”
“What’s wrong with your hand?”
“Nothing.” She stopped rubbing under her thumb, and crossed her arms.
“If you’d told me or—”
“What?” She lashed out the word. “Everything would’ve been fine? You, such a trusting individual, would’ve trusted me not to walk into your private thoughts like you assumed I’d walked into your locked house? Because I said I wouldn’t?”
He started to speak, stopped. Then lifted his hands, let them fall. “I don’t know. I’m trying to get my head around it. I don’t know.”
“You hurt me.” Her breath shuddered out as she tried to steady it. “You hurt me more than anyone ever has.”
“I know it. I can see it. I’m sorry for it. And goddamn it, you hurt me right back. Look, this is a little—this is a lot. I’m trying to … process.”
“Well, you do that, Ty, you take your sweet time and process. It doesn’t change a thing. I’m the same person I was five minutes ago, five hours ago, five days ago. I’m not ashamed of that. Being careful doesn’t mean I’m ashamed.”
