Lightning Strikes (The Almeida Brothers Trilogy #3) by Trevion Burns Page B

he could see his own breath catching her curls, helping them dance against the wind.  He clenched his fists.  “I did not try to kiss you.”
    “You tried to kiss me .”
    He turned away again, moving slower.
    “Why are you stomping away like you have any idea where the hell you’re going?”
    “Because I need to get the hell away from you.”
    “Looks like you’re on your way straight into a densely wooded area.”
    “Terrific.  Maybe a grizzly will do me a solid and give me a paw straight to the face.  If I’m lucky enough, it’ll kill me instantly, and I’ll never have to see you again.”
    “Come on.”
    He gasped when she took his arm from behind, turning to her halfway and catching her smiling face.
    “You are so dramatic.  God.”  Her smile grew.  “You don’t want a grizzly to claw your eyes out, and we both know it.  Stop it.”
    “It’s become astoundingly clear that if I spend another second in your presence, you’re going to get me killed regardless.  Might as well cut out the middleman and let the grizzly finish me off now.”
    She tugged at his arm.  “Come on.  I used to be a Girl Scout, and you’re going the wrong way.”
    It was Jack’s turn to smile, an ironic smile, and he held an arm out, motioning to the area around them.  “Okay, Chuck Norris, which way is the right way, huh?  Which way is the right way in this never-ending expanse of grass and trees that all look the same, not a hint of human life in sight?”
    She released his arm and pointed in the opposite direction.  “If you hadn’t been so busy trying to kiss me on that train, you would’ve seen the tiny town we passed a couple of miles that way.”
    Jack tore his eyes away from her and took one, two three seconds, before he looked back, his lips tight.  “I did not try to kiss you.”
    She began moving away, holding his eyes for as long as she could before she turned away from him completely, making her way toward the tattered train tracks.
    It wasn’t until she set her foot on the first wooden slat of the tracks that she looked down.
    Her smile bloomed when she saw a large shadow growing next to hers, telling her that, albeit with great hesitance, he was right behind her.
     
    ***
     
    The girl scout in Nina had done them proud, and right on time.  As she cleared the knee-breaking grassy hill and found herself greeted by a sprawling, lonely truck stop diner in the distance, she and Jack were on their last legs.
    She framed the diner with her hands.  “I never thought I’d be this happy to see a shitty diner that they should’ve left in the eighties.”  She turned with a grin.  “See. I was right, wasn’t I?”
    Jack lifted an eyebrow high on his face, his chest heaving from their long walk and the hill they’d just been forced to climb.  He came up next to her and stopped, crouching down.
    She watched him catch his breath, nodding her head toward the stop.  “Let’s hit that restaurant.”
    “I’m hitting the road.  There must be a train station nearby.”
    “How in the world do you think you’re going to get yourself a seat on another train, a spot on another aircraft, or a bed in another hotel room?  All your vouchers have dried up—”
    “Only because I’ve had the great misfortune of traveling next to you, a hurricane in the flesh.”
    “If being with me is so terrible, then why are you still here, Aries?”
    “I’ve told you a hundred times that I want to be left alone, but you won’t allow me to be.  I just want to be alone, Nina . ”
    “You say ‘leave me alone,’ but yet here you are.  Still right next to me, when you’ve had every opportunity not to be.  If I’ve learned anything in my short time on this Earth, it’s that people are never, ever who they tell you they are.  The words you say out loud will never mean half as much as the ones you don’t.”
    “And what words aren’t I saying?  What am I not saying, Nina? Since you know so goddamned