First Sight (33 page)

Date was awesome last night. Get up here soon!

I must not have gotten any reception in the tunnel
, I realized
, as I walked down the block
. 
That would have been too random if she had sent that
text
just as I was thinking about her.  At least her date with Rob had gone well yesterday. 
Maybe her good mood could cheer me up.
  I paused for a second to quickly
text her back
.

Be right up!

Tucking my phone back into my purse,
I hurried across the street and stepped onto the sidewalk in front of my office building. 
As I looked up,
I caught a glimpse of
someone
coming out of the doors and felt a flush of anger wash over me.  Of course
he
was here, practically
blocking my path, walking directly toward me
. 
Just what I needed after our disastrou
s meeting yesterday afternoon.

He was dressed down even fo
r a Friday, wearing a faded blu
e
-grey tee shirt that was just tight enough to show off his muscular
chest and
jeans that hung perfectly from his hips.  I raised
my eyes toward his face and noticed
for the first time
that his brown hair had a few strands of blond mixed in, gleaming in the sunlight.
His head was turned down slightly,
his brown eyes
gazing at me, I realized.
He did not appear happy to see me.
 
But then why were his eyes focused so intently on my face?

I suddenly heard tires screeching in the street behind me, followed seconds later by a loud crash.  I jumped at the sudden noise, stumbling forward, vaguely aware of the
shouts of alarm from people
around me
.
  The deafening sound of crunching metal echoed off my building and down the street of the city block. 
Travis
was suddenly right
in front of me
, his tall body towering over mine.
  He
reached out, as if to steady me, and inexplicably pulled me into his arms. 
I gasped in surprise as I fell against him,
but as
his arms tightened around
me
,
I noticed
only
that
I fit perfectly
against
him,
my body pressed to his chest,
my head
tucked just beneath his chin.

“Call 911!” a panicked woman’s voice yelled in the background.

There
were
other
voices shouting
now
, too
,
growing in volume
and intensity.
P
eople
were
rushing around us, hurrying to get past.
 
A
s I f
elt the sudden heat
coming from
behind
, I
realized that
the vehicles
had
ca
ught fire after the collision, and
were
now blazing in the street, just a few feet away.
 
Travis
swiftly turned with me in his arms, pressing my back against the brick wall
of the building
, his body shielding mine.
I closed my eyes, pressing my face into his chest as
people pushed by us
, trying to get away.
 
I
could hear
the
sound of sirens
coming from the
distance
, and e
ven as I felt the
disorder
in the air around us, I was intensely aware of him—the way the warm skin of his bare arms felt against mine, how big he suddenly seemed
as he
loomed
over me,
the
feel of his cotton shirt
beneath
my skin
.

It wasn’t until the sirens
were
turn
ed
off
and
I heard
the shouts of the firemen around us
that I realized
that
although
Travis
was no longer crushing me against the wall, protecting me, he still held me securely in his arms. 
I
was trembling, and as I lifted my head from his strong chest, I saw that he was now looking down at me with concern in his eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asked quietly
,
his voice
deep
and smooth
.

“Yeah,
” I said, looking up into his warm brown eyes
, my voice breaking a little.

“You’re shaking,” he said gently.

I felt tears welling
in my eyes, and I pulled away, only to find myself backing up against the wall of our office building.
 
The accident, the fight we had yesterday
, the
tension
between us
during
the last week
—it all felt like too much to deal with right now. 
Travis was standing right in front of me, and we needed to have a conversation I wasn’t even ready to begin yet. 
We’d barely spoken to each other
in days
,
I
had no idea what he was mad about, and now
that I was finally face-to-face with him,
I
felt too overwhelmed to even think straight.

“
Maddy
,” he said softly, reaching out so that one hand gently
rested
on my arm.

The tears
spilled openly down my cheeks. 
“Travis,
don’t,
” I said, shaking my head to indicate this wasn’t the time or place for us to talk.
 
I didn’t want him to see me cry, didn’t want him to see how much he’d hurt me. 
From the look on his face it was evident
that he
already
knew
though
.

“Please don’t cry,” he said, he own voice breaking slightly.

I looked up at him through blurry vision—
at
th
e
man I’d been in love with for so long.
 
He reached
out
to wipe a few tears away,
taking a step closer to me
, and as he cradled my face in his hands,
I knew that I didn’t want us to fight anymore.

“
I’m sorry,
” he murmured quietly.  “Can
we
please go somewhere and talk?”

A
police officer who’d arrived on the scene approached us
, holding a walkie-talkie in one hand
.  “Are you both okay?” he asked in a gruff voice.

“Ye
ah
,” I said, turning toward him as
I brushed my tears away
, and
Travis
gently
,
somewhat reluctantly
,
released me.

“Yes, we’re b
oth fine, Officer,” he said.

“Did either of you witness the accident?”

“No, I had just crossed the street.  I only heard it behind me,” I said in a shaky voice.

“I didn’
t see
exactly
what happened either,
”
Travis
replied
.
“I was walking out of the building.”

“A
l
l
right, why don’t you both move along
then.
We need to cordon off this area for the investigation.”

“Come on,” Travis said,
gently
placing his hand
on
the small of my back and leading me away
from our building and the accident
.  I didn’t ask where we were going, and I wordlessly let him guide me
down the street
. 
None of this was making any sense.  Travis had been
mad at
me all week.  He even looked angry when he saw me as he walked out of
our
office building this morning.  Now he was
suddenly
back
to his old self?  He was acting almost as if nothing had happened.

We walked past the coffee shop
a
nd headed to a little park around the corner.  Travis guided me over to a bench,
his hand barely grazing my back, his arm slightly around me,
and for some reason I let him walk with me
this way
the entire
time
.  To anyone else it must look like we were
a couple
—not two people who had barely been speaking
to
each
other
and
had
just
gotten into a
nasty
argument yesterday.

I sat down,
leaning back against the wrought iron,
and Travis sat beside me, so close that our legs were almost touching. 
He
placed his hands in his lap and
clasped them
tightly
together
,
looking rather
tense.
 
I
glanced down and
noticed how strong they looked, how the tendons bulged out from beneath his skin.  I waited as he seemed to mull over where to begin. 
“I saw that car speeding around the corner just as you stepped up onto the sidewalk,” Travis said quietly, finally looking over at me.

I didn’t respond right away but watched as he studied me carefully, his face uncertain.  “I didn’t even notice the car; it just happened so fast.”

Travis’s deep brown eyes focused on mine.  “I was so afraid that something was going to happen to you,” he said softly.

My heart caught in my throat
. 
He’d been so mad at me, why was he acting like he cared again now?

“Look, I owe you an apology for yesterday—f
or all of my behavior this week,” Travis continued.
 
“
I had no right to be
angry with
you, and I really wasn’t trying to make you look bad in front of everyone else
at that meeting
—I can’t imagine what you must think of me.  My behavior has been inexcusable.”  He shook his head with frustration, an anguished look on his face.

Looking down
as I
let his words sink in
, I felt unsure of exactly what to say.  He was admitting that he’d been treating me badly; he was apologizing for it.  That still didn’t explain why he’d suddenly act
ed
this way.  What was he so mad about?  His behavior lately could be described as nothing but cold.  I hadn’t done anything to him that I knew of.  He was still friendly with everyone else.

“I guess I don’t understand why you were mad at me,” I said quietly.  “I thought we were friends and….”  My voice trailed off.  Everyone else seemed to think
that
we were more than friends, and I’d considered the possibility as well. 
All those stolen moments, where the two of us
had somehow ended up alone—certainly it wasn’t all coincidence.  But after this week,
after barely speaking,
I didn’t
know what we were anymore.

“I know,” he said gruffly.  “That’s my fault.  I misunderstood something that I heard you say.  I thought you were talking about me, and I completely took it the wrong way.  But still, that was no
excuse
for me to behave the way that I did.”

I nodded, trying to think of what he possibly could have
misunderstood
.
  Everything had been perfectly fine when he drove me home from happy hour last week,
when I saw him the following morning.  T
hen suddenly
at lunchtime
he was barely
speaking to me.

“Elizabeth explained it to me last night,” he continued.  “I thought you’d said something insulting about me, and it turns out you were talking about that annoying guy Marissa had been dating a while back.”

I vaguely recalled talking to Elizabeth in the lunch room the other day.  What had I said
again
?  That
G
ym
G
uy was
just
a dumb jock? 
A
pparently I was right when I
’d
heard
someone out in the hallway. 
Out of all of my coworkers, of course it had
been
Travis.
 
“I wish you would’ve just talked to me about it,” I said, feeling hurt.  “I didn’t understand why you were being so mean to me.”