Pink Shades of Words: Walk 2016 (28 page)

Just like with the first four, there was no response except for a weak and stuttering grind. Not a whole lot of things in the world could drive me from zero to livid in .728 seconds, but my grandmother's old '82 Chevette—a.k.a. my college car—was one of them. Damn. I was supposed to be going to the grocery store to get food for my grandma and then bringing it over to her house. She didn't have her driver's license anymore and couldn’t do it for herself. If I couldn’t make it over there, what was she going to eat?

A loud knock sounded on the driver's side window next to me, echoing through the car. My head shot up as my heart began to race, my startle response in full effect. Unfortunately, I whipped my head up so quickly that my nose crashed into the steering wheel, causing my hands to fly up to my face as I shouted a curse. When I turned to see who had knocked on my window—the person who was witnessing me at my absolute nose-crush-cursingly worst—there was the gorgeous and ever-grinning face of Sebastian Winters.

Oh, God. If my suspicion that he was only interested in me as some sort of project, the human version of a fixer-upper, was correct, then his witnessing me in this situation was giving him plenty of fuel for that fire.

I put my head back on the steering wheel, slowly shaking it from side to side. "This. Is. Not. Happening," I groaned.

The knock came again.

"Miche? Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

I looked up, smiling ruefully. "Not hurt," I answered through the glass, "unless you count my pride."

"Well, probably for the best that your pride isn’t in full working order. You know what they say about it going before a fall. And I don’t know how much more of a beating that cute little nose of yours could take," he replied in that sexy drawl I was quickly becoming addicted to. "Think you might want to come out here and talk to me? Or at least roll the window down?"

I didn't, really. I was embarrassed and preferred to exit the car via the hole I wished would spontaneously open up in the earth and swallow me. But, since the odds of that happening were, oh, fifty-fifty at best (or, you know...maybe
slightly
less), I decided I might as well face him.

I stepped out of the car and slammed the door behind me. It would have been a much smoother and more suave move if I hadn't been forced to slam the door three times, increasing the force with each attempt, before the latch caught for good and the door stayed closed.

"Is this your car?" Sebastian asked.

Maybe I was projecting, but I thought I heard an undertone of pity in his voice.

"Yep," I said, adopting a tone of studied nonchalance. "Haven't you heard? This is the latest thing. When it comes to trends, 'piece of shit' is the new black."

"I
have
heard that," he replied, his eyes sparkling with amusement. "All of the car blogs have been talking about it. I believe they refer to it as 'classic.'"

"See? There ya go."

"Can I give you a ride somewhere, darlin'?"

"Nah. I'm good."

I hadn’t even thought before I’d responded. Turning down help, not to mention turning down anything to do with Sebastian Winters, was simply second nature to me. I'd never really stopped to think about why, I’d just followed the instinct to keep him at arm’s length. However, now that I was faced with actually
needing
his help, I was forced to take a closer look at my knee-jerk reactions.

"Come on, Miche." He grinned, nudging me companionably with his elbow. "Give me a chance, why don'tcha? Where were you headed?"

Well, damn it. That's where he had me. I needed to get those groceries to my grandma, so I could definitely use the ride.

"Don't laugh, okay?" I prefaced. Damn, asking for help was
not
easy!

"No promises," he teased.

"I have to go to the grocery store to get food and then bring it to my grandma's house."

The jovial demeanor disappeared from Sebastian's face, and his expression turned to a mixture of concern and puzzlement. "Honey, why would you think I would laugh at that?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. It just seems like the kind of thing that jock types would look down on."

The wide, bright smile returned, bringing back with it the warmth that shone from his eyes. He slung his arm easily around my shoulder as we started across the parking lot together.

"Well, then, I guess I just need to make it my business to show you that I'm not the typical jock type. Besides, if there are two things Southern boys take seriously, it's their mamas and their grandmas. I would never look down on you for taking care of yours."

I relaxed a little at the warmth and acceptance in his tone. "Okay. I have to warn you though. For when we go over there. She's kind of...a character."

"All the best grandmas are." He pulled a key ring from his pocket and pressed the unlock button on his fob.

The horn and lights on a large, shining, red pickup a few cars down from where we were went off.

"That's your pickup?" I asked.

"Oh, hell yes, darlin'. I forgot to mention the other thing Southern boys are serious about—their trucks."

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C
HAPTER FOUR

Sebastian

––––––––

"S
o, did you grow up around here, living with your grandma?"

Michelle shook her head. "No. I wish. My grandma didn't even live here while I was growing up. She was kind of a nomad. But being with her would have been better than my mom and stepdad."

"They were kind of a nightmare?"

She stilled, avoiding my eyes as she examined the label on a can of creamed corn. "No. That would be putting it too strongly. They never beat me or anything. My stepdad is just kind of passive-aggressively manipulative. You know? He has this surface charm thing going on, but underneath it are all of these intense expectations nobody could really meet."

"Sounds stressful, living with that day in and day out."

"It was. I think the worst part was that he always put my mom in the middle. If I did something he didn't like, he'd turn to her and say, 'Charlene, please tell her that we don't...’
fill in the blank
. Whatever I’d done that he didn’t like. ‘Not in this house!' He'd always end it that way. 'Not in this house!' Like he was some monarch or something. Like he had a lock on what civilized behavior was supposed to look like."

"Damn. Sounds like a real bastard."

She looked up at me, delight sparkling in her eyes. A small, slow smile spread across her face, and my heart swelled from knowing I'd put it there. Even better than the smile, though, was the fact that she was opening up to me. Most girls would blurt out their entire life stories within minutes of meeting a person. Michelle wasn't like that. With her, I had learned that her trust was not something she handed out freely. It had to be earned. And, apparently, I was now doing that.

She put the creamed corn into the basket, and we moved farther down the aisle. Her opening up to me, even a little, gave me food for thought. Hell. Maybe Jackson was really onto something. Maybe I didn't need some big strategy. Maybe the whole "be yourself or some shit" thing was actually working.

"He
was
a real bastard, as a matter of fact. But the thing that made it weird was that it wasn't out of mean-spiritedness. He wasn't just a plain old, garden-variety asshole. He was more like this very straight-laced citizen-of-the-year type. He’s a lawyer, you know? Very orderly, upstanding, keep-up-appearances-and-keep-up-with-the-Joneses type. And he had this vision of how a perfect, normal, traditional family should be. And, as you might have guessed, 'perfect,' 'normal,' and 'traditional' certainly don't apply to me."

I rested my hand on the small of her back, and she abruptly stopped walking. A rush of sensation at the contact zipped up my arm like steroids had been injected into my veins—or how I would imagine that felt, at any rate. Like a huge ball of power and strength and energy, all rolled into one, shooting out through my entire body from the point of contact. I leaned down to her ear, my lips close enough to brush the hot-pink strands of hair curled above it.

"I disagree," I whispered. "Traditional? No, that's not you. Or normal. And that's a good thing. You're an individual. You stand out. But perfect? Hell yes, you are. You're the most perfect thing I've ever seen."

She stood stock-still. I could hear the sped-up rhythm of her breathing. I could sense the beating of her heart, in time with mine. Time slowed. My vision tunneled down to just her face. Sounds faded away until they seemed like they were coming from another place. No. Another dimension. The world shrunk to nothing but Miche and me and the blood rushing through our veins in perfect synchronicity.

She turned her face to me in what seemed like the slowest of slow motion. I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around her waist, pull her warm body to me, and crush my lips to hers. Need filled me. I shook with it. My head spun. With every last bit of control I possessed, I made myself step back from her. I was just starting to earn her trust. There was no way I was going to fuck it up that quickly.

Her cheeks flushed, and her china-doll eyes widened behind her glasses, making her even more adorable than usual. And that was really saying something.

I racked my brain, trying to think of what to say next. Something casual. Something that would move the conversation on before I had to walk through this damn grocery store sporting wood.

Nothing came to mind.

Then, just as quickly as it had started, the moment came to a crashing halt. Michelle spun back around and pushed the cart up the aisle with a distracted, "Only two more things on the list. We should hurry. Gran's waiting for me."

Her knees trembled a little as she walked away from me. I smiled. That was good. Very good, in fact. It meant that I’d gotten under her skin, too. At least a little. It was a useful tidbit to know.

I jogged down the aisle to catch up with her, my muscles taut and alive from the adrenaline rush I'd just experienced. "Well, damn, girl," I teased. "Stop holdin' us up, then. We've no time for nonsense! Let's get this shopping finished."

Her lips twitched the way they did sometimes when she found a joke of mine amusing, and fireworks went off inside my brain. Hell, in my baseball-playing career, I'd hit my share of home runs. I'd easily loped around the bases, keeping my pace steady and even so that I could soak in the sound of the stadium full of cheering fans. I knew what victory felt like. I knew it with every fiber of my being, right down to my bones, and there was no mistaking it.

When I made Michelle Mitchell almost-smile, the feeling that flooded through me was pure, unadulterated victory with a capital V.

And I couldn't get enough.

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C
HAPTER FIVE

Michelle

––––––––

I
t should have felt good to smile. No, it should have felt great.

Forget should have though. What it actually felt like was
terrifying
. All I could hear inside my head as my lips curled up as if of their own accord, was my step-douche saying in that oily way of his, "Now, smile like a proper young lady. Nobody likes a frown."

Whether we were going to church or a school function where there would be other parents to impress, or having some of his colleagues over for dinner, it didn't matter. Douchebag Dan, Stepfather Extraordinaire, could never resist the opportunity to remind me that I just didn't
quite
measure up.

I shivered as I remembered his words, hearing them play through my brain as clearly as though he were right next to me. I had the same reaction to the memory as I’d had when I was in high school and had continued to have subconsciously ever since:
Fuck him
! If he thought I should smile, then I'd frown. If he thought I should wear frilly dresses, I'd wear skinny jeans and studded belts. If he thought I should wear a floaty, floral, button-down blouse, I'd dress all in black.

Not all of the rebellion had been terrible for me, of course. Some of it had left great stuff in my life. For instance, all of my pushback on the pretty, sweet "proper young lady" clothes he had tried to foist on me had led me to experimenting with fashion choices and aesthetics, and now, I loved my look. I felt comfortable in my own skin.

Also, trying to escape all the constant pressure to socialize and make nice with the people he wanted to impress had led me to seek escape in books, and books had been my salvation. They had opened up a world I never could have dreamed was possible. They had made the bad times better then, and they made the good times sweeter now. I was even devoting my life's work to books. As a library science major, I hoped to one day become the person who led others to discover the mind-altering and, in many cases, life-saving power of books.

So, even though I was happy to keep some positive parts of my miserable childhood’s legacy, I was ready to let other parts go. Like the part where it was hard for me to smile, trust people, or let them into my world because I was so afraid they were going to judge me or try to change me. I wanted to free myself of those walls, but I felt powerless to do it.

I glanced over at Sebastian. His hand was casually slung over the top of the steering wheel as he maneuvered his truck down the road. Damn. What was it about his easy charm and his quick wit that penetrated my barriers so effortlessly, like a hot knife through butter? It scared me. But, oh, God, it thrilled me, too!

"Make the next right. My grandma's house is the green one," I told him.

"Your wish is my command, darlin'." He winked and expertly palmed the wheel to turn the truck onto her street. He parked at the curb in front of her house, turned the engine off, and opened the door to get out.

"Wait one second." I put a restraining hand on his arm to keep him in the truck. Then I took my glasses off and stuffed them in my bag. "I don't wear these into the house because it worries her. She thinks I'm losing my sight or something. I just wanted to tell you ahead of time so you wouldn't say anything."