Through flailing tentacles of the fire, she saw the girls twist their faces in genuine expressions of surprise and fascination, but before she could continue her recounting of Tim’s heroics, Derrick tapped her on the arm. He gestured to a rickety ladder leading to the structure’s second level. “What’s up there?” he asked.
She looked up and shrugged. “Hayloft, I suppose.”
“Want to go check it out?”
Mallory felt the cadence of her heart quicken, and her cheeks begin to warm. In the periphery of her vision, she each of her friends avert their eyes in one way or another, pretending to be enthralled by something else.
“I don’t know,” she said, trying to remain casual. “Do you think it’s safe?”
“I’m sure it’s safe enough,” he answered.
A distant peal of thunder filled the silence when her friends paused their conversation. Standing, she let Derrick take her hand and lead her across the room, catching one last eyebrow-twitching glance from Becky before turning to the ladder.
Mallory climbed the ladder after Derrick, passing through the ceiling portal and into the barn’s loft. They stood side by side, glancing about the shadowy space.
At the front of the building, a gaping rectangular doorway opened onto the night where workers once hauled up hay bales via a rope and pulley. Both doors for the opening had long since dropped off their hinges, leaving an empty frame painted by thick layers of bird droppings.
Slivers of firelight shone through cracks between the floorboards, projecting a tiger-stripe pattern over everything around them. That gentle radiance gave the loft an unanticipated feeling of warmth, reminding Mallory of the cozy glow of Christmas tree lights.
Derrick stepped away from the ladder without the slightest attention to the creaks and groans coming from beneath his feet. He boldly strode across the loft, showing her the boards could hold his weight.
Reluctantly, she followed.
They went over to the far corner, away from their friends below, to where the sloping roof minimized standing room. In that cramped portion of the room, some industrious group of people had managed to arrange a makeshift seating area. The corner boasted two rust-splotched metal folding chairs, a pale-blue ottoman, a worn, gold-colored armchair, one barstool with cracked vinyl upholstery, a ragged old couch capable of holding at least three or four individuals, and a small table made from four chipped cinderblocks and a yard-square section of water-damaged particleboard. To complete the living room setting, all the items had been positioned over a large section of shaggy, age-soiled carpet.
“Hey, all right,” Derrick said, brushing away a few old beer cans from the couch. “Doesn’t look so bad. It’s dry and free of bird poop. Care to have a seat?”
“Um, sure.”
She sat down next to him, finding his already alluring features softened in the shredded yellow light from below. She had daydreamed about this moment for three years, imagining the splendor of it through countless biology and history lessons. But now that the fantasy had come true, she realized she didn’t know how to conduct herself, or even what to say.
“You have the prettiest eyes of anyone I’ve ever met,” he said.
A smile spread across her face, and she needed to look away, afraid her huge grin would ruin the mood.
“I mean it,” he added.
She bit her lower lip to repress her smile. “Thanks.”
“So, there’s something I’ve wanted to ask you,” he whispered. “But I couldn’t do it in front of the others. You know how friends can be.”
When she raised her eyes to meet his gaze, she found it had remained constant.
“I know we just met tonight, but I really feel a connection between us.”
Mallory felt that same stupid grin creeping into her cheeks again, accompanied by a hot rush that swelled through her whole body.
Beneath them, the bonfire’s crackle carried up to the loft with the sound of small forest animals bounding through an autumn field carpeted by dry leaves. The others had resumed their conversations, eliciting bursts of laughter from time to time, but the sounds floated on the edge of Mallory’s awareness.
Derrick leaned forward and kissed her.
Her heart skipped, and a shiver coursed along her arms and legs.
After several uncountable seconds, he drew his lips away, only a few fractions of an inch, pausing just long enough to acknowledge that she hadn’t objected to his forwardness. Then, he kissed her again.
Their mouths pressed together longer this time, moving slowly, lips parted. Their warm tongues mingled. Mallory had never felt anything like it, kissing so deeply. She shuddered with excitement.
When at last they separated, she realized his arms had slipped around her waist, and she’d moved closer up against him. She couldn’t recall sliding over, only the heat of their kisses.
“Was that okay?” he whispered.
She nodded, feeling another pleasant tingle with the memory of his touch.
Her heart hammered against her breastbone.
Her nipples pushed into her bra.
They kissed again.
CHAPTER 37
The train engine’s roaring power vibrated through Tim’s body when he passed in front of it—crossing the tracks—but paled in comparison to the jolt that shook his bones when the mechanical juggernaut clipped the bicycle’s rear wheel.
Time didn’t freeze for this encounter. Just the opposite. Everything seemed to happen with the swiftness of a camera flash.
The engine swiped the bicycle out from under him like a huge hand shooing away a bothersome insect. The bike’s handlebars tore out of his grasp; he flew off the seat. The world turned into a blur as he tumbled through the air. Through some miracle of high-tension awareness, his ears picked out the grotesque impact of the dead deer when it caught the full force of the train’s unstoppable energy, and the sound reminded him of the noise made when biting into a ripe apple: crunchy, but wet. Then the ground slammed into his back just when he thought he was flying skyward.
The blacktop bit into his skin on impact, scraping it raw in spots. His left arm ended up in front of his face during the fall, saving his head from hitting the ground. Consciousness blinked like an old light bulb but didn’t go out.
He rolled to a rest with the sharp squeal of the train’s brakes cutting into the night.
Tim flopped on his back and winced in pain. His right leg ached to the bone. The wounds on his palms, forearms, elbows, and knees burned with a fiery sting that grew worse with each passing second.
Striving to postpone the thought of discomfort, he lifted his head and looked around, assessing the scene. To one side of him sat the partially mangled mountain bike; to the other, lay the severed head of the deer.
Tim stiffened at his proximity to it, but relaxed again when his brain processed the extent of the damage. Dead or not, the train had finished the animal for sure.
The train continued to move past him, the deafening keen of its wheels like an incessant scream for attention. He knew it was only a matter of time before people from the surrounding houses came to investigate.
No one would believe what he’d been through tonight. How could they? No doubt the train’s operator was furious, probably thinking that he’d been attempting some kind of dumb stunt. In fact, now that he thought about it, Tim realized the man was probably already on a cell phone or radio, calling the police. With his luck, they’d assume Tim fabricated the whole chase story simply to draw focus off his failed train-dodge. Someone might even suggest he’d
All this after being rejected by Mallory.
