Lost King by Piper Lennox (moboreader txt) 📗

I glance at her, basking in that laugh. “Until you tell me to stop.”

“Well, this is a first.”

I step up beside Ruby at the railing and flick the strings of her new hoodie, courtesy of a roadside souvenir stand we were both shocked to find open at one a.m. “What? Drinking a caramel apple latte—which, by the way, is a lot better than I expected—or these banana cream pie donut holes that taste nothing like bananas?”

Stealing another from the thin cardboard box in her hand, I bite off half and hold out the rest. She hesitates, then eats it.

“Drinking a caramel apple latte,” she chews, “and eating banana cream pie donuts in front of Niagara damn Falls.”

“That was my next guess.”

We laugh, looking out again at the multicolored lights projected on the Falls. We talked nonstop during the second half of the drive, when the coin-toss was abandoned for the endless, open highway ahead.

“Can’t believe we drove seven hours,” she says. “Actually, strike that: I can’t believe I let you drive me seven hours away from my car. This has Dateline written all over it.”

“Relax. If I was going to kidnap you, I wouldn’t pick a tourist hotspot. And I doubt most captors have seven-hour conversations with their victims.”

“Instilling Stockholm syndrome,” she mutters, and I laugh again.

It was a complete accident, ending up here. I’d intended for us to settle on someplace in the city, but by the time we crossed the Hudson, we were so wrapped up in conversation it felt crazy to stop. If it weren’t for a lack of passports, I’m positive we’d be flying through Canada right now.

She relaxed, once the topic of money was officially off the table. Childhoods were an iffy subject too, I noticed, so we stuck to movies, music, books, and people-watching in the cars beside us.

I think it’s the longest conversation I’ve ever had in my life. Usually, I burn out fast: something about entertaining another person for several hours at once drains me. I find myself getting quiet, needing a recharge. But not with her.

“Last one,” she says, rattling the donut box. “Split it?”

This time, she bites it in half and offers me the rest. My lips brush her fingertips. For once, her smile doesn’t come with a blush.

As much as I like it, I think I like this better: the confident, amused quirk of her brow instead...and the way she licks the last bit of filling off her thumb.

“Did you know there’s a legend,” I ask, “that says the god of thunder lives down there?”

“And did you know,” she says, cupping both hands around her coffee cup, “over five thousand bodies have been fished out of those rocks? Thirty or so people die here, every year.”

My laugh sputters out. “Holy shit, Ruby.”

Smiling to herself, she sips and shrugs. “I thought we were sharing things we knew.”

“All right, Ms. Morbid. Tell me something that’s not depressing.”

She leans her elbows on the railing. “The first person to survive going over was a woman.”

“There you go. A fun fact that isn’t sad as hell.”

A devilish look flashes across her face, and I brace myself.

“And the first man who survived the fall,” she says, “later died because he slipped on an orange peel, of all things.”

“Wow. You couldn’t even last five seconds without getting all dark, could you?”

Ruby sips her coffee smugly and pretends to fight me off as I brace my hands on the railing around her. When I lock my arms, she gives up and settles back against my chest.

“I’m only doing this because you’re warm,” she says quietly.

“Fine by me.” The perfume or shampoo I keep smelling makes my head swim, this close to her. I don’t care if I freeze out here. I never want to go home.

“That is interesting,” I add, a moment later.

“What?”

“That the guy died because of an orange peel. Not to sound all English class about it, but the metaphor is kind of fascinating. Things we call safe or harmless can still hurt us…yet we can also survive something basically guaranteed to destroy us. The odds of both are so small. But still there.”

Ruby sets her cup down, then turns to face me. I pull myself in closer, until her back is pressed completely to the railing.

“Maybe.” She pushes her curls from her face, eyes never leaving mine. “But in a way, going over the Falls is still what killed him.”

“Why?”

“What he really died from was gangrene. He broke his leg after he slipped on the orange peel, and the complications were probably because of his old injuries from the Falls.”

I watch her mouth while she speaks. Her teeth aren’t chattering anymore.

“So you could just as easily say that ‘safe’ or ‘harmless’ are completely relative. What matters isn’t the odds. It’s whatever we’ve gone through before.” She swallows. “How badly we were already broken.”

I lower my head, our mouths dangerously close. Her breath picks up, clouding the air between us.

“I thought what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

“Not always,” she says, eyes landing on my lips a millisecond before I lean in and kiss her.

5

Maybe there is a god of thunder down there in the rocks, because I swear something otherworldly is screaming at me to stop.

Screeching at me to get my hands off Theo Durham’s chest.

Begging me, for my own good, to resist kissing him back.

He draws away slowly, less than an inch between us when he whispers, “I’ve wanted to do that since those buckets almost killed you.”

My laugh sounds nervous. I’m nervous. He wasn’t supposed to kiss me yet.

I wasn’t supposed to let him.

Theo slides his hand up to my neck. “You’re shivering again. Should we