Page 73 of Over & Out

“Well,” I say. “Thank you for telling me that. It’s not going to happen again, either.”

“I’m not finished,” Tru says.

Her tone has me looking at her like a kid in trouble in school.

“What I have seen is Hopper with various nonemployee women through his career. Including the ones you’re probably aware of.”

Jealousy rolls over me like slick, ugly slime.

“I’ve seen him in short relationships and long ones. Ones on set and long-distance. Improbable kinds of relationships?—”

“Tru, I don’t need to know?—”

She holds a finger up. “And never, in all those years, have I seen him look at a woman the way he looks at you.”

I’m nothing short of thunderstruck. That can’t be true. I’ve played out every scenario in the past week. And in each one, I’m not important. I’m a blip on the timeline of Hopper’s life.

I’m crazy about you…

I hate the hope buoying in my chest that maybe it’s none of the things I imagined. That it’s something different, something I don’t quite understand.

“To be honest,” Tru says, “I think this is my fault.”

I gape. “How?”

“I saw it on the very first day. I willfully ignored the very strong possibility—certainty, really—that the ire youraised in that man was more than just annoyance. I wanted to believe he got the same satisfaction in you putting him in his place as he did with me. Or his mother, God rest her soul.”

My head spins, just the tiniest bit. But it’s no match for my heart. That’s beating wildly out of control.

“I don’t think that’s possible,” I say, my throat dry.

“What, that he could be interested in you from day one? Chris, please. I’m not saying he had it bad the way he very clearly does now. But there’s something about you that makes the two of you opposite sides of the same zipper. You know what I mean? You two are both jabby as hell, but when you come together—” Tru demonstrates by stretching her fingers on both hands open and curling them into knuckles. Then she sticks them together one by one, just like a zipper connecting tight.

Too bad she’s got it all wrong.

“Tru, I’m not telling you the whole story. After we kissed, he—he panicked. He got weird and it was like a curtain came down between us. At first I thought it was because…well, he found something out about me.”

“What was that, exactly?”

She looks at me very intently.

I swallow. “That I have some…physical issues. I think I scared him.”

She seems to soften. “From the fire. Where you lost your father.”

My jaw drops, but only for a moment. Of course they would have done a background check on me. The fire wasin the news.

Ex-firefighter perishes rescuing own daughter from inferno…

“Yes,” I say tightly. “I have quite a bit of scarring.”

To say the least.

But Tru shakes her head. “That’s not Hopper. At all. Did you know he knocked a man’s tooth out when he said something awful about his mother? Something about how she looked like a ghoul. We had to pay the man a shit ton of money to settle that before it started.”

My stomach clenches. The story about the paparazzo. It was bigger than what they reported on.

“When he thinks you’re beautiful, Chris, he thinks you’re beautiful. Trust me when I say that didn’t make Hopper turn away.”

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