Page 36 of Take the Lead
More people filed on. Gina tapped her foot. The train started to move.Finally.
Assuming Stone had followed her instructions, they’d be reunited in…
The train sailed past Seventy-Second Street.
“What?” She glanced around. No one else seemed surprised. “What’s happening? Isn’t this a local?”
A middle-aged guy in a suit gave her a disdainful look. “If you’d been paying attention, you would have heard them announce this train is going express to—”
“To 125th Street.” Stomach sinking, Gina sagged against the metal door and weighed her options.
There were none, for the time being. New York City transit was notoriously unpredictable, and sometimes local trains went express for no reason, and vice versa. She was stuck watching all the local stops go by, each one reminding her how far away she was getting from Stone.
Her freak-out meter was at eleven by the time the train stopped at 125th Street. She dashed out of the train, up the stairs into the station, and down another flight of stairs to the downtown platform.
A downtown express was pulling in. She hesitated. Seventy-Second Street wasn’t an express stop. But when an automated voice announced delays on the downtown local track, that decided it. She hopped on and headed back to Fifty-Ninth Street, and this time found a seat.
She spent the entire subway ride worrying that Stone wouldn’t be there when she arrived. What was she going to do if he wasn’t there? Did he even know what hotel they were all staying at? How would they find him?
Tears threatened, burning her eyes and forming a lump in the back of her throat. She bit her lip against them. She wouldn’t cry on the train. The last time she’d done that, she’d been seventeen and stupid, crying because a boy had broken her heart.
Memories of that time reinforced all her goals and rules. Shoot for the top, and don’t let any man get in the way.
Still, this was her fault. She should’ve told Stone where they were getting off, or held on to him to make sure he was following her off the train. She would have, if she weren’t actively trying to keep distance between them.
By the time the train pulled back into the station at Fifty-Ninth Street, Gina was vibrating with anxiety. She bolted onto the platform, ran upstairs and over to the uptown platform once again, and stood wringing her hands and breathing hard while she waited for a local.
When it arrived a minute later, she paid close attention when she got on. This time, there were no announcements. The train picked up speed, heading for Seventy-Second, and Gina’s heart nearly burst out of her chest.
In the seconds that passed between stations, her traitorous, anxiety-ridden brain supplied all sorts of improbable images of what she’d find. An empty platform. Stone dead on the tracks. A huge crowd she had to fight her way through, screaming his name at the top of her lungs.
When the train stopped at Seventy-Second Street, she waited at the doors, chewing her lipstick off. Every second seemed to drag, until finally the doors slid open.
Gina stumbled out, looking up and down the platform with wild movements. She couldn’t see him yet. People were leaving the train, and she searched for Stone towering over them, but he wasn’t there. She’d just inhaled a shaky breath to call his name when the crowd passed, and she saw him.
Stone was sitting on a bench with his ankle propped on one knee, reading one of the free newspapers distributed daily in the subway.
When she let out the breath she was holding, he looked up. His eyes lit up, and a smile curved his lips.
“There you are.” He folded the newspaper, but before he could get up, she rushed him. Her knees wobbled and she dropped onto his lap, throwing her arms around his neck.
“You’re here,” she whispered into his hair, inhaling the scent of him that had become so familiar and comforting to her.
“Of course I am.” His voice held a note of surprise. His arms encircled her, and for the first time in… she didn’t know how long it had been… but for the first time since she’d lost him, she felt okay.
She refused to examine the feeling further.
“You told me to get off here and wait for you. So that’s what I did.”
He’d listened. She didn’t know what she would have done if he hadn’t. “I’m so sorry, Stone.”
“Gina.” He eased her back and tilted his chin down so he could meet her eyes. “I’m fine. It’s all right.”
She let out a shuddering breath, the stress of the day taking its toll. Her words spilled out in a jumbled mess. “I lost you, and I’m supposed to be responsible for you, and you don’t even have a phone, and—”
“Hey.” He cupped her face and leaned in. “You didn’t lose me. I should have been paying attention. And you’re not responsible for me—I’m a grown man, and I’ve been lost in worse places than this.” The corner of his mouth kicked up. “Besides, I think I was sitting here all of twenty minutes.”
Gina blinked, ignoring the way her stomach fluttered at his touch. “That was it? It felt like hours.”
