Page 41 of Powerless
I twist at my ring nervously and sigh. “I don’t know. Here. With you.” I gesture between us. “I keep forgetting about everything else in my life.Everyoneelse. But when we’re apart I constantly come back to y—you know what? Never mind. Just ignore me.”
The silence that stretches between us is thick, alive and sparking with the heat and reality of my almost-confession.
A heat that suffuses my entire body when he finally responds with, “Every fucking day, Sunny.”
“Want to play I Spy?” I ask after what has got to be at least an hour of silence.
I can see Jasper retreating into himself. His shoulders curl, his knuckles turn white. I swear I can see into his brain.
And what’s in there is a man who isspinning.
It makes me want to crawl into his lap and shake him, to bring him back from whatever ledge he’s toeing.
The only way I know how to do that is to entertain and engage him. Make him laugh. He has the best laugh, all deep and soft, a little breathy like he’s trying to tamp it down and hide it away.
When Jasper laughs, he looks bashful. His eyes drop and his straight teeth flash. I guess after watching him so closely for so long, I’ve catalogued his every reaction. The little tics.
It’s pathetic if I think too hard about it.
“I Spy?” His brow lifts and he glances my way.
I reach forward and turn down the Nirvana album that has been the soundtrack to the first stretch of our trip. “Yes. It’s a game where—”
He chuckles. “Sloane, I know what I Spy is.”
“Well then, keep up. Don’t act so confused. You’re too old to play dumb. It’s not cute.”
Amusement touches every feature, and I breathe out a sigh of relief.There he is.
“Okay. I’ll go first. I spy with my little eye something that is . . . brown.”
He glances down quickly at himself. “My coat.”
“No.”
“The trees outside.”
“No.”
“The . . . really? Brown?”
I shrug. “Yeah. Brown. What’s wrong with brown?”
His eyes roll, and he peers around like he’s trying really hard to figure it out. “The grass?”
I scoff. “The grass isn’t brown. It’s more like yellow.”
One of his hands flies up in frustration. His fuse is short right now. He needs a laugh. “I don’t know, Sloane. There isn’t much that’s brown in this truck or out there. What is it?”
“It was a bull in a field that we already passed.” It was the darker streaks in his hair. That’s how it popped up in my head.
I was lying to him.
He barks out a laugh though, and the lie is immediately worth the deception. “You can’t pick things that we’ve already passed!”
I grin, toeing off my slip-on Vans and crossing my legs on the seat. “Keep up or tap out, Gervais. This isn’t baby I Spy. This is the big kids’ version.”
With a light shake of his head, he glances over at me. “Okay. Fine.” His chin dips, and then his eyes are back on the road. They don’t shift. They stay fastened to the blacktop that stretches ahead of us. “I spy with my little eye something that is blue.”
