“I can do it,” Olivia told Rand, wiping the frosting from her fingers after cutting the last piece of cake. She took the juice from him and began pouring. “Is he always this good with kids?”
“Good? Jesus.” Rand rolled his eyes and shook his head. “It’s like he’s one of them.”
“No kidding,” she said, laughing. “How long have you guys known each other?”
Rand paused. When he spoke, his voice was soft. “Since Caitlyn was four.”
According to what Mel had said, that was right around the time his wife died. She wondered if there was a connection. “How did you meet?”
With a faraway look, Rand watched as Caitlyn and her friends ran from Asher then circled back around to push him from behind. “She looks a lot like her mother. Same eyes. Same hair color. She even has some of the same facial expressions, which catches me off-guard sometimes. You’d think something like that would be learned, but Caitlyn was so little when…when Amanda died. She doesn’t remember her very well anymore.”
“I’m sorry, Rand. That must’ve been so hard.”
He nodded, his eyes still tracking his daughter. “He saved her, you know.”
“Ash saved Caitlyn?”
“There was an incident at a checkpoint—that’s what the army likes to call it. They tried to claim that Cascadians were firing on innocent civilians, but I saw the whole thing and it was the other way around. Some young army punk yanked an older civilian from a truck and pistol-whipped him right there on the pavement. A woman in the passenger seat came out screaming. Then there were shots.” Rand pinched the bridge of his nose as he recalled what happened. “Suddenly, a huge fireball exploded in front of us, sending our car backwards, over the guard rail and into the river below. I must’ve blacked out because when I came to, Amanda was gone and a man—” He pointed to Asher. “—was pulling Caitlyn from her car seat in the back.”
“I’m so sorry.” Olivia was at a loss at what else she could say. She couldn’t imagine what he’d gone through.
“I can still see those army soldiers standing at the bridge railing, looking down at us and not doing a damn thing to help.”#p#分页标题#e#
“Asher jumped in the water to rescue strangers,” she said, almost to herself.
“Without him, I’d have lost both Amanda and Caitlyn that day.”
“He’s a hero.”
“Yes, but he doesn’t think so, because he hadn’t been able to save all of us.”
After singing Happy Birthday, the girls sat at the table eating cake and drinking punch for maybe a total of ten minutes before Caitlyn wanted to do the piñata. As she and her friends took turns hitting the candy-filled pink motorcycle, Ash crawled on the floor like a horse or big dog (Olivia couldn’t figure out which—one moment he was neighing and the next he was barking) and the kids in line climbed all over him.
Stacking the paper plates smeared with half-eaten cake, she laughed as she watched him. He had such crazy ideas and did things a normal person just wouldn’t think of. But she liked that about him. He was unpredictable and creative.
“Caitlyn adores him. Always has.” Rand looked a little less harried now than he had before the party started, probably because it was almost over. “She’s going to be sad when he leaves again.”
She wouldn’t be the only one.
Olivia swallowed around the lump forming in her throat as she continued to clear the table. Just a few more days and it would be over. Not that she was looking for something more with him. Logically, she knew that a relationship between the two of them wouldn’t work. Sure, it was sad that something this good, this magical, was coming to an end, but that was the thing about reality—it was soberingly real, and what was happening between them right now was pure fantasy. A fun, sex-filled fantasy. And by definition, fantasies were not real.
“What are your plans after this week?” Rand asked.
She felt her cheeks heating. Did he know she was Ash’s sex slave?
“I don’t know how much Ash has told you about my…situation,” she began tentatively.
Rand shook his head. “He keeps things pretty close to the vest and I don’t ask. Your business is your business. Not mine.”
Her shoulders slumped in relief. So he didn’t know about her Talent. Or their arrangement. Not that she thought Ash would say anything, but she wondered what Rand had guessed.
“I’m going to be moving soon,” she said. “New Seattle wasn’t what I thought it would be.”
It had been a mistake to move to the city. She’d thought she’d be able to hide better amongst all the people, that it would make her feel more anonymous, but in reality, the opposite was true. There were too many people who could notice that she wasn’t quite the same. First, there was the disaster with David and his fight club, and now the explosion. She felt like there was a big red arrow pointing at her head for all to see, announcing that she was different.