Free The Scent of Shadows Free with Bonus Material by Vicki Pettersson Page A

nearly to my navel. A short battle with double-sided tape had ensured it concealed all the right spots, while a matching purse easily concealed my aluminum kubotan , only six inches long. I could have the blunt steel barrel in my hand in one quick move. I might be paranoid, but I was fashionably paranoid.
    “That’s all right,” Ben said, leaning his elbows on the table. “I’m enjoying looking at you again, Jo-Jo.”
    I blushed, such a novel reaction for me that I was forced to look away.
    We’d seen each other just once after the attack. I’d just been discharged from the hospital, and it was a long enough period for the bruises to have faded from my skin but short enough that neither of us had yet become the people we were today. I didn’t talk much back then—didn’tsee or think or taste or feel much either—and I’d been too afraid to call him or to meet, knowing that the sweetness of the moment—being pierced beneath that concerned gaze as he remembered how I’d felt beneath him—was the same thing that would make it bitter.
    I was right. I hadn’t been able to clear that bitterness from my throat long enough to reach for words, and didn’t know what to say even if I had. Do you still love me? Why won’t you touch me? Please stop looking at me that way. So after moments turned into minutes, the silence prolonged, the younger Ben had run out of words as well. He looked, then walked, away. And I was left feeling more alone than ever.
    “Jo?”
    “Sorry.” I shook my head, realizing both he and the waiter were now looking at me.
    “I asked if you’d like some wine with dinner.” He laughed, a little self-consciously. I must have been staring at him forever. “I don’t know what you drink anymore.”
    “Wine would be great,” I said, forcing a smile, but I had to wonder if we should really try to start this again.
    Once upon a time—and it was a long time ago now—we could’ve married, and continued on together. Or we might have just as easily drifted; a simple slipping away of two people who’d grown up and apart. Either way it would have been a choice unmarred by tragedy.
    Instead, the unnatural death of hope lingered between us, a love murdered as surely as I was meant to be. So the question was, in this world, in my current reality, was that something that could be overcome? Because I was frightened by the long dormant emotions stirring inside me. It felt like I was on the verge of something risky and steep. An emotional precipice I could either leap from into a headlong tumble or pull back from and wisely head for safety. For a full decade now I’d chosen only safety.
    “You’re thinking too hard, Jo,” Ben said, with a smile that made my world tremble.
    I leaned back casually, just reclining, I thought. Calm as an earthquake. “How can you tell?”
    “Your eyes go black,” he said, peering into them. “Nervous?”
    “Petrified,” I said, surprising us both with my honesty. He laughed, and I was startled at the way it boomed out of him at first, then settled into a rumbling chuckle. Were you supposed to forget your first lover’s laugh?
    “Don’t worry, I don’t bite,” he said, leaning forward again. “I wouldn’t dare.”
    My gaze dropped to his lips. Too bad.
    I searched for a subject that wouldn’t stir my hormones or remind us of the past or, God forbid, make my heart start that perilous tumble, finally settling on a part of his life that had nothing to do with me. “Do you still write?”
    He nodded. “I’ve graduated from poetry, though. I’m into mysteries now, whodunits. Nothing published yet, but I’m still trying.”
    “I’m glad. Your poetry was wonderful.”
    He shrugged, a self-conscious rolling of the shoulders that gave away just how much it still meant. “It keeps my mind agile, anyway. I like creating the worlds, the characters, the situations.”
    “And solving the mysteries?” I asked, and he nodded, popping a piece of bread in his mouth.