Page 74 of If Our Hearts Collide

“Hey!” I fake scoff.

It feels weird again, laughing with him. It’s like the incident from the Japanese Garden never happened. It’s as if I fabricated the entire event in my own head. My feelings haven’t changed just from this moment of interlude, but it does give me hope that we can eventually coexist and be amicable toward one another.

I watch anxiously as Collins shuffles the deck and deals out our seven-card hands. With eyes full of determination, he examines his cards. I organize my stack, sighing over the fact that I have zero wild cards—the best ones in the deck. I do, however, have a crazy amount of plus twos.

“You first,” I insist, looking at the yellow eight that gets turned over from the main pile that is situated on the center console.

Collins places a red eight on top of the face up card, changing the color of the playing stack. I follow it with a red two. He eyes me carefully, as if he can see my cards with some type of X-ray vision. Who knows, maybe he can. He appears to have a sixth sense when it comes to danger, and I play to win. To some men, that may be intimidating, but something tells me that nothing scares Collins. The man is fearless.

“Wild,” he says cooly. “Blue.”

“Unlucky for you. Get ready to start collecting some cards.” I throw down a blue plus two, with a dramatic flare to my wrist, followed by a green plus two, and two yellow plus twos.

“I better mix up the deck more next round, because it seems to me you are a card shark.”

I wiggle my eyebrows, as he finishes picking up all of his cards. When I no longer have any yellows or matching cards to add to the pile, I am forced to pick up from the main stack.

“Not so cocky now, are you?” Collins teases, laughing every time I groan when I get nothing of value.

“I feel like I’m being sabotaged.”

When I finally get a yellow five to place onto the deck, Collins follows it with a yellow seven. I frown, and then start picking up cards from the main deck all over again.

We lose track of time playing back and forth, turning a short card game into the longest game I’ve played in a while.

“Uno,” Collins says happily, making me jump.

I change the color to green and hope he doesn’t have a match. But he does.

“Good game.”

His smile is genuine. “Thank you.”

Collins rummages through his backpack, pulling out a bottle of water for each of us and some beef jerky. “Hungry?”

I accept the offering. “Yes, thank you.”

We eat in silence, turning on our phones and checking the weather app to see if we have a signal.

Collins sighs. “Any luck?”

“It’s weak and things are taking a while to load.”

He continues messing with his phone, and then turns the engine on, rolling up the windows as the air conditioning kicks on. “There’s a lot of hall movement according to my security system footage, so I think we are in the clear to go back up. Storm should have passed by now.”

“I hope the elevators are safe. My feet cannot take any more abuse today.”

Collins glances over at the floor, where my shoes have already been slipped off a while ago.

“You should soak them in a bath tonight.”

“Can I get back home to Hillsboro, do you think?”

“No, Penny, you are staying with me until at least morning. I have space, and the roads may be flooded or closed along the way.”

I nod, glancing at the clock on the dashboard. It’s almost eleven at night. I could stay with either of my brothers, but I imagine getting there would be a challenge if there are downed power lines or emergency vehicles trying to get where they need to be.

Collins drives us back up to the main parking area, shuts off the engine, and grabs his backpack. He helps me out of my side, grabbing my hand to pull me toward the elevators. The wind is still whistling through the garage, but everything seems to be in good standing.

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