Page 4 of Strangers in Love

“This is going to hurt like hell,” I warned Leo as I moved up into a crouch.

His face tightened. “Just get me out of here.”

I nodded and hooked my hands under his armpits before moving backward as fast as I could. Chaos was all around us. Our guys. Them, whoever they were. But I couldn’t focus on any of that.

I was almost to the block of concrete when white-hot pain ripped through my calf, and I knew I was hit. My leg threatened to buckle, but I gritted my teeth and kept moving. Two more steps, and Leo was safe, but I wasn’t.

The shot that hit my left shoulder knocked me back, and I had a few seconds to register new pain before another explosion sent me flying. I slammed into something hard, and as everything started to go dark, I realized that the giant hole in front of me hadn’t been there before.

Fuck.

Three

Aline

Beingtwenty-one and on spring break meant making all sorts of bad decisions. Getting drunk and flashing people. One-night stands with hot strangers. Dancing until three o’clock in the morning. Pub crawls that ended in morning hangovers that made you swear off drinking ever again.

Well, it meant all those things if you were anyone but Freedom Mercier and her little sister. Guess which one I was? Here’s a hint: my name wasn’t Freedom.

Not that I really wanted to make bad decisions. I didn’t really have the desire to drink myself into oblivion and suffer through a hangover or lose my virginity to some random frat boy and not even be able to remember it. I hadn’t come to Stanford University to party. I’d enrolled to earn my bachelor’s and then master’s degree in childhood education, which I’d managed to achieve in less than five years. I’d have my diploma in hand in only a couple months.

Freedom was also graduating then. Her master’s degree was in International Relations, and she had a whole list of languages she could have declared as minors. She was four years older than me, but it was still an impressive list of accomplishments.

Both of us were proud to be academics, but still, it might’ve been nice to go to a bar or club at least one night. People watch or find a party that wouldn’t end in drugs and orgies.

Film was the basis of most of my knowledge of what occurred on spring break, so I might have been wrong about the orgies, but I was confident I could have found one if I really tried.

“The Elizabeth F. Gamble Garden,” Freedom announced as she pulled into a parking space. “It’s a beautiful day for it.”

She was right. Mid-April and an absolutely beautiful day. Sunny but with a little cloud cover. A light breeze and low seventies. We couldn’t have asked for a better day for our excursion.

Out of her normal business suit and in a sundress, we looked more alike than we usually did. My hair was a couple shades lighter than Freedom’s, and my eyes were light green while hers were clear blue. She was three inches taller than me and had a whole lot more curves, but being as we both took after our mother, our features were similar enough that no one who saw us could doubt our relation. Unlike many daughters, we knew we were blessed to look like Mom. We loved our dad, but Mom was a former model.

“Grab an umbrella,” Freedom said as she opened the car door. “It’s not supposed to rain, but who knows.”

Sometimes, I wondered if she realized I was an actual adult. True, I’d been sixteen when I’d started college, but only for six weeks. Then I’d been seventeen. Plenty of people went to college when they were seventeen, and they did just fine without a babysitter. Even if I’d needed her help back then, I was now twenty-two. Old enough to do everything. Well, everything but rent a car. For some reason, most places wouldn’t rent to anyone under twenty-five, which I found odd.

I reached under my seat and pulled an umbrella out. It was too big for my purse, so I put the loop around my wrist and carried it that way. The sky was a beautiful shade of blue, and the few clouds present were white, without a hint of the gray that usually came with rain clouds. Arguing with Freedom wasn’t worth it, though. She was a worrier, and it was almost always better to just let her do it.

“Any preference where to start?” she asked.

“Anywhere is fine with me.” I genuinely didn’t care, but I knew that Freedom probably already had an idea of what she wanted to do, so I was fine with following her lead.

“Let’s do the Watershed Garden first, and then we can cross over and go to the Gamble House.” Freedom gestured first one way and then the other. “It’d be easy from there to make our way back to the car without missing anything.”

I was tempted to ask if she’d memorized the online map, but I was pretty sure I already knew the answer. She did stuff like that all the time. Personally, I thought it defeated the purpose of having a relaxing day out, but hey, who was I to stand in the way of what my headstrong older sister liked to do, right?

We made small talk as we walked, comparing notes on our upcoming schedules, the work we had to finish, and the tests we had to take before we could officially say we were graduating. I’d been a little surprised when she’d suggested we do something over spring break rather than spending all our time doing schoolwork. I’d always been as committed to academics as Freedom, but this last semester, she’d been running herself into the ground.

When she had sources she couldn’t take out of the library, she’d stay as late as possible rather than leaving when she was tired. Some nights, she’d even go to her mentor’s house to work, so she’d have Dr. Ipres on hand to be a reference or whatever Freedom needed. In fact, now that I thought about it, she’d actually spent more time working outside of the apartment this year than she had in all the time we’d been at school together.

“Are you sure you have enough time to proofread your paper?” Freedom asked as she paused in front of some brilliantly colored tulips. “We can head back early if you think you need more time.”

I rolled my eyes. “I told you I was done with it.”

“You should re-read it at least once.”

I gave her a sideways look. “You do remember that I’m the one going to school to be a teacher, right?”

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