Page 25 of You Can't Fight Lightning
But reading this work of fiction yesterday, something had struck me, much like my own lightning bolts. That was twice in as many days—the first time, when I’d seen Roxy, and the second, when I was sitting in bed reading, by myself.
This woman, Courtney, was writing about what women wanted. To be loved. To be cherished. To be adored, fought with, yelled at, made up with, loved and cherished some more. To be laughed with, and appreciated for all their little individual quirks.
How had I missed this in all my years of existence?
There was no one in my past that I’d shared such a thing with. Not ever. Never.
The thought made me sad.
“How’s the research going?” Roxy leaned in, and I could smell her clean fresh scent.
She smelled of the sun, and the outdoors, and sweat.
“It’s going. I am finding things I didn’t expect to find.”
She leaned back in her chair. “Such as?”
“Nothing I’m ready to discuss. Suffice to say, it’s enlightening. What were you doing this morning? You smell like the sunshine.”
Roxy didn’t respond.
Oh, damn.
Had I gone too far?
“You can tell that? I’m not sure if that’s flattering or creepy.”
“It wasn’t meant to be creepy.” Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I didn’t want to lose all the progress I felt like I’d just made.
Then she smiled. “I hiked up to the B.”
“The B?”
She pointed over her shoulder to where I could see a large white ‘B’ on the hill.
“How was the hike?”
“It was perfect. Just what I needed today.” She looked out at the cars passing on the street.
I took the time to look more closely at her. She was less prickly than when I’d seen her last night. At the bar, I’d feared for a limb, her energy was so ferocious. This was not a weak woman. She hid it well, though. There was a deep well to her, and if I wasn’t mistaken, a deep pain.
I might not be the sharpest arrow when it came to modern women, as my reading was showing me—I ignored Hera’s jeering voice in my head—but I understood people. Much better than anyone thought I did. Thousands of years of being around them and watching them gave me a sense of their range of emotions.
Fear. Love. Lust. Anger. Pain. Jealousy. Those were the things that drove people. Gods, too, although most of us didn’t like to admit it. With Roxy, I thought it might be fear. But I sensed great love in her as well.
It only made her more interesting.
She was a mystery I would love to discover.
If she’d let me close.
This was a good step. If my romance reading research wasn’t complete shit, the fact that she sat down with me was a good thing.
I didn’t stop to wonder why I, Zeus, king of the gods, was feeling stress over one human. Or why I doubted myself at all.
It was Hera’s fault, I decided. If she hadn’t been needling me, I would be fine.
Or would I? Would Roxy even be sitting here with me?
