The Penalty Box - Teagan Kade Page 0,8
he does a runner.
“Fancy a walk?” he suggests hopefully.
Honestly, I’m surprised he’s not shoving me out the door.
“Sure,” I reply. “It’s just a regular neighborhood, though. It’s not exactly jaw-dropping scenery.”
A smile follows that spells trouble in the best kind of way. “You’re all the scenery I need, Ms. Marsden.”
“There you go with those lines again.”
He shrugs. “Call it habit. Come on.”
He gets out and I follow. We fall in beside each other on the sidewalk. The moon is waxing crescent. It plays peekaboo through the cloud cover above, streetlights providing pools of light for us to walk through.
I struggle to control the urge to respond to some of the things he said at dinner. I’m lost, don’t know how to play this at all, so I remain silent.
Nolan doesn’t seem to mind. Before I realize it, he’s holding my hand. It happens organically. With that connection, the façade I was trying to put up drops. “I suppose I wasn’t quite myself at dinner, was I?”
He looks down. “You didn’t seem like yourself, no.”
“We’ve been on one date and you’re a Linnea Marsden expert now?”
“Referring to yourself in the third person,” he says. “You know what they say about that.”
“’I wanted to do what was best for LeBron James, and what LeBron James was going to do to make him happy’,” I reply, quoting the basketball star.
That elicits a laugh from Nolan. “I suppose the sporting elite are particularly guilty of it. It’s got a name, you know—habitual illeism.”
“What, you learn that in psychology?”
“I did, as a matter of fact.”
I’m thankful it’s dark enough he can’t see me blushing in embarrassment. “I didn’t know you were taking psych.”
He taps his head. “I’ve always been interested in what’s happening up here. That’s where the edge is. It’s what separates the truly great athlete from the rest of the pack.”
“And talking in the third person—I mean, ‘habitual illeism’—is a good thing?”
He looks at me as we step through another pool of light, his eyes glinting mystery and menace. “Generally, no. It signals a stunted intellect, the presence of psychotic personality disorders, maybe rampant egoism.”
“But…”
“But recent research would suggest otherwise, some hypothesize a distanced perspective of yourself might promote greater inner awareness and understanding.”
I figured Nolan might be smart, but I had no idea he was a walking, talking Sigmund Freud. “Keep going. You’re turning me on.”
He stops walking and stands in front of me. He takes both my hands and lifts them, looking at me directly. “What were you doing, at dinner?”
Busted, I think to myself.
“I don’t know,” I shrug. “I thought maybe I’d come on too strong, too soon? I thought you’d prefer me a bit more watered down than usual, reined in?”
He smiles gently at that. “I prefer the Linnea I met last night, forward and kind of crazy, definitely not afraid to speak her mind. Can we get her back?”
I bounce my head from side to side. “I’ll have to speak to management.”
“Tell them Nolan King wants to meet, at their earliest convenience.”
We start walking again. “I’ll see what I can do, but be warned, this Linnea Marsden Company you’re dealing with isn’t afraid of controversy.”
“Fine.”
“Or letting its opinion be known.”
“All right.”
“Even if it means breaking your little heart.”
“Little?” Nolan scoffs. “There you go again. Nothing about me is little, Ms. Marsden.”
“So I recall,” I slur, conscious of myself returning.
“Do all you brothers share such sizeable…dimensions?”
“I thought you were dating me?”
“Is that what we’re doing now, dating?” I query.
We take a corner, a truck blasting past on its way to the town center. “If it’s agreeable to Management.”
I try to suppress a smile. “It is.”
The conversation swings back to the topics I dodged at dinner. This time I make no attempt to silence or suppress myself, swinging wildly between subjects and loudly proclaiming my stance on everything from the politics to gun control and animal rights.
“You’re all for animal rights but you don’t like dogs?” he laughs.
I show him the back of my right ear, the scarring. “I was attacked when I was a kid.”
“Oh, that?” he asks, trying to get a better look. “I thought that was from your days in the razor gang.”
“Har-de-har-har,” I fake-laugh. “But yeah, me and dogs don’t gel.”
“What do you gel with?” he asks.
“Long Saturdays spent on the sofa watching ball, maybe a Diet Coke and some malted chocolate chip cookies to keep me company.”
“And a man?”
I try not to laugh. “No. No man required.”
We keep walking and talking.
Nolan jumps in when he