Stray Fears - Gregory Ashe Page 0,91

me and bit his lip and blurted out, “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

He grinned, relaxed, slumped down on me again. His walked his fingers across my chest. “A marine biologist?” he asked.

“If I can get the grades.”

“And you’re going to Tulane?”

“I still have to apply, but I should get in.”

The struggle in his face was real; he was trying to say something, and it wouldn’t come out. Someone in the room next to us put on “Free Bird,” and someone else screamed with excitement.

“They are so fucking loud,” Elien grumbled. “Every night.”

I just stroked his back, gathering the sweat there, feeling the heat still dissipating from his muscles.

“I have some money,” Elien said carefully.

I raised an eyebrow.

“And I need a place to live,” Elien said.

I nodded.

“And I don’t want to live here anymore. I want to be away from here.”

I nodded again.

“I was thinking about New Orleans.”

“It’s a great city,” I said.

“And if you’re going to school in New Orleans, it makes more sense for you to live in the city too, instead of commuting across the lake every day.”

“That does make sense.”

“Would you please help me out here?” Elien asked, slapping my stomach.

Grinning, I said, “Only because I’m so proud of you for earlier.”

He rolled his eyes.

“When you told me you loved me,” I said.

“Yes, I remember.”

“I think we could find somewhere really nice,” I said, my hand moving more slowly on his back. “I think we could find somewhere we could be really happy.” Then I nudged him toward the edge of the bed. “But until then, can we please get out of this motel right now and go just about anywhere else?”

“You just want to go home so your mom will coo over you some more.”

“You’re my home, Elien Martel,” I said. “Starting right now.”

He propped himself on an elbow. “Hey, Dag? Would you—do you mind calling me Eli?”

I shook my head.

“I think I want to be Eli again.”

I ran my hand through his hair, smiled, and said, “Hello, Eli.”

THE SAME BREATH

Keep reading for a sneak preview of The Same Breath, the first book in a new series by Gregory Ashe.

1

Teancum Leon had barely gotten home from the Division of Wildlife Resources when a knock came at the door. Scipio, his black Lab, was in the middle of doing a welcome / please-take-me-out-for-a-walk dance, but the Lab adjusted his priorities and began to bark.

“All right,” Tean said, stroking the dog’s ears as he bumped him out of the way.

Mrs. Wish, his neighbor from the end of the hall, was wearing her usual ensemble, regardless of day or night: a full-length house dress, something Tean imagined her picking from a color page in the Sears Catalogue, and a chemically pink terrycloth robe over it. Her long white hair was free of its usual bun, and her eyes were wide.

“There’s an intruder,” she said between gasps for breath.

“Oh my gosh. Did you call 911?”

“Not that kind,” she said, and then she grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the apartment. “It’s a spider.”

“In that case, I’ve got to take Scipio for a walk,” Tean said.

Mrs. Wish drew herself up, glancing back at Tean’s door and then looking down the hall toward her own home. “I’ll walk him,” she said, like a woman offering to step in front of a firing squad. “You deal with that nasty little murderer.”

Tean sighed and nodded. While Mrs. Wish hurried back to rescue Scipio, Tean made his way along the hall and pushed open her door. He had to snag the domestic short-hair that tried to slip out of the apartment—he thought this one was Senator Frank B. Bandegee, because he remembered the white patch on her chest—and then he was inside the apartment, pushing the door shut behind him.

Very little ever changed about Mrs. Wish’s apartment: the smell of dander, animal and human, mixed with wet cat food and a floral scent. Collectible presidential ashtrays, holding the mounds of potpourri that provided the flowery note, were placed on occasional tables and shelves and ledges around the room. Doilies. A million doilies. A framed, larger-than-life portrait of President Woodrow Wilson, hanging where most people would have placed a television (once Mrs. Wish had sent Tean into the bedroom to examine a . . . deposit that Senator Henry Cabot Lodge had left on the carpet, and he had stumbled onto an autographed photograph of President Gerald Ford in a heart-shaped frame. President Wilson’s illicit rival? Tean was dying to know). And, of