Read Run (The Tesla Effect #2) for Free Online Page B

ago. If she wanted their relationship to change, Tesla would have to be the one to do it.
    She shivered once in the cold as she rose up on the toes of her boots and pressed her lips to his mouth, gently but with conviction. His mouth was firm, his lips soft and warm. She pulled her hands from his and laid them on his shoulders to steady herself, and then pulled back to wait for his reaction. Tesla’s hood had fallen back and the November wind lifted her hair from her neck and swirled it around her shoulders. An unexpected shiver ran up her spine and she felt a sudden urge to turn and search the darkness between the trees, certain, for no apparent reason, that they were being watched.
    “I’m not sure I know what this means,” Sam said, his voice low and steady.
    “I’m not sure I do, either,” she admitted, surprised to hear the tremor in her voice. “I wanted to kiss you. So I did. We hang out all the time—we’re close, I think, and—well, we’ve only ever kissed that once.”
    “No, we—” he started to say and then abruptly stopped. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them he seemed sad. He reached up and gently removed her hands from his shoulders. Disconnected them. “Tesla, I don’t think this is a good idea.”
    “Oh,” she said, taken completely by surprise. “I thought—I mean, you know, you said last summer—”
    “I remember,” he said firmly. “It’s just that—why tonight, Tesla? Why now?”
    “God, Sam, I don’t know. It was just a kiss! I’m sorry I did it,” she said, embarrassed. This was the second guy she’d kissed today, and he was also the second one to make her feel like a fool for it. She turned and began to walk back the way they’d come.
    “Look, Tesla, don’t take it like that,” Sam said as he caught up to her, his boots crushing the fragile, brittle leaves beneath his heels, scattering the ones just out of reach. “It’s just—look I can’t explain, okay?”
    “Hey, no explanation necessary,” she said as cavalierly as she could. “Trust me, it’s no big deal.”
    They were silent as they left the park and headed, without consultation, to Tesla’s house. Sam stopped on the sidewalk, and Tesla turned to him when she was halfway to her door.
    “Don’t you want to come in?” she asked. He always came in. They always watched TV after they went out.
    “Not this time.” His discomfort was obvious, so obvious that Tesla felt her face flame in response.
    He turned and walked quickly away, just left her standing there—Sam, whom Keisha made fun of for his devotion and Max called ‘your lover-boy,’ in that maddening, sing-song voice that little boys reserve exclusively for their sisters.
    What is it with this day ? Tesla thought. With these boys ? She had no answers, so she went in the house, up to her room, and flopped down on the bed to stare morosely at the ceiling. What is wrong with me ?
    The question was a wail inside her head, a keening that was about her confusion and embarrassment over Sam and Finn, but so much more. That one question encompassed everything, the parts of herself she didn’t understand, her sense of being different, isolated from everyone around her, and the indisputable fact that she was left utterly alone to figure it all out by herself.
    She wished, for the ten thousandth time, for her mom.
     
    All Finn could see as he stumbled back to the old Victorian house was Tesla, draped in some long, dark sweater that hugged her body, a loose hood over her hair, grabbing Sam’s hand as they walked a winding path among the trees, in and out of the pools of light cast by the park lamps spaced at intervals along the various walking trails. She had stood on tiptoe to kiss Sam on the mouth, her hood falling back and the wind picking up her fiery hair that put to shame the faded colors of the leaves that moved restlessly at their feet. Finn had stood, a few dozen yards away, stunned and unable to look away.
    He shouldn’t