Summary: She lives in a world of innocence and romance. He lives in a world of garish lights and pulsing music. Is their love strong enough to create a world they can share?
I don't own HSM. Kenny Ortega does. Nor do I own this story.
:D
This chapter is dedicated to Allie (ZanessaLover247)!
Habits die hard. By morning, Gabriella had begun to worry. The reassurance of Troy's presence might have helped, but by midweek he had not tried to see her. And that brought home the torments a relationship with a man like Troy Bolton would cause. He was not a stranger to her, and never would be again, and yet she had no way of knowing if he hadn't called because he was busy, or indifferent, or complacent. Or if in that one night together he had satisfied whatever instinct that impelled him to pursue her.
She had tried to see herself clearly, with her strengths and weaknesses. She was romantic, and filled with a thousand picture dreams of how the world ought to be...and only rarely was. Some of the most enchanting hours of her life had been spent in Troy's forest, but any relationship she had with them would have to be lived in the real world. She knew that she was not composed emotionally for the heavy lightning of spectacular love affairs. She needed things around her that grew and lasted. She needed security.
She shed tears and faced the truth that Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez just weren't meant to work.
She would just have to tell him so when she saw him again. Or if she saw him again.
On Friday afternoon, Gabriella was sitting alone in the back of the boutique she was employed at, and was supposed to be doing inventory. She was so involved with work and her emotions that she didn't hear the door open or shut behind her. She first realized that she wasn't alone when she felt a gentle finger locate the slight hollow behind her neck and traced slightly and carefully downward. There was no mistaking her body's reaction to that magical touch.
"Troy!" She swung her swivel chair around to face him.
"Hello. I've missed you terribly."
An easy motion of his hand brought down a chair in front of hers and he sat down facing her, his body very close, one of his knees separating hers. Her breath caught at the sudden pleasure-filled uplift in her abdomen from the pressure of his leg inside her thigh. Her gaze dropped involuntarily to his legs. There was a mesmeric fascination in the way his lean muscles tugged at the age polished denim and she found herself following the taut line upward with her eyes until it occurred to her what she was doing.
Her gaze flew to his and held there suspended in the perception and tenderness and dancing light she saw in his eyes.
Her deepening flush and steady wide-eyed gaze, the engaging rise and fall of her chest against the light fabric of her blouse, the dusky barely parted lips, were drawing deep-rooted answers from his senses; and his desire to have his arms filled with her became almost as great as his desire to make her smile. Holding her waist in a tight clasp, he drew her towards him, setting her on his leg with her thighs straddling one of his. One of his palms slipped upward to massage her neck, bringing her lips slowly toward his.
"Troy, no."
Under his hands he could feel the tense hold of her body, the winsome trembling in her thighs. He could sense her lacerating inner struggle against the violent flame that was the mirror of his own. He searched her expressive brown eyes.
"Why?"
"Because--Troy, please. Let me go. I can't think with my--with your leg between..."
He released her and watched her go to the other side of the room, closing her eyes, catching a shelf in a pale-knuckled grip. It struck him then that she was saying no to more than the kiss. She was saying no to everything. There was an odd despair in her face and he echoed that as he had her desire. In a lifetime of hearing yes, the first shy, sane voice to break the babble that his life had become, was telling him no. Don't you want to be my redemption? he thought. He tried to choose what he would feel, to corral and control and confront it, but the emotions were too new, too unfamiliar. All he could do was ask again,
"Why!"
The subtle tracing of feeling she had seen earlier on his face seemed to have vanished and she began to wonder if it had been there at all before. The blue eyes were only clear and curious, no longer hypnotizing and enchanting. The long mouth, relaxed. She had never felt less articulate.
"It would be too complicated," she said.
His head tilted slightly. His eyes affected interest. "Is that based on something concrete or is this more of the 'I don't trust men because they're strange and have body parts that change size' doctrine?"
"If you think I'm that ridiculous, it's a wonder I intrigue you at all."
That drew a smile.
"It's because I strip isn't it? Don't worry about that. I'm sure everyone who sees the show is only interested in my mind. She turned away fighting to enforce the slipping hold on her willpower. He came to her and caught a firm hold of her shoulders bringing her to him. She sensed something in him that reminded her of exhaustion as he laid his forehead against hers, his fingers gently kneading through her thin blouse.
Logic evaporated like steam as his mouth moved in a soft eddy over hers, dragging her lips into fragile openness. With a seizure of need, she melted forward into the firm and welcoming frame, her restive sense seeking him, learning his pliant flesh, the complex detail of projecting bone structure, the sensitive strength of her hands. Her fingers found her shoulders, the sides of his face, winnowed the fawn-soft delicacy of his hair. Each part of her the pressed his body stung with the tingling hunger to know more of him.
The reality surface again, and Gabriella remembered where they were, who he was, and pulled away.
His hands left her, resculpting themselves quickly to her cheekbones, his thumbs gently lifting her chin.
"When you--" He stopped, taking in a betraying breath. "When you decide to pull your head out of the sand, come see me. You know all the places to look."
He left her with a hammering pulse and the image of his mouth burned into hers. And she knew the moment she let him walked out of that door was a mistake. No woman in her right mind would have let him walk out of her life. Because Troy Bolton had won. She liked him. She desired him. More, she respected him. She made an important discovery about human nature. One didn't always hand one's heart to another human being. Sometimes, it just went against the owner's will.
That night, after the store closed, she directed her car toward the mansion at Lucille Hill. She knew only one thing. IF she was going to Troy Bolton, she would have to do it quickly, before thought returned. Quickly and without thinking, like a paratrooper making a jump into fog-saturated space.
An arctic cold front had sliced that state and the steadily dropping temperatures were keeping the prudent indoors. Traffic was light on the country roads. Across the lake, she could see the lights of the village as a distant that threw fading streamers on the lake's frosty glass. Within the curtain of the trees, the towering ramparts of oak and maple, there was no light except from the headlamps, piercing far in the clear, frigid air, yet revealing little beyond smokey tunnel glimpses of road and brush. The cold seemed to burn out even light.
Her nerves were fine and tight, overstretched cords, by the time Troy's gateway loomed at the deserted roadside. The iron-wrought gate was closed shut. If it was locked, she wasn't sure what she was going to do.
Wind-drifted snow obscured twenty or so feet leading to the gate. That meant trouble for the Beetle, so she crushed the accelerator, seeking momentum as she made the turn. But it may have been too much momentum, because the little car landed on the driveway with a hop, its rear wheels catching in a hidden ice patch. The car sloughed around, showering snow powder, and spun off the drive, the engine-heavy rear end pulling it down a steep incline into a snowbank.
She was not thinking clearly beyond the monologue in her mind on her own stupidity when she got out of her car to assess the situation head-on, leaving the engine running. More rattled than she knew, working on automatic reflexes, she stood in the snowbank, locked the door and slammed it shut. Then automatic faded to comprehension and she stared in disbelief at the silver key ring dangling back and forth, separated by a pane of glass. The swaying circle mesmerized her, and when it stopped she crossed her arms on the sloping yellow roof, buried her head against the chill fabric of her parked, and groaned in frustration.
Her body awoke all at once to the cold. It framed her face in iron, wept like damp acid through her pants, blared in her muscles. Her stadium coat was fine for twenty and thirty degree weather, or for running from car to work to car to house. Tonight, it might have been Kleenex.
The large gates were locked, but there was a smaller entrance not far down the wall that was open. She ran down the rutted driveway from the slanting headlights of her VW, headlights that were shooting aimlessly into the swaying leaf-stripped trees above her head.
Night closed around her as the drive curved. The stars twinkled in a cloudless black sky, too distant for comfort. The trees arching over the drive seemed in their thrashing malevolence to want to deny her the small solace of the sight of the stars. The wind keened, a predatory chorus.
She looked up and suddenly saw it. The Bolton mansion.
Still distant, it rose from the hilltops, a hard forbidding silhouette. Faint light from etched-glass windows on either side of a grand formal entrance. In the flat moonlight it appeared huge, institutional, charmless. There must be someone home here. There must be. Relations, servants, Doberman pinschers...People didn't leave their mansions unprotected, did they? Her min fastened on Upstairs, Downstairs, cataloging episodes, examining habits of the rich.
The rich didn't strip! Why did he do it? Rebellion? Hard times? How hard could times be when you own a prestigious mansion and you're swimming in dough?
All at once, the snow heaved under her feet. She toppled though an underlying brittle crust into two feet of water. The pristine surface had hidden a spring-fed brook. Like frigid poison, the icy water bled through her clothes, lacerating her raw flesh, washing her in agony and convulsing her muscles.
When she stood at least, she could her herself weeping. Pain came in racking paroxysms beyond any threshold she could have imagined. Winded, her body heaving with shudders, she tried to aim her clumsy steps toward the mansion and for the first time in her life, she considered the fact that she might die tonight. Death. She rarely thought about it. It seemed like something removed her from her mundane life. But if she didn't get help, she really might die. Her picture would be in newspapers and people with busy lives would scan the article and say "how sad, she was so young." But dumb. So dumb to have her keys locked in a car on a night when the chill factor was 60 below 0.
There was no exact moment when she realized that her intellect had begun to malfunction. But distantly, she knew. Her actions pierced her awareness in sharp disconnected detail. Sorcery seemed to transport her from place to place.
She was pounding her fists on the mansion door.
She was trying to break through a window.
I'm freezing to death, she thought. Me. Gabriella Montez. Won't everyone be surprised...she tried to cudgel her mind into coherency. She tried to recall whether she actually knocked on his door or if it was just a figment of her imagination. She tried to think. But thoughts vanished as if someone was forcefully plucking them one by one like feathers, out of her mind.
Well, that's chapter four! Will Gabriella freeze to death, and be tomorrow morning's headline; or will Troy finally hear the pounding and come out and save her? Only time will tell, but you have to review first! XOXO, VG.