Murray Hill || A Superhuman Tale - 1

Chapter One

May 2016

"Are you one of them?"

Rhonda lay stretched on the bed, her head cradled on her right arm as she gazed through the window at the street below. A year of doubt and worry. She barely was able to utter those five words—and she couldn't look at Tommy when she did.

Yet the calm of her own voice, which was just above a whisper, had surprised her. Could it be that easy?

At first, she hoped it might. Tommy made a noise as if he hadn't understood, sort of a muted meh, but that sound was followed by a pause that seemed to go on too long. Finally, after a dozen beats of her heart, his warm form slide into bed behind her, spooning her as he always did. His lips took their familiar perch just atop her left ear, and his gentle left hand settled above the curve of her hip. She loved his touch. Even after six years together, it sometimes left her breathless.

But he hadn't answered her question, which was unlike him. She paused, took strength from his proximity, and, after a few minutes, pressed on, her voice now betraying the faintest tremor of emotion. "Are you Gifted?"

He rose on an elbow and turned her toward him, looking into her eyes with the love that he so often did. His voice was calm and soft. "The only gift I've ever had worth having is the gift I have for loving you."

And she knew

Her man often was gentle and loving, but he had that sense of humor, sometimes corny, sometimes so wicked Rhonda thought her sides might split.

She knew him.

He should have laughed at such a silly notion. He should have made a wisecrack about his being the "gift of flatulence." He should have tickled her. He should have slapped her backside and told her to get her lazy ass out of bed.

Instead, he'd held her and pledged his love with more sincerity than he ever had. She knew, and tears pooled in her eyes.

Tommy didn't say a word. He just regarded her with love and concern, but with a hint of mistiness in his eyes that she'd never seen before.

After a few seconds, she rested her head on his chest, took four heavy breaths, and wiped her tears on his shirt. Then she rose and moved to the bathroom to prepare for work. Her shift at the Kensington Hospital ER started in an hour, and she didn't want to be late.

"Asshole," she said flatly.

The word was such a common refrain between them that it broke the spell, and the tension lifted. From the corner of her eye, she could see him move off to prepare her things.

In the bathroom, Rhonda pulled the door closed and stood there some minutes, catching her breath.

"How could it have gone any other way?" she whispered to herself.

She knew she looked good for a woman of 43. Her black hair had begun to fleck gray here and there, but her skin, smooth and dark, might have been that of a woman a dozen years younger, with the merest suggestion of smile lines and crows' feet. And though no one had ever called her beautiful—the best she'd ever garnered was "pretty," and that only when she was years younger—she still had that figure men had always admired.

And here you are, shacking up with a white man half your age, she thought.

And that was the tender spot, the first hint that something was wrong. No, not wrong, just not quite—.