Collide Into You: A Romantic Gender Swap Love Story (24 page)

Plus, I’ve always wanted to run without a shirt on. Call me crazy, I suppose.

“I don’t expect you to understand, Dillan,” I say and I lean forward, stretching my hamstrings. Dillan has the tightest hamstrings in the damn world. “Running allows me freedom. It allows me to be a little disobedient.” What I don’t say is that if I’m going to be stuck in his body, that I need to get this heavy frame used to running. Because I’m not giving
that
up.

“Yeah,” he says. “But in the middle of the night? Someone might mug us.”

“Of what? Our dignity? We have nothing of value. The worst that can possibly happen is that a politician will convince us to switch political parties.”

Dillan snickers. Yeah, sometimes I am funny. Not often, though. “Congress isn’t in session, Keira.”

Of course he’d know a Washingtonian tidbit like that. He’s dated every female Congressional intern over the last seven years. Naturally he’d pick up on that type of information. I try to keep my jealousy in check. He’s being a good sport about running with me tonight. That’s something.

Dillan has no idea of how to stretch out, so I say, “My calves get a bit tight after the third mile, so make sure you stretch them out good now.”

“Three miles? Seriously?”

I give him a dark look. “
You
won’t have a problem, Dillan. My body, which is a running machine, has completed eight marathons. This old thing,” I say, moving my arm up and down Dillan’s body—my God, he has a great chest, “will probably die after the first mile. In your body, I feel like one of those junkyard junkers that doesn’t even have a steering wheel, whereas you are a sleek new Mercedes.”

“So what you’re saying is that I’m going to kick your ass tonight?” Dillan asks.
 

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” I smile. I can’t help myself. I’m shocked that I even suggested running tonight. Since I’m in Dillan’s body, I know I’ll suffer the consequences tomorrow. “You don’t even have to go easy on me, Dillan. One of the cool things of you being me, I can watch you and study my stride. See if I need improvements or tweaking.”

“That makes absolutely no sense to me, Keira. But I’ll go along with it just to please you.” He gives me what I can only consider The Grin, but on my face it doesn’t have the cheesy affect that it would have had it come from his real face. I try to do The Grin, but he only laughs at me. “Not nearly good enough, Keira. I’ve perfected that smile over the years. One cannot master it in a day.”

“If you say so, creep.” He looks hurt, but only briefly. “Okay, so we’ll walk to The Mall and run around it at least once, if not twice.”

“I swear you’re trying to kill me,” Dillan says.

“Like I said, you’ll be—”

He shushes me, placing a finger over my lips playfully. “
My
body, Keira. You’re trying to kill
my
body.” It’s like his finger sears my lips. A small shock goes through me.

Dillan

K
EIRA
HUFFS
AND
PUFFS
BEHIND
me and I swear to God that running is some sort of sacred sport that I never knew existed. Granted, I’m in Keira’s amazing runner’s body. So I’m sure that this has something to do with it. I’m ahead of her as we pass the Washington Monument. I’ve never been out this late at The Mall before. People look at us as if we are insane.

And we are.

It’s a Saturday night and we choose to
run
The Mall. We are not normal people. Normal people hit up bars or clubs or hang out at friend’s houses. We…run.

“Slow down!” Keira demands. I speed up instead, ignoring her. “I am going to kill you, Dillan.” She really is a wonderful runner. No wonder she’s won a few marathons. Her legs are sleek, chiseled, and I have fleeting thoughts of them wrapped around me.

I know how you feel about me, Dillan.

My heart thumps again and I slow down to keep from gasping for air. She knows. She knew. She thinks she’s always known.
Love is my disorder. I’ve never been in love.

All of these things run though my head as she catches up to me. I wish I knew how to make her fall in love with me. I’ve never actually had to try. I don’t even know if anyone has fallen in love with me. What if I’m not “love” material? What if I’m only “lust” material?
 

That’s why it’s a challenge, Dillan, you dumbo.

Ellen. You are a sly woman.

Keira sucks in air, leans over, and tries to say something, but words fail her. She just can’t breathe right now. It’s been only a mile. She wasn’t kidding when she said I needed to work on my aerobics. I feel like I could run all night, into the day, and then into the next night. There’s something so earthy about running that I never knew about. I wonder if—when—we change back, if she’ll let me run with her. That might be fun.

“Sorry I didn’t slow down,” I say. “You told me not to go easy on you.”

“I didn’t think your body would be this…bad,” she sputters out in between heavy breathing. “I honestly thought I’d make it at least to the two-mile mark before expiring.” She points to her crotch. “How on earth do you run with these
things
dangling between your legs? If they aren’t jarring with each step, they’re flapping or flopping or, worse,” she seethes, “they get pinched between your gigantic, monstrous thighs. I need duct tape or something…”

I laugh and snort at the same time.
Duct tape?
“It’s called a jock strap. I guess it’s something men get used—”

Instantly my mouth goes dry. She rubs her hands down her chest in an unassuming manner. I doubt she even knows she’s doing it. She’s feeling
my
chest and I imagine her hands going lower. Exploring. Then I shake my head. She’d never do something like that.
 

Keira tilts her head. I’d love to know what she’s thinking right now. Probably something about Army manuals or the best way to torture people who inadvertently see classified information. Then I think about how she might torture me, and my head is pretty much lost from that point forward. Because I have a feeling I’d love for her to torture me.

“What are you thinking about?” she asks me suddenly. My mouth is still an O. “I know that face…” She trails off. Her face is flush, but I can’t tell if it is from the run or something else. Something more. Like arousal.

“Nothing!” I answer just as quickly as I can.

Her lips tighten. “Don’t lie to me, Dillan Pope.”

“You want the truth?” She nods wearily after narrowing her eyes. Keira knows I won’t answer how she expects me to answer her. “I was thinking about how I want to kiss you right now.”

Keira

I
BACK
UP
A
LITTLE
, as if he’ll suddenly kiss me. Right now. Like, right now. But that’s just silly. Dillan’s just being…Dillan. Smooth. Suave. Sexy. He’s all those things, all the time. Even when he’s in my body. Strange how when I look at him—
at Dillan in my body
—I no longer see my face. I see him. He’s in there, regardless of the external package.

I look past him, down to the glowing Lincoln Memorial. It stands out much like a lighthouse does on a rocky cliff, alerting those on the sea of oncoming land mass. I need some sort of warning system for when Dillan gets too close to me. Now might be a good time for one. When I turn my gaze back to Dillan, he’s closer.
Warning: Danger Zone.
He’s way too close and I back up. Again.

“You said you wanted the truth, Keira,” Dillan says, his voice an octave deeper than my own normal voice. He’s turned on. Aroused. “I’ve noticed that you turn inward when confronting personal problems. From this point forward, I’ll always be honest with you. Trust is the opposite of disorder, right?”

Trust. Truth. Honesty. All of those things are the opposite of disorder. But all of those things are inherently separated from disorder. Right? Can’t have both. Trust
and
disorder.

“I’d say that in most circumstances, yes, trust is the opposite of disorder. But in our circumstance…”

“Let’s forget logic for a moment. Logic didn’t swap our bodies. An old lady did. Let’s even forget our circumstances, too. If you trust someone or something, then that something isn’t completely out of order. It’s not in a state of disorder.”

“So you’re saying I should trust you?” I ask sarcastically. He gives me an exasperated look and places his hands on his hips.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all, Keira.” His lips bunch up and turn white. “Part of my challenge is to be honest with you from this point forward and hopefully earn your trust in the process.” He smiles as if he’s figured everything out.

It’s not a bad idea, actually. Will it work, though? “So, when you look at me right now, in your body, you want to kiss me?” I ask.

“Is it weird? Yes,” he answers with a small laugh. “Do I want to kiss myself? Hell no. But I’m not talking to myself. I’m talking to you. You’re Keira Holtslander, regardless of what you look like on the outside. I’ve wanted to kiss you since your graduation party. You wore a yellow dress and your hair was shorter and your smile…” He pauses while I hold my breath.
He remembers what I wore?
“You smiled a lot easier back then. Now, not so much. I don’t know what you’ve seen, what you’ve experienced over the last nine years since you were that eighteen-year-old girl, but every time I look at you, I always have the same thought: that whoever you fall in love with will be the luckiest damn son of a bitch on the planet. Am I going to kiss you right now?” he asks. I’m still holding my breath and feeling a bit dizzy. My insides are melting and betraying me.
Kiss me!
I scream internally. “No.
I
won’t be the one to kiss
you
, Keira.”

“What?” I breathe the question out. A small wind comes by to cool me off. As sweaty as I am, I feel a bit cold at the moment.

“You will have to be the one to kiss me. No matter what, it will be your decision.”

Dillan

T
HE
LOOK
ON
HER
FACE
is priceless: it practically says, “In your dreams, buddy.” But then there’s something else, a different look. Concession? Agreement? Or maybe it is one of defeat.

“I—” she starts, then stops from saying whatever she planned. She looks conflicted. “Okay,” she says, finally.

“Just
okay
?” Did she sort of, kind of, maybe just agree with me? My legs tingle and the urge to sprint around her, around The Mall, around the whole world kicks in right then. I jump up and down a few times, flexing my leg muscles.

“Yeah,” she answers. “Just okay.”

“I’ll take it. Now…” I trail off, taking a few steps away from her. “Chase me.”

“What?”

I might as well have told her to build an ancient pyramid. I take a few more steps. “It’s two-thirty in the morning. We have nothing else to do.” Well, nothing that
she’d
agree to, namely allowing me to ravage her silly. “If we’re going to run, let’s do this right! By me kicking your ass.”

With that, I sprint away from her. Her groan, though, is loud enough for me to hear. But she runs after me and after a few minutes, I can hear her laughing like a lunatic. She’ll never catch up to me. So she doesn’t have to worry about me thinking she’ll catch me and then kiss me. That’s what movie-guy would want. Or maybe that’s what movie-girl would do. However, I don’t think one kiss will swap us back. A kiss is just a kiss. Well, a kiss from Keira would be something a lot more than just a kiss, but still. I doubt Ellen would undo her little magic spell if our lips happened to accidentally-on-purpose touch.

It would still be wonderful, though. A whole hell of a lot of wonderfuls.
 

I pass in front of the Lincoln Memorial and notice that Keira doesn’t stick to the path. She’s running at a diagonal now, across the lawn, and right for me. My God, she’s determined, and in about three seconds, she collides into me and takes me down with her. Her hands cradle my head and I know that while she did what she could to lessen my impact, she skinned her elbows on the gravel.
 

“You may be faster than me,” she huffs out. Keira’s the first to talk, but only because I can’t breathe with her on top of me. “In this form, I’m stronger than you.”

I sputter a laugh. It’s a weak one. “You couldn’t stop, could you?”

Keira groans. She’s still on top of me and it doesn’t seem like she’s going to remedy that any time soon. “No. Once I started sprinting at you, it was like I was a bulldozer without a brake pedal. Plus, I think every muscle in this body is cramped up right now.”

Ah, so that’s why she isn’t moving. “Is your mouth cramped?” I stare at her lips. She tightens them into a thin line. Nope. Not cramped.

She arches an eyebrow. In truth, she’s only a few inches away from me. I can feel her heavy breaths on my jaw. She’s also very, very sweaty, and it’s sort of gross. I bet that if I pushed a little bit, she’d slide right off me.

Instead of getting up, which is what I expected, she leans down. Her eyes flutter shut, briefly, like a butterfly’s wings, and her lips lock with mine. It’s a tiny, whispery kiss, and after a few seconds, she lifts her head back up.

My heart has literally exploded. Everything tingles. My breasts, my stomach.
There
.

Instantly, I want more. A lot more. One kiss is not enough. I want everything. Of her. Of us. I want to breathe her in, consume her, worship her.

“Nothing?” she asks.

Huh?
“What’s nothing?” I’m not thinking straight. Keira has, effectively, scrambled my brain. Honestly, I don’t want to be thinking straight right now. When she doesn’t answer right away, I pull her down and kiss her. With hunger, passion. Every ounce of feeling I possess goes into that kiss.

Keira

W
HEN
HIS
LIPS
CRASH
ON
mine, I think I’m going to die. I thought a small, chaste kiss would do the trick. I thought that when I lifted my head up a few seconds ago, that I’d be me. That Dillan would be Dillan, and we’d be back to ourselves lickety-split.