Run (The Tesla Effect #2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

wished she could take it back, wished she’d never said it, but only a part of her. The anger that licked along her veins could not be ignored. There was no stopping what had been set in motion.
    “You refuse to say anything more than that there was some vague, generic car crash,” Tesla said all in a rush, her words coming out fast and loud as she hurled them at her father. “Why? Sebastian Nilsen said there was no car accident—he said her death was your fault!”
    It was out there, in the room now. Tesla took a step back, as if she could distance herself from the words she’d spoken, could somehow unsee her father’s face drain of color, the unguarded pain in his eyes, and something else that she didn’t recognize, wouldn’t recognize. This was the one event from last summer she hadn’t told anyone—especially her father: that Sebastian Nilsen had accused Greg Abbott of the death of Tasya Petrova, had accused his old rival of killing Tesla’s mother, the woman they had both loved.
    Greg Abbott’s hand shook as he raised it to gently push his glasses up higher on his nose, a gesture so exactly like his son’s that he looked, for a moment, the same age as Max. “I—I didn’t think you would give credence to anything Bas Nilsen had to say. Or that you could think this of me.”
    “No, it’s not that, exactly—” Tesla began, but stopped, not altogether sure what it was , if not that.
    Her father walked away but stopped at the kitchen door and spoke without turning around. “Things are never as black and white, never as simple, as we’d like them to be. And neither are people.” There was a pause that seemed packed with meaning that she could not decipher. “Even the ones we love the most.”
    Tesla stood a moment longer in the kitchen after he’d disappeared upstairs, until the cold air from the still-open refrigerator reminded her to shut the door. She walked slowly up the stairs, past her father’s closed door and the awful silence that emanated from his bedroom. In her own room, she changed her clothes to go meet Sam while she savagely berated herself for her inability to self-censor, to think before she spoke. She always managed to make every situation worse.
    Let’s see, Max is mad, and Dad is crushed and disappointed in me. I guess my work here is done , she thought bitterly as she dressed all in black to suit her mood. She pulled on a soft, fringed wool tunic with long belled sleeves and a deeply cowled hood like a monk’s, thick, ribbed sweater-leggings and flat, slouchy boots before she left the house. It was only when she got to the square in town and saw the bright lights around the theater’s marquee that she stopped the self-hate long enough to realize that her father had managed to avoid her questions about her mom and left her frustrated, with no answers, yet again.
     
    Tesla looked up at the clock tower in the town square to check the time—she was twenty minutes early for her date with Sam—and had just decided to get a coffee when someone laid a hand on her shoulder.
    Startled, she spun around to find Finn, who took a step back to widen the gap between them to exactly two feet eleven inches, she noted instantly.
    “You really have to stop following me, Abbott. It’s getting embarrassing,” he said. His cocked eyebrow and lopsided, derisive grin were calculated for maximum aggravation.
    Caught off guard, and apparently still unsettled by the kiss they’d shared earlier, Tesla decided a good offense was, after all, the best defense. “You wish.
    Really? That’s your stinging rebuttal? she berated herself silently.
    Finn laughed. “Well, I wish a lot of things, but I’m not sure you following me made the cut.”
    Annnnd, there it was, his endless amusement at her expense.
    “I have a date—what’s your excuse?” she demanded hotly. “Maybe you’re following me .”
    His smile never wavered, but there was a faint, barely detectable… tightening about him. His lips,