The Beginning: An eShort Prequel to the Bridge by Karen Kingsbury Read Free Book Online

camera up on the dashboard, rigged it with masking tape and a dowel so he could turn it slightly. The viewfinder flipped out, facing them. “Just act natural,” he told her. “Keep your eyes on the road.” His taped laughter rang through her living room the way it once rang through her mornings and afternoons.
    The video started with the camera on him, and his first question always made her smile. “Okay, Miss Molly, tell the people how we met. The unlikely meeting that started the madness.”
    “The whole story?” He had turned the camera so she came into view, her face less than agreeable as she drove her BMW sedan. “While we’re driving?”
    He laughed again. “It’s thirty minutes to The Bridge. I think you can multitask.”
    She made a face at him and then laughed as she glanced at the camera. “Fine. What’s the question again?”
    “Keep your eyes on the road.”
    Their laughter came together in an up-tempo waltz, while the camera caught the discreet way their bodies seemed drawn to each other. The slight but intentional way their knees and elbows brushed together and the way she looked at him as he filmed her—as if she’d never been happier in all her life. Molly smiled as the video played. The camera had caught their heart connection, the friendship definitely, but it had also caught the connection they hadn’t been willing to talk about. The chemistry between them, so strong it took her breath away even now.
    Their crazy undeniable chemistry.
    As the video played on, something remarkable happened—the reason Molly watched the video every year on this day. She no longer felt herself sitting in front of her TV screen watching footage shot seven years ago. Instead she was there again, the sun on her shoulders, adventure in her heart, the summer after her high school graduation. Not in a flashback sort of way. But really there. Heading into an oversize auditorium with three brand-new girlfriends for August orientation at Belmont.
    Maybe it was the sense of freedom Molly felt that day, the fact that she’d convinced her father to let her do the unthinkable—leave the West Coast to attend college in a flyover state like Tennessee. Or the fact that here she wasn’t an heiress biding time until she could take over her father’s corporation. She was a college kid, the same as everyone else. Whatever it was, that day she felt wonderfully alive and hopeful, every predictable aspect of her life as far removed as the Pacific Ocean.
    That day the Belmont auditorium was filled with the energy of college freshmen excited and anxious and desperately trying to fit in. Molly and the girls took the first open seats. Her eyes had barely adjusted to the light in the auditorium when one of her friends nudged the other. “Look at him!” She pointed to a guy one section over. He was tall and built, with short dark hair and piercing blue eyes. “He’s looking at me!”
    “Nice try.” The friend laughed. “He’s looking at Molly. Same as every other guy.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous. He’s just . . .” Molly giggled, but she couldn’t finish her thought. Because in those few seconds, the connection between her and the dark-haired freshman was so strong it took her breath away. She’d met a number of kids by then—through registration and lunch and field games earlier that afternoon. This felt different, and Molly knew one thing without a doubt, no matter what else happened in her four years at Belmont.
    She would never forget this single moment.
    They didn’t talk, didn’t make their way toward each other when orientation finished that evening. Molly almost wondered if her dad had someone following her, someone who would pay the guy to stay out of her way. Because her time here had come with a stipulation from her parents. She could study music, but she couldn’t date. If her father found out she was seeing a Belmont boy, he would bring her home on the next flight.
    “You’ll marry your own kind,”