One of those barn bunnies hopped in front of Abby and the result was a detour through the cornfield. A huge grin spreads across my face and Abby laughs as pieces of green stalks fall down around us like rain.
Abby’s laughing as she helps me maneuver the huge machine away from the corn and back into the empty pasture. She has a magical laugh, a light laugh, one that I could listen to for the rest of my life.
“Good thing Chris put up the dairy cows otherwise we’d be offering steak for dinner,” I say loud enough for her to hear. She elbows me just enough to nudge me, but not enough to hurt.
“Better cow than bunny croquets.”
We’ve been driving for the past half hour and she caught on quick. Turning the big wheel with me, pressing the clutch when we have to shift, and resisting the urge to use the clutch as a brake when she wants to slow.
The tractor climbs a hill and when we reach the top, I put my hand over
Abby’s to show her how to take the tractor out of gear, into Park, and turn it off. It’s deafening when the loud engine rumbles off and the only sounds remaining are Abby’s leftover tingling giggles.
Abby giggling. Feels like a gift.
Abby slides off me and onto her feet on the ground and I follow. Like me, Abby wears jeans. The day was scorching, the night is humid, but being out on the farm requires pants. Too many things out and about that can scratch the hell out of your legs.
She’s a sight in her jeans though. Hip-hugging. Worn and threadbare in all the right places. Her blue tank is perfect for Abby. Not cut too low, but just enough for a nice peek of her breasts, ends right around the waistband of her jeans, and it has sparkles.
“How far away are we from the cabin?” Abby asks.
“Far enough away that Chris is going to wonder what the hell happened to the corn.”
Her eyes widen. “We’ll tell him aliens. I’ve seriously been wanting to use that excuse for a while—aliens. Crop circle aliens. No one seems to appreciate the alien answer for anything else. Like Abby, where were you—I was abducted by aliens. They don’t even pretend to buy it, but this time—I can totally own the crop circle defense.”
“Can I show you something?”
She bobs her head. “Besides how to harvest corn early? Okay.”
“Lie down.”
Abby releases that dangerous grin that’s half seduction, half fear-inducing. “Is this where the thing you show me involves dirty secrets?”
“Only if you’re good.” I drop onto the grass. “I’m serious, come here.”
Abby plops down beside me and looks over at me expectantly. “What’s my prize?”
“Close your eyes and lie back. Then when I tell you, open them.”
Wariness hovers in Abby’s eyes, but she does what I ask, closing her eyes and lying back. I ponder lying down beside her to see what she’ll see, but instead stretch out beside her and prop myself up on my arm, settling for her reaction.
The grass is cool against my warm skin and the humid night. Beyond us pond frogs croak and the stalks of corn rustle in the slight breeze. Abby looks peaceful tonight. One day of rest and those dark circles she’s had since she was shot are fading and there’s a smoothness to her usually razor-sharp expression.
She’s a vision. She’s beautiful. Just like the natural night painting I’m about to show Abby.
“Open your eyes.”
Abby does, and after the blinks to readjust her sight, wonder and awe race across her face. “Oh...my...God. There’s thousands of them.”
Stars. She’s referring to the stars. We’re hours away from any city, a good forty-minute drive from the nearest expressway. We’re as far from civilization as we can get and by being here, we get to witness the world as God envisioned it, as God created it, and it is absolutely good.
I ease down beside Abby, allowing the skin of my arm to touch hers. “I was in eighth grade the first time my parents allowed me to come down here with Chris and his grandfather. Chris brought me and Ryan out here and we camped. Long after Chris and Ryan went to sleep, I lay on the grass and stared at the stars in the sky. Made me feel small.”
“You liked that?” There’s an unsure tone in her voice. “Feeling small?”
“Yeah. If I was small, then maybe my problems were, too.”
“I get that. I get that more than you’d think.”
We’re quiet for a bit and I don’t mind the silence. I tried counting the stars once, and I never got far. Always fell asleep before one hundred. “I’m going to quit the band.”
Abby leans up to her elbow. “Why?”
“Those guys—all they could talk about was music. Their music, other people’s music, arrangements, instruments, shots and dreams...I was more interested that they had a gig in Florida before the summer ended.”
Abby cracks a grin and nudges my ankle with her toe. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Beaches sounded good at the time. Don’t get me wrong, I like to play. Gives me something to do with my hands when I’m bored, but a deck of cards can do the same thing. They deserve someone who loves what they do as much as they do.”
Abby nods like what I said was insightful. “So you’re going to play baseball again?”
My stomach knots. “Maybe, but being a baseball player...that’s not me, either. I like to play. Gives me a hell of a rush, but Ryan’s a baseball player. He can’t live without the game.”
Just like Isaiah can’t live without cars and Chris can’t live without dirt beneath his feet. Sometimes, I think I’m more like Chris. I like the idea of owning something, not being underneath anyone else, my own successes and failures dependent on what I do or don’t do. Working in a place where I’m reminded, in a good way, how small I am.
I’m off-kilter with my diabetes admission and Dad’s rant. More than I care to be. Now that my friends know and they haven’t shoved me into a wheelchair or deathbed yet, I’m lost.
I’ve worked my entire life to not be the guy with diabetes, taking on whatever it is that was in front of me to prove it. If I’m the guy with diabetes and no one cares, then who am I? “Maybe I don’t know who I am.”
“I disagree with that. I think you’re mixing up what you want to do with the rest of your life with who you are. For instance, I think I would make a kick-ass high-level agent for the stars. Nobody would say no to me. I know what I want to do, but I have no idea who I am.”
I reach over and link Abby’s fingers with mine. “You want to be an agent for actors?”
She bitterly laughs. “No, but it sounded good. I get what you’re saying though. I’ve spent my whole life being Mozart’s daughter, the girl he saved from the junkie, Grams’s second chance, the street hustler for Ricky, the pet project for Linus. I don’t have a clue who I am. Do you think normal people ever feel like us? Like we’re so busy being what everyone in our lives say we are that we never have a chance to be anything else?”
“Who are normal people?” I ask.
“Not us.”
Not us.
“Truth?” she asks.
I squeeze her fingers. “Truth.”
“I like who I am more around all of you then I ever liked myself before. Sort of like I had been trying out other people’s skin like a girl trying on clothes. The person I was before I met any of you, the person I am when I’m not around any of you feels too tight, too scratchy, too irritating. But when I hang with any of you, it’s like I can breathe.”
That’s a big statement for Abby and I’m dumbfounded as to what to say. Instead, I gently pull on her hand until she tilts her body so that we’re facing each other.
“Bigger truth?” she whispers.
“Bigger truth.”
“I really, really like who I am when I’m around you.”
I tuck her hair behind her
ear and enjoy the silky strands as they fall from my fingers. For months I ignored the truth, gave what was brewing between me and Abby other labels—attraction, friendship, playing around, lust.
While Abby definitely takes my breath away every time she walks into a room, there’s always been more between us and it’s time to man up. “Abby, I’m in love with you.”
Abby
I can’t breathe.
Logan’s in love with me. With me. And he knows all my dirty secrets. Not just the slightly-coated-with-dust secrets. The real deep muddy ones. The secrets that are so crusted over that they’re cemented into my soul. He knows all of these things, but he loves me anyhow.
“People don’t love me,” I whisper. Fear me. Leave me. Hate me. Use me. But love? Grams loved me but she left me mentally a long time ago and my father...I was the closest he had to experiencing emotion.
“I do.”
My heart thunders. “Normal people don’t love me.”
Logan’s mouth twitches into a somewhat smile. “Guess it’s good I’m crazy.”
I sock him in the shoulder. “I’m serious.”
“I am, too.”
“On being crazy?”
“Yeah and on the loving you.”
I sit up. “Will you stop saying that?”
“What, that I love you?”
“Yes!” I shriek. “That.”
“Why?”
“Because what if you don’t mean it? What if you think you love me and you don’t?”
“I can’t say I have much experience in all this, but I’ve seen a lot of what love isn’t in my life and maybe that’s enough to figure out what it is.”
There’s a trembling inside me that keeps building in intensity and it’s like being on a countdown until I explode. With shaking hands, I touch Logan’s face, confirming he’s real. That this is real. His skin is warm, rough from the slight evening stubble.
“You love me?” I say, trying out the words.
“I love you.”
He loves me.
I stare at him and he only stares back. I’ve had boys touch me before, but it wasn’t because they cared. I had people tell me they’re my friends before, but it’s only because they wanted something I had. I had a mother before, and she sold me for drugs. I had a father, but I was more of a highly valued possession that he liked to admire from the other side of a glass case. I had Grams and I lost her before her body drifted away.
I don’t understand love very well and I don’t understand why someone would give it so freely.
“Stop searching for an angle, Abby. You won’t find one.”
I lace my fingers in my hair and slightly pull until there’s pain at the roots. None of this makes sense. I know how I feel for him, but for him to feel this way for me?
My forehead wrinkles as I try to solve this problem. When I open my mouth to argue with him again, Logan leans in and kisses me.
His mouth is warm, soft, just a tiny bit rough on the edges and electricity shoots through my veins. Starting my heart, waking my soul, making me warm in all the right places. Logan twists my hair around his fingers and right as I’m about to touch him, Logan pulls away and meets my gaze. “I love you.”
I incline my head to argue again and Logan once again leans in. This time he takes my lower lip into his and when he releases it, he permits his tongue to slip along the seam of my mouth. My blood tingles and my mind becomes fuzzy.
I melt. Like hot butter against toast. Like wax dripping off a candle. I’m liquid in his hands.
Logan edges back again and he uses a hand to steady me when I sway. Disorientation fogs my brain and there was something I was going to say, but it’s hard to remember when Logan’s thumb keeps caressing the sensitive skin of my neck.
“What if it’s just lust?” I understand lust. I understand boys using my body and me letting my body be used. There were times I caved into lust. There were times I did what I did because it was a way to survive or to help someone else survive. But lust associated with emotion? That confuses me.
Hunger darkens Logan’s eyes. “No question on there being lust. I’ve been attracted to you since the moment you strode into Isaiah’s garage, but there’s more to us than that. You asked me to take care of your grandmother. I’ve told you more about my parents than I’ve ever told anyone else. We have trust, we have friendship, and we both feel like being someone better when we’re around the other. I already said I don’t know much about love, but I know that when I’m with you I feel something that’s a lot like flying and that is something I don’t want to go away.”
“You love me,” I say and wish I had the courage to turn those words around to use for him, but just trying to accept he has emotions for me is about all I can handle for one day.
Logan circles his arms around my waist and flips us. The breath catches in my throat and when he settles his chest on mine, I slowly release the air.
He’s on top, I’m on the bottom, and this time, unlike my bedroom, he’s not holding back. Logan’s sweetly pressing into me, our legs tangled, and just the right brilliant and blush-worthy parts are touching.
I expect Logan to take possession of my mouth, to return to that frantic pace that we had discovered so quickly at the bar, but instead he skims his nose down my cheek and places one delicious kiss on my neck. My cells zing to life as my fingers press into his back.
Logan explores me using this gradual assault. Kisses, touches, and caresses. All of it in this slow sweeping motion down. Along my bare skin at the top of my tank, then over the material, barely nipping places that make Logan a tad naughty and me devilishly happy.
He fists the ends of my tank and slides it up, leaving my belly button naked. I giggle as he kisses me there and squirm as he purposely tickles me on my side. When I declare mutiny and threaten to roll away, Logan returns to kissing my lips and I get lost in the sensations.
I wiggle as he covers me with his body again and places his strong hands on my hips. We play, letting our hands roam and satisfy curiosity of the skin.
It’s tickles and tingles and shivers and pleasurable sighs. It’s his fingers tracing the inside of my thigh, my hands messaging the broad shoulders I’ve admired from afar. It’s all slow, all methodical, and it’s causing this warming in my belly to wind tighter and tighter and tighter.
And there’s this moment when Logan moves that I let out a small gasp. Oh, that felt good. So very good. And then he does it again. And again. And it’s like we’re a wildfire. The good kind of fire. The kind that destroys the old and creates new. It’s fire licking through my veins, rhythmic movements that cause me to want more. It’s this need, this desire and as we hold each other so close that I’m no longer sure where I begin and Logan ends we race for the horizon and discover heaven.
It’s the only way to describe it...heaven. My body is weightless and I would think I had died if I didn’t breathe in. Logan edges to the side and pulls me into him. It’s exhaustion and slow kisses and our bodies that are now correctly fitting puzzle pieces. Never before have I felt so high and all of it with our clothes on. It’s odd how close I feel to Logan, odd how so many emotions are flooding through me.
“Hey, Logan,” I whisper.
He kisses one cheek, then the other, the tip of my nose, and then my lips. “Yes?”
“I don’t know what love is very well either, but I hope it feels like this.” It’s not poetic. It’s not really a declaration. But it’s a lot like being an addict or not being addict, it’s one of those things that I’m not sure of and I’m wary of jumping in and admitting to too much, too fast. Love is one of those things that I’m not sure I’d know unless I truly know who I am myself.
Logan’s eyes glitter and it’s the same spark as when he wins a dare. As if I just said the words back to him that he said
to me that I’m still having a hard time digesting. Seeing all that happiness on him is amazing and terrifying and I change the subject
“Now that you’ve captured me in the chase,” I say, “will you tire of me?”
“Abby, can’t imagine one minute with you being boring.”
I grin and lean up so that my arm’s on his chest. “You said that once, remember? When I was turning eight and scared no one at school liked me and you promised to be my best friend for life.”
Logan beams as he combs his fingers through my hair again. “As I said, never a boring moment.”
Logan
The alarm on my cell goes off and I’m so dead to the world that my eyes won’t open and my muscles that I swear were filled with concrete overnight won’t budge. Every breath in is the scent of wild honeysuckle and underneath my arm is solid warmth. My hand is splayed across Abby’s tempting belly, and her back is tucked close to me. Sometime during the night, Abby laid her hand over mine.
We finished Chris’s grandfather’s land on the second day and we’ve moved around to neighboring farms, cashing in on their need for work. It’s been going faster with Chris helping us lift the hay and with Abby driving, but regardless, it’s work.
One more day—today—and we’re done. Only problem, my body may be done before our time commitment. My alarm continues to chime and cold feet kick at my shins. My arm tightens around Abby and my fingers slide to her side. It’s amazing what I can get Abby to do or not do while threatening to tickle her.
“Do it and I’ll cut your balls off,” she says in this sexy yet groggy voice. “And turn off the alarm.”
I chuckle and the air mattress underneath us squeaks. “You can turn it off.”
“It’s on your side and I was shot, remember? I’m healing and need my rest, not being your damn tractor slave.”
I crack my eyes open and her bandage stares me in the face. Regretfully, I remove my hand from her stomach, turn off the alarm, and then I’m careful as I peel back the tape. The wound that was raw and angry when we first arrived here is now healing.