by Jordan Bell
For the first time I felt a twinge of guilt at being so abrasive towards her. I hadn’t considered my parents’ position in all this, but it was an ugly one. There was no way I could ask them to choose sides, even if by not choosing one they ended up on Bailey’s by default.
“It would be nice if I had an apology. That would be a start.”
“Of course Bailey’s sorry. She’s your sister.”
“She’s never said. Not once.”
“Have you apologized for the damage you caused at the King’s? Have you? Oh yes, I heard all about it, Cass. Francine King gave me an earful at church. You scared her to death. She thought you were going to go after Jonathan.”
“Thought good and hard about it. Could have only been an improvement.”
My mother gave me the I am not amused, Cassidy Marie Blue, look and I swallowed any other smart-ass remarks before I got in trouble like I was sixteen years old again.
“I have an idea,” she said suddenly, brightness returning to her sun-wrinkled face. “You, me, and Bailey will have lunch together this week. We’ll clear the air. Like we used to. It’ll be fun.”
I gave her a skeptical look. “Mom, we never did that.”
“Once we did. Remember? We drove to Lincoln and had lunch and went shopping.”
The thought of sitting somewhere in public with my sister to clear the air seemed like a fast way to another visit from Sheriff Gibbs. Anxiety clenched my stomach and despite the hope in my mom’s eyes, I shook my head.
“I don’t think so, mom.”
“What, so you’re just going to ignore her for the rest of your life?”
“Not in a town this small.”
“You know, you’ll meet someone else, kiddo, and this will seem like a blessing. Maybe not now, but soon. You’ll meet the person you’re supposed to be with and you’ll be grateful you didn’t marry Jonathan King.”
“Oh, I’m already grateful I didn’t marry Jonathan King.” I dumped my cold tea in the sink. “I have to get going. Thanks for the tea, mom.”
“Wait, Cass, we’re not done yet.” She stood up but I held up my hands to keep her from getting any closer. Bailey was the touchy-feely one in this family.
“I’ve got some deadlines and I’m already way behind. Another day, I promise.” I put the plastic covered couch between us as fast as I could and waved over my shoulder as I fled my mother’s house.
I headed down the block towards Main Street where I’d parked my car. The heart of the town was a two block stretch of small businesses dressed up all historic for the antique shopping tourists. Castle Creek had twelve antique stores, four churches, and five bars which pretty much summed up every rural small town I’d ever been to. Busy for us was foot traffic into Marcy’s Diner after church on Sundays and the annual antique fair in June when our population quadrupled for sixteen hours a year. When McDonalds went in off the highway with the gas stations, you’d have thought we’d just gone cosmopolitan.
I got as far as opening my car door when I noticed him across the street loading plywood into his grandfather’s truck bed. Jason had apparently made the full transition back to country boy, sun-sweat glistening across his biceps, darkening his t-shirt at the small of his back. The t-shirt looked too small strained across his shoulders and my fingers pressed into my palm at the memory of what it felt to touch the shape of him. His jeans looked faded and soft, worn through in the right knee and back pocket in the shape of his wallet. His work boots looked old, but the black cowboy hat looked new. His grandfather’s influence, I was willing to bet. He even wore a little bit of dark stubble on his usually baby-smooth cheeks. He looked rough and strong and I was suddenly overwhelmed by a powerful craving to peel the sweat soaked t-shirt over his head and kiss him madly.
I shut my door and walked down the block to the corner before crossing. He had his back to me as he strapped the wood to the truck.
“Nice hat.”
Jason glanced over his shoulder and grinned that slow, unfurling smile of his. I ordered the butterflies in my belly to knock it right off, but they didn’t listen. They never did.
He gave the ropes one last tug before giving me his full attention with an appraising once over I could feel in my toes.
“Grandpa Garton’s subtle way of reminding me where I’m from. You can about imagine how much he loves my dad and me living out east, working the stock market instead of the land.” He deflected the faint bitterness I caught around the edges whenever he mentioned Garton King with an easy, but shrewd smile. “Still, I look damn good, right?”
“And so modest too.” I stuck my hands in my back pockets and glanced down between us, feeling both nervous and embarrassed. “I need a ride home.”
He leaned back against the truck, propped his boot against the tire, and crossed his arms over his chest. He nodded down the street.
“If I’m not mistaken, your car is right over there.”
“In which I just got back from picking up the wedding dress in Omaha with my mother and sister. I need a ride home.”
“Get in.”
He pushed away from the truck without further argument and I didn’t wait for him to change his mind. I clamored up into the cab and slid across the cracked leather. Despite the Kings owning half the county, Garton King was as down home as a person could get, unlike his brothers and nephews who flaunted their power and money. He could have bought himself a fleet of new trucks, but this old blue Dodge still ran fine and I doubted he’d buy anything new until it refused. The cab smelled like fresh cut grass.
Jason slid in next to me, put the truck into gear and pulled off onto Main Street. Once Main Street turned highway and we were going sixty into farmland, he moved his hand from the gear shift to my thigh just above my knee. I relaxed for the first time in hours and concentrated on the heat radiating from his palm.
“So how’d you end up in the same car as the wedding dress, anyway?” he asked.
“Mom needed someone to drive her. Bailey’s doing some work in the city and met us but threw a fit over the idea of leaving the dress in her car all day. Said the sun would discolor the white lace.” I shrugged and stared out the passenger window at the rows of corn slicing by. They’d be down soon and our world would turn into a post-apocalyptic desert of empty, broken fields. “Anyway, forbidden topic.”
I felt him look at me, but I couldn’t acknowledge that look. Are you ok? it would say, all blue-eyed and sincere. No, I’d scowl. Then I’d get catty and morose, not that I didn’t have a corner on that market anyway. But that wasn’t really why I didn’t look at him. Truth was, I didn’t want to share him with Jonathan and Bailey and the wedding dress. They didn’t deserve him.
Jason pulled his hand away and slowed the truck. I glanced up, sure we weren’t quite at the turn off. He pulled onto an overgrown, unmarked road – really more of a scruff in the grass than an honest-to-god road - that disappeared into a thicket of trees and headed back over the hill towards the old apple farm no one cared about anymore.
“Where are we going?” I asked, nervous as we bumped along. If not for the occasional bald tire ruts, the road would have been swallowed completely by now. Jason dropped the gear into something low and mean and the truck lurched through the brush with a growl.
“You’ll see.”
Then the path evened out very suddenly and pulled off along the wide orchard of overgrown apple trees. The ground here was paved by years of fallen leaves, rotten apple cores, and sprigs of rusted barbed wire poking through the underbrush.
Jason pulled the truck to a stop. We were dusted with amber sunlight half shaded by the thin tree branches. If they’d been half cared for they would have been in full green and filling with new fruit, but their gnarled bellies hadn’t seen much light back here since the trees we’d just plowed through had been allowed to overgrow the orchard and block it from half a day of sunlight.
Instead the trees looked crouched like an army of old men, gnarled boughs stretching wide instead
of high, creaky and mostly dead.
Without waiting for an invitation, I climbed across the seat to his arms and he caught me up like he’d wondered why I’d waited so long. I pinned him to the seat, one knee on either side of his hips and lowered my mouth to his. I hadn’t pulled my hair back and it shaded us from the low sun and tickled his rough cheeks. He smiled against my mouth and caressed the long gold strands from my face.
But I wasn’t so romantic. I dug at his shirt, untucked it and ran my hands across his strong chest. I marveled at his muscles, tight and shaped like stone, not real flesh. I had no idea bodies could feel like this, strength in every breath, every stretch of his hand.
When I went for his belt buckle, he caught my hands, pulled them away, and kissed each wrist. “Whoa, whoa… Hold on now, Cass. Angry sex isn’t going to calm you down.”
I leaned back against the steering wheel and blew hair out of my eyes, frustrated. “Then what are we doing here?”
“You need to be settled, not stirred up. Let me.”
He slid his hands, fingers splayed, across the small of my back and pulled at my shirt until he felt skin. I tried to slow my heart. I recognized the anger he’d felt, like adrenaline in my heart. I let him stroke my skin and kiss my mouth. He pulled at my lips, licked at them. He had a great tongue.
I curled against him, my cheek close to his as he touched me, wound his hands down over my buttocks and thighs. I was grateful I’d worn shorts today, green canvas things that rose higher than I typically liked but gave him ample access to my thighs. He grabbed the back of them, each in one hand, and trailed his fingertips teasingly up the path of delights to the gusset of my shorts.
“Turn around,” he panted, and I did with some difficulty so that I was pressed between him and the door, my legs across his lap, settled comfortably in his arms. “Just relax, Cassidy.”
I tried to listen. He undid my shorts and slid a hand down my stomach and under the band of my panties to the forbidden triangle between my legs. I sighed when I realized his intentions and captured his free hand in mine. We laced our fingers, the only sound in the closed cabin our heavy breathing.
He circled the skin below my trimmed hair and above the dampening crest below.
“Yes,” I breathed and all but pushed his hand down. He gave and I opened my legs to accommodate his hand. He stroked the puffy lips lightly, sending little currents up into my pussy, before dipping into them. I sucked in a sharp breath, arched from him and though I couldn’t see his face, I could feel him smiling. He smiled a lot when we were together, laughed sometimes too. I’d never been with someone where it was completely appropriate to laugh while we fucked when no other emotion would quite do.
“Relax. There you go. Good girl.”
I settled and sighed and closed my eyes, trying not to be completely overwhelmed by every touch and emotion he elicited so expertly with his fingers. He worked two fingers, then three into me, scooping my sex with increasing urgency. He felt for the dent inside me, the little spot that made me lose my head and turn words into noises of eager need. He rumbled his approval into my neck where he left thorough kisses up to my ear.
He fingered me deep and hard, knuckles bruising against my wet lips, and while the pain throbbed dully it also inflamed my frenzy. I clutched his shirt in my fist and squeezed his hand. He soaked his hand in my damp folds and shook my mound lightly in his palm. It was a nothing motion that lit me up like a light bulb, a possessive, claiming thing. I bit my lip, gyrated into his palm to rub my swollen clit into his fingers.
“Come for me, Cass,” he growled into my ear. He brought our laced hands across my stomach to hold me against him tighter. It wasn’t like having his cock inside me, this was both dirtier and more innocent and completely frantic.
He let go of my hand to slide it into my panties too and I clawed fervently at the window, slick with condensation. I wound my other hand behind his neck to hold him.
He continued plunging his fingers in and out of me while his other hand nudged back the fleshy hood to expose my clit. He touched me and I raged, covetous and ardent against his hands. The overstimulation blew my thoughts, blissed me out like an addict and everywhere he touched was too good, too much, to everywhere.
“Jason,” I gasped. “Oh, god, I can’t…I…Jason!” I came apart all at once, seizing and flying, knotting and melting. I shuddered, shook, squeezed as I came humping against his hands.
When I opened my eyes again, minutes or years later, his hands were no longer inside me. I wiped weakly at the drips and fog on the driver’s side door window and gazed out at the sun dappled orchard. No longer did the forgotten trees look like dying old men. They looked fairy-tale like. Beautiful and forgotten and ours.
“Better?” he whispered against my skin and I nodded. He wiped his hands off on a handkerchief, then held me in his lap for a long time while I watched the sun sink behind the overgrown trees.
Of all things, his phone ringing startled us out of our reverie. He sighed and shifted my weight to retrieve his cell from his pocket.
“Yeah?” Silence. His brows drew together suddenly and he tensed. “Wait. Slow down.”
He set me off his lap onto the seat next to him and I flushed while I buttoned my shorts back up and tried to straighten up what was clearly orgasm hair. His expression went from peace to aggravation in a second.
“No, don’t do that, you’ll only piss him off. I got tied up, but I’m on my way now. Don’t let him get on it.” There was a moment of silence as he listened to someone on the other end yelling. “Damn it, Jonathan, he’s not a child. Manage the situation for ten minutes, that’s all I ask.”
Jonathan. Well that sobered me up fast.
Jason hung up the phone and tossed it onto the dashboard. He started the truck with more aggression than was necessary.
“I need to take you back to your car.” I nodded and fumbled for the seat belt. He backed up, turned us around, and headed back down the hidden road to the highway.
“Everything ok?” I asked quietly. It was weird to be on this side of the conversation instead of being the one needled for answers to emotions that were too impossible to describe.
“Garton.” Jason’s fists tightened around the steering wheel. “He thinks the guys we hired to cut the fields are waiting too late and the hay’ll be too course. Normally I’d say he knows best, but I think he’s just pissed that someone else is taking care of the fields this year. He’s looking for any reason to throw them off his land.”
“And I’m guessing he’s decided to go cut it himself.”
Jason snorted. “All of it himself. Last time he was on his tractor he fell and broke a hip. Jonathan’s all but got him tied to his porch chair right now.”
“That’s why he carries a cane now.”
Jason threw the truck into fifth gear and floored it up the highway towards town. He was lucky Sheriff Gibbs wasn’t out anywhere.
“Jonathan treats him like he should be committed. He’s not losing his mind. It’s just…Garton’s worked his land since he was barely a teenager. He’s been in the fields every summer for over seventy years. Seventy years! We can’t expect him to give it all up overnight. He doesn’t know what to do with himself now.”
I glanced at him, traced the tight anger in his jaw, all the way down to his squeezed fists. “You’re here for your grandpa. To make it easier. That’s why you came home.”
Jason sighed and nodded. He pretended that Garton drove him nuts, but I could see the respectful way he said his name, the reverence when he spoke of his grandfather’s legacy. “I’m the one that left town, but it’s Jonathan he thinks has no head for farming. And he’s right. I’ve almost got him convinced to move in with my mom and sell the farm. Then Jonathan gets him riled up over losing the King’s position of power in the community. I could strangle Jonathan sometimes.”
“You better let me watch.”
He grinned, briefly, before concern reclaimed his serious face. “You’ll be
right next to me.”
Jason pulled me up near my car but left the truck idling.
“I have to go.” I nodded and lifted the door handle, but he grabbed my wrist before I could leave him. “I…I don’t think I’ll be over tonight.”
My butterflies catapulted into my toes. I glanced over my shoulder and tried to steel my thoughts behind my eyes. “Sure. No problem.”
“I want to, but…” he shot a look out into the street, then back at me. “The family’s coming over for dinner and I have to settle Garton down before mom shows up. His ranting and yelling breaks her heart and I don’t want her to see that. It’ll be late before they go home.”
“It’s fine.” I smiled and leaned towards him and for a moment we both lost our heads and almost kissed right there on main street for everyone and God to see us. We stopped just in time and pulled away like teenagers caught behind the school.
Late that night, well after midnight, I woke to the sound of a car door and boots on gravel. I found him on my doorstep looking desperate and hungry and badly in need of a shave. We made love until just before dawn, our bodies slick in the moonlight, and only then did he go home and let me sleep.
9
____________
Ten-freaking-o’clock. It was like I was born ten minutes late and never managed to catch up. I shouldn’t have told him nine. What was I thinking? As if the auxiliary women would let me out of the church parking lot by nine.
To my surprise, he sat on my porch steps, elbows on his knees, looking way too beautiful in the moonlight to be real. The black cowboy hat his grandfather had given him sat next to him, and next to that was a backpack. An overnight bag.
I climbed out of the jeep and approached him shyly. He lifted his head, drifted his gaze down my body and back up before smiling. I came to a stop in front of him. He fingered the hem of my white sundress.
