Under the Dusty Sky

by Allie Brennan

  I pull forward then push back before giving it one final yank forward and the thick caked rust lets loose its hold on the bolt. I spin the bolt off with my fingers and hold it up in the most pompous way I can and smile like a complete jerk.

  “Don’t mess with a farm girl,” Bentley whispers as he reaches for it, but I clamp my hand around it and shake my head.

  “This ain’t my first day either. A promise is a promise.” I don’t even care that my accent takes over my voice. He said he’d kiss me and now he has to. I take a deep breath so I don’t get nervous, but it happens anyway. I have to lick my bottom lip to keep it from trembling, my stomach tightens, and my heart beats way too fast for how hot it is outside.

  Bentley steps closer. He pushes a sweaty strand of hair off my face, but I’m too charged to be concerned about it. My eyes close as his fingertips graze my cheek, and he runs his thumbs lightly over my eyelashes. It tickles.

  “Don’t close your eyes,” he says, so I look at him. Sweaty and sexy just like the first time I met him. He runs his fingers along my hair line down to my jaw. Then he tilts my head to the side. My fist tightens around the bolt in my hand as my whole body tenses.

  Ben kisses my cheek. My eyes are still open. His lips are soft, and his breath warm as he tilts my head further and makes his way along my jaw. He stops just at the corner of my mouth and kisses it lightly. This guy knows what he’s doing. I’ve had some good kisses, but no guy I’ve kissed has been so slow, or confident. Usually it’s rushed, wet, and frantic as they hope to go further.

  Bentley’s mouth is hovering over mine. Why am I thinking about other guys right now?

  I feel him suck in a breath before he pulls back so I can look him in the eyes.

  “You know what? I think I might have to get to know you a little better still.”

  He steps back, and I throw the bolt to the ground.

  “Seriously?” I yell, but it’s all out of breath and trembling. “You can’t just back out like that.”

  He turns, and I want to smack the smile off his face.

  “The deal was I’d kiss you, and I did. You didn’t specify where I had to kiss you.”

  My mouth falls open, and he laughs really loud.

  “I think you get your way too much, Gracie. It’s time someone made you work a little harder for it. I am not exactly sure what your scheme is for me yet, and I’m sure I should be pissed that you’d think I was that easy to play. But I like you. The real you. It’s her I want to get to know.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Bentley

  I’m playing with fire. The look on her face is equal parts disbelief and anger. It proves that I’m right. Not only does she not hear the word no enough, she probably never has anyone call her out on her shit. I’m familiar with girls like her. The kind that need to be challenged the whole way. The kind that become bored as soon as it becomes easy.

  I could just give in. Give her what she wants. I know I’d enjoy it. But the more I get to know this other side, the more I want to find out what she’s hiding from. Why me? And where all this sexual determination comes from.

  If I give her what she wants, she’ll be done with me. Of that, I'm certain.

  We stand and stare at each other for a long time until she regains her composure. She leans down and picks up the bolt before making her way back to the car. Whatever she’s feeling I can’t tell because she’s as good as I am at covering it up.

  “So what’s wrong with this thing, anyway?” Her hand shakes a little as she sets down the bolt, but her gaze is steady. We are changing the subject now, I guess.

  I wipe my hands on my pants and wish I could take off my T-shirt off, but given the timing and what just transpired, I don’t think it’s a good idea. Leaning over the hood next to her, I replace the bolt she removed and smile as I do so. She looks at me with raised eyebrows.

  “I didn’t think you could do it,” I say and bump her with my shoulder. I can’t seem to stop touching her, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She bumps me back.

  “Yeah well, I didn’t think you were a cheater. Cheater.”

  “I didn’t cheat. I just bent the rules a little. Anyway, I don’t know what’s wrong with this thing yet. Everything under here looks fine. It might be the clutch. Based on what your brothers told me, you might have burnt it out. If that’s the case, we’ll have to go to town and get one.”

  I look at her, and the blank stare flicks between me and the engine.

  “Or maybe two, for when I teach you to drive it.” I laugh. Her expression doesn’t change, meaning she doesn’t get it.

  “Are we done now? I need to shower.” She asks.

  I’ve lost her, and the clutch stuff is too much for her now anyway so I nod.

  “I’m going to stay out here for a bit, but you go. We’ll get parts tomorrow, and we’ll be driving it by Wednesday.”

  Without even thinking about it, I walk to the side of the car and pull my shirt off, tossing it inside. I have to get underneath to see the drive shaft. When I turn around, Gracie is right in front of me. She hooks her fingers in the waist of my pants and presses my back against the hot car. She pushes up onto her toes so her mouth is on my ear, and her whole body is pressed against mine. The searing hot metal is nothing compared to the heat coursing through the rest of me. Her breath is hot, and her loose strands of hair tickle my cheek and neck. My hands settle on her hips like they have minds of their own.

  In the sexiest country accent I’ve ever heard, she breathes, “Bentley Blackmoore McKinna, I reckon I’m gunna love learnin’ to drive stick with you.”

  My fingers dig tighter into her hips with every word until she loosens her grip from my pants and uses her fists against my stomach to push away. She’s wearing the most evil smile, and her eyes dance with life as she throws my own tactic right back in my face. Watching her turn and walk away while trying to relearn how to breathe is all I can do. That girl is going to unravel me, which is not what I need, nor want, at this point.

  But the phrase, “No thanks. I don’t want the sexiest girl I’ve ever met to pin me up against a car and mutter sexual innuendoes in my ear about driving a stick-shift,” has never been uttered by a single straight guy anywhere. I guarantee it.

  When she disappears around the corner, I lean forward and brace my hands on my knees. This is the most sexually charged day I’ve ever had, and I don’t even think it’s noon yet. Gracie and I have started to play a game that no one can win, but I know no matter how many times I say I’m not going to give in, it’ll be the biggest lie I’ve ever told myself.

  ***

  Every day this week is the same. I wake up and go around the farm, doing chores. I’m so glad for the hay harvest because it keeps me busy until almost sundown. This means I am off the hook to work on Gracie’s car and try to keep my distance. The other plus is that all the work makes it easier to fend off my mother and sister’s incessant phone calls and make excuses as to why I can’t go to Lacy’s or the diner or wherever people go to hang out around here. By sundown I have energy for only one thing, and that’s falling face first into bed.

  Harvesting hay keeps me so busy that the week is gone, and I feel nothing but pain. If I had to describe farm work in one word, I’d say lifting. Lifting shovels of shit or hay, lifting bales, lifting water jugs and slop buckets, lifting my sore aching body out of bed at an ungodly hour every morning. But I’m the one who wanted to see what it’s like. To have a taste of the working man’s life, to not have the security of knowing I always have the biggest trust fund of all my quasi-famous friends.

  I meet up with Gracie’s dad in the hay fields after I get the call that the swather is dead. I have no clue what that means. When I reach the huge four-wheel drive tractor on the quad, Carter is just climbing down to meet me.

  “Ben!” He hollers with a wide grin. He’s got to be the nicest, most honest man I’ve ever met. It throws me off every time I talk to him.

  “Hey, Carter, How’s the battle?” I
shake his hand because that what he likes to do.

  “Oh, you know. Getting my ass kicked by mother nature, and now this.” He gestures to the machine behind him.

  We walk down the row of tall dry grass, which is up to my waist. This man is massive and terrifying until you see him in the field and all that toughness just fades. He walks slowly, his thick arms stretched out and his hand brushing the grass like a kid would do. Every so often he plucks a stem and inspects it. Turning it over in his hands, rolling it between his fingers, putting it in his mouth and spitting it out. He loves this. A child-like love of the field and his farm.

  He rambles off a bunch of things that need to happen now, and still my job is basically to lift stuff from one place to another place, then drive it to the yard and lift it somewhere else. Going to the gym everyday since I was fourteen did not prepare me for this. This is real work, where I have to actually use my muscles instead of just having them to look good on camera or film or posters or album covers or where ever else my mom could pimp me out after my dad died.

  Carter smiles and laughs at his own farming jokes. I don’t get them at all, but I play like I do. The longer I walk with him, the heavier I become. The farther the knife of my fate digs deeper into me, twisting painfully. I’m jealous. Jealous of this man who loves his life, even when all his shit breaks down. Who lives each day with passion for what he does, with knowledge of every aspect of his career, with the deepest adoration of his children.

  I definitely don’t want to be a farmer, but if I can have a fraction of the passion he shows, I’ll be happy. If I can live even a little bit more honestly and openly, like Carter does, I feel like this constant uneasy feeling will lift.

  “So you’re up for taking a look at the swather then?” Carter asks on the way back to the vehicles. I snap out of my thoughts. I only half heard most of what he said.

  “Yeah, I don’t ever work on large engines, but I’m guessing it won’t hurt. They have basically the same idea.” I grin, and Carter slaps me on the back.

  “Good. You just let me know what you find out. You might as well wait ‘til the weekend because Thursday’s Gracie’s birthday and Friday I won’t be around for most of the day. I’ll be in town.” He clears his throat and shifts slightly. I look sideways at him.

  “Hot date?”

  His eyes get wider, and he smiles.

  “You might say that.”

  “Way to go, boss. I’ll make sure I get to it Friday then. You say Asher knows how to operate all the equipment? So if I have questions?”

  He nods, and we turn away from each other.

  “Hey, Ben?” he says, and I face him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you maybe not tell Gracie about Friday? She’s so sensitive to these things. She had a near apocalyptic melt down when Hunter first brought Emma home. I want to be sure I’m doing the right thing before I tell Gracie, you know?”

  I have a million questions on my tongue. Mostly about why everyone won’t just tell Gracie to get over herself. But what I say is, “Yeah, sure. No problem.”

  I think about Gracie the entire ride back. How pissed she was when we had to put the car on hold to harvest. How we have to go to town today to get all the parts to replace the clutch, then tomorrow we put it together, then the next day I teach her to drive, then it’s her birthday, then I have to distract her while her dad ducks out to go on a date. I’m starting to think everything on this farm revolves around Graceland. Everyone lies to keep Gracie happy. It’s too familiar. She’s too familiar.

  I don’t shake her from my mind until I get into the house, and then I think of nothing other than the shower. It doesn’t last.

  I pass the bathroom on the way to my room, which is Hunter’s old room, just as Gracie opens the door wearing nothing but a towel. Her hair is sopping wet and hanging around her shoulders, her eyes wide with surprise. She shrieks so loud that I jump, and then she slams the door in my startled face. I can hear her laughing hysterically on the other side.

  I close the door to my room behind me and lean against it. I’m so done for.

  In this moment I am legitimately contemplating going home, taking a stupid business diploma and taking over my dad’s business like Mom wants. All because a girl in a towel that I’m trying to stay away from makes my head spin so fast I’m constantly dizzy and eternally in danger of falling over the edge. An edge I don’t want to fall over, not when all there is at the bottom is games and lies.

  CHAPTER 15

  Graceland

  The wind pushes my hand, and I push back, letting my fingers play through the air current as we speed down the gravel road. I look at Ben again, his eyes shaded behind dark sunglasses. L.A. sunglasses I assume because no guy here would wear glasses like that, strictly for style and nothing else. I grin and hold back a laugh. Just as I look away, I see him look at me.

  “What?” I ask, shoving a big chunk of hair behind my ear.

  “I might ask you the same thing?” He smirks.

  “I’m just laughing at your face.”

  “Oh, thanks.”

  “No, this morning. I’ve never seen emotion on your face ever. You’re either bored, thinking, or completely neutral. It was nice to see that Big Ben feels things.”

  He raises his eyebrow at me. “I definitely feel things. Most of them you wouldn’t want to know.”

  “What if I did?” I say and immediately regret it. Not that it’s a lie but because it shouldn’t be true.

  “What do you want to know about my feelings?”

  I turn to face him, pulling my feet from the dash, and the corner of my mouth twitches but I force it down.

  “For the sake of getting to know each other better, of course.” I say, and he laughs but doesn’t look at me. “Why do you refuse to go home?”

  He laughs louder and stretches his hand over the steering wheel, resting his wrist on it. He looks at me this time with that illegal smile.

  “Bringing out the big guns on the first question, are we? You really waste no time with anything, do you?”

  “I’m efficient, what can I say.” We’re flirting. It takes everything I have not to giggle when he smiles, or looks at me, or one of his fifty bazillion muscles flex. His smile never fades, and he keeps shaking his head and laughing to himself.

  “Well, for the sake of getting to know each other better,” he mocks. “My father’s recording studio was left to me in his Will as the oldest son. Apparently, both my parents thought themselves royalty…” He scoffs, but my jaw is hanging wide open.

  “What? A recording studio? You own a recording studio?” I can’t help my voice from rising a couple octaves.

  “Not yet. I will when I’m twenty-one. I guess I have to be able to drink first to smooze the band managers. But my mom wants me to take some stupid business degree thing first. She insists that she will remain stinkin’ rich until she dies without ever actually doing anything to earn it. She has little faith in her eighteen year old son.”

  “That’s freaking huge, dude.” I reach over and hit his leg then scrunch my nose. I can’t hang out with my brothers anymore.

  “Totally, bro.” He teases.

  I slap his leg again.

  “So you don’t want to do it?”

  “I don’t know what I want.”

  “That’s why you came here, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I just needed to be away from it. From all of it. To get shit straight in my head, you know?”

  “I want to get away everyday. I get it.” I watch the road as we pull into town.

  “Looks like you have a pretty sweet life here.”

  I snort. “More like boring and predictable.”

  “As opposed to frantic and completely fake.” He states it flat and with a tone I’ve never heard from him. It’s harsh and cruel. He really hates where he’s from, and I feel like the door on this conversation has been slammed, locked, and barred.

  “Well, are you ready for a real taste of small town li
fe?” I laugh because it really is boring and predictable.

  “You mean the Kick-Off wasn’t taste enough?”

  “Not a chance. That was a special occasion. Everyone is at their most fun on those days. I hope you love talking about the weather.”

  He smiles warmly at me, and I do giggle this time before biting my lip. This strange floating, trembling, sinking, tingling feeling spreads through me as he pulls into the hardware store parking lot and stops Dad’s truck. I’ve never felt this before, and I can’t describe it right, but it only happens when he looks at me. I feel like when his eyes settle on me I want everything else to disappear. I want all my anger and fear to just disappear. I want my mom’s journal and that poem to disappear.

  “Gracie? You just gunna sit there or what?” Bentley’s out of the truck and leaning through the open window. I jump as his voice pierces my fuzzy bubble of unknown emotions. I shake it off quickly and jump out of the truck.

  ***

  It doesn’t take long to get the parts we need, but it feels like a million years. Jake, the owner of Jake’s hardware and the drummer of the lone town band, wants to do an instant replay of every song that Ben played with them. They talk about the weather, of course, and then we leave. We’re finally parked in front of Lacy’s place, and I reach in the back for my night bag. I catch Ben checking me out as I lean into the back seat. Spinning to face him, I crawl across the bench seat and kneel beside him. The smile drops from his face, and he leans away from me.

  “Gracie, what are you doing?” His voice is even, but his head flicks as if he’s checking to see if anyone’s looking.

  I turn my head so my cheek faces him. “Kiss me,” I say.

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “You have to kiss me every time we know each other better until you know me well enough to kiss me the way I want you to. The way you were supposed to,” I continue.

  “Oh, do I?” His voice is back to amused. “I didn’t know that was part of the rules?”