Gabe squatted in front of the sink, his hand gripping a pipe underneath the counter. His shirt stretched across his toned back.
“I got it,” he yelled with a heavy accent.
He didn’t see me sidle around the stairwell. My heart skipped into high gear, fighting its way into my throat. My hair was a mess.
I wasn’t dressed, again.
I tiptoed as softly as I could and scurried around the kitchen table to huddle behind a pantry door. One quick leap and I would be past him, free to scale the stairs and get ready.
Gabe stood startled. He had already showered and changed.
“How-dy.” He took a long time to get out the second syllable.
I knew he itched to say more.
“Shut up,” I said, tossing my head back. “You don’t see me.”
I ran around the corner at lightning speed and stopped to steady myself on the banister behind the wall. My ankle felt much better.
“Okay then. I didn’t see you. I wasn’t picturing you in a towel either. Just my imagination gone wild again.”
* * *
Gabe was sitting on the bottom step of the stairway when I came down, his hair combed back into a HalRem cap. He wore a short-sleeved button down and camouflage shorts.
I smiled and then quickly tried to hide it. “Where’s Meggie? She left you in here alone?”
He stood. I stopped on his abandoned step.
“She lets me in if I fix things for her. Feeds me sometimes too. She thinks I’m too young to live out there.” He ran his long arm along the banister beside me. Our eyes leveled. I could feel his warm breath on my shoulder. I smelled shampoo.
“She went to the office. Some guy came banging down the door. Looked all official. Like a banker or something. Ready? You get dressed for me?”
I didn’t respond. Couldn’t he see how ready I was?
The old-fashioned flip-phone awaited me on the counter along with two wrapped sandwiches and a four pack of Gatorade. It was like Christmas morning. I was going to be able to call back home and spend an afternoon with Gabe.
The black pickup faced the road. I climbed inside. The books were gone. The cab smelled brand new.
“I hope you don’t feel obligated,” I said, leaning into the door. “You know, because they put you on the spot and all.”
Gabe threw the truck in gear, drove off the property, leaving a dust bomb the size of Montana in his wake. A minute went by. Then he gave a dry chuckle, pulled off his hat, and set it on the seat.
His long fingers parted his dark chestnut hair. “Wanna see a rig?”
“Yeah. Is that the thing that goes up and down and pumps the oil?” I summoned a cheerful tone and moved my forearm up and down, mimicking a pump. “They look like birds pecking the ground.”
The sun glared off the windshield. I squinted.
He sighed with a hint of arrogance and cast a sideways glance. “That’s a pump jack. Is that what you wanna see?”
The side of his face wrinkled up.
I enjoyed the way he said pump jack.
I nodded. “Yeah sure. Is that where you work? On one of those?”
“Kinda. Sometimes.”
“Kinda? Do you and your brothers all work together? What do you do? Is there no work where you’re from?” I couldn’t help myself. I had him alone and I had a trunk of questions to unload. They just slipped out.
I wanted to know why they were in North Dakota.
Did he and his brothers have to work instead of going to college?
“Yup and yup.” He lifted an open bag of Skittles from the cup holder to his mouth and poured some in.
“Okay. You’re not going to answer.” Asking him about Jordan Halverson or Hunt Barrett was out of the question.
He finished chewing his sugary rainbow. “Yup. That’s right, ma’am.”
I crossed my legs. I could play his game. Maybe work was a sore subject. I changed it. “You get along with your parents?”
“You get along with yours, Av’ry?” he countered quickly.
Hopelessness swept over me. However, he said my name for the first time ever. The pitter-patter of my heart tickled my ribs.
“Nope.”
Gabe drove in silence until he pulled up to the intersection of US 85. Freightliners and shiny tankers clogged the road. I had never seen so many trucks. They made an endless caravan.
“E-lab-or-ate,” he said, enunciating each syllable to be funny.
When he rolled through the stop sign, an oil tanker honked his horn in a long high-pitched sound like a locomotive about to run somebody down. Gabe slammed on the brakes. Books slid around the bed of the truck. My head hit the seat.
“This isn’t fair. You’re like impossible,” I said as I recovered from the near crash and fought to hide my smile.
A parade of ugly tanker trucks passed before we could go.
“I’ve been told.” He smiled. Then his smile widened into a grin. Not the big toothy kind but the subtle lips-curled-into-his-cheek kind.
He was gorgeous, physically flawless.
I couldn’t stop stealing secret stares.
I tapped my head on the glass and gazed out my window to read a sign that said Missouri River as we crossed over an unassuming bridge. “I hate my parents if you really want to know. They sent me here. I didn’t do anything wrong,” I fumed. Not that being in North Dakota was so awful. “I’m going to get them back. I just haven’t figured out how.”
“The urban thesaurus on your face? That’s why you’re here? Or something else? Someone else?”
“Yep and maybe,” I teased as he accelerated and then slammed the brakes behind a water truck that stopped short up ahead.
“Dang traffic,” he muttered.
Did he really care if there was someone else?
“I miss my little sister.”
“How old is she?” He was nearly whispering.
“She’s three.”
Gabe’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Wow. That’s young. Sure you’re not like one of those teen moms from MTV?” He lifted an inquisitive eyebrow.
I huffed. “No way. My parents had her when I was fourteen. She’s not mine. I can assure you it’s not possible.”
I felt like stomping my flip-flops.
“Okay. I believe you.” He shot me a sly grin. “If you say so.”
“What are you implying? That it is possible?” I spoke more forcefully. He was being rude. “You don’t know me at all. Okay?”
“You’re right.” His smile fell away. “My brother was a lot older than me.” He tapped one of the gauges in the dashboard with his pointy finger.
A throng of emotions played over me. “I know. I heard. I’m sorry.” I assumed it was appropriate to recognize his brother’s death since he brought him up. My muffled voice raised an octave. “Are you okay? I mean—”
Gabe slapped his palm on the steering wheel.
“Was Eli—”
“Let’s not.” He cut me off and didn’t speak again. I sensed the annoyance in his tone.
It was as if his brother’s name was a curse word. I was sore myself. I didn’t wish to stir up anything. Still, I didn’t like being hushed.
He tapped the gauges again and almost cracked the cover.
I fiddled absently with Meggie’s cellphone, unsure how to address his obstinate quiet. When I opened the phone, it spoke in a robotic voice, “You have no new messages.”
The human silence was difficult. I busied myself for about thirty minutes. I studied the sprawling landscape, the flat prairies and the hilly grasslands. The scenery amazed me. Crows devoured deer carcasses every few miles, but I tried not to look. Dozens of drilling sites stood tall above the barren farmland. Yet we kept driving. I scrutinized the valleys for prairie dog holes. Anything to keep my mouth shut.
Then the quiet broke.
“We’ll stop here,” Gabe said. “I work here sometimes.”
He drove onto a side road. My gaze widened on a dozen HalRem truc
ks parked haphazardly in the gravel pit. I spied gigantic drums that reminded me of a six-pack of cans.
Gabe made a better effort to be social.
“That’s a pump jack and those containers there, they hold water that gets forced into the ground at high pressure.” He jerked his chin forward. “About two miles under, there’s seven to eight billion barrels of oil trapped in the shale, so they say. It’s all recoverable. She’s giving Texas a run for her money. And that one there is pumping out ten thousand barrels a month. This here’s a commercial field. Proven reserves.”
Was that a lot of oil?
“Can we be here?” My gaze flashed to his profile and then back outside.
“Yeah. I got connections, remember?” he drawled.
Connections at nineteen. Yeah right.
“Just don’t touch anything. It’s crude oil, liquid petroleum, Av’ry. Toxic. Refined oil gets manufactured out of it.”
I had a feeling he was starting out as a field hand like Josh but wanted me to think otherwise.
Gabe pulled into a spot beside a Halden-Remington truck. The giant H was white, the R blue, set in a star fixed out of a Texas flag. I was spotting it on every tanker and trucker cap around. The pickup was so close I could see my refection in the shiny wall of the tanker. I was busy making faces, scrunching my nose and frowning at myself when Gabe hopped out of the cab and skipped around the hood. As he was about to slide in between the trailer and my door, he spooked. I studied his posture. His shoulders stilled. Something had snagged his attention.
Within a split second he was back in the cab throwing the truck in reverse.
“What’s going on? Can we look around?”
“Nothing’s going on. We’re not staying,” he said bluntly. His eyes tightened and his voice lapsed into a growl. “Hold on.”
The truck shot out from behind the tractor-trailer and spun around in the dirt. I clasped my hand on the dashboard. We swung sideways. I grabbed the door handle. One of my fingernails bent backward. Gabe hustled up the gravelly road and came to a screeching halt at the highway. Truck traffic sailed by.
I swung around to look over my shoulder. My confusion turned to understanding. Parked at the edge of the property was the Humvee from the bonfire. The one that said LOC. It was the infamous Hunt Barrett.
Another twenty minutes passed as we drove in complete silence. I had an urge to call my friend Janie and tell her everything that was happening to me. I opened the cellphone. The robotic voice announced, “You have one new message. Press one to hear message. Press two to...”
I pressed one out of sheer boredom.
“Mercy Medical Center calling for—” I slammed the phone shut.
“Is something up?” Gabe asked.
“You speak?” I sneered. I had no clue what the hospital was calling about.
He smiled halfheartedly. It was so hard to stay peeved when he looked so good. There was no comparison between Gabe and the boys back home. They weren’t even in his ballpark. For one thing, he had scarcely laid an attentive eye on me since we met.
“I never miss a good chance to shut up.” He laughed. “Let’s face it. I’m not exactly a conversationalist or a good tour guide. I get distracted.”
Me too.
“It’s fine,” I lied, disappointed. I was looking for more than he was going to give. I wished I distracted him.
“Since we’re this far out, I’ll drive to the Bad Lands. Teddy Roosevelt National Park. You can climb the lookout and stand on the roof.”
Finally, something interested him.
“You hungry yet?”
He flicked his finger at the dashboard.
I shrugged my answer. I could play stubborn and silent as good as he could.
“Well, I’m starving. There’s a pull-off down the road a piece.”
We drove past a line of farms. I noted the quaintness of the old-fashioned wash lines, the rickety porch swings, kids running around half-naked in the front yards. Before our turn in, I grimaced at the remnants of Bambi lying at the brink of a valley. Once Gabe parked the pickup, I climbed right out. For hundreds of miles in every direction, the sky shone clear and unusually blue. It was magnificent.
“Where are we?” I fanned myself with the paper bag I’d packed the sandwiches in. “This is amazing.”
It was also tremendously hot.
Gabe’s eyes widened. “Smackdab in the middle of Nowheresville, USA. Looks like where I’m from aside from these buttes. We got more snakes. You can see a bird poop eighty miles away.”
Snakes?
He hoisted himself up into the truck bed and swung his long legs over the side. Then he lowered the tailgate for me. I lifted myself onto the hot metal and dangled my legs, letting my flip-flops fall to the ground. I clasped my lips tight when he slid in beside me and bumped a knee against mine. I kicked my legs back and forth and tried to act casual, even though my blood was pumping on the wilder side.
“What’s your home like?” I hazarded to ask.
The skin on my shoulders was already sizzling from thirty seconds of sun exposure. I knew nothing about the brothers. It was hard to think of Gabe as the baby.
The corner of his lip curled. “Sucks mostly.” The southern drawl came out. He opened a sandwich and devoured it in two bites.
I offered him mine. “We’ve got a lot in common,” I said in my most amiable voice.
Gabe chuckled and swallowed his mouthful.
“I seriously doubt that,” he said.
He struck a nerve somewhere deep in my core.
“You got me figured out, huh?” My voice lifted. I wanted to shake him. What was the big secret? We all had teenage demons.
“You really wanna hear it? My brother died and nobody cares.” He dropped his gaze to his lap.
I searched his furrowed face, not entirely certain he would go on sharing.
He lifted his eyes, his look heavy with exposed heartache. “That guy back there in the Hummer, he covered up the goddamn accident. Frickin’ made it look like my brother was driving when he wasn’t. His truck flipped and my brother got thrown. I know for damn sure. Hunt, he did it. He was hammered. He tried to save his ass and lied. He forced other people to lie. He’s up to no good. Bad stuff’s been happening. My dad won’t even press charges or hire somebody to investigate. It’s like he’s fine with everything how it happened. It makes me crazy. Even Lane. He keeps telling me to drop it.”
“Hunt got away with it,” I commented. My words had a double meaning. Hunt got away with the accident and the girl.
My shoulder bumped his, almost affectionately. My ponytail bounced and draped over his shoulder, briefly grazing the skin on his neck and inside his open collar. The compulsion to touch his hand was there, yet I resisted. I pulled the cellphone out of my pocket and held it tightly instead.
“I’m not looking for a girlfriend. I had one,” he said and made no apologies.
He leaned back on his elbows. His HalRem hat slid over his eyes and he threw his head back like he was asleep.
A knot formed in my throat. I hadn’t asked if he was looking for a girlfriend. Not that I wasn’t thinking it. Jeez, he was a testy boy.
“No reception. Darn. I wanted to call home. I haven’t talked to my friends in days.” I was desperate for some moral support. Why did I want him to like me so much?
“You’re not one of those crazy texters are you? Show me your thumbprints,” he said as he straightened up.
Our shoulders brushed again. I needed to get away.
Why did boys have to be so crass and moody?
I groused. I was still sore about the whole texting ban. I hopped off the truck and held the phone in the air.
“It doesn’t work like that here,” he said in an all-knowing tone, stretching out his legs.
I almost thought he was trying to touch me.
Was he playing a game? I made a routine check for coverage and tried to ignore his confusing signals. Nothing.
I noted a small hi
ll behind the truck. There was a better chance for reception up high. “Why don’t you carry a phone?”
“I don’t wanna talk to anybody,” he said. “Up the road, reception’s probably better. Get in. We’ll keep driving.”
Gabe took a leap off the tailgate and lifted it in place. I narrowed my gaze on his back as he climbed in the cab. There was an uneasy quiet between us until the engine wouldn’t turn over. He tried again. And again.
I made a fruitless attempt to shut out the image of us sunburned and dehydrated, hiking along a desolate highway for hundreds of miles. “Isn’t this a new truck?”
He spilled off the seat. I followed.
“Two months old.” He opened the hood. “Practically newborn.”
I came to stand at his side, fixed my gaze on his deft hands and made no comment. He knew what he was doing, inspecting the engine, pulling this and that.
“Get in and try to start her up,” he ordered. Sweat dripped down his cheek and onto his collar. His eyes scrutinized the spark plug, the dirty black thingamajig in his hand. “C’mon. Get the keys outta my pants.”
He stayed bent over the hood and didn’t meet my eyes.
I boldly lifted the hem of his shirt a little higher than necessary and exposed his baggy pocket, along with his tight abs. I couldn’t help but steal a glance. A long glance. The shorts hung low on his hips. The pitter-patter returned to my chest and I found it hard to breathe.
I cautiously dug my hand in the fabric and pulled out the keys along with two glittery guitar picks and a pack of Juicy Fruit gum.
“Oops. Here. I’ll just leave them.” I set the contents on the bumper and ran around to the driver’s side.
“Now,” he yelled.
I turned the key. Nothing happened.
“Aw shit!” He slammed the hood shut. Then he angled over me in the seat, his shoulder near my ribs. He tapped the gauge on the dashboard with his greasy finger. I leaned into the middle to get out of his way, but not before I stole a deep lungful of his shampoo and something else.
He tapped harder. The dial fell to the left.
“Holy mother!”
“What?” I said, alarmed. “What happened?”
He backed out of the seat and wiped his hands down the front of his shirt, ruining it for good. I guessed that was what boys did if they wanted clean hands.
Stubborn Page 6
