Chapter 5Rayne

H

ay bales. Two big, round hay bales pushed together in the pasture on the fringe of the bonfire crowd. And he wants me to climb them. Me. Climb them. This boy has a lot to learn about my shortcomings.

“Here?” This has to be a joke, but he’s not laughing.

“Here.” He unfurls the blanket across the top of both, and then nudges my elbow. “Don’t worry. I’ll help you up.” Grabbing one of the baling wires, he plants his foot on the side and hoists himself up in one seamless motion. Oh dear Lord. He’s already seen me half-covered in crap today, and now he’ll see me sprawled out at the bottom of a hay bale when I fall. Possibly bloody… and broken. On his knees, he reaches over the edge and grabs my hands. As he pulls me up, my feet scramble for traction like a cat being pulled from a flea dip bucket.

Finally making it to the top, I crawl beside him and sink into the crevice between the bales, legs thrown up on one side and back resting on the other. Like one of those adjustable beds, only scratchier. An unseasonably cool wind tousles my curls, and the bonfire flames pirouette in the distance, orange fingers spiraling against the blackened horizon that spice the air with aromas of charred wood.

Preston tugs me to his side, so close my hand smooshes into his thigh where his smooth skin edges out the bottom of his shorts—silky smooth. Preston’s clean-shaven from face to foot, and the peaks and valleys of the muscles hidden below his khakis tease my fingertips. He slides his right arm across his body and runs his fingertips up and down my arm. The sensation’s so gentle I glance down to make sure his fingers are, in fact, touching me. They are, and not on accident.

But why’s he not talking? I sweep my tongue around my cottony-dry mouth, ensuring the barbecue from earlier is gone and focus my eyes on everything except him. People talking around the fire. A few clouds swirling by the moon. A wily piece of hay sticking out from the others. Put me out of my misery already…

“So…” He drums his fingers on my arm. “Have fun today?”

Finally! “Yeah, I did.” I prop up on my elbow. The moonlight gilds the top of his hair, illuminating a brown clump lodged above his right ear. “Looks like you missed a spot cleaning up that mud.” I pinch out the dried clod and flick it to the ground.

“Thanks.” He relaxes into the bale, elbows behind his head and a slight grin settling into the corners of his mouth. “Tell me something about yourself.”

“Okay… I’m seventeen. Closet nerd with a slight coffee addiction. A cheerleader, but only because Jaycee forced me, and to relax, I enjoy long runs through downtown.” I stop and pinch my lips together. Desperate much? “Wow. That kinda sounds like a personal ad.”

“Yeah. Kinda does.” He smiles, both rows of teeth perfectly straight and bright white against the darkness, and traces meandering circles with his finger over the top of my knuckles. “So, Miss Personal Ad, what kind of guys do you like?”

I twist my mouth sideways, tapping my finger to my chin. “Hadn’t given it much thought.” Lies. All lies.

“Don’t. Thinking about anything too much ruins it. You have to let things happen. Ignore the rules—a famous Gage-ism.”

I squint my eyes. Rule-breaker is not a word I’d use to describe Preston. “And you’re okay with that?”

“Absolutely not. I don’t like surprises.” He reaches up and strokes my hair, singles out one ringlet and curls it around his finger. “So, tell me more. Favorite food, favorite color, college plans?”

So, he does want to know more than the shape of my tonsils or the feel of my ass.

“Sure. You first.”

He smiles. “All right. Lasagna. Red. Tech starting this fall, then transfer to a four-year school—probably Clemson.” He ticks each off on his fingers.

“Why Tech first? Weren’t you recruited for football?”

He presses his lips together. “I was. Got a lot of offers, too, but mostly up North and out West, and I want to stay here. My parents have this dream of me one day working in my dad’s accounting firm. That’s why I’ll be working there when the fall semester starts. Shadowing, going to meetings, that sort of thing.”

“Wow. Sounds grown-up.”

“That’s Mom’s philosophy. A nineteen-year-old high school graduate should act like a man and put away ‘childish diversions.’” He says childish diversions like he’s imitating her, but he’s not snide, just matter-of-fact.

“What are your childish diversions?” I wiggle my fingers in air quotes.

“Anything not directly related to school or the firm, according to mom. For me, it’s football. I miss playing, but...” He shrugs. “You do what you’re supposed to, right?”

“I guess.” A nasty grimace takes my face hostage, and I drop my head so Preston won’t see. My whole life’s been about doing what you’re supposed to, but sometimes I want to do what I want for a change.

“Anything else you want to know about me?”

I glance up at him. Something’s been bothering me since the news broke this morning, and if I don’t ask, I’ll wonder. And if I wonder, I’ll doubt. And if I doubt, I might as well forget this whole thing right now. “Why me?”

“What?” He rises back up on his arm and narrows his eyes.

“I’m not like any of the girls you’ve dated before. So… why me?”

He shifts his legs along the hay and blows out a loud breath. “The town’s gotten to you, I guess?”

I fiddle with some hay sticking out from underneath the baling wire, refusing to look at him. What’s the appropriate way to ask why he’s suddenly decided to go slumming? “I mean, yeah, I heard it around town, but that’s not why I’m asking. I just need to know.”

He tips my chin up with his fingers. The shadows haunt his face, the only light an orangey glow warming his chocolate eyes, which deadlock on mine. “You’re not like other girls I’ve dated. I’m tired of that.”

Who does he think he’s fooling? “The perfect guy is tired of perfect girls?”

He sighs and shakes his head. “You think I’m perfect? You think they were?”

Uh, yeah. My shoulders shrug to my ears.

“Rayne, people believe what they see, but what you see isn’t necessarily true. The other girls I’ve dated… oh, they had some issues, but I’m not perfect either.”

“Sure you are…”

He grabs my shoulders and squares me in front of him. “Okay, let me tell you a story. I’m the championship quarterback. Led the team to victory, right?” I nod. “My junior year, there was one game I got my ass kicked all over the field. I could throw it deep but not scramble, and once they figured that out, it was over. The coach was in my face, and I really just wanted to say screw it. When we got home, my dad took me in his study, sat me in the leather chair, propped his feet up on his desk and stared at me over his glass of scotch.”

“Was he mad?”

“No. He said he was glad it happened. It exposed my flaw, got it out there in the open so I had to deal with it. I still remember his words, ‘Son, address it, face it, beat it. The weak points are where you grow. Failures bring success.’” He snorts and shakes his head. “I thought he was drunk at first. Now I know he’s right.”

I study his face for a minute. He nods, eyes wide and smiling as if he’s just revealed some great truth. “So much good advice to be had from you Howard men. And that’s a convenient answer, but…”

“It’s truthful.” He pauses, swallows, and starts again. “You want to know why I’m interested? At prom I saw you with that geeky dude… Thad, right?”

Oh God. I bury my face in my hands. No good deed goes unpunished yet again. I’d gone with Thaddeus McKelvey, grade-A class nerd, because I could relate to him. We both had that square-peg-in-a-round-hole-thing going on. Besides, Mama wouldn’t agree to my going with anyone else. Jaycee swore it’d come back to bite my ass, and here it is.

“Anyway, everyone was making fun of him, but you stayed on his arm all night. That dude had a smile on his face the whole time, while I was stuck with a date that complained about everything, hated her food, hated her hair, and hated all my friends. I wish I could’ve smiled like Thad.”

No freaking way. My going with Thad won Preston over? So much for Jaycee’s theories.

I drop my hands to my lap, grab his fingers, and squeeze. A new connection, a better understanding of each other, smolders in the touch. “Now I guess I owe you some answers. Chicken-fried steak, blue, and I have absolutely no idea, but Mama’s got a whole crop of college applications waiting on me at home.”

He reclines into the bale, running his fingertips up my backbone, and then pulls me into the niche between his neck and shoulder. In between our school discussions and quiet moments of gazing up at the multitude of stars freckling the inky blackness, Preston meanders his fingers to mine and interlaces them, the length almost double mine, folding nearly all the way back to the meaty part of my palm. The warmth radiates up my arm. With his other hand, he scours the bale and plucks out single strands of hay he twirls between his fingertips before letting them drop into a little pile beside him. Maybe he wants to ask me about Mama and the Pig fiasco? If so, what do I say? I can tell the truth, but I don’t want him thinking Mama’s crazy because if Mama’s crazy then her daughter can’t be far behind, right?

He loosens his grip and props up on his elbow, hovering above me. He cups my chin and lines me up for a direct impact, my nose brushing against his. “I really like you, Rayne…” His words faintly stand out against the high-pitch humming of crickets and cicadas in the surrounding pasture.

His lips come at me like a shark in the ocean. Searching. Seeking. Intimidating. I’ve kissed a few boys over the years, but no one special. A peck here or there. A spin-the-bottle game. Never a hot guy like Preston. Never a make-out session. Oh my gosh—is this about to be a make-out session?

His lips greet mine in a flurry of kisses. I can’t catch up. By the time I acclimate my lips to one type of smooch, he moves on to another. Full-on contact to bottom lip nibbling to some sort of licking motion along my teeth. I’m glad I checked for leftover barbecue. His lips are more soft and supple than I expected, and they glide over mine with a faint heat.

I slit one eye open. His are closed. Stop it, Rayne. Enjoy this. Quit getting in your own way.

His lips still and linger close but not touching, our foreheads leaned together. I lift my eyes. He’s looking back. “It is okay if I kiss you, right?”

Not trusting my voice to actually work, I nod. He smiles and kisses me again, harder and faster, this time letting his hands roam over my body, down my shoulders, arms, side, and to my butt, where he digs in his fingers a little and tugs me closer. Mama would kill him. She’d crawl up on this bale and beat his… Mama. My curfew. I forgot all about it, so while he’s kissing me, I sneak a peek at my phone. All hell breaks loose when the digital numbers flash on the screen.

I rip my lips from his. “Oh shit! It’s almost eleven. I gotta get back before curfew.” I stand up, brushing hay from my clothes. I sure don’t need Mama wondering how I got straw stuck all over me tonight. “Talk to you later.” I jump off the edge of the hay bale, my ankle screaming in a jolt of pain as I hit the hard dirt.

“Wait,” Preston yells and jumps off right behind me. “I want to see you again.” He presses me into the hay bale and leans in close, past my lips to my neck. When Jaycee runs up, he jolts backwards.

“I hate to interrupt whatever this is,” she says, waving her hand around, “but it’s ten ‘til eleven. If we’re not back by curfew, your mama’ll send up the search helicopters.”

“I gotta go.” I grab his phone and hand him mine. We quickly enter our numbers in the other’s contacts. “Call me.” I run to Jaycee, who grabs my hand and pulls me to the car.