The Stars in the Sky (Giving You ... #2) (18 page)

"You want to torture me.”

"It will be torture for me too," I whispered. "But I have to know. I have to know if there is something more here than just physical attraction."

He blew out a breath. "Okay. For how long?"

I thought about it. "Two weeks? That's as long as I’ve known you, practically. Next week we have the kids from the ASD program and after that we have the kids from East Los Angeles. Then we have a week break. So after the L.A. kids go home?"

"I'm going to have the biggest fuckin' blue balls on the planet if we do that. I can't keep my hands off of you. You know that George Strait song? No of course you don't. Well, he has a song, 'I Get Carried Away.' That's how I feel about you."

I was going to have to listen to that song and think about what that meant, but I knew that I liked it. As I lay there, I had an inspiration. "What if I make you a deal?"

"Yeah?" He nuzzled my neck.

I said it all in a rush. "You make it just over two weeks with me spending the night here, and no sex, and you take me out and I take you out and we spend time together, and come Friday after the L.A. kids leave, if we still like each other and want to continue this, I'll let you do anything sexually to me that you want."

He drew back and stared at me. "
Fuck
."

Suddenly nervous, I felt like I needed to clarify. "Just don't hurt me."

"I'd never do that." He looked disappointed that I'd even suggest that.

I wiggled into him, my breasts pushing up against his chest, his dick in my belly. "Then, anything," I repeated.

He looked away. "Fuck. You probably want to start abstinence now, don't you."

Smiling shyly, I said quietly, "Not really, but I think we should."

He held me close, moving his lips to my ear, "Then there's no fuckin' way you are sleeping naked with me because that's just wrong."

I thought about torturing him a little bit more, but decided against it. "Okay," I agreed.

"What am I getting myself into?" he muttered.

"Me," I said, and he squeezed me tight.

"Okay, baby, you got yourself a deal. Two weeks from Friday, anything I want, and be prepared. Until then, we do it your way."

He released me and I got up and put on a t-shirt of his and my underwear, and he put on his boxers and we crawled into bed together. Because it was late, we both fell asleep quickly, but it was an uneasy sleep for me.

When I checked my phone the following morning, there was nothing from Amelia, so I texted her.

What is it about bossy guys? Why are they so hot?

Because they care. They are IN. TO. IT.

Yeah, I thought. Will cares. But I needed to know how
I
felt.

After breakfast, Will and I walked with a group of kids over to the corrals for their morning riding sessions. The kids were talking about the blockbuster movie of the summer.

When we were almost there, I heard one of the snobby girls, Emma, talking to Truc in a sneering voice. "Listen,
Fob
, have you ever seen a movie that wasn't a bootleg?" Truc immediately burst into tears.

Stunned, Tricia, the group leader, and a few other kids drew in their breath.

Tricia opened her mouth to start talking, but Will beat her to it, stopping Emma and asking, "What did you say?"

"Nothing," she said sullenly.

"What's that mean?" he asked Tricia.

"Fob means fresh off the boat. It's a nasty thing to say to another person."

Will's brows knit together and he looked at Emma. "That's not cool," he said in a low and dangerous voice. "You and me, we're gonna have a talk about prejudice. With everyone. Now."

He stopped the group and made them gather around.

"My mom's from Spain. She speaks Spanish. Marie's dad is Mexican. He was a migrant farmworker. That's how she grew up. We have people here from different countries, or their parents were from different countries, and we treat them all with respect.

"Prejudice is when you judge someone based on what they look like, not on who they are. We all do it. I do it myself. Do it all the time. I did it to my girl here, Marie, because I thought she was a lazy liberal." He smiled. "Turns out she's a caring, hardworking person who doesn't deserve to be judged like that. But words can hurt. Would you want to be called what you called Truc?" he asked Emma.

"No," she said quietly, but still petulant.

"Where you did you learn that word?" Will made a very good authority figure.

"At school," she said in the same voice.

"Do you think Truc likes to be called that?"

"No."

"Yeah," he said, looking at me. "People can prejudge each other. Words can hurt. I've done it myself. Let's make a pact, you and me, that we aren't going to call anyone names on my property. I'm not going to do it and you're not going to do it and everyone else here is not going to do it."

"Okay," whispered Emma.

"Okay," whispered Will back to her. Then in a louder voice, he asked everyone, "Are any of you going to call anyone names on my property?"

"No," the chorus came back.

"Good," said Will. And he came over to me, held my hand, and led everyone over the corrals.

Marie Got an Idea

FOR THE REST OF the week, the kids from Oakland rode horses, made crafts, took care of all of the different farm animals, and generally had a blast. After a rough start with the terrible campfire, the earthquake, and the overt racial slur, the group responded by bonding. I saw Emma talking with Truc several times at meals, James smiled at me once, and Enrique put his phone away in his duffle bag.

Both Maurice and Tricia came up to me and told me that they were going to do the program again next year. Success. Having no phones, no television, no distractions—except for friends to talk to and animals to take care of—really made it a place to put aside differences and make connections. I loved it. It felt like a perfect world. A utopia.

At the closing campfire Thursday night, the fire lit quickly, we roasted marshmallows, and everyone participated in singing my silly songs. And I even thought I saw Will join in from the back.

During the week, I noticed that while Will was a tough cowboy, he was also a kid-magnet. These children really looked up to him. Every time they saw him, they’d call out, "Will, Will!" and he’d walk over, all burly, and talk with them, his face smiling and animated. He had no guard up around the kids. He’d ruffle the hair of the guys and tease the girls and the kids all seemed to adore him and want to be like him. After his lecture about prejudice, even though it was just a sentence or two, it seemed to do the trick. I heard not a word of teasing about race among these children. At least for now. At least with this group. And sometimes that's all you could hope for.

I realized that his lecture, in part, was an apology to me for what he said when we met. We still needed to talk about a lot of things, however, like our beliefs, our politics, ourselves. But knowing that he had the ability to instruct kids to set aside their beliefs was a start to me opening up to him.

I wondered if he could set aside his own beliefs. I wondered if I could. I wanted to talk with him, and while he wasn't hard to talk to, he was never chatty. I needed to come up with a way to fix that.

But I was scared. What if it really was just about sex? What if we really did get on each other's nerves and had nothing in common underneath the mutual physical attraction?

It would hurt to discover that there was nowhere to go.

And realizing that it would hurt meant that I really did like him.

While Will had not tried to get into my pants this week, he gave zero fucks about public displays of affection. Whenever I was near him, he touched me, either with his arm around my shoulders, holding my hand, or tracing a finger down my back or arms. It felt comforting and I really liked it.

But he hadn't kissed me since I asked him to knock off the sex.

I missed his mouth on mine.

I missed other parts of him too.

Then it was Friday, and the kids went home to Northern California, dusty, wearing tie-dyed shirts, and boisterously singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" in a round on the bus ride home.

After they left, I went into the kitchen and made myself a snack of hummus and pita chips. Looking at my vegan food supplies, I realized that I needed to make a trip to a health food store to restock some of my favorites. I also noted that the bottle of tequila I’d brought with me had remained unopened.

That gave me an idea for tonight.

After I ate, I walked over to the barn to check in with Happy the horse. One of the farm hands, Claudio, was mucking out the stalls.

"When did you come here?" I asked.

He talked slowly, in a thick, Austrian accent. "I come here for school and then I start to work for Mister Will. And then I don't want to leave. At first I come to California. I rent red convertible Mustang. I try the surfing. But no, I am not surfer. Here, with the horses, I belong."

"I understand," I said. "I feel like I belong here too."

Will walked in the barn, hung up a bridle and reins in the tack room, and then came over to me. Claudio excused himself. Will put a foot up on a hay bale next to me, boxing me in by Happy's stall, and asked, "What do you wanna do tonight?"

"Get you drunk and see if I can get you to answer questions," I immediately responded.

He chuckled. "So you're gonna hide your true agenda."

I pushed his broad chest in protest, as a joke. He didn't move, just looked down at me, his brown eyes mellow. I responded, "Nope. But I got a bottle of tequila and it has our names on it."

He groaned. "Shit. Tequila. You sure that's a good idea?"

"Yes!" I clapped my hands. "I know! We'll go on a picnic. There has to be a good spot for a picnic, right? We can watch the sunset and drink and talk."

"Sounds terrific," Will muttered, not sounding like he believed it at all.

"It's all settled," I said. "I'll talk to Cookie and pack up something."

Will shook his head like he couldn't believe me, but he also looked amused.

Good. Hopefully I could get him talking. But I wasn't sure that I wanted to find out what he was going to say.

Tequila

WILL AND I WALKED away from the compound to his favorite bluff, which had quickly become my favorite bluff. A clear, cloudless sky meant that it was an absolutely beautiful summer evening that would surely turn into a superb night for stargazing.

I carried a blanket to sit on. He carried a small picnic basket with sandwiches made by Cookie—ham for Will, peanut butter for me—potato chips, watermelon, vegan chocolate cookies, water, and a huge bottle of tequila with a couple of plastic cups. So it was going to be a party. Woo-hoo!

But I had an agenda. I probably didn't really want to know the answers to any of it, but what could I say? I couldn't help myself. I
had
to know.

Still, as we walked, I was suddenly shy. This felt weird. I was never shy. But I guess I didn't want to spend the evening fighting with him about politics, or getting jealous of past girlfriends. And truthfully, I also really liked him and I didn't want to find out anything I wouldn't like.

I still felt an overwhelming urge to ask these things.

I couldn't bring myself to say a word until we got to the picnic site and spread out the blanket over the low vegetation. Since it was one of the longest days of the year, the sun was still high in the sky. The ocean crashed below us, no one else around. We settled on the blanket, sitting cross-legged, facing each other.

"Guess I shouldn't be worried about you takin’ me out here and takin’ advantage of me, given our agreement," Will joked.

"Nope. I do want to talk," I said sincerely.

"'Kay."

"See, that's it. You always have one word answers. Maybe for every one word answer you have to take a shot of tequila—"

"No," he interrupted. "We can each take a shot to get started. And if the other says somethin’ that deserves a shot, that'll be it."

This could get interesting rather quickly. I nodded. At least he was playing along.