She clutched a pipe bender to her chest, skipping back toward me as if it was a Golden Globe or whatever award she could win in her Hollywood world. “What does this do? Is it hard to use? Should you teach me now or is it not important?”
I rolled my eyes, forcing a yawn and layering boredom thick. “Unless you’re planning on becoming a plumber, you don’t need to know what a pipe bender does.”
“Ah, okay.” She grinned, placing it back amongst the relics. The same relics Dad had claimed from the farmer who’d hurt him. The police had appeared one day with a box of stuff and said it was his if he wanted it. They’d kept the brand, though. The cattle mark that had been seared into all the children Mclary had bought.
“…so yeah. That’s what I think.”
I hadn’t been paying attention to whatever Hope prattled about. Continuing to ignore her, I climbed onto the tread of the tractor to check the fuel gauge.
Half full.
Better take a gas can with us to top up rather than returning to the barn. We stockpiled diesel at low prices, filling up large tanks buried underground.
It wouldn’t take long to fill a canister or two.
Twisting to leap off the tractor, I miscalculated the jump. My back tweaked, my head sloshed, and I fell forward, completely missing my footing.
I braced myself for a hard, painful landing.
Only, something soft and delicate intercepted, wedging her shoulder against my chest, taking my entire weight for a second before she toppled to the ground with me on one knee and a hand speared to the concrete beside her.
My palm slapped by her face for balance, my body poised over hers while she landed on her back with hay in her ponytail and dirt smudging her cheek.
I stopped breathing as my body once again reacted.
Reacted way too fast and utterly out of my control.
She sucked in a breath as I shifted, pain lashing down my spine and my fingers tangling in her hair on the floor.
Her eyes lost its infectious lime joy, turning forest green with sick invitation. She shifted a little, her legs falling apart in a way that made me think she didn’t know she’d done it. Her desire hijacked her control, just like an erection had hijacked mine.
Our bodies understood whatever was going on between us.
The basicness of sex seemed so utterly simple.
My hips screamed to come down and slot between hers. My back didn’t give a damn if such a position would kill. All I needed was her flush against me so I had something to hold and press against and goddammit—
Breathing hard, I scrambled upright, doing my best to hide the tightness of my jeans. “You okay?”
Hope sucked in a breath, her legs scissoring together as if she’d only just realised what she’d done. “Yeah, you didn’t hurt me.” On the floor with her baseball cap askew, lips plump from no kiss and eyes wild from no touch, she didn’t look seventeen.
She looked a damn sight older and scarily younger all at the same time.
My chest physically hurt as my heart played some awful version of Jenga with my ribcage, tugging on each bone, trying to see which rib would cause the rest to come crashing down so it would be free to go to her.
“That’s good.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “You should’ve just let me fall.” My voice sounded thick and strange to my ears, gravelly with self-denial and frustration.
Climbing easily to her feet, she brushed off cobwebs and barn muck. “It was instinctual to help. Sorry.” She smiled softly. “To be honest, I’m more worried about your concussion than your back. Your balance seems off.”
I turned away, striding as smoothly as I could to the stack of red diesel canisters in the shadows. “I’m fine.”
“I know.” She followed me, grabbing a can without me asking. “Just making observations.”
“Well, don’t.”
“Okay, Jacob.” She looked me up and down, her gaze lingering on places I wished it wouldn’t. “I won’t.” Tossing the canister into the tractor’s small storage box, she clapped her hands together, uncaring about the dust, and grinned. “The sun is waking up. Let’s go meet her on the fields.”
* * * * *
I would never admit this out loud.
Even under pain of death.
Never.
I’d take this secret to my grave.
But Hope…I’d completely misjudged her.
She might’ve been born to stardom; she might’ve been raised by nannies, taught by scholars, and lived in mansions, but she’d merely tolerated such an existence.
The Hope who had a sunburned nose, three chipped nails, and a grubby white singlet revealing way too much pink bra was not the girl who’d arrived here, lonely and confused, seeking meaning to her life a couple of weeks ago.
She was right.
Plain and simple.
She did belong to the land, and the land belonged to her. I’d never seen something so…right…or so strange. In five hours, Hope had lost her tentative seeking and fully embraced her place in this world.