by Nora Roberts
Now, somehow, he was rolling with her on the dirt road, over the prickly grass on its edge. He was hard, brutally hard, so when she pressed her hips up, pressed against him, he groaned in pleasure and torment.
“Does it hurt? What does it feel like?” Her words tore on ragged breaths. “Let me feel—”
“Jesus. Don’t.” He gripped her hand and pulled it back from its sudden and fierce exploration. Another minute of that and he knew he’d go off, and embarrass them both.
He pushed back to sit on the old road with his heart knocking between his ears. “What are we doing?”
“You wanted to kiss me.” She sat up with him. Her eyes were huge, deep and dark. “You want more.”
“Look, Lil—”
“So do I. You’re going to be my first.” She smiled as he stared at her. “It’ll be right with you. I’ve been waiting until I knew it’d be right.”
Something, she thought it might be panic, streaked across his face. “That’s not something you can take back once it’s done.”
“You want me. I want you back. We’ll figure it out.” She leaned forward, laid her lips gently, experimentally on his. “I liked the way you kissed me, so we’ll figure it out.”
He shook his head, and the panic turned into a kind of baffled amusement. “I’m supposed to be the one talking you into having sex.”
“You couldn’t talk me into anything if I didn’t want it.”
“That’s for damn sure.”
She smiled again, started to lean her head on his shoulder. And was on her feet in a flash. “Oh, God, look at the sky. Look north.”
It boiled. Coop pushed to his feet to grab her hand. “Let’s get inside.”
“It’s miles off. Miles. It’s going to spawn though. It’s—There!”
The funnel whirled out of the churning mass, twisting its way to the ground like a deadly black finger. “My grandparents.”
“No, it’s miles off, and it’s heading west, heading to Wyoming. We’ve barely even got wind here.”
“They can turn.” As he spoke he saw it simply eat through a line of trees.
“Yeah, but it’s not. It won’t. Look, look, Coop, can you see the rain wall? There’s a rainbow.”
She saw the rainbow, he thought, and he saw the black funnel storming its way across the plains.
He supposed that said something about both of them.
OUTSIDE LIL’S BEDROOM, Jenna took several bracing breaths. The light under the door told her Lil was still up. She’d half hoped that by the time she’d finished stalling, the light would be off.
She knocked, opened the door when Lil called out to come in.
Her daughter sat up in bed, her hair spilling around her shoulders, her face scrubbed for the night, and a thick book in her hands.
“Studying already?”
“It’s on wildlife ecology and management. I want to be ready when I start classes. No, I want to be ahead,” Lil admitted. “A freshman has to be really good to have a chance at any serious fieldwork. So I’m going to be really good. I’m already feeling competitive.”
“Your grandfather was the same. Horseshoes or horse trading, politics or pinochle, he wanted to come in first.” Jenna sat on the side of the bed. So young, she thought, looking at her daughter. Still a baby in so many ways. And yet . . .
“Did you have a good time tonight?”
“Sure. I know a lot of people my age think barn dances are hokey, but they’re fun. It’s nice to see everybody. And I like watching you and Dad dance.”
“The music was good. Gets the feet moving.” She glanced at the open book, saw what looked like some sort of strange algebra. “What in the world is that?”
“Oh, it’s explaining equations for measuring population density of species. See, this is a formula for finding the merged estimate, that’s the mean of the individual estates. And its variance is the mean of . . .” She stopped, grinned at her mother’s face. “Do you really want to know?”
“Do you remember me helping you with math after you got through long division.”
“No.”
“That would be your answer. Anyway, you didn’t dance much tonight.”
“We liked listening to the music, and it was so nice out.”
And whenever you came back in, Jenna thought, you had that dazed and smug look of a girl who’d done some serious kissing.
Please, God, let that be all.
“You and Cooper aren’t just friends anymore.”
Lil sat up a little straighter. “Not just. Mom—”
“You know we love him. He’s a good young man, and I know you care about each other. I also know that you’re not children anymore, and when you feel more than friendship, things happen. Sex happens,” Jenna corrected, ordering herself to stop being a coward.
“It hasn’t. Yet.”
“Good. That’s good, because if it does, I want both of you to be prepared, to be safe.” She reached in her pocket and took out a box of condoms. “To be protected.”
“Oh.” Lil just stared at them, as dumbfounded as her mother had been by the equations. “Oh. Um.”
“Some girls consider this the boy’s responsibility. My girl is smart and self-aware, and will always look after herself, rely on herself. I wish you’d wait, I can’t help wishing you’d wait. But if you don’t, I want you to promise me you’ll use protection.”
“I will. I promise. I want to be with him, Mom. When I am—I mean just with him, I feel all this . . . this,” she said lamely. “In my heart, and in my stomach, in my head. Everything’s fluttering around so I can barely breathe. And when he kisses me, it’s like, Oh, that’s what’s it supposed to be. I want to be with him,” she repeated. “He pulls back because he’s not sure I’m really ready. But I am.”
“You’ve just made me feel a lot better about him. A lot better knowing he’s not pressuring you.”
“I think it might be, sort of, the other way around.”
Jenna managed a weak laugh. “Lil, we’ve talked before, about sex, safety, responsibility, those feelings. And you’ve grown up on a farm. But if there’s anything you’re not sure of, or want to talk about, you know you can talk to me.”
“Okay. Mom, does Dad know you’re giving me condoms?”
“Yes. We talked about it. You know you can talk to him, too, but—”
“Oh, yeah, big but. It’d feel really weird.”
“On both sides.” Jenna patted Lil’s thigh as she rose. “Don’t stay up too late.”
“I won’t. Mom? Thanks for loving me.”
“Never a problem.”
RELY ON YOURSELF, Lil thought. Her mother was right, as usual, she decided as she packed provisions. A woman had to have a plan, that was the key. What to do, when and how to do it. She’d made the arrangements. Maybe Coop didn’t know all of them, but the element of surprise was also key.
She put the packs in the truck, grateful that her parents had gone to town, so there didn’t have to be any awkward be carefuls, even if they were unspoken.
She wondered if Coop’s grandparents knew what was going on. Really going on. She’d opted not to ask her mother that one. Talk about awkward.
Didn’t matter, don’t care, she thought as she drove with the wind shooting through the open windows. She had three days free. Probably her last in a row for the summer. In another few weeks she’d be on her way north, on her way to college. And another phase of her life would begin.
She wasn’t leaving until she’d finished this phase.
She’d thought she’d be nervous, but she wasn’t. Excited, happy, but not nervous. She knew what she was doing—in theory—and was ready to put it into practice.
She turned the radio up and sang along as she drove through the hills, passed tidy farms and pastures. She saw men mending fences, and clothes flapping on lines. She stopped—she couldn’t help herself—to take pictures and some quick notes when she spotted a good-sized herd of buffalo.
She arrived at th
e farm in time to see Coop saddling up. She hitched on her pack, grabbed the second, then gave a whistle.
“What’s all that?”
“Some surprises,” she called out as he walked over to help her.
“Jesus, Lil, it looks like enough for a week. We’re only going to be a few hours.”
“You’ll thank me later. Where is everybody?”
“My grandparents had to run into town. They should be on their way back, but they said not to wait if we were ready before.”
“Believe me, I’m ready.” She hugged that exciting secret inside. “Oh, I talked to my college roommate today.” Lil checked the cinches on the mare’s saddle. “We got our dorm assignments, and she called, just to touch base. She’s from Chicago, and she’ll be studying animal husbandry and zoology. I think we’re going to get along. I hope. I’ve never shared a room before.”
“Not much longer now.”
“No.” She mounted. “Not much longer. Do you like your roommate?”
“He stayed stoned pretty much through two years. He didn’t bother me.”
“I’m hoping to make friends. Some people make friends in college that stay friends all the rest of their lives.” They moved at an easy pace, all the time in the world, under the wide blue plate of sky. “Did you get stoned?”
“A couple of times and that was enough. It seemed like the thing to do, and the grass was right there. He’s all, Dude, fire one up,” Coop said in an exaggerated stoner’s tone that made her laugh. “So why not? Everything seemed pretty funny—and mellow—for a while. Then I was starving and had a headache. It didn’t seem worth it.”
“Is he going to be your roommate again this term?”
“He flunked out, big surprise.”
“You’ll have to break in a new one.”
“I’m not going back.”
“What?” She jerked her mount to a halt to gape, but Coop kept going. She nudged the mare into a trot to catch up. “What do you mean, you’re not going back? Back east?”
“No, back to college. I’m done.”
“But you’ve only—you’ve barely . . . What happened?”
“Nothing. That’s pretty much the point. I’m not getting anywhere, and it’s not where I want to get, anyway. The whole prelaw shit was my father’s deal. He’ll pay as long as I do it his way. I’m not doing it his way anymore.”
She knew the signs—the tightening of his jaw, the flare in his eyes. She knew the temper, and the bracing for a fight.
“I don’t want to be a lawyer, especially not the kind of corporate stooge in an Italian suit he’s pushing on me. Goddamn it, Lil, I spent the first half of my life trying to please him, trying to get him to notice me, to fucking care. What did it get me? The only reason he’s paid the freight on college is because he has to, but it had to be his way. And he was pissed I didn’t get into Harvard. Jesus, as if.”
“You could’ve gotten into Harvard if you wanted.”
“No, Lil.” Exasperated he scowled at her. “You could. You’re the genius, the straight-A student.”
“You’re smart.”
“Not like that. Not with school, or not that way. I do okay, I do fine. And I fucking hate it, Lil.”
Sad and mad, she realized. The sad and mad was back in his eyes. “You never said—”
“What was the point? I felt stuck. He can make you feel like you don’t have a choice, like he’s right, you’re wrong. And Christ, he knows how to make you toe the line. That’s why he’s good at what he does. But I don’t want to do what he does. Be what he is. I started thinking of all the years I’d have to put into becoming what I didn’t want to become. I’m done with it.”
“I wish you’d told me before. I just wish you’d told me you were so unhappy with all this. We could’ve talked about it.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. But I do know this whole deal’s about him, not me. Him and my mother, and their endless war, and endless pursuit of the right appearances. I’m finished with it, too.”
Her heart broke a little for him. “Did you have a fight with your parents before you left?”
“I wouldn’t call it a fight. I said some things I wanted to say, and I got an ultimatum. I could stay and work in the family firm this summer or he’d cut me off. Financially, as he’s cut me off in every other way since I was a kid.”
They forded a stream in silence, just the splash of hooves through water. She couldn’t imagine her parents stepping away from her, not in any way. “So you came here.”
“It’s what I’d planned to do, what I wanted to do. I’ve got enough money to get my own place. I don’t need much. I was never going back to live with my mother anyway. Just never going there again.”
A little bubble of hope swelled inside her. “You could stay here, with your grandparents. You know you could. Help out at the farm. You could go to school out here, and—”
He turned his head toward her, and she felt that little bubble pop and dissolve. “I’m not going back to college, Lil. It’s not for me. It’s different for you. You’ve been planning what you were going to study, what you were going to do, ever since you saw that cougar. And decided to chase cats instead of pop flies.”
“I didn’t know you were so unhappy. I get law wasn’t your choice, and it was unfair of your father to push you there, but—”
“Fair’s not the point.” He shrugged, a gesture of a young man too used to unfair to be bothered by it. “It’s not about that, and from now on it’s not about him. It’s about me. The whole college scene? That’s not about me.”
“Neither is staying here, is it?”
“It doesn’t feel like it, not yet or not now anyway. I don’t know what I want, for sure. Staying would be easy. I’ve got a place to stay, three squares, work I’m pretty good at. I’ve got family, and you.”
“But.”
“It feels like settling, before I know. Before I do something. Out here, I’m Sam and Lucy’s grandson. I want to be me. I enrolled in the police academy.”
“Police?” If he’d leaned over and shoved her off her horse she’d have been less stunned. “Where did that come from? You’ve never said anything about wanting to be a cop.”
“I took a couple of courses in law enforcement, and one in criminology. They were the only things I liked about the whole pile of crap these last two years. The only things I was any good in. I’ve already applied. I’ve got enough course credits to get in, and I’ll be twenty when I start. It’s six months’ training, and it just feels like I’d be good at it. So I’m going to try it. I need something that’s mine. I don’t know how to explain it.”
She thought, I’m yours, but kept the words to herself. “Have you told your grandparents?”
“Not yet.”
“You’ll be working in New York.”
“I’d’ve been going to school back east,” he reminded her. “And if everyone but me had their way, working in legal in my father’s company back there. Wearing a suit every fricking day. Now I’ll be doing something for me, or at least trying to. I figured you’d understand that.”
“I do.” She wished she didn’t. She wanted him there, with her. “It’s just . . . so far away.”
“I’ll come out when I can. As soon as I can. Maybe Christmas.”
“I could come to New York, maybe on semester break, or . . . next summer.”
Some of that sad lifted from his face. “I’ll show you around. There’s a lot to do, to see. I’ll have my own place. It’s not going to be much, but—”
“It won’t matter.” They’d make it work, somehow, she told herself. She couldn’t feel this way about him, about them, and not make it work. “They have cops in South Dakota, too.” She tried out a bright smile. “You could be sheriff of Deadwood one day.”
He laughed at the idea. “First I have to get through the academy. A lot of people wash out.”
“You won’t. You’ll be great. You’ll help people and solve crimes, and I’ll study and get my deg
ree and save wildlife.”
And they’d find a way, she thought.