RANSOM (13 page)

   “She started it!” he replies to her, pointing his finger at me.

   “I just asked for some water!” I counter.

   “Don’t you dare throw blame on
her! She’s your company.”

   “I’m not twelve, Mom.”

   “Then stop acting like it. Real men tell a woman when they have feelings for her.”

   Did she just say that he had feelings for me? I look to Lynkin as he responds.

   “I am a real… Wait… what?” He jerks his head towards me, and our eyes connect. I know that he is processing his mom’s statement before he answers because I am too, but I didn’t expect to see the dismissal of it so quickly. He looks back to his mother and says, “Oh no. It’s not like that, Mom.”

   It’s astonishing how much sting and hurt comes from that short sentence. If I hadn’t still been next to him I wouldn’t have caught him saying the next words under his breath, “It can’t be.”

   His eyes are sad, but serious. One side of his mouth turns up into a remorseful half-grin. He puts his hand out to help me up, but I don’t take it. Instead, I put my hands onto the ground to pull myself up. It takes a little bit more effort because I slip and lose my balance a few times before I get completely upright.

   “Come on, sweetheart. I’ll take you inside, get you in the shower, and into some clean, dry clothes,” Lynkin’s mother says, placing a hand on my shoulder to usher me towards the house.

   I tip-toe and do my best to not leave a trail through Chrissy’s clean house. I keep my arms pulled in as close to me as I can so that I don’t rub any mud off on anything. When she stops at a door and opens it to reveal the bathroom, I look back the way we came and see a few spots on the shiny hardwood floor.

   “I am so sorry, Miss Conner. I tried to be careful,” I apologize.

   “Oh, please. You do realize that the man that did this to you is my son, right? Now imagine him as an eight-year-old boy.” When I raise one of my eyebrows at her she assures me, “Those little specs of dirt are nothing compared to some of the things he has dragged through here. Now, go on in there and get washed up. There will be clothes sitting on the counter when you get out.”

   “Thank you, Miss Conner,” I say stepping into the bathroom.

   “You’re welcome.” She stops halfway through shutting the door, “And Sage? You are making me feel like a little old lady. My name is Chrissy.”

   I shower quickly and dry off. True to Chrissy’s word, there is a pair of plaid pajama bottoms and an old band shirt sitting on the counter. I pull the pants up to my waist only to realize they won’t stay up, and there is no drawstring on them. I look around on the sink and in the drawers for a safety pin, but come up empty.  I turn to the shelf under the window and start looking in the small baskets on it. I nearly have a heart attack when something walks across the window.

   I let out a small scream before I realize its Lynkin. Luckily, he is far enough out that he doesn’t hear me. He is shirtless and soaking wet, and I can’t help but to watch as he walks the rows of plants and grabs the vegetables that are ready to be picked. The muscles in his back pull tight and cord around each other as he twist to  grab something then turns back to place it in the bucket.

   I could watch this all day long. There is one thing that can toss cold water on anyone’s dirty thoughts though, and that is a parent. “You ok in there, sweetheart?”

   “Um, yeah. Just finishing up,” I holler back. I look at myself in the mirror. With one hand I run my fingers through my still wet hair while the other holds up my pants. I hear her footsteps heading down the hall away from the bathroom door and wait a few more seconds before I decide to walk out. With my head down, I unlock the door handle, and open it up to see a pair of bare feet on the other side. Following them up the lean, toned, and naked legs. Ok, so he has boxer briefs on, but the way they are sticking to his body is leaving nothing—and I do mean nothing—to the imagination.

   “It’s a damn shame,” he says with a deep southern twang.

   “What’s that?”

   “That I didn’t make it in here ten minutes earlier. Then maybe we could have shared another shower.”

   “It’s not like that, remember? Besides, we came here to help your mom, I just wished I was out there to help you finish up.”

   “Were you watching me?” I open my mouth to object but he cuts me off and walks me back into the bathroom. “You were.” He leans forward so his breath tickles my neck as he talks. “Did you get hot and bothered? Did you touch yourself and imagine it was me that was doing it?” he ask as his hand travels up my inner thigh
til’ he reaches his mark.

   I lean back against the counter as he rubs me through the cloth pants. My arms go around his neck, causing my bottoms to fall to the floor, leaving less clothing between him and me. He grabs my ass, picks me up, and sits me on the counter. I pull him into me, wasting no time with pleasantries.
Neither does he as our mouths meet and tongues collide.

   Just kissing Lynkin, I feel more passion than I have ever felt with Richard. Not that I don’t love my fiancé but being away from him for this amount of time has made me realize that I’m not in love with him. With Lynkin, everything is like a sensory overload. Him touching me, kissing me, hell just the way he looks at me sometimes sends me over the edge.

   He grabs the bottom of my hair and pulls so he can deepen the kiss. I wrap my legs tight around his waist and run my hands down the front of his chest until I reach the band of his briefs. When I run my hand in beneath them my hands feel gritty against his skin. I break our kiss and look down at my hands to find them again covered with mud.

   Then, what Lynkin said to his mom earlier comes back to me.
‘It’s not like that. It can’t be.’

Lynkin

We went from this really amazing make-out session to her shoving me away and walking out the door, leaving me wondering what the hell happened the whole time I’m in the shower. She didn’t so much as look in my direction as she hopped off the counter, grabbed her pants from the floor and put them on, then walked out the door.

   I wrap the towel around my waist, walk to my room, and grab some old clothes. Once I’m dressed I walk to the kitchen to find Mom showing Sage some kitchen basics. I watch how Sage is so kind and loving towards my mom. She respects her, and I know it is because I told her how strong she is. I still can’t help the small amount of peace that it brings me to see that they like one another. Even though the sparks that Sage and I have with each other will be forced to end. No matter how strong they may be, we can’t be together, not really.

   I have been thinking about letting her go. She can go back to her old life and what she is comfortable with. I can only hope that she realizes that she deserves better than even that. Better than that asshat of a man she calls her fiancé.

   “…up there?” I hear the tail end of whatever it is mom asks me.

   “What?”

   “Open up your ears. Now, do as I asked you and reach up on top the cabinets for me and get the flour bowl.” She reiterates.

   “How many times have I told you that you need to find a different place for this?” I scold her, but still retrieve it and place it on the counter for her.

   “And how many times do I have to tell you that when I get more room in this kitchen, I will find a better place for it. Until then it is just fine where it’s at.”

   Knowing I am fighting a useless battle, I walk to the other side of the island counter, grabbing a piece of bacon as I walk by. Taking a big bite of it I ask, “Breakfast for supper?”

   “That’s right, but if I see you steal another piece of bacon, I will walk right out of this kitchen and leave you to fend for yourself.” I toss the last bit of the bacon strip into my mouth and hold my hands up. “Why don’t you make yourself useful while Sage and I get these biscuits in the oven and fix the leak that’s under the sink?”

    I look over to where Sage has her hip leaned against the counter and her arms crossed. Her gaze is on the floor, and she looks as if she feels out of place, which is odd. I bet she has never felt out of place a day in her life, but the more I think about it, I know she hasn’t had anywhere near the relationship with her parents that I have with my mom.

   “Fair trade.” As I walk by Sage, I nudge her and give her the biggest smile I can to try and make her feel more comfortable. Instead, she looks more irritated.

   Over the next hour, Mom shows her how she makes her homemade fluffy biscuits and the best damn sausage gravy south of the Mason-Dixon line. The whole time she told her stories, and not just any old stories. Nope. They were all about little old me. I didn’t say anything, though. Not even when Mom told her about me running around the house for a week straight in nothing but my underwear because I was so sure I was superman’s son. I didn’t say anything because Mom was making her laugh and Sage’s laugh is just like her: beautiful.

   I go to make my plate as soon as Mom sets the food on the table and she scolds me, “I swear by all that’s Holy, son. It’s not going to kill you to wait until after grace has been said.”

   I think she does her very best to make that the longest grace that has ever been said around any dinner table, just so that I have to wait longer to eat. She was always the best at trick punishments. Sage and I spend the rest of dinner listening to Mom go on and on about all the bad things going on in the world. I’ve told that woman countless times that she needs to quit watching the news, all it ever shows are the bad things people do, never anything good. The television networks get more ratings off the bad than the good, and they feed on that.

   She switches from telling me about a memorial service that happened somewhere into a more close to home subject. Literally, a subject sitting in her home. My heart stops and I am sure she can see the sweat already beading up on my forehead. I grab my napkin and put it in front of my mouth to spit out the food in my mouth. Suddenly, the food doesn’t taste as amazing as it did.

   “I can’t believe you haven’t already told me about your boss’s poor daughter being kidnapped.” She pauses and looks at Sage. “I hope she is alright, wherever it is they have her.”

   I sink a little lower in my seat.

   “How could someone be so cruel as to kidnap someone’s innocent daughter? And only to get rich quick. Whoever it is should be ashamed,” she says with a tsk.

   “Maybe he had a good reason for doing it. He could have been doing it to support his family,” Sage speaks up. I look at her silently asking why she would defend me, and she straightens up in her chair as if to solidify her statement.

   “Family doesn’t have to have money to be supported.”

   “But money does pay the bills and buy the food,” Sage says back. Did she just talk back to my mom? I wait patiently for my mother to reach across the table and pop her mouth.

   Instead she just says, “Love, dear. Love can conquer all things. It conquers poverty and riches, distance, race, and sex. It is the most powerful thing that was ever created. God wouldn’t have given us such power if he didn’t mean for us to use it. There were other ways for this person to get through whatever lays in his path, he didn’t have to resort to such drastic measures.”

   “It’s a nice thought.”

   “Love?”

   “Not love, the thought that it can conquer all.”

   “One day, you will know the kind of love that I am talking about. You will see there is nothing as important as the love that someone holds for you.” my mom explains.