Chapter 6 “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” #2
“The hay thinks so too.” I offer her my hand, setting the plate of blondies on top of the tractor’s rear wheel well. “All right then, little lady, you paid the fee. Now let’s get to work.”
She grins. “This is the kind of work I like.”
“Figuring out a way to survive your life? Fuck that. Billie, we’re gonna get you thriving.”
That’s rich, coming from you.
Then again, aren’t I the expert in what being in survival mode costs you? I don’t want Billie to have to numb herself like I do. I want more for her.
What if you wanted more for yourself too?
A buzz of awareness zips up my arm when she takes my hand and meets my eyes. It happens again, the charged exchange of understanding between us as we hold eye contact for a beat too long.
I wish I’d known you were feeling this way sooner.
I wish I could tell you I’ve felt the same, and I know I need to make some changes, but I’m scared out of my fucking mind. The concept of “thriving” is foreign to me too. Maybe we learn how to do it together?
That’s just dumb, though. I’m fine. Everything is fine.
Bullshit.
One thing I am certain of is that I don’t want this conversation to end. Rare for me to be able to talk to people honestly this way.
Even rarer for them to be honest with me too.
“Are you?” Her throat bobs on a swallow. “Thriving?”
Not by a long shot.
“Tonight ain’t about me.” I lift our joined hands, guiding her onto the tractor’s step. “Go slow, yeah? I’m not wiping your ass if you break the other arm too.”
She throws back her head and cackles. “That would not be thriving, no.”
I try very hard not to look at said ass and her legs as she carefully climbs into the cab of the tractor and stands against the far window, her head ducked beneath the ceiling.
Billie usually wears jeans—as ranchers, we all do—so to see this much skin is…
a lot. I notice a birthmark high up on her left thigh.
It’s light, barely visible, and it’s shaped like a spoon of all things.
Makes me think of how it’d feel to spoon her. Which is fucking weird, but whatever. Billie is tough as nails. In bed, though, I bet she’d be all softness.
Soft skin. Soft moans. Soft little cuddler who’d tuck in nice and tight as the small spoon to my big one.
Even though the late September evening is mild, I’m sweating by the time I climb into the cab while she continues to wait, standing. I set the plate on top of the little cooler behind my seat.
The only seat in this tractor.
Fuck me for life.
We have newer machines on Lucky River Ranch, ones that have multiple seats and are a more comfortable ride.
But this particular tractor is my favorite.
It’s the same model that was Dad’s favorite.
I remember feeling like the king of the world when I would sit on his lap way high up in the cab. It felt like we were flying.
Billie Wallace is gonna have to sit on my lap now. And I’m gonna have to try with all my might not to get hard with that perfect peach of an ass pressed against me while we bounce around this godforsaken field.
Why does sitting suddenly feel more dangerous than spooning?
Too late to turn back now, though. I sit and try to make light of my terrible predicament.
I pat my knee. “You’re right here.”
“I prefer here”—she bends down and settles her ass smack dab in the center of my lap—“thank you very much.”
“You don’t listen to a damn thing I say, do you?”
She turns her head to give me a hot little look. “You’d be bored if I did.”
Then she leans back a little, resting her shoulder blades against my chest, and I close my eyes and take a deep, steadying breath through my nose. She’s so warm.
She smells so good.
Her body feels so fucking good tucked against mine. She is temptation personified. Not just bodily temptation. But she also tempts me to let down my guard. Feel my feelings. Be fully present in the moment.
An ominous heaviness gathers low in my belly. Gritting my teeth, I start the ignition. The tractor rumbles to life.
Dear Lord and Savior, please help me keep my shit together tonight.
Then I wrap my arms around Billie so I can take the wheel.
We sway together as we start to move, and I nearly bite off my tongue when the side of her breast brushes my arm.
Billie shifts a little, turning her head to look out the window. My chest cramps thinking she must really be unhappy if she’s this quiet.
“What do you think you’re missing?” I start to make the turn at the end of a row, careful not to jostle her bad arm. “Being a bookkeeper?”
She turns her head the other way, giving me a view of her profile. Her mouth looks especially lush from this angle, and I tamp down the urge to remember how soft her lips were.
How they tasted.
“You know what’s funny? I’ve been wondering that myself. And then when you and I played that game at the hospital—”
I groan. “God, that was cheesy. The humming? So embarrassing. Sorry.”
“It wasn’t cheesy at all.” She puts a hand on my knee.
“It was great. You were totally lit up, and it made me realize that the only place I’m lit up that way is when I’m…
outside. Moving my body. It’s when I’m working with people and I’m around animals and just, like, real life, you know?
Remember that time you found me in the barn in the middle of the night and I was cuddling with Meredith? ”
I let out a soft chuckle, my pulse skipping a beat at the memory. “We talked about that at the hospital. You were having those bad dreams then, right?”
“I was. And you made me feel better by playing your guitar. I hummed the song, and you picked it right up.”
I groan again, despite the weird flutter that happens inside my chest. I loved that guitar. But I stopped playing after Mom and Dad died, and I haven’t so much as touched the damn thing since.
Last I saw it, the guitar was in the old storage shed on the Rivers’ side of the ranch. No clue if it’s still there.
Not like I’d wanna play if it were still around. But if I did—
“Do you ever think about picking up the guitar again? You were really good, and I had fun playing that game with you.”
I swallow. Why is my throat tight? Is it the way Billie can read my mind?
Or is it the memory of how happy I felt—how alive—whenever I played music? No one’s ever pushed me to take it back up. I think my brothers and my friends know it’s a sore subject.
I don’t know why it’s a sore subject. Music, singing, playing…maybe I associate all that with my parents? Our time as a whole, happy family?
I wonder if I stopped playing because music made me feel, period. And feeling got dangerous after I lost my parents.
My guitar had the power to make me feel happy or sad or lonely or excited or turned on.
Which meant I didn’t have power over my emotions—the music did.
And once my parents died, I was afraid that playing music would make me feel things I couldn’t handle.
I’ve always known that grief is lurking in the corners of my consciousness, and if I played music, I worried it would flood my body and I’d drown in it.
So I set down my guitar and never picked it back up again.
My chest spasms, a vast, empty feeling opening up inside me.
That seemed like the right choice at the time. Now? I’m not so sure. I remember feeling proud that I didn’t cry at my parents’ funeral. Come to think of it, I haven’t cried since.
But closing off my feelings might be more of a problem than a cure. Am I ready to face that fact, though? What if I let myself experience that grief and it absolutely destroys me?
“Nah.” I sniff. “Don’t got the time.”
“That’s a lie. You should do it.”
“You should mind your own damn business.”
One side of that pretty little mouth kicks up.
“I know. So anyway, the other night I did it again—I had a nightmare, so I snuck into the barn and I was cuddling the horses and I was feeling real sorry for myself that I only got to be around them on my own time. Dad runs a tight ship, and he wants me in the office seven to four every day, five days a week.”
“Brutal.”
“No shit.” She puts her hands on the wheel inside mine. “Can I drive?”
“Do you know how?” I can’t help but notice how different our hands look next to each other. Hers are paler than mine, and about half the size.
“No.” Her pinkie darts out to brush my thumb knuckle. “But you could teach me.”
It’s all I can do not to hang my head. This girl ain’t afraid to push my goddamn buttons.
Problem is, I like it.
“Should you be driving with that hand?” I motion to her broken arm.
“My elbow’s busted, not my hand. I’ll be fine. But maybe you should keep your hands close to mine on the wheel, just in case.”
I chuckle, a low, gravelly sound I don’t recognize. “Billie.”
“I know.”
“Billie.”
“I know. Now show me how to drive this tractor, damn it!”
“Fine!”
“Fine!” She’s giggling now, and so am I.
I carefully glide my hands over hers, ignoring the way my core pulses at the smoothness of her skin, and move them to the correct position on the wheel. “Ten and two. Nice and easy.”
“Just like me,” she deadpans.
“Hey. You’re not nice.”
“But you are easy.”
“Easy to please, yeah.”
“I bet you are.”
My dick twitches. “That tool been buggin’ you? The bull rider.” I only ask the question because I need to change the subject, quick.
Only this is not a subject we should really be talking about either.
“Xander…” She sighs, and together we make the turn around another row. “I don’t know. I think he might be history.”
Relief swoops through me. Thank Christ.
“Good. He sure as hell isn’t gonna help you thrive.”
“What should I do, Ryder?” She pauses. “What would you do?”
“Not date bull riders. That’s just life 101.”
Somehow she manages to elbow me. “Talk about someone needing to mind their own business. I’m talking about my life, not who I’m sleeping with.”
“I think…” I actually can’t think when I have you in my arms. “I think you try to follow that feeling.”
“What feeling?”
“The one you get when you’re doing the stuff you mentioned. Like, how did you feel during that race before you fell?”
That makes her smile. “I felt free. And scared, but also…alive? Like fully, completely, totally alive. Connected to the universe, as dumb as that sounds. I was happy. So freaking happy, Ry, I can’t even tell you.
But I think you get it, though, because it looked like that’s the way you felt when you and I were playing your cute little humming game. ”
The tightness in my throat returns with a vengeance. “It wasn’t cute.”
“Can we play it again right now? Pretty please?”
Part of me really, really wants to say yes. I loved revisiting my favorite old songs with her.
Right now, though, my feelings are a flashing neon sign that says Danger, danger. Uncharted territory.
“Another time,” I manage. “I understand your daddy’s thought process—why he wants an in-house bookkeeper. I just can’t figure out why he thought you’d be right for the job. Clearly you’re not meant for an office gig.”
Billie turns to look at me for a second. I get why she’s confused. I had fun playing that singing game too. But we’re not kids anymore, and I need to keep some boundaries in place here. Hence the reroute back to the original thread of our conversation.
“I’m gonna find out, you know,” Billie says.
“What’s that?”
“Why you’re afraid to play.” She turns back to the windshield.
“So anyway, I think my parents don’t believe it’s ‘proper’ for a girl to do the kind of things I like doing.
” Her smile fades. “Dad keeps saying I’ll get used to working at a desk.
I want to make him proud and do right by my family. I just…”
She’s not able to finish the thought because we have to turn again. That’s when I realize my hands are still on hers even though she’s clearly gotten the hang of driving. This definitely isn’t the first time Billie’s driven a tractor.
It is, however, the first time she’s confided in me. Questioned me.
Called me out.
I like her brazenness just a little too much.