Free The Lonesome Young by Lucy Connors Page B

Mickey is here with me? And everybody keeps telling me to stay away from you. I honestly don’t know what to do.”
    “So why don’t we sit and talk and figure it out?” He pulled off the flannel shirt he was wearing over his T-shirt and put it on the step. “A little late, maybe, but so you don’t get your skirt dirty.”
    It was a nice gesture, but without the “as you wish” Princess Bride reference, I might have left him there alone in the stairwell anyway. It was hard to resist a good Westley quote.
    I carefully sat down on his folded shirt.
    “Sorry about coming on so strong. I was running out of ideas about how to get you to talk to me, especially after I kissed you like that,” he admitted. “I just wanted a chance to get to know you—for you to get to know me—without the burden of everybody’s judgment crashing into us.”
    I shrugged, not quite sure how to handle this new, sincere version of Mickey. “They won’t tell me anything about you, you know,” I finally said. “My family. Or at least my grandmother and our foreman. Pete warned me to stay away from you, and Gran won’t even hear your name. What is that about?”
    He laughed, but it was more bitter than amused. “The Rhodale line throws true, my grandpa used to say. We all look the same, and we all grow up to be lawmen or criminals. Hasn’t everybody in school told you about us?”
    “My grandfather sounds a lot like yours.”
    “Really? Did he have to leave the ranch to shoot possums and squirrels to make sure his family got enough to eat?” His sarcasm hung in the air between us, tangible as a slap in the face.
    “No, what I meant was that my Gran told me he talked about how the Whitfield line were all born to be horse people, you jerk. You have to make up your mind, Mickey. Are we going to actually talk to each other like normal people or not? I’m kind of tired of the hot and cold running attitude,” I snapped.
    He narrowed his eyes, but then he nodded and sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ve heard about the horrible Whitfields for so long that I guess I’ve internalized it.”
    “Ooh, ‘internalized.’ Points for the SAT word,” I said, smiling a little before what he’d said really registered. “Wait. The horrible Whitfields?”
    He returned my smile and nudged my leg with his, and a little of the tension relaxed out of my shoulders. We might be able to have a civilized conversation after all, in spite of the almost painful sparks of sensation that snapped and pulsed along my nerve endings from his nearness.
    “I don’t actually know. I’ve heard Pa mention your father a few times. They never got along, apparently.”
    My head was starting to hurt. “What, like when they were kids? Dad hasn’t lived here since high school. Who cares about that?”
    “You really don’t know?”
    I sighed and closed my eyes. This circular conversation was getting us nowhere, fast.
    “This is Kentucky, Princess. Everybody cares about everybody else’s business and pasts and especially any misdeeds,” he said, dropping his head into his hands.
    The hint of vulnerability in the boy everybody else seemed to think was a monster tugged at me more than if he’d tried to charm me or seduce me.
    “Mickey—”
    “I’d like to get to know you,” he said abruptly, raising his head. “I admit it, I’d like to kiss you again, too, but this is about more than that.”
    Time itself did a little hiccup as I stared into his blue eyes. He raised his hand and touched the side of my face so gently that it was more a whisper of a promise than an actual caress. My hands started to tremble, and I forgot how to breathe for a moment, as the connection between us flared into urgent, electric existence. I thought for a second that he’d kiss me, but instead he leaned back and stretched out his legs, shoving his hands back in his front pockets as if he had to forcibly keep himself from touching me again.
    Or so I imagined.