He sighed impatiently, his hand making a fist and releasing. “Okay, Leah. Why won’t you let me in your house?”
“Because it’s not a house,” I snapped. “It’s a trailer.”
“It’s temporary.” His voice was soothing as he stepped closer to me. I looked way up at him, but all I saw was my reflection.
“Eighteen years isn’t temporary.” I meant to say this sarcastically, but it came out hoarse, and I found myself backing through the open doorway as he leaned even closer.
“It’s temporary from now on.” He took another step forward, forcing me to take another step inside. “Let me in, Leah.”
“Why? So you can search for beer again? There isn’t any. If there had been, my mom would have taken it. That’s probably the first thing she checked.”
“No,” he said. “This is important.”
“Let me guess.” I tried to sound cocky, but my heartbeat sped along and I sounded breathless as I said, “You’ve come to tell me that my fake relationship with you has screwed up my fake relationship with Alec, and I should keep my hands off you from now on. Well, sorry, but my mother is headed to Savannah and she’s not coming back to check on me, much less pitch a fit at the airport because I forged her name years ago. You can’t order me around anymore. I never would have helped you in the first place if I’d known you were trying to control Alec’s life. He told me about the Citadel and the military. What you’re doing is wrong. Our agreement is off.”
“I don’t care what you think.” Grayson took another step toward me. We were both inside the trailer now. He kicked the door closed with a flimsy metal crash and kept walking toward me. I kept backing up until I felt the hard kitchen counter behind me.
“I just want to know where Alec went,” Grayson said.
“Now?”
“Tonight. Are you two going out? I went in the office to write your check and cash it. When I came out, he and Molly were both gone, and he’s not answering his cell.”
“He said he was going out with his recruiter.”
“His recruiter!” Grayson ripped off his shades and his hat, tossed them both on the counter, and ran his fingers back through his damp curls. “Goddamn it, Leah. Why didn’t you stop him?”
“Because I’m not your brother’s keeper!” I exclaimed. “He said he was going out with his recruiter, Grayson. He didn’t say he was signing up for a six-year stint tonight. And I did tell him what a bad idea I thought that would be.”
Grayson shook his head at me, jaw set, nostrils flared, eyes hard, like this was all my fault. “There are two possibilities, and both of them are awful. The first is that he’s lying to you. He doesn’t want to spend time with you, and he’s made an excuse so he won’t have to go out with you again. Maybe he even has a date with somebody else, like a girl we went to middle school with that he ran into at that party.”
“Why is that so awful? I don’t like him romantically either.”
“It’s your job to make him like you, Leah. Have you completely forgotten about that?”
“Not anymore,” I protested, “because I—”
He put his hands on either side of me on the counter, leaning close and boxing me in. He interrupted, “The other possibility is that he wasn’t lying. He really is meeting his recruiter. On a Thursday night on spring break in Heaven Beach. Which means they’ve gotten to be buddies. The recruiter will pal around with him to draw him in, and the next thing you know, Alec has signed his life away. Alec can do that, you know, anytime he wants to!”
“Yes, I know!” I was so exasperated with Grayson. I wished he could hear himself. “It’s his life and his decision, and it’s none of your business!”
“How dare you say that,” Grayson said. It was such a funny-sounding, old-fashioned response. Maybe that’s why it rang so true and sent a shiver down my spine. “You have no idea,” he said. “None. How many brothers do you have?”
I swallowed. “None.”
“How many dead brothers do you have?”
I squinted to keep from tearing up, then put my hands up on his shoulders, lightly, tentatively. “Grayson. Just because he joins the military doesn’t mean he’s going to die. The Admiral spent his entire career in the Navy, probably the first twenty years of that flying, and he never got wounded. Your dad never got wounded.”
My words slowed to a halt as I heard how ridiculous they sounded. Grayson didn’t need multiple friends and family members to die to make him fear for Alec’s life. Jake was enough.
I’d realized this and I didn’t need Grayson’s lecture, but he was so upset that I let him give it to me anyway. “Alec’s already a pilot, Leah.”
“Okay.”
“The second he graduates from college, they’re going to send him to flight school. Hell, if he signs up for the reserves and there’s a military emergency, they’ll pluck him out of college and send him to flight school. It could happen this summer, Leah. It could happen in June. He’ll be number one on that flight line. You’re thinking that maybe he’ll dodge a bullet, literally. I’m thinking that flying an airplane while people are shooting at you is never a good idea. In June he could be dead.”
“I told him what I thought.” I patted Grayson’s shoulders once more and moved my hands together to his chest, placing my fingers gently on his neck. “You told him what you thought. I don’t know where he went, and that’s all we can do right now.”
His hard gray eyes started to soften, and his body moved in, caging me more tightly against the countertop. “To answer your question, yeah, you screwed up your fake relationship with Alec today. Why did you tell your mom that you were dating me instead of him?”
I knew what was coming. My heart beat faster in anticipation, as if a plane were rounding from the taxiway to the runway and revving its engines, readying for takeoff.
“That started a long time ago,” I admitted. “I didn’t want to give her all my money. I told her that part of the time I was at the airport, I was actually spending time with my boyfriend, not working.”
He put his hand up to my cheek. The broad pad of his thumb stroked across my lips. The engine revved so high that the roar filled my ears. “And why was I the boyfriend you picked?”