Such a Rush(70)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“Your prom!” High school stuff seemed a million miles away, especially for Grayson and Alec’s foreign town that really was eighty miles from here. “I hope you don’t expect me to go to Alec’s prom with him.”

“If he asks you, yes.”

“Then what if he wants to make prom night super-special?”

He looked out the window, his high cheekbones and long nose lit by the moon, and seemed to be considering it.

“That’s it,” I snapped. “You have officially lost your mind. I put up with this shit when I thought it was only going to last a week, and I didn’t know I was going to get tangled up with you. Now I’m through. Get out.”

He balled his fist and held it in front of his mouth. “Leah. We’re both mad, and it’s late, and we’re tired, and we just… we just—”

“What? You don’t even have a word for it, when you’re still trying to get me to screw your brother.”

He jerked up to standing then. He’d pulled his shirt over his head and was halfway across the dark room when he turned and said, “You don’t have to fake anything with him anymore. Just don’t tell him that I asked you to in the first place.”

“Oh! Thanks, Grayson, for clarifying that. You know, I’m beginning to wonder whether you only slept with me to get me to do what you wanted.”

He gaped at me. In the still dark, we could hear another man and woman outside a trailer up the road, screaming at each other.

Grayson’s hands were shaking as he touched one of his pointer fingers to the other. “I would not do that, Leah. To anybody.” He touched his middle finger. “And I especially wouldn’t do that to you. My God!” He extended his hand. “What was tonight, anyway?”

I could see tonight had meant as much to him as it had to me. And he was willing to throw every bit of it away in order to manipulate Alec, just like he’d always planned. I’d played this game when I thought I was the only one getting hurt. But I wouldn’t continue to play Alec. Why couldn’t Grayson see this was wrong?

“So you won’t do some immoral things to keep Alec out of the military,” I pointed out. “Other immoral things to keep Alec out of the military are perfectly fine.”

Grayson spread both arms wide, exasperated. “Yes!”

If Grayson didn’t see my point, I would make him see. “I’m going to tell Alec.”

“You are not,” Grayson growled.

“I’ll be at work at seven,” I warned him. “I’ll give you until then to tell him. If you don’t, I will.”

He balled both fists.

Put one to his mouth and one on his hip.

Seemed to be holding his breath.

Finally he stomped out of the room, down the hall, and out of the trailer. The pit bull became hysterical, but the aluminum door did not bang shut.

Staring at the poster of the beautiful Airbus floating in the Hudson, I knew I was right. I knew I would go through with my threat. Yet I wanted to call Grayson back. He was under so much pressure, but he hadn’t slammed my door.

I walked up the path and emerged from the trees onto the bright airstrip as usual. Nothing else was as usual this morning. Mark must have had an early night, because he was in Mr. Simon’s hangar, checking the fuel level in his Air Tractor. He whistled at me as I passed. I ignored him.

Molly was already out in the grass, unrolling a banner for Alec. But all the Hall Aviation planes were still there. First I swung around the doorjamb of the office and faced Grayson, grim behind the desk, his blond hair wet from a shower. I fought down the urge to go to him and embrace him and smell him. What I asked was, “Did you tell Alec?”

He glared up at me with pure hatred in his eyes. “No,” he said curtly.

“It was kind of late when we talked last night,” I said loud enough to make him cringe and look through the doorway to see whether Alec was listening. “Maybe you’re kind of fuzzy on this. I said I would give you until I got to work this morning to tell him, and then I would tell him.”

He squeezed all the blood out of his fist. His jaw went white too. He said very slowly, “I’m going to give you every opportunity not to do that.”

I flounced out of his office. Alec stood in the open doorway of his airplane, peering into the gas tank on top of the wing, just as Mark had been.

I called, “Alec, can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure thing.” He hopped down from the doorway and leaned against the strut. “What’s up?”

He was so handsome, grinning, round-faced and blond and blue-eyed and innocent, that I found myself faltering. What if he really had fallen for me, and my revelation crushed him?

“Wow,” I said. “I wanted to tell you something because I think you deserve to know, but this is a lot harder than I thought.”

He never stopped grinning. He didn’t even sound particularly sarcastic as he said, “You’ve only been pretending to like me? Grayson blackmailed you to do that, hoping I would cling to you instead of joining the military?”

“Yes,” I said on a huge sigh of relief. “He did tell you.”

“Molly told me,” Alec said, and now I could hear the bitterness in his voice.

“Molly told you!” I exclaimed, glancing past his airplane to the field, where Molly stretched tall to hang a banner on the upright poles. “When?”

“Sunday night.”

Sunday had been the day Grayson first came to my trailer. Sunday night, Molly had taken me for a drive. “Alec, you hadn’t even met Molly on Sunday night.”

“I’ve known her for a long time,” Alec said self-righteously. “Sort of known her, but it seemed pointless to try to start something with her when I wasn’t in town that often. I knew I would be here this week, so Sunday morning I asked her out. That night she called me to say my brother was forcing her best friend to pretend to like me.”

My stomach twisted. No wonder Molly had acted so strangely all week. And when I felt like she’d betrayed me by dragging me to Francie’s party, that hadn’t scratched the surface of what she’d done to me.

“So you knew all along?” I murmured. “And you played along with it? Why, Alec?”

“Molly asked me to, for one thing,” he said. “She told me I could never let you know she’d spilled the beans. But it was all typical Grayson anyway. Underhanded. Breaking the rules. He convinced our mom that he’d changed. I realized Sunday night he hasn’t changed at all. I was curious to see how far he’d take it. And he’s been in love with you since the day you first walked onto this airstrip three and a half years ago. I thought it would be fun to make out with you and see how he liked getting double-crossed by his own brother.”