For All You Have Left (14 page)

I watch lines form near the corners of his eyes as he holds out his hand. And I can’t help but smile too when I lay my fingers against his.

He swings his legs over the labyrinth of metal and chains that connects the two train cars next and then turns back toward me.

“I know this is pretty much after the fact, but this is safe, right?” I ask.

A playful expression dances to his face.

“It is until it starts movin’.”

I feel my eyes growing wide right before I scurry up onto the metal hitch, steady myself with the help of Jorgen’s hand and then quickly jump off. Immediately, I feel my feet hit the loose gravel on the other side of the tracks, and I let go of a thankful breath.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say, securing a strand of my hair behind my ear with my free hand. “There’s really no other way in?”

He slowly shakes his head back and forth. “Not from this side.”

“How often does it just stop here like this?”

“Oh, about once a month or so,” he says casually, as if it’s just another fact of life.

The way he says it makes me laugh.

“Come on,” he says, setting out down the black asphalt with my hand still in his.

The asphalt is the only thing, once we cross the tracks, that reminds me that I’m still in the twenty-first century. I mean, I’m not exactly from the most bustling of metropolises either, but we do have grocery stores and hospitals...and lines on our roads. My eyes fixate on the black highway that carves a winding path through corn fields for several miles. There’s not a single white or yellow mark on it.

“So, this is home?”

He angles his face my way. He’s wearing a happy, boyish grin, and I can’t help but notice there’s a new spark in his eyes all of a sudden.

“This is home,” he confirms.

It’s about a quarter of a mile to the shed. We reach it about five minutes later and make our way to one side where there’s a big door made of wooden slats. We stop at it, and Jorgen reaches up and lifts a latch, then pulls the door open.

“Watch your step,” he says, holding out his hand.

I lay my hand in his again before I look down and step over the raised, wooden ledge and onto the dirt floor.

It’s dark inside the shed. There are no windows, but the sun pouring in from the open door lends me just enough light to see that there’s a thick, gray tarp covering something big in front of us.

I watch as Jorgen bends down at one of the corners of the tarp and starts pulling it up. He pulls it up and then over and then gathers it into his arms.

“Ol’ Red,” he announces, once he’s got the tarp squished into a big ball.

He gestures toward an old truck painted a bright cherry red.

“What year is it?”

I can’t believe something that looks this old still runs.

“It’s a ‘64.”

I walk around the front of it. There’s a clear bug shield running the width of the hood. The words
Ol’ Red
are written on it in black, cursive stenciling.

“It really is Ol’ Red,” I say, pointing to the letters.

“Sure is,” he says, smiling back at me.

I take another good
look at the old truck. “I love it,” I say and mean it.

I watch Jorgen walk to the back
of the shed and swing open two big wooden doors. Dust goes flying every which way. I can see its particles hanging on the sun’s rays, though Jorgen doesn’t seem to notice it so much.

He walks over to the passenger’s door then and pulls on it. It comes open but not without a noisy squeak.

I peer into the cab. Inside, the seats are vinyl, and the same cherry red as what’s on the outside of the truck covers the inside too, including the dashboard. And there’s a big steering wheel on the driver’s side made wholly out of metal with what looks like a small doorknob fastened to it.

I climb onto the seat, and Jorgen gently closes the door but then gives it a good, forceful push until it latches. Inside the cab, I notice there’s a long shifter comin
g out of the floor and only two little metal knobs for the radio. Out of pure habit, I reach for my seatbelt, but I don’t feel anything. I look above my shoulder and notice the reason why I don’t feel one is because there isn’t one.

Jorgen hops in behind the wheel a minute later, and immediately, my eyes fall on him. I watch him reach up above his head and pull down the visor. A keychain with one key attached to it falls to his lap.

“Theft not so bad here, I guess?”

He looks at me with a wide grin.

“Not so bad,” he confirms.

He sticks the key into the ignition and purrs the engine to a start before backing out
of the shed and onto the little dirt path that leads to the blacktop. From the big side mirror, I can see the dust trail that’s left in our wake.

So far, this trip has yielded a string of firsts for me—my first train hopping, my first ride in Ol’ Red, my first look into Jorgen Ryker’s life. It’s making me want to stop and stay awhile—even if it is just to see what this sexy creature beside me is all about.

I use the metal lever on the door to roll down my window. The glass seems to come down in two-inch increments and is all the way down in no time. I stare out the window then and let the warm wind pouring through it hit my skin and toss strands of my hair around my face. The dusty trail still hovers over the dirt path in the side mirror. And the train is still frozen on the tracks. We drive parallel to it for a little while longer, until we take a slight bend in the road and start heading away from it. The turn of the wheel makes an object dangling from the rearview mirror sway slightly to one side. It catches my eye and soon, curiosity claims me.

“What is that?”

Jorgen glances at me and then follows my stare to the mirror before he laughs gently and then sets his eyes back on the road again.

“It’s my dad’s tassel. This was his first car.”

The tassel is a faded red and yellowed white with the number
81
in tarnished silver at the top.

I watch the tassel sway back and forth for a moment before I return my attention to Jorgen. His eye
s are still planted on the road. One arm is resting on the ledge of the open window; one hand is barely on the big steering wheel. He looks so comfortable—as if he fits perfectly inside a 1960-something truck with the words
Ol’ Red
painted across the bug shield. The thought makes me laugh inside, until I catch his finger lift up from the steering wheel, and I’m distracted again. There’s another much newer truck coming at us. I watch as the driver of the newer truck lifts a finger as he passes, and I can’t help but laugh out loud this time.

“Was that a wave?”

He sends a questioning look my way. “Yeah,” he says, before he plants his eyes back on the road.

“Who was it?”

He glances across the cab at me, still smiling, and then shrugs his shoulders.

“You don’t know him? But you just waved at him,” I say.

Suddenly, he beams. “It’s how you tell the insiders from the outsiders, baby. Welcome to the river bottoms.”

Baby?
All of a sudden, he has this new air of confidence about him or maybe it’s more like comfort—the kind that makes
baby
sound so perfectly normal and also so perfectly sexy. There’s a happy, tingly feeling in my chest, but I also feel my eyebrows slightly furrowing.

“The insiders wave...,” I start.

“The outsiders don’t,” he finishes.

“Aah,” I say, allowing my head to fall gently against the back window. “I know all your secrets now, Jorgen Ryker.”

He just smiles. “Just about.”

It’s another mile on the blacktop before Ol’ Red climbs a levee and then wanders down a gravel road. It’s flat on the other side of the levee too, with more fields for miles and only a few houses in view. And one
house, in the far-off distance, even looks as if it might be abandoned. Its outside is gray and through its windows, all I can see is a dark and sleepy inside.

We finally get to a long, white-graveled driveway, turn into it and eventually stop in front of a two-story farmhouse. It’s made of wood and painted white, and I think it still has a tin roof.

Jorgen gets out and then jerks open my door. It squeaks again but not nearly as bad as the first time.

“They’re all probably inside,” Jorgen says, helping me out of the truck.

“They?” I try to ask without sounding terrified.

“Oh, don’t worry, it’s just my mom and my grandma. I’ve just got to run in for a second. You wanna come?”

“Of...course,” I stutter. Of course
home
would mean meeting his family. I don’t know why that never crossed my mind. I silently put myself back together. I can do this. I meet new people every day in my job. I tell myself it’s just like that as I tug at the bottom of my tank top and try to brush out my wind-blown hair with my fingers.

I follow Jorgen up three concrete stairs to a little porch lined with hanging baskets full of bright red flowers.

“Mom, we’re here.” Jorgen pushes through a screen door.

There’s a room to the left; stairs in front of us; and a hallway to the right. We go right, and I follow Jorgen down the hallway, but an open door to a den-like room suddenly makes me stop. Hanging on the wall, there’s a framed newspaper clipping of the same photo I uncovered of him standing next to the cow. I stop and stare at it. Underneath the frame is another photo. It’s of his sister. She’s wearing a crown and a sash.

“What’d you find?”

Jorgen’s facing me again.

“I just...Is that you?” I feign ignorance, point to the frame and wait for him to walk back to me.

When he sees the photo, he lowers his head and chuckles, then walks into the room.

“That would be me.” He examines the photo more closely. “All one hundred pounds of me.”

I laugh and join him in the room.

“And that’s Lindsey?” I ask.

His eyes fall to the frame.

“Yeah. She was homecoming queen her senior year. You wouldn’t know it by this picture, but she hated every moment of it.”

I cock my head to the side.

“Lindsey’s not really the girly type,” he says. “And I think that’s why she won. Everyone knew that.”

I laugh again, but this time, my eyes catch another photo on the opposite wall.

“Wait, who is that?”

I walk closer to the other frame.

“Jorgen, is this you?”

There’s a little kid in the photo. He’s maybe four, and he’s holding a fish that’s almost his size.

“Yeah, my first catfish.”

“Is that your dad?” I point to a man in waders helping to hold up the fish.

“Yeah, I think he was more excited than I was. Don’t let him fool ya; he’s a sentimental old fart.”

I stare at the photo some more and then glance back at Jorgen. “You were cute.”

“Were?” he asks. He’s wearing a sideways smirk, and it’s as sexy as hell.

I playfully roll my eyes.
If he only knew.

He walks closer to me and takes my hand.

“Jorgen, was that you?” A woman’s voice echoes through the hallway, but for a moment, it does little to faze Jorgen.

Hi
s stare lingers in mine, and all I can think about is kissing him. When I’m not lost in his eyes, I can make up all the excuses in the world for why I shouldn’t just devour those prefect lips of his. But in those eyes...it’s a whole different ball game.

“We should probably go say ‘hi’ before she convinces herself she’s hearin’ things and checks herself into the loony bin too soon.”

“Yeah,” I agree, slowly nodding my head. “We should.”

I
don’t really agree, simply because I want to stay in his eyes, but I follow him out of the room and down the narrow hall anyway. The floors are wooden, and they creak with each step. But with each step, I’m also a little more excited. I know I’m still nervous for some reason because I still keep trying to brush out my hair, but at the same time, I also can’t wait to find out more about this man, whose stare and lips have taken over my mind.

We get to the end of the hallway, and suddenly, there’s an overwhelming smell of apples and cinnamon.

“Jorgen!” I hear a woman exclaim.

Jorgen hugs the woman and then goes to hug a shorter, older woman with gray hair.

“And you must be Ada.”

The younger of the two women closes in on me and instantly throws her arms around my shoulders.

“Hi,” I say, as she squeezes me tight.

The woman pulls away and then goes to brushing off one of my shoulders.

“Oh, I’m sorry, dear. I’m covered in flour. We’re baking for the church picnic tomorrow. That’s why I don’t have a sit-down dinner. But I did whip up a salad, and there’s some pasta that Grandma made in the Crock-Pot.”

She points to a table in the center of the room.