“Fuck me.” He hisses and shoves to the back of my mouth.
Warmth starts to fill my mouth as he twitches against my tongue, I swallow, sucking him each time until he puts his hands on each side of my head and pulls me up to crash his lips to mine.
***
The last dish is finally in the dishwasher, and I glance over the kitchen to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I grab the bag of trash from the can under the counter and carry it to the dumpster at the back of the house, when I step outside the smell of smoke floats past my nose and grabs my attention.
Looking toward the barn and then to Marley’s stables, Idon’t see a source. I look further out across the field and see smoke in the direction of Kinley’s cabin. I didn’t see her for breakfast but that’s normal, I look around for any of the guys but remember that Mason said he and his brother were going into town. I don’t see Mr. Harlow anywhere.
I run to the mudroom, grab the keys to the old pickup that’s parked next to the house, and gun it down the dirt path to Kinley’s cabin.
As I get closer, I can see thin tendrils of smoke floating up from the back side of the cabin. I pull up to the side of the house and see Kinley pumping water into a bucket about ten yards away from the house, the fire is on her small back porch and is slowly moving up the wooden handrail next to her back door.
She looks terrified and we briefly make eye contact as I put the truck in park and jump out.
There is a horse blanket in the bed of the truck, I grab it and run to the porch to start beating at the flames that seem to get bigger by the second. The breeze pushes the heat and smoke in my direction, and I cover my mouth and nose with my hand and turn away.
With my hand on the rail for support, I try to catch my breath while coughing. Kinley runs up the steps and throws the bucket of water on the flames, so I move next to her and start beating the flame that the water didn’t touch.
“I’ll get more water,” Kinley yells and turns to run back down the steps.
Throwing water on the flames made it smoke even more so I cover my mouth and nose with the crook of my arm and keep beating the flames that are slowly getting smaller. When I hear Kinley run up the steps again, I turn to the opposite handrail across the little porch and let the coughing take over.
“I’m going to douse it one more time.” She says and runs back to the water pump.
She is still in her flannel pajamas with a large sweater thrown over and her boots. We both have tears running down our cheeks from the thinning, white smoke the cold breeze keeps pushing toward us.
Her long blond hair is twisted up on her head and held in place with a long paintbrush, a coffee cup is sitting on the porch next to the Adirondack chair next to a small, metal fire pit that looks to be the source of the fire.
She doesn’t make eye contact as she walks back up the steps, I can’t say for sure, but I think she looks embarrassed. The wooden rail and the wood next to her back door hiss as she pours another bucket of water over it and her shoulders fall, the bucket hanging from her hand next to her leg.
I know that Kinley knows an open flame on such a windy day is a no-no, especially with most of the grass in the fields dried up for the winter, and I wonder what she was doing this early in the morning with a fire in her fire pit.
In December.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Her back is toward me and her head drops, her frame seems even thinner than usual, she almost looks like a child and something inside of me wants to comfort her. I let the blanket fall from my hand, and I take a step toward her.
“Don’t.” She says, her voice is small and thin.
“Why would you start a fire on such a windy day?” Asking the question makes my lungs spasm and I start coughing again.
When she turns, her cheeks are streaked with tears and smoke, and her sweater is hanging off one shoulder, “Can you just leave now? Please?”
“No, I want to wait and make sure it doesn’t reignite. Were you smoking out here?” She knows what I am talking about, and she rolls her eyes as she looks away toward the field. Mason told me about her pot smoking and Mr. Harlow’sthreat to make her leave the ranch if he ever caught her smoking again.
It would be easy to get her in trouble if I wanted to, all I would have to do is tell Mr. Harlow that she started a fire while smoking on her back porch. She drops the bucket next to her feet and turns her head back toward me, her eyes narrowed.
“No, I was not smoking out here, my dad would be able to smell it all the way to the house if I did. I don’t do that outside.” She shakes her head slightly and looks at her back door, “I was sending a letter to my mom.” Her voice cracks as she says it.
Oh.
My dislike for her cools a bit as I realize that I’m looking at a girl who misses her mom. I miss my mom all the time, so I know exactly how she feels. She was burning her letter so it would reach her mom, I’ve read about people doing that and it helps them with the grieving process.
I lean against the rail behind me and cross my arms over my chest to warm my hands from the cold breeze. “Do you do that often?”
Another tear rolls down her cheek and she nods, “Once a week.” She looks over her shoulder to the small fire pit behind her and says, “I put too many wood shavings in this time and the wind pushed the flame to the wooden post.”
