Such a Rush

Alec still frowned at me. “You sound like Grayson. Have you two talked about this?”

“No,” I said honestly. I hoped I sounded honest. Really I was begi

“Well, listen,” Alec said, a small smile returning to his lips. “I’m going to miss you tonight, but I’m having di

I blinked. “Your recruiter?” This was serious. “Alec, please think about what I said.”

“I will,” he promised. “But that means I won’t see you tonight. We hadn’t made plans, exactly, but we’ve all been going out together, and I thought you and I…” He took my hand and rubbed my palm with his thumb. “We haven’t said we’re dating exclusively or anything, so I don’t mean to assume too much. I just wanted you to know where I’d be. And I wanted to explain it to you while we’re alone. Grayson’s going to have a fit that I’m seeing my recruiter, like it’s any of his business.”

Oh, it was Grayson’s business all right. He’d made it his business. But all I said was, “Thank you.”

Alec kissed me on the forehead. “And I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” He turned for the Hall Aviation hangar and walked back toward the yellow Piper, while Molly out in the field struggled to pull his ba

My last flight of the day was ruined. I loved that rush of takeoff, that sight of the world spread out below me. I hadn’t played a lot of video games in my life, but I was sure threading the needle by pointing an actual plane toward two tiny poles to pick up a ba

That is, I loved flying when I could think about flying. But when my mind was filled with something else, flying was a chore. And right now my mind raced in circles, taking Alec and Grayson down a whirlpool with it.

I understood now why Grayson had blackmailed me. I believed that he believed what he’d told me last night: fooling Alec was a matter of life and death. That didn’t make it right. Showing Alec that they could make the business work was one thing. Adding me into the mix was evil. Now he was no longer convincing Alec. He was manipulating Alec.

In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered whether Grayson had made up all those dire predictions about my crop-dusting job too. I wouldn’t have put it past him, to make me do what he wanted.

I wondered whether last night at the beach had been just another method to keep me on his side.

This was what I was thinking as I dropped my ba

I knew how my boyfriend had acted when we did it at the runway when I was fourteen. He hadn’t been in love with me. I knew how Mark had looked when we made out. I was so confused now about his motivations that I had no idea what to think. How would he have acted when I kicked him out of my trailer if he’d really loved me?

That led me back to my conversation with Alec right before we took off. He’d asked me what I thought of his plan to go into the military. I’d told him. I realized now that what I’d said was all wrong. That’s why he’d been frowning at me. If I had fallen for him, I would have hugged him and cried and begged him not to join up, and he knew it.

I’d blown that part of Grayson’s scheme without even meaning to.

There was no help for it now. As soon as I landed, I was going to have a long talk with Grayson and convince him that if he wanted to change his brother’s mind, no matter how important the issue, this was not the way.

That was my plan until I came in for my final approach. I should have been focusing on the runway, but my eyes drifted to the Hall Aviation hangar, where Grayson’s and Alec’s planes were already parked. Then to the lot beside the airport office, where my mother was stepping out of her boyfriend Roger’s ancient Trans-Am, the door a different color from the body.

As I landed, taxied over to the hangar, and stepped out of the plane, I didn’t see my mom anywhere outside. I sca

I walked up and put my hand on Grayson’s chest. He stopped talking and looked down at me in surprise over the top of his shades.

“My mother is here,” I told him, “and you’re my boyfriend. You’ve been my boyfriend for three and a half years, except for my week with Mark.”

“What?” he yelped, panic in his eyes that I’d ruined my fake relationship with Alec.

“I can’t explain it right now,” I said impatiently. He wasn’t the only one engineering fake relationships around here. Couldn’t he see that? “I actually don’t work that many hours at the airport office, and when I’m not working there, I’m spending time with you.”

“But—”

I cut him off, turning to Alec. “You and I aren’t dating. Okay? Just for right now.”

“Okay,” Alec said dubiously.

I turned to Molly. “You… haven’t met my mother. Just keep your mouth shut.”

I turned to the side door of the hangar, which my mother would come through any second. “She’s at the airport office,” I said, keeping my eyes on the door. “Leon is telling her I’m working here instead this week. If he tells her I’m flying, I’m screwed. If he doesn’t offer that detail, I’m just your secretary, do you understand?”

I slipped my arm around Grayson’s waist and stared at the Cessna for two seconds until, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the hangar door open.

I was astonished at how she looked. She seemed the same as always, and it had only been ten days since I’d seen her—the night she told Mark he could move in. What surprised me was how much she looked like that girl in Mark’s truck, the one he’d taken to the beach, except that my mom was fifteen years older.

I walked over to her, calling, “Hey, Mama!” I hugged her. “Hey, Roger,” I said over her shoulder as he came in the door.

She beamed at me. “Baby, I’ve got some news.”

Since she’d just come back from the Indian casino, the first idea popping into my head was that she’d won fifty thousand dollars. But if she had, she would have spent it all on the way home. She and Roger would have rolled up to the hangar in a sparkling new club cab pickup instead of his Trans-Am.

“What is it?” I breathed.

“We’re moving to Sava

I went cold in the broiling hangar. My brain tried to process this information. It did not compute. The backhoe plant, or for that matter any factory in the United States, would require three things of its employees that Roger did not have and could not get: a clean drug test, references, and the ability to drag his ass into work more than two days in a row. But in my heart I knew it would take a couple of weeks for my mother to figure this out, if she even cared. By that time we would be living in Sava

In a trailer park next to the airport.

And I would have to start over.

seventeen