Straddling the Line - By Sarah M. Anderson Page 0,23

but it was the one class in high school where he couldn’t show up his big brother. After Billy, all the other teachers were thankful to have a Bolton who could be taught. But Ben always had gotten the feeling that Mr. Who would take Billy every day of the week.

“Anti-Dad. Very funny.”

“I’m serious. He didn’t make you earn his respect, you know? He gave it to you. To me, anyway.”

The weight of thirty-two years’ worth of effort to get Dad’s honest respect suddenly crushed Ben’s chest. “Yeah. I can see that.”

“Cal helped me out a few times, when I got in real…trouble.” Suddenly, Billy looked way more than serious. He looked positively moody.

Billy’d had no shortage of trouble back then. A smart remark about bail money and strippers danced around Ben’s mouth, but a strange sort of sadness made Billy look young. Small, even—which was no mean feat. Let Bobby be the jerk in this family. Ben knew how to keep his mouth shut.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Billy stood there for a moment. Ben was about to give him some space and get back to work on his bike when Billy unexpectedly went on. “After September 11th, he re-upped with the army, did three tours in Afghanistan before an IED got him a few years ago. He finally got clearance to ride again—but his wife doesn’t want him on a chopper.”

Hands down, this was the longest, heaviest conversation Ben could ever remember having with his brother. A lifetime of loyalty—what the hell kind of trouble had Billy gotten himself into back then?

Ben didn’t even get his mouth open before Billy started talking again. “He expected better of me. Everyone else—even Dad—expected me to fail. But not Cal. He almost died for me, for my country. He never asked me for anything. The least I can do is build him a damn bike. On my own time. With my own money. And if you’ve got a problem with that—” His shoulders dropped and he swung his hands into loose fists.

“No, no problem.” Ben threw up his hands in surrender. Only an idiot would push Billy.

“You don’t look like an idiot to me.” Josey’s voice floated around his head as he and Billy went back to their respective bikes. Something else she had said popped into his head. “People expect them to fail.”

One man had made the difference for Billy—a man who asked for nothing in return, but got unshakable loyalty anyway. Ben thought back to the little girls who’d been scared of him, the young boys who wouldn’t look at him. Those kids—people expected them to fail. Was he one of those people?

Josey’s face swam before his eyes. Not the polished businesswoman, not the hot chick at the bar, but her face today, with the big paint smear across her forehead and her hair crazy around her. He saw the warm, bright smile she had for those kids. She expected better of them.

She expected better of him.

Everyone expected so much from him—to keep Billy working, to keep Bobby in line. Dad expected him to fail, but also expected him to keep the company afloat. Not her. She didn’t act like he had to have all the answers, like he was the one thing between her and complete, total failure. All she expected from him was to be something better. And all he’d done was kiss her.

He could do better. He could be better.

“Billy!” He had to shout over the air compressor.

“What?”

“You got any tools you don’t use anymore?”

*

The dull pain in residence behind Josey’s eyes picked up speed at an irregular clip. What a disastrous day. She could still hear Ben saying, “You have one drum for how many students?” Because one drum was all she was going to get.

At least she could take comfort in the fact that building the shop class from the ground up counted as real, live shop class. Maybe they’d postpone music class until after winter set in, when they couldn’t do much on the shop anyway. Surely she’d be able to get some instruments in three months.

She could always try asking Ben—he was a musician, after all—but she’d already made up her mind about that. She didn’t know what, if anything, was going on between her and Ben Bolton. She only knew that asking him for anything else would muddy the waters between pleasure and business.

Even if that meant no more kissing.

In this foul mood, Josey rounded the bend and slammed on the brakes. A massive, dual-wheel pickup