Dixie
The knock on my door came way too early the next morning. I tried to go to bed almost immediately after getting into the room and taking my long-awaited shower, but my body was far too used to being awake late into the night and sleeping when the sun was in the sky. Not to mention I couldn’t stop my mind from spinning pretty fairy tales around that taste of Church I had snuck on the side of the road. I was stupid to think a single kiss was enough to satisfy the way I had been craving him since the beginning. I wanted more. I wanted it all and the way his big body tightened and shivered against mine was a pretty big indication that he was willing to give me what I desired, but the look in his eyes warned that it was only physical on his end. He would give me every single thing I asked for except for a way into that heart he guarded with iron bars and bulletproof armor.
I also couldn’t stop thinking about what was waiting for us when we got to Mississippi. His story hurt to hear. I hated the idea of him feeling unwanted and I couldn’t believe anyone could ever look into those beautiful eyes and consider his mother’s choice to keep him and raise him a mistake. I knew there was more to why he hadn’t been home in so long than him needing a break once he got out of the service.
I watched Church with Rome and Asa. I watched him with the other guys that filtered in and out of the bar that made up the tightly knit family that had surrounded and supported Rome when he was going through his own adjustment period after coming home from the desert. Church might think he was a lone wolf but it was obvious to me that what he actually was, was an alpha in search of his own pack to lead. He missed the camaraderie of having a band of brothers, he missed being a part of a group of like-minded individuals that would watch out for each other come hell or high water. He still had that bond with Rome, but for reasons that I didn’t understand and was more determined than ever to figure out, he held himself aloof and apart from anyone else willing to welcome him into their fold, his family included.
I tossed the covers off the bed and made my way to the door blurry eyed and rumpled. When I pulled it open Church was on the other side looking like he had been awake for hours. He even had a white to-go cup of coffee in his hand and something in a paper bag that smelled heavenly.
“I sent you a text when I got up but obviously you didn’t get it.” He sounded amused and I realized his gaze wasn’t on my sleep-tangled hair or my practically naked lower half. No. He was focused on the words “Tequila Made Me Do It” where they stretched across my chest on the long tank top I’d worn to bed the night before.
I shoved my hands through my hair, not thinking that the motion would pull the hem of my shirt up well past my waist, giving Church an unobstructed view of my underwear. I blushed, but took solace in the fact that this time they were at least cute and lacy. I tugged the end of the shirt back down so that I was barely covered and took a step back into the room. “I need to get dressed and do something with my hair. Give me half an hour and I’ll be ready to go. My sister called me no less than twenty times last night, so I had to turn my phone to silent. That’s why I didn’t get your text.”
I fisted my hair in a hand and lifted the snarled mess up off my neck. I shouldn’t have gone to bed with it wet. There was little to no chance that I was going to be able to wrangle the curls into any kind of order. I thought he would take the hint and head back to his own room, instead he walked farther into mine and placed the coffee and paper bag on the dresser where the TV sat. He made himself comfortable on the edge of my unmade bed and crossed his long legs at the ankle while he watched me with amused eyes.
“Everything okay back home?” The genuine concern in his honeyed voice had more heat working its way through my body. I spun on my heel, snatched up my jeans from the day before, grabbed my bra from where it was dangling on the bathroom door handle, and slid inside the little room so I could put some layers on between me and the walking, talking seduction that was Dash Churchill.
“Wheeler told her the wedding is off. He also told her she has until I get back home to find somewhere else to live. Kallie hasn’t ever kept a full-time job and has never had to support herself, so she’s freaking out. Also my parents invested a lot of time and money into their wedding, and she’s panicking that Wheeler is going to tell them the reason he’s walking away is because she cheated on him. She’s always been the baby, the one they coddled, but they love Wheeler like a son, so it’s going to be bad.” I wiggled into the rest of my clothes and finger combed my hair. It was useless. The curls had taken over my head and they wouldn’t be stopped.
I stuck my toothbrush in my mouth and looked at him in the mirror. He was watching me with hooded eyes and there was tension in his shoulders and arms that wasn’t there when he walked in. He looked like he had been cast in bronze by a great artist that wanted to capture what true masculine beauty was all about. He was so strong and hard, but there was no denying that he was also all kinds of gorgeous and flat-out dazzling.
“Why do you think your sister stepped out on him?” I ran my tongue over my now clean teeth and wasn’t surprised one bit that instead of minty freshness I still tasted him. I was certain I was going to taste him forever and that it was going to slowly drive me insane.
I trapped my hair in pigtails on either side of my head, which made me look like I was twelve years old. Well, a twelve-year-old with some serious cleavage. I made a face in the mirror as I slathered on some tinted moisturizer and some ChapStick. I figured it would be wind in my face and more truck stops today, so there was no need for me to doll myself up. Besides, today was the second morning in a row Church had seen me the way I was when I woke up, so there was no putting lipstick on a pig after that. I figured he couldn’t be too repulsed by my au naturel state if he hadn’t run out the door yet and I tingled when I remembered that he’d told me he thought I was cute when I was all grumbly and growly in the morning.
“Who cares why she did it? Wheeler is a good guy and this is the second time she’s had no regard for how her actions will hurt him. There is no excuse that can justify what she’s done.” And I’d told her the same thing in no uncertain terms last night. I was pissed at her, and her tears and woe-is-me attitude over a situation of her own making only served to make me angrier as I talked to her. Eventually I’d had to hang up on her, which hadn’t stopped her from calling or texting me well into the wee hours of the morning.
Church lifted an eyebrow at me as I made my way to where he had stashed the breakfast goodies. I wasn’t fully awake yet but my stomach sure was. I didn’t hold back a delighted squeal when I found frosted doughnuts in the paper bag. I was going to need to figure out a way to fit a treadmill in my apartment after all of this road trip food but I wanted to eat now and worry about my ass later.
“Seems to me if she isn’t typically a bad person then there is more to why she did what she did than her getting tired of the same cock. There’s usually a reason why good folks do bad things.” He was watching me carefully and I felt like his somber words were some kind of warning I was supposed to heed.
I popped a sugary sweet bite of dough into my mouth and chewed while we stared at each other. It tasted like heaven and the jolt of sugar was enough to kick my sluggish system awake.
“I don’t care what her reason is. I care that she hurt someone I care about and I’m pissed that she was only thinking of herself, not how her actions could affect the rest of the people in her life that love both her and Wheeler.” I sounded sharp and slightly petulant but I didn’t care. I couldn’t imagine Kallie saying anything to me that would make the circumstances she had set in motion okay. I didn’t care where her head was at while she was carrying on behind Wheeler’s back, all I cared about was that her thoughts hadn’t been on the man that had given her everything or the family that had claimed him as one of their own.
Church lumbered to his feet and ran a hand over his closely cropped hair. His eyes were serious and intent as he told me, “Her reasons might not matter to you, but they could be everything to her. Sometimes people make choices that hurt other people because they feel like it would hurt the people they care about even more if they didn’t make that choice.”
I cocked my head to the side as the chocolate frosting from my doughnut started to melt all over my fingers. “Are we still talking about my sister, Church?” I wondered if he was trying to explain why he had felt compelled to stay away from home for so long in a roundabout way.
“We’re just talking, Dixie. That’s what friends do.” He looked at me, intensity and things I couldn’t decipher burning bright in his brilliant eyes as he made his way to the door. “Finish your breakfast. I want to see if we can get to at least the Arkansas border today.”
I licked along the side of my thumb and heard him suck in a sharp breath. I grinned at him and nodded. “Thanks for breakfast. Chocolate is my favorite.”
He gave me another look, this one followed by a smirk, and then disappeared out the door with a snort. He didn’t smile but there was definitely a lip twitch involved. I would take what I could get and consider the almost grin a win for the morning.
He was already on the bike with the motor running when I made my way to the parking lot. I had the leathers on so I wouldn’t have to take any unnecessary trips to scary bathrooms and he tilted his chin in approval. He had on mirrored sunglasses, so I couldn’t see his eyes anymore, but something instinctive told me that he more than liked the way the leather covered my legs and framed the part of me that fluttered and went damp as soon as I put a hand on his rock-hard shoulder so I could get the leverage I needed to climb on behind him. By the end of this trip I was going to be nothing more than one giant orgasm waiting to happen. He was going to accidentally brush up against me and I was going to make a fool of myself as all that desire finally burst out unable to be contained. I was bound to look like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally, only my public climax was going to be very real because there was no faking that he turned me on and inside out.
I chuckled at the image, which had Church whipping his head around to look at me questioningly. I shook my head and smiled at him. There was no way I was going to pass along the information that all it would take for him to turn me into a sexual time bomb was the touch of his hands. Something told me he would use that intel to his advantage. His eyebrows winged up so that I could see them over the rims of his sunglasses but he turned back around and guided us back onto the highway. We had a long way to go, both in miles and in what it was going to take for Church to actually find his way back home, and there wasn’t any time to waste.
Kansas was a straight shot, and I made it almost all the way through the entire state before we had to stop. This time Church wouldn’t let me out of his sight, so I had to go to the bathroom while he waited outside the door. I wanted to tell him it was overboard, but honestly I felt better knowing I could do my thing without worrying about what was happening beyond the closed door. The truck stop had a diner attached to it, so we stopped for lunch and he ordered a steak that was the size of my head. When I questioned him he said he was used to a high protein diet and that typically he worked out enough that he needed the fuel. I was already burned-out on all the greasy food we’d been eating, so I tried to order a salad. Unfortunately, the only salad they offered was driven towards trucker taste, so it came in a fried tortilla bowl with taco meat, cheese, and sour cream on it. It was really good but I could feel the waistband of my jeans getting tighter with each bite.
I was rumbling about calories and the lack of healthy options on the menu when Church cut me off with a raised hand and a furious scowl. “Do you like the way you look?”
His sharply spoken question surprised me into silence. I nodded slowly and mumbled, “I do. I mean my hair can be a pain in the ass and when I was younger I hated having freckles everywhere but for the most part I know I’m pretty cute.”
He nodded at me and his scowl turned into a leer. “You are very fucking cute. There is something to love about all women, no matter what form they take, so eat your salad and enjoy your chocolate doughnuts. If a man can’t appreciate what’s right in front of him then he isn’t a man that was raised right and he doesn’t deserve a taste of that sweet skin, no matter how much or how little of it there may be.”
I was so stunned by his words that I let my fork fall back into my very unhealthy salad with a click. “Wow. I don’t think you’ve ever said so many words in a row before.” Minus last night when he was filling me in on his tragic family dynamics. “Leave it up to you to pick some of the best words I’ve ever heard to be the ones you go with when you decide to finally venture into small talk.”
He made a noise that might have been a laugh low in his throat. “I grew up not being white enough for the white kids and not black enough for the black kids. I had grandparents that wouldn’t acknowledge me and a mother that looked like a supermodel but dressed and lived like she was an orphan, because she pretty much was after she had me. She had a baby with one guy of color and then married another one even after she knew firsthand how difficult interracial relationships could be in the south. As far as we’ve progressed as a nation when it comes to acceptance there is still a long, long way to go. You gotta like the way you look because how you look tells your story and fuck anyone that doesn’t want to appreciate that.”
I was stunned into silence, so all I could do was gape at him with my mouth hanging open. I looked ridiculous, but I couldn’t get my head around someone as gorgeous and as perfectly built as he was ever being anything other than admired and sought after. Even now in this nowhere truck stop, every pair of female eyes was on him … and some of the men couldn’t look away either. Not all of the male attention was admiring. Truck stops in the middle of nowhere the farther south we went meant more and more narrow-eyed looks and tight-lipped scowls were sent his way. They seemed even worse when we walked side by side and when he put his hand on my lower back to usher me into the booth across from him.
“I … well, I can’t believe anyone could ever look at you and not want the story behind those eyes. You’re beautiful.” He was, but it was the hardness in his face and the scars that dotted his arms and that peeked out of the collar of his shirt that begged to tell their tale.
“Sometimes all people can see is what’s different, but those differences are what make us who we are. For instance you might fight with your hair but I’ve never met anyone else whose hair I want my hands in all the time. It’s soft and I like the way it feels when your curls don’t want to let me go. I like that you look a little bit like a lion when you get up in the morning even though I know you’re a pussycat. And don’t even get me started on the freckles.” He gave me a look that clearly indicated he would like to find out exactly how many I had and where they stopped. The answer was a lot and they didn’t. I had them all over, so if he wanted to find them all he was going to be a very, very busy man.
“Can you just keep talking? I’ve always liked your voice but it’s even better when you’re saying such amazing things.” It really was. I fell for him in an instant when he went out of his way to make sure I was okay. I knew then that he was it for me, but now that he was letting me actually know him it stung even more to realize that my heart had chosen wisely even though his still couldn’t see what was standing right in front of him. He was a good guy, smart and resilient. I didn’t want anyone to ever look past how amazing and important he was again.
We finished lunch in relative silence after and I wasn’t surprised when he appeared to be done talking for the day. He had used up his daily allotment of words to make sure I knew that he liked the way I looked and that I should like the way I looked just as much. In his own subtle way he also addressed the fact that he wasn’t oblivious to the stares and side-eyed looks coming from the people in the truck stop that weren’t interested in his story. He knew they were there, he just didn’t care.
I wanted to kiss him again, instead I climbed back on the bike behind him and settled in as we pushed our way through Kansas City and all the way through Missouri until we both agreed it was time to stop right before we hit the Arkansas border. We would roll into Lowry late tomorrow afternoon at the pace we were going, which worked well since Elma Mae was due to go home from the hospital the following afternoon.
The ride today had gone much smoother than the hours spent on the asphalt last night. There weren’t any almost accidents, and we were lucky that the weather had stayed temperate and dry. I needed to stretch my legs and work out some of the numbness in my backside when we stopped. Church found a tiny little place that looked like it was a bunch of individual cabins for us to spend the night. Unfortunately, there was a celebration happening in town called the Ozark Festival, so there was only a single room available for the night. The entire town was packed with tourists in for the event and it was one of the only vacancies. The festival brought in people from all over the Ozarks and was a pretty big deal. The guy that handed us the room key mentioned we should plan on waiting if we headed out for dinner anywhere. I did a quick search on my phone to see if there were any other options and came up with nothing unless we wanted to ride another fifty miles down the highway.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage sharing a bed with him and keeping my hands to myself, but I was a grown-up and told myself I could make it through one night unscathed … maybe.
“I need a beer, and maybe a shot … or three.” Definitely more than one if I was going to lie next to that big, hard body all night and not touch. I could drink until I blacked out ensuring I would keep my hands to myself and not whisper into the dark all the ways my heart longed for him. “We drove past a couple bars when we pulled into town that are within walking distance. Wanna grab a drink?”
“I’m not sure that’s the best idea.” He sounded gruff and leery of my plan.
“Come on. It’ll be fun. I promise your virtue, and the rest of you, is safe with me.” I smiled at him and reached out so I could grab his hand. I started walking towards the road, thinking he would oblige me, but was pulled up short when his massive frame didn’t budge an inch.
“It’s not my virtue I’m worried about. It’s all those Confederate flags hanging out of the back of the pickup trucks parked out front.” I paused and frowned at him over my shoulder. “I’m used to not being safe, it’s you I would worry about.”
That wasn’t something I even noticed, but I wasn’t surprised he had and his words had my tummy twisting into knots. Every single time he mentioned keeping me safe or taking care of me it made that thing I knew, that knowledge I had that he was it for me, settle deeper into my bones. It made me want to kick myself for wasting a second on those stupid dating apps. I couldn’t trick my stubborn heart into thinking there was a substitute for the man that didn’t want it. When the heart knew, it just knew. “Okay. Well, I guess we can find a liquor store and have happy hour in our room.” I didn’t want to put him in a situation where he was uncomfortable or unappreciated. He was a lot bigger than me but I really wanted to shield him and protect him from some of that ugliness that he’d experienced throughout his life.
He grunted and gave his head a shake. “No, let’s just go to the bar. I’ll be fine and I’ll make sure you’re fine.” Something in his tone told me that it probably wouldn’t be fine and he was lying through his teeth.
“Really, I just want a drink. I don’t care where it comes from.” I yelped as his fingers curled around mine where I was holding him and he started to march up the side of the road practically hauling me along behind him. There was no way I could keep up with his long-legged gait, so I ended up almost having to jog to keep pace with him.
“I haven’t been around the good ole boys in a long time. It’s probably good to have a refresher course before we hit Lowry and it can’t hurt anything for you to see what you very well might be up against when we cross into the city limits. Jules used to have to come and get me from school for fighting all the time. Now he’d have to come get me out of jail if someone rubbed me the wrong way.”
I tried to pull him to a stop so I could urge him to go back to the cute little cabin with me but now he was a man on a mission. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to teach me a lesson or prove something to himself, but either way it wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience. All I wanted was a drink, not to be caught in the middle of one of his memories or a bad memory in the making.
I felt him stiffen the minute we pushed through the doors. I saw his back go board straight and the way his shoulders braced like the ceiling was going to fall down around us. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew that if I could the expression on it would be fierce enough to keep anyone from venturing too close to us. However, as we walked farther inside the honky-tonk it was clear the loud country music wasn’t going to stop playing. None of the patrons stopped the conversations they were having, and the bouncer sitting at the door much like Church did at my bar didn’t flick an eyelash or even shift his weight. The only person that seemed to care about us at all was the blonde cocktail server in shorts that were way too short who swung by and told us there was a table in the back if we wanted to sit down. She apologized for the crowd, mentioned the festival, and told me she liked my tank top after mentioning they had a two-for-one special on Patrón.
I ordered a round before we sat down and gave Church a look from under my eyebrows as he sat sulkily and silently across from me, eyes darting around the room like he was waiting for a confrontation that didn’t seem like it was in any hurry to find him. The waitress smiled at him exactly the same way I would if I was the one dropping off his bourbon, lots of teeth, lots of eye contact, and enough of an invitation that I was now also scowling. She hurried about to take care of the rest of her tables as Church’s gaze found its way back to mine.
I let the silence drag on through the first two shots but by the time the blonde brought the third I had settled enough that I was brave enough to ask. “So I take it this isn’t your usual experience in a place like this?”
I tossed the third shot back and chased it with a swig of beer. My head was starting to get a little fuzzy and my limbs a little loose.
He picked up his glass and gave the amber liquid a little taste, his multicolored eyes seeming to swirl together like an abstract painting. “Been in a lot of places around the world. I learned you never know what to expect when you walk into any place not looking much like the locals.”
I frowned a little bit and licked at the salt I had poured on the back of my hand I’d used to chase my tequila shot with. I made a face as I sucked on a slice of lime. “That sounds exhausting. Being on alert all the time, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. That doesn’t sound like much fun.”
He grunted at me. “Fun doesn’t have anything to do with it.” He didn’t sound bitter about the fact, just matter-of-fact and resigned. It was the way it had always been for him and he didn’t expect it to be any different no matter where he was. “If you don’t plan for the worst and you’re caught with your ass hanging out in a bad situation there is no one to blame but yourself. Especially if you know firsthand how bad it can get.”
I lifted an eyebrow at him and licked my lips. “What about plan for the worst but expect the best? Why can’t you have a plan for if it goes bad but go into a situation ready to experience all the good things it may have to offer?”
He made a noise low in his throat and picked up his drink so that it covered his lickable lips. “I know my way around bad like the back of my hand, good not so much.”
I ordered another round of shots and glared at him as he lifted his eyebrows questioningly at me. “Are you having a liquid dinner tonight?”
He smoothly changed the subject and I noticed that his attention was now squarely on me and not on searching out hidden danger. I pointed a finger at him and realized it was less than steady. “We’re sharing a bed and that means I’m drinking enough that I’ll be too hammered to do anything inappropriate in my sleep and if I do get clingy I’ll be too drunk to remember it in the morning.”
There it went again, that little lip twitch that was trying so hard to be a smile. “You don’t have to share the bed if you don’t want to. I can sleep on the floor. Believe me, I’ve laid my head down in worse places.”
I groaned and put my face in my hands. “I do want … that’s the problem.”
He chuckled at me and pulled the shot I still hadn’t taken out of my hand. “How about we play a game and if you win then I’ll give you back your shot.”
I pouted at him and crossed my arms over my chest. “What kind of game?” I worked in a bar and had for a long time. If he thought he could beat me at pool, darts, quarters, or any of the other common barfly games I was constantly surrounded by he had another thing coming, even if I was well on my way to a pleasant buzz.
“Let’s play two truths and a lie. You tell me three things, two that are true and one that’s a lie and I have to pick the lie out. If you win you get your drink and if I pick the lie, then we get to go.” He sure did seem like he was in a big hurry to get back to the room we had to share but my brain was a little bit too fuzzy to pick up on the heat in his eyes and the sexy twist of his lips.
“Fine, I’ll play.” I was a terrible liar, so there wasn’t a chance in hell he wasn’t going to win. I tapped my fingers on the table in front of me and narrowed my eyes on his in concentration. Two truths were easy, it was the lie I was struggling with. I held up a finger and smirked at him. “Number one, is the first boy that I ever kissed ended up being gay. He was beautiful and it broke my heart when I found out. Number two, I am not a real redhead, all of this—” I picked up one of my poofy pigtails and let it fall “—is fake.” His eyebrows danced up and I saw his gaze sharpen on me in the dim light offered up by the neon glow surrounding us. I could tell he was trying to see if I had roots showing or not but I just smiled at him and held up a third finger. “Third, I’ve been calling my vibrator Church for the last six months. It never had a name before but since I’ve practically burned the thing out since
you came to town it only seemed fitting I named it after you.”
He almost dropped his glass.
His eyes flared to life in a way I had never seen before and those lips that were made to kiss and to whisper dirty, sexy things in the dark parted as a breath wheezed out of him.
“Jesus, Dixie.” My name sounded like the direst word he could think of and at the same time like something decadent and sweet he wanted to indulge in.
It was my turn to lift eyebrows and smirk. I pointed at the shot he was still holding captive. “You were the one that wanted to play.”
His eyes burned with colors that there weren’t words to describe. “I don’t want to play anymore.” His words were nothing more than a guttural growl. “Are you ready to go?”
Was I? A day ago I would never have considered bed-breaking sex with him because I knew it would lead to nothing but heartache considering I was way more into him than he was into me. I wanted the whole fantasy, the entirety of my own version of perfect, but after a few drinks and long minutes lost in that multicolored gaze, having something instead of nothing didn’t seem quite so bad. Maybe I wasn’t the girl meant for happy-ever-after. Maybe I was the girl that was going to have to take happy for now because that’s what was on the table. It wasn’t what my parents had, it wasn’t what Kallie had thrown away with Wheeler, but I wasn’t them and Church didn’t know what I knew.
This wasn’t the dream. This was reality.
I leaned across the table so I could get my fingers around the glass. I pulled it back to me and let the tequila burn its way down my throat.
Liquid courage.
Tequila really did make me do it, but it wasn’t like I’d stood a chance against him and the way I wanted him from the start. My body was all for making decisions my heart was going to pay for later on down the road. I wondered if he realized the danger sitting right across from him. I had a feeling that if he knew how into him I really was, beyond the physical, beyond the fact that I knew he would rock my world, that he would back off because he was compelled to protect me and he had the power to hurt me. I knew without a doubt hurting me would hurt him far worse than facing the silent judgment of strangers did. Even with that I still whispered, “Let’s go.” Because I always expected the best and refused to think about the worst.