THIRTEEN
Fallon
“I didn’t disappear.” Her eyes welled up with tears, one salted track trailing over the arch of her cheekbone. “That’s not…” More tears started to flow, her voice choked with emotion. “If you only knew what happened when you left me on the road that day.”
Her words battered my heart with their raw pain. “Christ, don’t cry, Augusta Belle.”
I groaned, pulling over into the first parking lot I found, a hotel chain I’d stayed with a few times in the past. “Could never stand it when you started crying. And I didn’t just leave you on the road.”
I slid her over the seat toward me, her tears growing stronger as I enveloped her quaking form in my arms. “I wish I was there for you that night, Fallon, more than anything, but I can’t go back in time and change it. And trust me when I say I’d rather be with you any day than where I was…”
I shook my head, not even giving a shit anymore about the years of hardship that had fallen on my shoulders, all beginning with that night.
I’d moved to Chickasaw Ridge to help my dad. The irony was that by the time I left, he was already in the ground, that little burned trailer hauled off to the junkyard, every piece of evidence of my life in Chickasaw along with it.
“If I would have known that happened… Well, if I could have come back, I would have. You know that, right, Fallon?” Her brandy eyes gazed up at me, pleading for some sort of absolution I didn’t know I had it in me to give.
“That was a long time ago.” I pushed a hand through my too-long hair, breathing a sigh of relief when she scooted back across the bench seat and took to gazin’ out the window.
The miles of open road rolled by in silence after that. Hours of thoughts hanging heavy between us, neither one of us brave enough to bring a voice to the things we’d been waiting a decade to say.
I’d had different words on the tip of my tongue a dozen times, and then I’d sneak a glance at her, looking all lonely and lost in her thoughts. And for the first time in nearly a fucking decade, I wondered what in the hell it’d been that I was chasing out here.
For so long, I’d run from town to town following some lofty idea that I might find her again.
And then I’d resigned myself to the fact that she was gone forever.
And then finally, I’d decided that everything she’d done, she’d done with the sole purpose of tearing my fucking heart out and burying it in the cold country clay under her feet.
Truth be told, none of those estimations was quite right, and havin’ her here turned every damn thing I thought I was thinking upside down.
We were passing the “Welcome to Memphis” sign a dozen miles later when I punched the address of the little dive bar into my navigation system and followed the route to Slick Willy’s.
I grinned when we pulled up alongside the little establishment, so small they probably couldn’t pack in more than a hundred folks at a time. I could smell the burn of cheap whiskey already.
“Looks like this is home the next few nights,” I said aloud before realizing she was with me and I had promised to boot her once we got to Memphis.
And now here we were. Only thing was, she was huddled up over there looking so sad and broken.
I suppressed a groan before I took in our surroundings. A chain hotel perched just down the street looked clean enough for my needs.
I steered the truck in that direction, then shifted into park and paused, lingering at the door handle as I wondered whether or not to say anything before I went to the reservation desk.
I shook my head silently, opting to leave her to her thoughts.
I’d had a damn decade to get used to the fact that my life had changed irreparably that night, that I’d soon found myself as the sole caregiver for a man in rapidly failing health, that the girl I’d sworn my whole heart to had vanished without a trace. That the fire that’d taken so much away from me may have been an act of arson.
The fact that Augusta Belle wasn’t there for any of it was inconsequential to me at this point.
I’d had to get along regardless, and I hadn’t done a half-bad job, whiskey bottle aside.
I stepped out of the hotel’s main office fifteen minutes later with two keycards in hand, a healthy drizzle now coating my windshield, and Augusta Belle still curled peacefully in the passenger seat, just like I’d left her.
My eyes quickly registered an Italian pizzeria joint across the street, with a liquor store right beside it.
Memphis catered to all my essentials.
I frowned. The familiar warmth of that smoky aroma curling around my nostrils as I opened a bottle of Jack for the first time had me fightin’ to keep myself in line. Cravings tore through my veins as the need to soak myself in liquor reared it’s ugly head.
I swallowed the memory of warmth washing my insides, heart ratcheting up to a gallop as the neon lights across the street called to me.
I chomped down on my bottom lip, struggling for any sense of control to keep me planted in the present, when a clap of thunder echoed across the sky.
My eyes cut across the lot to Augusta.
The only thing stopping me from walking through that liquor store’s swingin’ door was the little girl perched in my front seat, not a soul left on this earth to love her but me.
I grunted to myself, uncomfortable with the idea of anyone at all relyin’ on me and leaving a pit of something like dread deep in my stomach. But I didn’t think about that, just trudged on across the street, eyes trained on the homemade pizza that would soon be in my future.
I was walking back across the street a handful of minutes later with a warm pie in my hands when I approached my truck to find Augusta Belle perched on the seat, passenger door open and a bottle of booze between her thighs.
“Christ,” I muttered under my breath as she took a slow swig with her lips, throat contracting in numerous swallows.
The way she was hugging my best stuff made me think she’d been doin’ this a lot of nights, but that wasn’t any of my business. In fact, nothin’ about her was. I was just doing my duty to humanity, making sure she was fed and had a roof over her head.
“Pizza, party for two?” I flipped her the keycards in my palm, and she snagged one, pulling her backpack over one shoulder and tucking the whiskey bottle under her armpit before we pushed through the double doors of the hotel and headed for the third-floor room.
“I told them two beds,” I said when she was pushing in the door of the room a minute later.
She didn’t say a word, only threw her black backpack on the bed, flopping down onto it herself before uncapping the whiskey and taking another swig.
“That’s bad ya, know. Some old-timer gave it to me after a show once. Called it white lightnin’.” I tossed the pizza on the counter and kicked off my boots by the front door. “Can’t promise you’re safe drinkin’ it.”
She only shrugged, pushing the whiskey bottle on the faux-wood tabletop, eyes dragging across the room before landing on mine.
That look didn’t promise anything good.
“Y’know, you think you’re so innocent in this, just walking away like you did. Turnin’ into a big star in Nashville, dating those pop star twits.” She pushed a hand through the air as if to wave away the irritating flies. “I was all alone.”
She hiccupped, frustrated tears hovering at her eyelashes.
I wanted nothing more than to lick away her pain, take it all from her until the only thing left standing was her and me and that special thing we had together.
“We’ve gotta be at the gig in two hours. Think you’re gonna be ready, champ? Or you sittin’ this one out?”
Her eyes shot open but refused to focus. “I’m totally fine. Besides, m’not going to your show anyway. I’m just gonna take a shower then find the nearest bus station and head back to the Ridge.” She stood from the bed, pulling her shirt over her head and stumbling slowly to the bathroom.
“That’s the closet, actually.” I spoke up when she opened the wrong door.
I guided her into the bathroom before turning on the hot-water tap.
“I’ll be back in to check on you.” I placed a kiss on the furrow of her forehead.
“Don’t need your saving, Gentry.”
“I know you don’t, Branson. Never did,” I offered, retreating back out the door and closing it softly in my wake.
I slumped down on the office chair, pushing the cooling box of pizza aside and looking longingly across the room at that golden liquid belonging to me.
I hadn’t expected her to be the one to hit the bottle, but some truths were just too destructive to bear without some liquid courage, I supposed.
And hell if I was anyone to judge.
A few new lines to the song I’d been working on materialized in my mind, and I scratched out some words on a stray pad of paper and hotel-logoed pen. I’ve got this monkey on my back…these habits I can’t break… You left me here standing in the early dawn light, and all I got is more pain…
I heard the steady hum of the shower through the thin wooden door as I fell further into the song, matching some of the words to notes I could imagine playing under my fingers. In a few more weeks, this could be ready to sing onstage. I’d written hundreds of songs in just the same way in the years I’d been on the road.
Seems Augusta Belle disappearin’ had worked wonders for my creative side.
I scratched out a couple more notes about the arrangement of the music, and before long, the water in the shower was kicking off and the door squeaking open.
“Thanks,” she hummed, honey silk ringlets falling around her ivory shoulders, a fluffy white towel wrapped around her body.
She looked so fragile, like a rare bird that needed extra-gentle handling.
“I’m not sure what got into me.” She avoided my eyes and went to the bed, shuffling through the backpack before pausing, clean change of clothes in her hands.
She chomped down on her lip, taking a few tentative steps closer to me. “I know I just showed up in your life like a ghost out of thin air…”
“Took the thoughts out of my head,” I affirmed.
“And I know you don’t have to put up with me.” She hardly suppressed an eye roll, the admission painful for her still-stubborn self. “But I appreciate it.” She paused as if considering whether or not to say more. She seemed to decide against it before adding, “I would love to see your show tonight.”
And then she disappeared back into the bathroom, a cloud of spiced peaches and smoky whiskey leaving a dreamy, numbing warmth in her wake.