SIXTEEN
Fallon
Augusta Belle’s whiskey-brown eyes held mine, her lips turning into a sweet half smile before she sang the same opening lines that’d fired up the same crowd at Slick Willy’s last night, the bar packed to over-capacity tonight.
It was true what they said. News travels fast in a small town, and apparently, today’s news was the reunion of Fallon Gentry and his whiskey girl.
People’d asked both of us to pose for pictures as we’d made our way in through the packed crowd, glasses of whiskey offered to each of us from every other outstretched hand.
I was thankful as fuck I didn’t look like the guy who was smiling weakly on the cover of that single they were thrusting at me. That guy wasn’t me. Never was. The man I was now might be a little rougher around the edges, but he was a helluva lot wiser and a lot more confident than he had been.
I’d earned this scowl, dammit.
It wasn’t until Augusta Belle crooned the opening lines of “Jackson” that my scowl lifted at the edges, my instincts to sing kicking in as we fell into a perfect harmony, arguing in lyrics and having fun every word of the way. Something about this song made me happy, everything about Augusta Belle made me me.
By the time we’d breezed through six more songs together, I finally sat center stage and gave them the one song they’d all come for.
The one that’d been a thorn in my side, that I’d been dreading as we’d inched closer to it every minute of tonight.
I started the opening lines, twisting the notes a little to add a quicker tempo, something the crowd didn’t recognize immediately. Not until I began with the opening lines: It’s not easy to forget, the bitter taste lovin’ you left…
A few women in the room sighed, the crowd hushing as a short gasp spread through the noise.
I charged on, sticking with the kickier tempo, the one they might not have been used to but the one that felt more like me.
The me now, anyway.
The me not soaked in whiskey and hell-bent on bitterness.
I slowed down a few words of the final chorus, my eyes finally brave enough to chance a glance at Augusta.
She was standing riveted off stage, both hands clasped over her mouth, eyes wide with tears, but also with something else. Pride, maybe.
I winked at her once, voice slipping into the last haunting lyric of the song before I let my guitar end on a soft note and stood, ducking into the darkness of backstage as the crowd erupted into a fit of applause.
Adrenaline charging through my veins, I clasped Augusta’s fingers, guiding her quickly through the back hallway and into the fresh air.
She squealed, spinning me around and leaping into my arms.
I yelled into her hair, a smile spreading across my lips, the widest I’d had since I didn’t know when.
“That was fucking incredible!” Her breath was hot on my neck, lips hovering just out of reach of mine.
I let her slide down my body, her feet landing on the pavement before we locked fingers and walked off down the sidewalk, getting lost in the crowds of a busy Memphis night.
“Now will you let me do a few gigs with you? I promise I won’t get in the way.” The moonlight lit her cheekbones, shadows dancing across the soft planes and making me feel some sort of way I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Did I like spending time with Augusta Belle again?
Sure.
Did I want to do it every day?
I worked that thought over in my mind, so many questions still hanging like a cloud over us, lightning and thunder just waitin’ to erupt.
“Sure that’s what you want?” I asked finally.
Her shoulder brushed side by side with mine, late summer air still thick with humidity, suffocating us like a blanket charged with electricity.
“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
I faltered a step, a bitter taste rising up the back of my throat as I thought about all the things left unsaid. “We still got a lot that needs sayin’ between us, Augusta.”
She nodded, eyes casting up to the dark sky as emotions tore across the features of her face. “Do you think…” She pressed her fists together, twisting the fingers and looking everywhere but at me in that moment. “Will it ever be possible for us to start over? So much was stolen from us, all of it out of our control. When it was just you and me makin’ the decisions, we were good. We were always so good.” She reached out a hand, brushing my forearm.
I couldn’t help the hardened pain that’d begun glossing my eyes. “Been through a lot, Augusta Belle, and I’ve been open, like a fucking book, for every question you’ve had. There’s still a big question mark in my head, though. There’s one thing you still haven’t answered, and maybe that’s because you’re not ready, or you think I don’t want to hear it.” I shook my head, jaw working back and forth as so many fucking memories slid in and out of my brain. “It’s been real nice living in this little bubble of sunshine the last few days with you, but that’s not reality. That’s still running away. And now you’re askin’ me if we can start over? If we can just be us again? After everything?” I shook my head, attempting and failing to process all the contradictory feelings running through me. “I don’t think it works like that.”
Her eyes downcast, she frowned, leaning against the tailgate of my truck, arms crossed as she seemed lost in her own mess of feelings.
“I don’t wanna stay another night in this shithole,” I said, eyes taking in the run-down three-story hotel we’d been in the last two nights. “I wanna get on the road to Tupelo tonight. Pack up your shit, and we can talk more about it in the truck.” I pushed a hand through my hair. The memory of her perched on my lap, snuggled up against me and invading my space just this morning as she cut my hair and trimmed my beard almost felt like a dream. “Or,” I finally breathed my last offer, “I can get you a ticket home.”
She swallowed, eyes crossing the expanse separating us. “Last time I was in Mississippi, I was eighteen.”
Her words hung heavy in the air, pregnant with some hidden meaning.
I’d been with her for her sixteenth and seventeenth birthdays, but she would have turned eighteen after…
I cleared my throat, stepping closer to her, resting a palm on her arm because not touching her was becoming too much to bear. “You were in Mississippi?”
She nodded, body beginning to tremble softly as her mind seemed to shift back to a time a decade earlier. “You don’t think I’m ready to face the past? But what if you’re not, Fallon?”
I screwed my eyes up, surprised by the strength lacing her voice when she looked like a broken little bird in front of me now. “What happened between the time I brought you home and your eighteenth birthday, Augusta Belle?” I held both of her shoulders in my hands, ducking down to her level, desperate for the goddamned closure I’d been denied for so long. “Not knowin’ what happened to you…” I swallowed the painful baseball in my throat. “It about killed me.”
“You want to know what happened after I climbed through my bedroom window that day?” She narrowed her eyes. “Absolutely nothing. It was so perfectly normal that it almost chills me now. Knowing that they knew.” She shook her head, crossing her arms as if to sink in on herself. “I started getting ready for school. Mama was already up, which should have been my first clue that something was off, and then she made eggs, biscuits, and sausage. The only time anyone made breakfast around our house was Daddy on Sunday mornings, and that’d become more rare over the years anyway.” She paused, and I took the moment to take her fingers in mine. She smiled up at me before continuing. “And then I went to school. Everything was perfectly fine. The thought actually crossed my mind in my first class that morning that maybe Mama had made breakfast because she felt bad for hitting me the night before.” She laughed, uncharacteristic bitterness lacing the sound. “And when I got home from school that day, they were both there, waiting for me. All dressed up next to two small suitcases of what Mama said were the only things I needed for where I was goin’ next.”
I gnashed my teeth, containing the rage that was pummeling my veins. Thank God her mama and daddy weren’t alive now. I couldn’t be held responsible for what I might do.
“I fought with them,” she whispered, tears sliding down her cheeks. “All I could think about was finding a minute alone to slip out the door and run all the way to your house. I knew if I could just get to you, you wouldn’t let them take me.”
“Augusta.” I crushed her into my chest, heart thrumming as my own salty tears bled into my beard, soaking the cotton of both of our T-shirts.
I held her closer than I ever had, held her like I’d lost her, because I fucking had. One night she was in my arms, the next vanished.
I’d lost the woman, and somehow, she’d found her way back to me, even after everything we’d both been through.
I murmured the only words I could think of against her ear. “I’m so fucking sorry, Augusta Belle.”