TWENTY-FIVE
Augusta
I twisted my hands in my lap, feeling a million miles away from Fallon even though he sat just across the cab of the truck, bench seat stretching lonely between us.
I’d gotten used to sittin’ at Fallon’s shoulder. The reassuring brush of his thigh, the stray touch of his fingertips against my knee something I’d come to live for, but that didn’t change the last twelve hours.
Not in the slightest.
Him disappearin’ just when I’d laid out my most precious secret? How could I be sure that wouldn’t happen again when I said something he didn’t like?
I’d held off divulging everything to him for that very reason, afraid I’d have to watch his back, walkin’ away again.
My eyes held fast on the horizon, truck cruisin’ down an old country road, lush green fields highlighted with the occasional stand of magnolia trees for almost as far as the eye could see.
“I don’t remember Mississippi bein’ quite so…pretty the last time I was here.”
Fallon’s eyes cut across the space between us, fingers twitching on the wheel. “Hard to see the nice things when you’re blinded by heartache.”
I let his words hang heavy, realizing how true they were on more levels than I could count.
“Y’know,” he finally said, interrupting the silence, “Every day, every gig, no matter where I was, in a sea of people, my eyes never stopped searching for you.”
A new ball of locked-up emotion threatened to overwhelm me before I swallowed it down, the reality that he’d ached as much as I had all those years like a fresh wound.
Fallon slowed the truck, sensing everything that still sat unsteady between us, turning into the first pull-off he could find.
I gnawed on my bottom lip as the shade of an ancient stand of magnolias draped in moss nearly swallowed us from the side of the road.
I opened the door to find the palest pink and white petals floating on the breeze, dancing onto the hood of Fallon’s truck, landing in my hair, carpeting the soft dirt under my feet.
“It’s a little like a fairy tale.” I pushed the door closed behind me, coming around the front of the truck and meeting Fallon.
I felt his eyes on me, my only focus on the sweetly scented blooms engulfing us.
“Every day with you is a fairy tale, Augusta Belle.” He followed at my shoulder as I waited at the base of one of the tallest trees in the grove, a pond riddled with moss-covered stone at the base. “I can’t promise I won’t fuck up. I have a bad habit of fallin’ just when I need to stand tall, but I’m serious when I say that ends now.”
His rough palms cupped mine, the gravelly lilt to his voice conveying the emotion he had trouble expressin’ with words.
“Fucked up last night, I’m not proud. Wouldn’t be right if I didn’t tell you that I almost made the mistake of my life last night. Took almost losing it to see the beauty right in front of my face. With you. Even when it’s hard, it’s still so much more fucking perfect than I’ve ever had.” His thumb caressed the sensitive hollow at my neck, eyes clinging to mine as if his life were at stake.
“What I did last night—” he squeezed his eyes closed “—reminded me of all those dark fucking nights I spent without you, looking for happy at the bottom of a bottle. Took till bein’ with you again to remember that I’m not him. I’m the man I am when I’m with you, making music, singing alongside you…” His head dipped, voice lowered. “…takin’ care of you.
“I don’t plan on ever bein’ that man again. Took a flashback of it last night to send me runnin’ the other way.”
Both his arms encircled me then, holding me against his tall body, swallowing me against his form, sheltering me in him.
Right where I loved to be.
He hummed against my ear, swaying me softly as the wind swirled a cascade of blooms around us, the words of the song he’d been working on at my ear.
My rough and rowdy days long gone
You rode the storm and broke the chains
Rain clouds clear and the sunshine came
Aw, you kiss me sweet like honey and whiskey
Your love is warmer than sunshine and whiskey
Your love heats like honey and whiskey
Your love is sunshine and whiskey
We stood like that, heartbeats syncing as the harsh world faded at the edges.
As long as we could do this, everything would be okay.
I’d always felt that way about Fallon, and that feeling only grew with each passing memory we made.
“Sometimes I wish we had a second chance to meet again for the first time.” He brushed his lips against mine, tingles spiraling through every piece of me with his touch. “Don’t know what I would do different, but I’d find a way to do somethin’.”
“I was fifteen, Fallon.” I said the words softly, the inevitability of our outcome settling like a cloud. “There wasn’t a thing else we coulda done.”
He breathed against me, chest pressed against mine as one hand sank into the waves of my hair, lips finally touching mine in the tenderest of kisses.
Soft and slow, reflective and redemptive, our touch healed what our words couldn’t.