CHAPTER ONE
Presley Collins
The morning sun gleams off the Tennessee River as I drive parallel to its banks on the way to work, following its meandering curves along Neyland Drive. What I wouldn’t give to play hooky today. I’d skip the boring staff meeting and just toss an innertube in the water and float like I did when I was young.
It’s certainly hot enough. It isn’t even eight in the morning, and the temperature gauge on my Camry reads seventy-two. And it’s so humid, even though it’s early September. I don’t need a gauge for that. One glance in the rearview mirror is evidence of another steamy day. My red hair practically springs from my head, already pulling loose from the low ponytail I tried to contain it in.
Thunder from Imagine Dragons comes on the radio… again. Why do radio stations do that? Take a perfectly fabulous song and play it so often that I snarl when I hear it for the fiftieth time in a week. And I love this song. Well, loved this song. Maybe I’ll pitch a story to the team today about why stations run new songs into the ground. It could work great in my “I Wonder…” column. That’s what today’s meeting is about, after all. The editorial team of Sass & Frass and I will be tossing out ideas to enthrall our readers into plunking down a few dollars to pick up our weekly Southern culture rag.
Ugh.
No, I don’t mean that. I love my job. I do. Really. I just sometimes wish it was a bit more glamorous. And… a lot less boring. There, I said it.
Even as the words escape my mind, I immediately feel guilty. Job stability in today’s economy is a blessing. And with print newspapers and magazines dying on the vine each and every day, I need to count those blessings and be thankful that I can pay for a nice apartment and car that I adore. All on my own, thank you very much.
No need for a man here.
No need for white knights to bail me out and sweep me up from near destitution. No need for big dicks to get me off. I can do it all on my own.
I grit my teeth, thinking of Josh Jones, the man I went out with last week. The last man I might ever go out with, truth be told. It’s official. Men are assholes.
Let me make you feel good.
The jerk.
“I can make myself feel good, thank you very much,” I mutter to myself, tapping my thumbs on the steering wheel. Sex in return for a steak dinner? Seriously? What century is this? I tossed Josh a twenty and called it done.
Done. Done. Done.
Hmm… I wonder… if a vagina shrivels up and dies and no one is around to witness it, does it become a virgin again?
I snort and take a sip of my iced coffee as I wait for the red light to change to green. I’d love to see my editor’s face if I pitched that story to him. I doubt he’s said the V-word even once in his entire life.
Wow, I’m being a total bitch today.
Take care, my love. That savors strongly of bitterness. One of my favorite lines from Pride and Prejudice.
Is that me? A bitter old prune at the ripe old age of thirty-two?
I automatically think of him…
Yep. Bitter.
Especially since I’ve done nothing but think of him the last few days, which isn’t a surprise considering what this weekend should have represented. What should have been.
And just like that, he appears. Not like some mystical angel in the car seat beside me, but as the voice of one surrounding me on all ten speakers.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Automatically reaching for the button to switch radio stations, my finger halts just millimeters from pressing it down.
Lie to me. Lie with me.
Don’t ever leave.
I need you like breath.
I close my eyes as those words travel directly to my core then bounce up to my heart, nearly shattering it again.
That voice. In an instant, ten years dissolve and I am lying with him. His weight is on me, his mouth on mine as I curl all my limbs around his body, lifting my hips to meet his every thrust.
How he’d sang that song to me… his one-hit wonder, whispering the words against my pussy just before he licked into me deeply, circling my clit with his dexterous tongue.
Lie to me. Lie with me.
Don’t ever leave.
I need you like breath.
You are my air.
Lie with me and I’ll never lie to you.
They called them power ballads in the eighties, although I don’t know if they still called them that ten years ago when this song hit the top spot on the billboards for seven weeks in a row.
Ten years ago.
It still doesn’t seem possible.
I was in grad school back then, the world a shiny new oyster I had been in no hurry to open. Because of him…
Kace Rymer.
My college sweetheart.
The man who taught me about love. The man who’d broken my heart.
I jump as the car behind me honks. The light is green and I’m sitting here like a dork.
Lifting an “I’m sorry” hand, I press my foot to the accelerator and speed off with more g-force than I intend. My new car is certainly zippy.
And even as I zip down Neyland faster than I should, his voice still rings out all around me.
As I listen to the beautiful song written for me, I know I should just turn it off.
I don’t even have to extend an arm to reach for the radio, I can turn the station with just a flick of my thumb on the steering wheel. I can hit the mute button. Turn the volume down. There are multiple ways in which I can spare myself this torture, but even as I turn toward Market Square and leave the river behind me, I let Kace Rymer take me back in time.
I love you.
He told me that a million times, and I’d believed him. Every single one of those times.
But he’d loved something else more.
I wonder… does Kace Rymer still think of me, or did the drugs wipe away that part of his memory?
It hurts to even ask the question mentally.
I know enough about drugs to know that they turn the smartest person into the most foolish. They wrap their dirty hands around a person’s free will, dragging them in the direction it wants them to go.
And that direction had been away from me.
Because I hadn’t been able to go with him.
And I couldn’t save him.
I’d barely been able to save myself.
Ten years.
I need you like breath.
You are my air.
Lie with me and I’ll never lie to you.
As I pull into my parking spot and turn the engine off, the last line dies its own type of death.
But I won’t cry.
I’ll never cry over a man again.
As much as I hate myself for doing it, as I get out of my car on shaky legs and head into the offices of Sass & Frass, I can’t help it… I wonder.
How he’s doing.
And if he ever thinks of me.