TWENTY-FOUR
Fallon
“Do you think I have a single word to say to you, Fallon Gentry?” Augusta Belle stood in the doorway of the little yellow house on a corner in Jackson, Mississippi, hands on her hips and directing all that anger at me.
I sobered up real quick in that instant. “The fact that you didn’t take my truck and head home to leave me to fend for myself down here makes me think you might.”
Her little fist clutched at the door, polka-dot shorts and tank top doing nothing to intimidate me like she probably wanted. “Woulda taken off in a second, but that woulda been grand theft auto, and I just don’t have time for that.”
I swallowed the bark of laughter, knowing she’d lay into me real good if I mocked her now.
I pushed aside the urge to haul her into my arms and hug her so damn tight my chest ached, but I’d have to smooth this one over first.
And I had a helluva lot of smoothing to do.
“Old guy across the street said something ’bout hot cakes and sweet tea.” I stepped a tad closer, itching to run my fingers along the inside of her arm, feel her shiver underneath me, her lips quivering against mine.
It’d only been a few hours, and I missed her like it’d been the better part of a lifetime.
“Nothin’ here for you. Now that you’re sober, you can take your keys. Ms. Kathy’s already offered to bring me to the bus station at nine.”
“Hell if I’m letting you go home on a bus,” I gritted out, fingers twitching as I reached out, catching her wrist, a silent request for her to hear me out. “I’ll drive you home myself if that’s where you wanna go, Augusta Belle. I’d drive you to the ends of the earth if that’d make you happy.” I stepped even closer, swallowing the last bit of distance between us. “Call me crazy, but I don’t think that’s what you’re lookin’ for, though.”
I traced a fingertip down her hairline, thumb grazing the arch of her cheekbone as her eyes drifted closed.
“Just give me a chance to show you how much you mean to me. I want to talk, really talk. I never was worthy of you, Augusta Belle, but the day we met, you wrapped yourself around my soul. The days you weren’t there it felt like a vise, squeezing all the life out of me. But the days I’m with you are the only days I feel the sunshine.”
Tears tracked down her cheeks, wetting my hands and her shirt, soaking into my beard and making my chest hurt somethin’ fierce.
I’d never known pain to exist outside of my body, but with Augusta Belle walkin’ around in the world, it felt like an exposed nerve, my heart always on guard and vulnerable, ready to defend my love for her at any possible second.
“The world is hard. I’ve known that since the time I was old enough to string a sentence together, but then I had you. You came along and brought the sunshine.” I thumbed away fresh tears, her finally wrapping her arms around my waist as she emptied her pain into my embrace. “I can drown myself in all the whiskey in Mississippi, but a man still needs his sunshine.”
Her fingertips worked at the thin threads of my T-shirt, chest racked with waves of devastating pain.
I stood there.
I took it all.
I cried real tears with her on that front porch; I felt every horrifying moment of that night our baby was stolen from her deep in my bones.
She’d needed me then, and I wasn’t there.
If I woulda been the man I was aimin’ to be now, I woulda hunted her down the day I knew she turned eighteen. I would have searched every college campus east of the Mississippi, then gone west if that’s what it took.
And maybe, deep down, that’s what I had been doin’ all these years on the road.
Lookin’ for my whiskey girl.
“Whaddya say we take the day? Explore Jackson?” I sank my nose into her hair, sucking in that sunshine and honey scent like my life depended on it.
“I’m still mad at you, Gentry,” she sobbed, scrunching my shirt up in her little fists.
“Then I’ve got a lot of making up to do.”