Loving Dallas

by Caisey Quinn

  I close my eyes and gag on several bites. “That’s the best I can do for now,” I tell my roommate. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine. You did your best. Let’s get some clothes on so you can get to your appointment.”

  I shake my head. “I can’t go. I was supposed to text him a picture.”

  I look at my phone. Nothing. I’ve texted, I’ve left a dozen messages telling him to call me, that I love him and need to know that he’s okay.

  No response.

  Now I know how he felt when I blew him off before. The only difference is, he knew I was alive.

  After Katie helps me get dressed and puts me in the car, the tremors come back. Instead of crying, my body has decided to do this weird seizing that scares Katie half to death.

  “Even if you don’t want them to tell you if you’re carrying a boy or a girl today, it’s good to check on the baby. And I’d like to see if they can give you something mild to calm your nerves while we wait for news.”

  Her knuckles are white on the steering wheel. I’m stressing her out and I feel bad but I can’t hide this. I’ve always been so good at hiding my emotions, keeping up the tough-chick exterior, but I can’t anymore.

  “Did I ever tell you why we broke up?” My throat is raw and my words are raspy.

  Katie glances over at me. “No. I don’t think so.”

  I lean my head against the window, agitated that the sun has the audacity to shine today. It’s cold out, but the damn sky couldn’t even cooperate with my gloomy mood.

  “I was supposed to go on a six-week summer tour with his band, help with their outreach and social media and such.” I close my eyes. I can still remember it so clearly. I was so excited about the road trip. We’d both been so busy—me with school and him with odd jobs and the band—we were looking forward to the time together. “I had a music mix made and everything. A lifetime supply of beef jerky. All the road trip must-haves. That was supposed to be an epic summer.”

  “Sounds fun.”

  I swallow hard while trying not to lose myself in the memories. “It should’ve been. But then my mom got sick. She had stage two breast cancer. The lumpectomy wasn’t enough. She spent the summer in chemo treatments.”

  “I’m so sorry, Robyn. I didn’t know.”

  “She’s doing really great now and she’s big on looking forward, so I try not to dwell.”

  “Sounds smart,” Katie says, side-eying me as she drives. “But surely Dallas understood. I mean it wasn’t like you just blew him off for no reason. It was your mom.”

  “I didn’t tell him. I just bailed on the trip and told him I thought we needed some space. I can’t even remember exactly what I said. But it hurt him. It hurt us. When he came back at the end of the summer things were different. Over.”

  I don’t tell her how many nights I lay awake wondering how things might have been different if I’d just told him the truth.

  “Wow. Well . . . You were young, Robyn. People make mistakes. I’m sure Dallas has made plenty. He’s probably forgotten all about it by now.”

  “He hasn’t. He mentioned it in Nashville, when I tried to blow him off the night I got sick. And we talked about it a little in the airport before he left.” Tears stream down my face as I continue. “I almost did the same thing with the pregnancy. I just didn’t want to stand in the way of his dreams, you know? Just like I didn’t want this baby to derail his success like I ended up doing that summer even though it was the last thing I wanted. But now I have this piece of him forever and I can’t even be grateful for that. I keep thinking, what if this is all that’s left? What if I never get to see him or hold him or kiss him again?”

  “Don’t think like that. Let’s just focus on today, okay?”

  Katie does her best to console me, but I’m gone, over the edge of sanity and dissolving into a puddle of misery. I can’t wipe my tears away fast enough.

  Everything that happens after that is fuzzy. We go into the sterile gray offices and wait until they call my name. The technician does the ultrasound, placing it in an envelope and telling me the baby’s sex is printed on there for when I’m ready to look.

  Katie, God love her, murmurs softly to the doctor about what’s going on with the father, but she doesn’t name him, which I am grateful for. I hear them talking about bed rest and keeping my stress level and blood pressure down.

  I leave with my envelope in hand feeling grateful for Katie but knowing I’m going to have to start handling these things on my own. Just like I will have to face the rest of my life on my own.

  Katie squeezes my hand as we leave the office and step out into the sunshine. I stare at the sidewalk. The not knowing is awful, but I think it might be better than confirmation that he’s gone.

  “Robyn,” Katie gasps, squeezing my free hand. “Look up, sweetie.”

  I rub my eyes behind my sunglasses. They’re still sore from crying. “Why? Can’t you be my Seeing-Eye friend? My head is killing me.”

  “Because you need to see for yourself. Dallas is fine. He’s okay.”

  “What? How do you know that?” My heart races nearly out of my chest as I look around for a newsstand or television screen or something announcing this.

  She laughs, grips me by my shoulders, and turns me to face the opposite direction. “Because he’s standing right there.”

  42 | Dallas

  ROBYN COMES OUT OF THE BUILDING JUST AS I’M CROSSING THE street and I finally feel like I’ve found my center of gravity.

  Two hitched rides, a flight with a layover that involved a dead sprint across an airport, and one smelly cab ride later, I made it. Judging from the envelope in her hand, I missed her appointment, but I promise myself that it’s the last one I’ll miss.

  “There’s my girl,” I say as she bolts across the street and into my arms. “Hey, baby.”

  She’s a wreck, crying and sobbing and saying incoherent words I can’t make a single bit of sense of. I look over her head at her assistant.

  “Did I miss the appointment? Is the baby okay?”

  In the second Katie hesitates, my confidence falters.

  “You did but the baby’s fine,” Katie tells me, ending the agony. “Everything is fine. I’ll let you two talk. My car’s on level D,” she tells us, nodding to the parking garage across the street. “I’ll wait as long as you need me to until y’all are ready to go. It’s good to see you, Dallas.”

  “Oh, thank God. You, too. We’ll be up in a minute.” I hold Robyn tightly until she pulls back to look at my face. I grin when she touches it like she can’t believe I’m here. “I’m sorry I missed the ultrasound. I got here as soon as I could. Are you going to tell me if we’re having a girl or a boy or leave me hanging in suspense?”

  Robyn looks at me like I’m speaking Greek.

  Then she squeezes me hard enough to hurt just before whacking me hard in the chest and starting to cry all over again.

  “I thought you were dead, Dallas Lark. What the hell happened down there? They said you were unaccounted for after the accident.” Noticing my arm for the first time, she pales. The butterfly stitches are caked in dried blood. “Oh my God.”

  “We were in an accident and I decided to come home instead of checking into a hospital in Rio. My phone was destroyed but my arm will be okay. It’s fine. I’ll be playing guitar in no time.”

  Maybe. Truth is, I haven’t even stopped to think about that yet.

  Right now the most important thing isn’t my arm, it’s in my arms. Both of the most important things.

  “Dallas . . .” Those shining exotic-jewel eyes I love so much stare up at me.

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “I’m so sorry. For everything. For not telling you when my mom got sick and for getting pregnant when—”

  I cut her off with a kiss, pressing my lips harder against hers until the fight goes out of her body.

  “Do not apologize for giving me the greatest gift in the entire world. We’re in this together, Robyn
. For always, okay?”

  She nods against my chest. “For always.”

  Her body trembles in my arms and I know it’s already a huge moment, but there’s more I have to say and I have to say it now.

  Pulling back, I look into her beautiful face. “My luggage was already gone, except for one thing. I keep it on me almost all the time. It was in a carry-on bag that was salvaged from the car and I need to give it to you.”

  I pull the ring out of my pocket, wishing I’d had time to find a nice velvet box to place it in. But it was given to me in a plastic bag with Mom’s belongings after she and my father were killed. If Dixie had wanted it, I would’ve let her have it, but some part of me wanted desperately to give it to someone someday. I just didn’t realize how soon that someday would come. But I think I knew this girl was my someone the day she yanked me up by the arm and made me listen to her favorite song in the back of a pickup truck.

  “This was my mom’s, but before I ask you to accept it, I need to tell you something. Several somethings.”

  Robyn swallows hard and nods eagerly for me to continue.

  “I know how this looks. How it must seem and maybe even how it will be portrayed in the media. But I don’t care about that. I care about us. Because the most important thing here is us.”

  She sniffles, which I take as agreement.

  “And I don’t want you to say yes because you’re pregnant. I don’t want you to say yes because I was in an accident and you were worried. I don’t even want you to say yes out of pity for the poor sucker who walked away from his entire career to come ask you this very question. You with me so far?”

  She nods. “Um, I-I think so.”

  I pull in as much oxygen as my lungs can hold and drop to one knee. “Robyn Breeland, I love you. I have always loved you and I will always love you. I want you to marry me because I can’t lose you. Not for music, not because of crazy managers, or cocky country music singers who charm their way into your life—present company excluded—and definitely not because of my own fear of not being able to give you everything you deserve. I will do whatever it takes to make you happy because if I lost you, I’d have lost my best friend, my heart and soul, my muse, my everything.”

  A small cry breaks free and Robyn gapes down at me with watery eyes.

  “I want to be successful. I want to make music. I love being onstage—creating that experience for the audience—and I’ll never pretend otherwise. That is my dream. But nothing, and I mean nothing, is worth losing you. I will not walk away from my family ever again. And if you say no today, then I will keep asking. Because you are my family, baby. You’re my family forever.”

  Fuck. Now I can’t keep my shit together, either.

  “Dallas,” she says, surprisingly calmly. “Just give me a second.”

  That wasn’t a yes. I am not moving from this spot until she says yes.

  “Stand up.”

  I shake my head. “Not until you say yes.”

  “Please. I need you up here with me. We need to talk.”

  “We will talk. After you say yes.”

  She huffs out a breath. “I just spent twenty-four hours thinking you were dead. You have no idea what I’ve been through. And now there’s this. Stand up right now, Dallas Walker Lark, or I’m bringing my pregnant self down there.”

  I do as I’m told.

  “I love you,” she says, clutching my hands tightly. “And I want you. Only you. I want us. Always. But I don’t want to be the reason you miss out on your dreams, Dallas. I don’t want you to look at me and our child in a few years—or even sooner—and wish you weren’t stuck with us and that you’d stayed on that tour. I love you enough not to cost you your dream. So I will say yes, on one condition.”

  “Name it.” I want to tell her I will never feel that way, that I know this because I had the fame and when I had it without her it didn’t matter. But right now I just want to get this ring on her damn finger so I can breathe again.

  “Promise me you will not give up on your dreams. Promise me you won’t pass up opportunities to succeed even if it means upsetting me. Promise on everything that you will be honest with me always. None of that sissy sparing each other’s feelings stuff for us, okay?”

  I nod. Then I reach for her hand.

  “Now you promise me something.”

  Robyn smiles. “Yes, the baby is yours.”

  I bump my forehead to hers. “Damn straight it is.” She kisses me softly, but I won’t be distracted so easily. “Promise me you won’t give up on your dreams, either. You are damn good at your job and you don’t have to give that up unless you want to.”

  She nods. “I’m going to talk to my boss about less travel and more behind-the-scenes event coordination. It will all work out however it’s meant to. Katie has volunteered to step in when needed.”

  “So are we good now?” I ask, holding the ring at her fingertip before slipping it all the way on.

  Robyn pulls back once more. “You sure this is what you want? It’s not just the concussion talking?”

  I laugh low against her lips. “Do you want to know what I saw when we were about to hit that truck? What flashed before my eyes?”

  She nods and her body trembles against mine at the mention of the accident.

  “I saw you. I saw us. I didn’t see my life as it was because there wasn’t much to see. Hotel rooms, tour buses, and audiences full of strangers—none of that came to mind. I saw the life I wouldn’t get to have if I died, or if I lived and walked away from you. I saw you holding our child in your arms and smiling up at me with those beautiful eyes of yours. I saw birthday cakes and toy guitars and God help us, the drum set Gavin will buy this child to bang on all hours of the day. I saw you in a white dress becoming my wife. I saw my family.” I hold her close and kiss her hair. “Be my family, baby.”

  “Yes, Dallas,” she says through her tears. “A million times yes.”

  Once we both pull it together and my ring is on her finger, where it will damn well stay, I nod to the envelope she’s still holding.

  “Are you going to do the honors?”

  She hands it to me. “I think you should. I mean, you came all this way.”

  As we make our way across the street I slide my finger into the seam. A small black-and-white square sits inside. Taking it out gently once we’ve reached the parking garage, I stare at it, feeling the sunshine on my face and wondering if my parents and grandparents are smiling down on me.

  There’s a song here somewhere, but I’ll write it later.

  “Congratulations, Daddy,” Robyn says softly, taking the picture from my fingers. “It’s a boy.”

  “You have a name picked out yet?” If I know Robyn, she has an entire list.

  She leans against my arm. “I was thinking . . . Denver.”

  I can’t help it. I laugh. I want to pick her up and spin her around and shout from the top of the parking garage that I am officially the luckiest man in the universe.

  “So what now?”

  My girl always has a plan.

  “Now we go get you some real stitches in that arm. Then we go get some pancakes because I am seriously starving.”

  “Sounds good. Then what? We just wing it?”

  Robyn scoffs at me. My girl doesn’t wing it.

  “Then we live happily ever after.”

  Epilogue | Robyn

  “DIXIE SAID YOU’D BETTER CALL HER YOURSELF SO SHE CAN HEAR your voice. I think there was one heck of a vigil going on over there. Sounded like she had a house full,” I tell my fiancé as he pulls me onto his lap. “Did you talk to Gavin?”

  Dallas kisses me on the tip of my nose and places his palm on my protruding belly. “I will. And yeah, I did. He had some news, too, actually.”

  “He finally talked to Dixie and they’re getting married, too?”

  “Uh, no. Why? What did she say to you about him?”

  “Not much. Just that she saw him with some chick she plans to back over with yo
ur truck and that he acted like an asshole.”

  Dallas makes a growly noise of discontent in the back of his throat. “Remind me to hide my truck keys when we go to Amarillo.”

  I rest my head on his shoulder and close my eyes, savoring the clean wood-infused scent of him. “Okay.”

  “Speaking of Amarillo,” Dallas says, shifting me so that I lift my head. “We need to finalize the wedding plans because I have another proposal for you, but I don’t want to add any additional stress on the mother of my baby.”

  I roll my eyes. I basically thrive on stress and Dallas knows this. “Tell me what’s going on, Lark.”

  “Gavin works at that huge new bar downtown—the Tavern.”

  I vaguely remember Dixie mentioning that that’s where she saw him. “Okay,” I say slowly. “And . . .”

  “And Rock the Republic Records is hosting a Battle of the Bands there in a few weeks. First prize is twenty-five thousand dollars and a one-year recording contract.”

  I sit up so fast I nearly head-butt him. “Are you serious?”

  Dallas grins and nods. “Yeah. Since Capitol is probably already drawing up the paperwork to drop me like a bad habit, I’m thinking it’s time for the band to get back together and give it another shot.”

  I can’t even contain my squeal of joy. “I can get y’all a fan site set up right now. We can do a Facebook promo to get people to come out and—”

  “Babe, slow down.” Dallas tightens his grip before I can jump up out of his lap. “I was hoping you’d help out with that stuff. But there’s plenty of time for that. First I have to make sure Dixie is on board and that those two can put their drama aside to do this. Then maybe Leaving Amarillo will get a second chance. Think we can convince my sister to give Gavin one?”

  “Well . . . you know how I feel about second chances.” I place kisses along the edge of his jawline when he reaches over to place a protective hand on my slightly protruding belly bump—something he does often and I’m not even sure he’s conscious of.

  He rests his forehead on mine and I am swept away by the overwhelming love and adoration in his gaze.