Come Home to Me

by Liz Talley

  His only comfort at that moment lay in the bottle of Four Roses bourbon he’d found in the back of the pantry. He currently jiggled the melting ice and watched Grampy Pete shuffle around the kitchen.

  “Where’s that goll-danged bottle opener?” his grandfather growled from the doorway.

  “You’ve had your one beer,” Summer said, not bothering to look up. “And you ate my shrimp dinner, so I’m not inclined to find the bottle opener I hid half an hour ago.”

  His grandfather shot Summer a hateful glance. “Damn women. That’s why I didn’t marry Sally McCorkel. Women want to manage everything a man does. Hell, you can’t even take a whiz without them criticizing your aim.”

  “Which, judging by your powder room, is the floor,” Summer said, a ghost of a smile around her lips.

  Summer Valentine had grown into a looker. Gone was the baby fat and dimpled cheeks and in their place was a wily woman who obviously managed his grandfather quite well.

  “I don’t go on the floor,” David piped up.

  “Of course not. I’m training you to be an accurate shot. Unlike Pete, who is like a fireman with a rogue hose.”

  Rhett laughed. “Are you sure you’re Summer Valentine?”

  She glanced up. “What?”

  “The Summer I remember was too sweet to harass an old man with a bad prostate.”

  “I ain’t got a bad prostate,” Grampy Pete said, giving up on the beer and reshelving it in the fridge. “She’s exaggerating about my aim.”

  Summer snorted. “As the head head-cleaner, I can assure you I’m not.”

  “Bah,” Grampy Pete said, shuffling into the living room. He regarded Rhett. “Still, boy, can’t believe you showed up without a call. I didn’t raise you right, I guess. You probably whiz all over the toilet, too, but I bet your maid don’t harp on you.”

  “I’m not your maid. I’m your assistant who sometimes wipes up after you.” Summer turned another page, her pretty eyes firmly fastened on the article within the magazine.

  “I will make every attempt to hit the mark while I’m here. I’m sorry I didn’t call. It was an impulse I still don’t understand, but I can rent a place, if that’s better for you. You don’t have to worry—”

  “Why would you get another place? Last time you came with that washed-up actress. What was her name?”

  “Scarlett Ro—”

  “She had the longest legs and fingernails I’d ever seen. But anyway, I was insulted you rented a place. Never hardly saw you. This is your home.”

  Something about those words comforted him, even as he knew them to be untrue. He hadn’t made his home in South Carolina for a long time. You can never go home again was a phrase he’d often repeated when people asked him if he ever thought about where he grew up. In his mind, Rhett had always been meant for the sunny West Coast. Still, there were times when the tang of the ocean hit him just right. The fecund smell reminding him of dying marsh grasses laced with briny grit, mornings when he rucked around the tidal plains looking for treasure. He’d close his eyes and instead of the California beaches, there was marsh, low-hanging oaks brushing against the lapping tidal push and pull onto the shores of Carolina. Shrimp. Grits. Low Country life—all would tangle into an intense longing for a simpler time.

  But those moments were rare and fleeting. He was Rhett Bryan. He was California personified. A mover and shaker. On his way up. Until he took a detour.

  But he’d get past the sleepless nights and nightmares. He’d rebound. Just had to get his head straight. Sleep. Revive himself so he could press forward toward his goals. Something inside him told him staying at the Nest, named by the grandmother he’d never met, would be the best place to find what he needed. He’d first come to the Nest when he was a three-year-old, right after the funeral of his parents. They’d been killed in an automobile accident in Michigan, and Grampy Pete had brought him home to South Carolina. Home had healed him then; surely it could heal him now.

  Besides, renting a house meant he’d be alone with his thoughts and the nightmares that denied him sleep. “As long as I don’t cramp your style, Grampy.”

  His grandfather fastened his beetle eyes on him, thick eyebrows drawing together. “You ain’t crampin’ me none. But you’ll have to bunk in your old room. Summer’s got the cabin. And this here boy who better get his skinny butt outta my chair in three . . . two . . .”

  David looked up with a lazy smile that looked so much like Rhett’s old bud Hunt McCroy, he felt a flash of . . . something. Irritation? Fondness? Mere acknowledgment that Hunt had fathered a kid with someone who’d professed she disliked him?

  “Move it, kid. I’m serious,” Grampy Pete said, lowering his bony ass toward the lanky teen.

  “Okay, okay. I don’t want your old balls touching me,” David said, holding out his hands to prevent Grampy from sitting on him.

  “David Matthew Valentine!” Summer barked, slapping the magazine shut. “I don’t want to hear that talk.”

  David laughed and slid from beneath Rhett’s grandfather. The look he shot toward Rhett was pure imp. He loped over to the couch and dropped beside Rhett. “You don’t look the way you look on TV.”

  “I don’t?”

  “No. You look older.”

  “Thanks. That’s what every talk show host wants to hear.”

  David’s lips curved and Rhett noted the kid had his mother’s eyes. “You’re my dad’s age. He said y’all used to be good friends.”

  Rhett lifted a shoulder. “We were. Haven’t seen Hunt in a while.”

  “Because you’re famous?”

  No. Not because he was famous. Or maybe that was true. He’d moved away and made a different life, one that he’d loved until . . . well, until he’d made the biggest mistake of his life. His impatience, his preoccupation with his career had led to . . . He dashed the bad thoughts away. “No. We just drifted apart, I guess. Hunt went to Florida, I went to LA. Different places, different paths.”

  David’s gaze was as intense as his mother’s once was. Rhett would be willing to bet a hundred-dollar bill that David had inherited Summer’s smarts. “My dad played baseball with you. He was good, huh?”

  “Good enough to win 4A pitcher of the year and a scholly to Florida.” What more was there to say? Rhett knew about the performance-enhancing drugs, the sanctions, the bad press. Hunt’s career had tumbled down a flight of concrete stairs. His friend had landed hard at the bottom. Rhett had stayed away. Maybe that was wrong. Perhaps he could have stopped Hunt’s fall with a well-placed word or something. But fear of getting dragged into his former best friend’s cesspool of bad choices had kept him silent. “Hunt and I had some good times together.”

  “He wants me to play ball. I’m going to start lessons with some guy who trains pitchers.”

  “Yeah?”

  David shrugged. “I guess. My dad says it’s important to be part of a team. Builds character, and he said baseball’s the best sport. Takes patience.”

  Rhett glanced up and caught Summer watching them. Something in her gaze was unsettling. “That’s true. Have you played baseball before?”

  “Sure. When I was a kid. It was in Nashville, though. We lived there before we moved here.”

  “Nashville?” Rhett asked, looking questioningly at Summer. He had no idea she’d lived in Nashville, and then he remembered her singing. That one day when he’d gone to her house. After prom. Before she stopped speaking to him.

  “David, stop boring Mr. Bryan with the details of our lives. Don’t you have homework or something?” Summer said, sending the pointed glances mothers were so good at giving. Not that Rhett would know. The only looks he’d gotten came from teachers. And Grampy Pete.

  “I already did it.”

  Summer lifted an eyebrow.

  “I swear. Dad won’t let me play Xbox until I do it. He read that on some parenting website.”

  “The game’s about to come on. Y’all are going to have to stop all your yapping,” Grampy said,
picking up the remote control and turning on the TV Rhett had bought him four years ago when he saw the man was still using the one they’d had when Rhett was in high school. The old man had begrudgingly agreed that the HD picture was better than the old set. But Grampy Pete wasn’t one to quit on a piece of equipment because it had some years on it. He was a living testament to not quitting on anything.

  Rhett set the empty glass on the scarred end table and rose; his body was stiff from the long drive south. He moved toward the French doors that led out onto the wide deck. Beyond the windowpanes, the night sat quiet on its haunches.

  With a jerk, Rhett pulled open the door that still stuck at the bottom.

  “Don’t let in the skeeters,” his grandfather yelled.

  One thing for certain—his grandfather didn’t believe in the kid glove treatment. That Rhett rubbed elbows with superstars meant beans to Pete Bryan. Rhett closed the door and walked to the cedar rail. Frogs barked in the distance and the moon shimmered in the water. Outside of nature and the hum of the television inside, there were no sounds. No traffic, no loud K-pop from his teenage next-door neighbors, no fluffy Pomeranians yipping at a leaf turning over (his other neighbor). Serenity should be settling upon him.

  But it wasn’t.

  For the past five months, he’d been a condemned man swinging at the end of a rope, someone holding onto his feet, pulling him down hard. He couldn’t kick free from the shadows. Therapy had helped for a while. He’d done all the exploration of his feelings he could do. Still, something he couldn’t name had him by the throat and wouldn’t lessen.

  The door opened behind him. He didn’t need to turn around to know it was Summer.

  “Strange being home?” Her voice parted the night as she halted a foot from him, setting her hands on the aged wood railing.

  “How’d you know?”

  “Because I’ve only been back for a year now. It’s quiet, huh?” Her voice was like whiskey.

  “Yeah,” he said, studying the marsh, the way the shadows moved, the way the light divided into distinct dark and light. Summer’s scent reached him—honeysuckle or some other sweet flower that bloomed on southern summer nights. “Just thinking about how quiet it was. Almost makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Why are you here, Rhett?”

  He turned to her. She stood with fists braced against the railing, the moonlight painting her in the same relief as the marsh. He couldn’t remember what color her eyes were, but they looked dark. Mysterious. The Summer he’d once known had been as obvious as red paint on a front door. “Why are you here?”

  “Oh, so we’re going to do that, huh? Answer a question with a question?” A ghost smile materialized on her lips.

  “Turnabout’s fair play. Or so they say.”

  “I came back because there wasn’t a good reason not to.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “It’s all you’ll get. I’m not one of your Hollywood pets with secrets.”

  “Pets? That’s harsh coming from someone like you,” Rhett said.

  “You don’t know me anymore.”

  “Or maybe I never did.”

  She turned back to the night. “True.”

  “You did Nashville?”

  Summer nodded. “It was harder than I thought. Yet somehow easier.”

  “Again, cryptic.” He curled his fingers around the banister, thinking about how true those words were for many things in life—easy yet hard. Some things were harder than others, though.

  “I put Nashville on a pedestal, but I shouldn’t have. Anyone can go. Wasn’t hard to pack the car, get a place, or find someone who wants to make you a star. Unfortunately, the people who take advantage of dumb hicks in Nashville are a dime a dozen . . . as long as you pay ’em. Most are full of crap. I wasn’t willing to bow, scrape, or screw my way to success, so . . .”

  Rhett made a face. “Sounds like LA.”

  “You had to screw a slimy record exec to get your job?” she asked.

  “Almost. I did a lot of tap dancing. You can lose sense of who you are out there.” Maybe that was why he was in South Carolina. He needed to remember who he’d been. Try to get back that brash, cocky son of a bitch who’d blazed a path to stardom. Because right now he was tired. So fucking tired.

  “It wasn’t all bad. When I first got there, I got a recording contract. We went on the road. I drank champagne . . . until my manager made some bad decisions, ripping that bottle from my hand and smashing it on the ground. Not sure I ever recovered from the mismanagement of my career. It’s hard to have something and then watch it disappear.”

  It felt insincere to agree with her. He’d been golden from the start. Lots of empty champagne bottles that someone else took away while he basked in the limelight. He’d been lucky. Didn’t mean he hadn’t worked hard for his success. There were many nights he never went to bed, many times he’d prostrated himself at the feet of power, many hours of worry, sweat, and pinned hopes. “But you’re not done.”

  “I am for now. Sometimes dreams . . . change.”

  “Why?”

  “Because some things are more important.” Heaviness shaded her voice. Perhaps even defeat. He didn’t like to think of Summer as defeated. He remembered the way she’d played that guitar, how haunting her voice was. “My turn. What are you doing here?”

  Rhett dropped his hands and stepped away. He eyed the Adirondack chairs that looked on the verge of collapse. The Nest needed some attention. Like an old warrior, it held too many scars and bruises. Perhaps Rhett should hire someone to make repairs and wield a paintbrush. Or maybe he could get his own hands a bit dirty. Once upon a time, he’d known how to swing a hammer and repair a simple engine. Occupying his hands would keep his mind from straying to things it shouldn’t. “I don’t know.”

  Summer watched him test the chair. “That might not be a good idea.”

  “What? The chair?”

  “Yeah. It’s wobbly. So are you here because of what happened?”

  “Don’t.” His word was a warning. He wasn’t going there with her. Hell, he wasn’t going there with anyone. No more talking about the accident, drinking, depression, survivor’s guilt, the breakdown he’d had on national TV.

  Her gaze stayed on him, and for a moment he felt as naked as he’d been earlier when she’d barreled into the bathroom and knocked him into the toilet. A jellyfish stranded by the tide, quivering, craving the protection of the sea. “Oh, Rhett.”

  His name was an exhalation, filled with things she wouldn’t say. He could hear everything she felt in that simple sigh and he hated it. “Let’s go inside.”

  Because then he wouldn’t have to talk about why he’d taken that exit and headed south.

  “Okay.” She extended her hand. He took it, noting how capable she seemed. Her grip was firm, like an answer to an unspoken prayer. “But you were right to come here.”

  He rose but didn’t drop her hand. Instead he turned it in his hand, cradling it. Her fingertips were calloused, likely from the guitar strings. At that moment, he heard her voice the way it had sounded that night fifteen years ago—throaty, sultry, unexpected. She’d had talent for finding the right words, eliciting the perfect emotion. A plucked string of regret reverberated inside him at the thought she’d let that dream go. “Was I?”

  She turned her hand over, giving his a squeeze. “I think you were.”

  For a moment they held hands. It was one of those narrowed-in moments, when the camera catches something unexpected. A oneness. An understanding. A simple human touch. A special must-see episode.

  “Pete has pie in the fridge. I picked it up for him at the Sweet Cheeks Bakery. Want some?” she asked, dropping his hand.

  “I don’t eat sweets.” Sugar was the enemy of everyone who appeared on TV.

  “It’s lemon. I’ll let you have my piece,” Summer said with a quirk of her lips, like she knew something he didn’t.

  “Well, maybe just a small slice.”

  Summ
er headed toward the weathered doors that hadn’t seen a good coat of paint in too many years. And then he remembered those nights studying at Butterfield’s Grill. The old guy—what was his name?—always brought him pie on the house.

  Maybe he’d been wrong. You can go home again. At least when you needed to remember who you were and where you came from. Nothing wrong with a visit . . . or a small sliver of lemon pie.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  November, present day

  Summer closed her son’s bedroom door and then immediately bent over and picked up an errant sock.

  There was always an errant sock.

  She took the offender to the stacked washer and dryer and made a deposit into the laundry basket. Then she took a few minutes to tidy up the kitchen, stacking dirty dishes for washing in the morning and riffling through the stack of mail she’d left on the counter on Friday. She couldn’t remember a time that she hadn’t spent the moments after David had gone to bed cleaning up the day’s messes. Maybe when he’d first been born and her mother had been there, but that was too long ago to recall.

  Finally, she sank onto the secondhand couch and dangled a glass of chardonnay as she stared into the darkness.

  Rhett Bryan was back in Moonlight, South Carolina.

  Odd how difficult it was to reconcile the witty, polished, late-night host with the man who’d stood outside that evening in such obvious pain. Most nights she couldn’t catch his Late Night in LA show because that would mean a really late night in SC, but sometimes, when she got home late from a gig, she would catch some of the show, and even though she’d known him once, he had evolved into an A-list star—not accessible and, therefore, not real to her.

  But tonight he’d been real to her . . . maybe too real.

  How long would Rhett stay?

  According to celebrity gossip rags, NBC had ordered him to take a break, which was understandable after he’d gone ape-shit crazy on Bev Bohanan. Poor woman. The controversial reality star had stumbled into a conversation about her show BEVerly Hills Blondes, sparking Rhett’s ire.