“I fought with them,” she whispered, tears sliding down her cheeks. “All I could think about was finding a minute alone to slip out the door and run all the way to your house. I knew if I could just get to you, you wouldn’t let them take me.”
“Augusta.” I crushed her into my chest, heart thrumming as my own salty tears bled into my beard, soaking the cotton of both of our T-shirts.
I held her closer than I ever had, held her like I’d lost her, because I fucking had. One night she was in my arms, the next vanished.
I’d lost the woman, and somehow, she’d found her way back to me, even after everything we’d both been through.
I murmured the only words I could think of against her ear. “I’m so fucking sorry, Augusta Belle.”
SEVENTEEN
Augusta—Ten Years Ago
My head pounded, my eyes blurry as I slowly woke up, cold window pane pressed against my cheek as my parents’ car sped down the interstate. “Where are we?”
My dad glanced at me in the rearview mirror, pleased smile on his face. “Oh, the princess is awake.”
“Dad, what are we doing? What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” he crooned, liquid brown eyes locked on mine. “What isn’t wrong? You disappear all night, sleeping around with some loser kid, and think as a parent I’m not gonna have something to say about that?”
“That’s not what we are—” I defended lamely, eyes searching my father’s in the cold mirror, my mother’s now turned and addressing me.
“Oh, honey, we just want what’s best for you, and I think what we’ve got planned will be the best thing. We’ve been thinking a lot about it. Your dad and I have really done our research on this, and believe me when I say—”
“Believe you?” I erupted, haze suddenly clearing a little more from my head. “You drug me to get me into the car, and then tell me I should trust you?”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Augusta Belle, but if we didn’t do everything in our power as your parents to put you on the path to a bright and successful future, well, we just couldn’t live with ourselves.” My mother’s saccharine voice made me cringe.
“That’s the problem here, isn’t it? You can’t live with each other, so you’re kicking me out thinking that will solve all your problems?” I assessed the locks in the car, the speed at which my dad was traveling, and debating if I could do some sort of roll that could keep me alive if I launched myself out the door right now. We couldn’t be that far from the Choctaw County line, could we?
But I wasn’t sure.
It was so fucking dark.
We had to have been in the car for at least three or four hours, which really fucking begged the question about what they’d given me to knock me out for so damn long. And then I remembered my mother’s array of prescriptions in her medicine cabinet. If only Fallon were here to see what kind of shit they were pulling now…
Fallon.
My heart was cleaved in half by a ragged edge, tears finally tracking down my face as I thought about how many hours apart we were for the first time in two years. If I’d only known last night was going to be our last night.
I swiped angrily at my cheeks, thinking crying would get me no closer to figuring a way out of this car, before my mother turned around again, thrusting a bag of fast food into my lap. “We stopped a few hours ago. It’s probably cold, but you were sleeping so peacefully we just didn’t want to wake you.”
I glared, cold and hard at her. “Why is it that you’re being the kindest to me you’ve ever been in my lifetime when you’re driving me god knows where to leave me all by myself?”
For the first time, the mask of kindness fell and her eyes hardened. “This school costs a lot of money. There’s no way in or out, and every fucking minute of your day will be structured and logged. Your dad and I can log in and watch you over the cameras.”
“Cameras?” I choked, throwing the cold burger and fries to the floor at my feet. “What the fuck is this place? And how long do I have to stay?”
My mother smiled again. She must’ve taken a truckload of tranquilizers to manage that smile on her face. “Well, the entire senior year of high school, of course.”
“All of it?” I was shrieking again; I couldn’t help it. “Can I come home for holidays? Christmas? What about Dad’s birthday? We always go out on the lake and—”
“Oh, we have to sell the boat, honey. Your dad is thinking of retiring early. Work has just been so stressful. You know there was some fire at a crack house this morning, and he could hardly get away to drive us down here now. We’re so lucky to have him.”
I winced, watching as she praised my dad, his eyes glazing over in the mirror as her superficial sweetness seemed to suck him in.
“This is fucking crazy, and I’m not doing it. I’ll just run away. I can work.”
“We thought about that.” My mom turned in the front seat and dug through her purse. “I know that’s what most parents would probably do, but that just didn’t feel like enough. Our Lady of Sacred Heart sounded like such a nicer option, and look how old it is. I know you like old architecture and things, so when I came across this brochure, I fell in love with it. We had to pay a little extra for the last-minute registration, but they’re used to dealing with cases like this. We’re lucky they leave a few beds open for sudden problems.”
“A bed?” I sobbed, throwing the brochure back into the front seat. “Why are you doing this? It’s just one more year of school. I’ll move out, you and Dad can have all the time in the world you want alone again. I’ll swim harder than ever this season and make sure I get a scholarship and get into a good school. I promise, Mom, please.”
Dad was shaking his head, Mama leaning away from my pleading touch. “No, honey. Not after what your father witnessed…”
“Witnessed? Why does it feel like there’s more you’re not tellin’ me?”
“Well, I guess it just came to our attention recently that you’ve been dating a boy who’s five years older than you.”
My eyebrows shot up, surprised that this might have more to do with Fallon than I thought.
“Fallon’s good for me. I swear he’s been the only thing making me feel sane and stable lately.” I couldn’t shake the irony tensing all my muscles. I didn’t make a practice of hating people, not even those bimbo mean girls at school who were always smoking cigarettes and cussing like that made them cool, but I hated my mother and father in that moment.
I’d resented them for years before now, spent as many nights as I could running away from the toxic chaos they created. And now, after everything, they were taking Fallon from me?
“But what does Fallon do? See, your father’s been around his sort for a long time, honey.”
“I’m a professional at recognizing a bum, Augusta Belle.” He nodded, eyes wide with knowing in the mirror.
I wanted to gouge those cold, dark eyes out of their sockets right now.
“He’s not a bum. He saved me.”
“Saved you from what?” My mom laughed. “Only thing you needed saving from was him. You know what you did…it’s illegal. There’s a name for it. It’s called statutory rape, Augusta Belle. I told you your father, and I did our research on this.”
“But, I… Now? I’m almost an adult. I can make my own fucking decisions!”
“We just want what’s best for you, sweetheart. And you may not know it yet, but this school is what’s best for you. Like a fresh perspective. Aren’t you always sayin’ you want out of Choctaw County? Well, now’s your chance.”
“No, I’m not always saying that.” That was a small white lie; I’d been saying that on repeat until the day I turned fifteen. The day Fallon caught me tryin’ to jump off the Whiskey River Bridge.
I swallowed the ache in my throat, tired of fighting, knowing they would never see my side of this.
“Well, if I had a nickel for every time I heard you say you hated that town…” My mom shook her head. “I just can
’t believe you’ve been sneakin’ out all those nights right under our noses. I mean, it’s not like we weren’t home. We had family dinner together every night! I just don’t understand why you wanted to go out and spend time with a boy like that.”
“He’s not what you think,” I defended quietly, the fight already fading.
“Forgive me if I didn’t like the way he had his hands on you, his tongue down your throat first thing in the morning.” Dad shook his head, eyes avoiding mine now. “Only time a man touches a woman like that is when he knows her intimately.”
I couldn’t help the blush that crept up my cheeks. If this were just forty-eight hours before, I would defend our innocent love tooth and nail. But the truth was, on top of all of this, the most beautiful part of the last day was that I’d given my virginity to Fallon.
We’d spent one last wonderful, bittersweet night in each other’s arms, crying, kissing, making music, and dreaming of our futures.
“If you woulda told me, Augusta Belle…” My mom fought tears.
“If I woulda told you, you would have dragged me by the hair into the car and robbed me of my life!”
“You’re right, I would have. And I also would have gotten one of those doohickeys put in your arm. What do they call it? The birth control so you don’t get knocked up by that useless riffraff and ruin your life.”
I screwed up my face. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I looked him up, Augusta Belle. You know anything about his family? They’re a rough sort.” My dad shook his head, disappointment crossing his features at the thought of his daughter spending time with people like that. “They got generations of crime runnin’ through their blood. I looked that boy’s daddy up on the system at work and found half a dozen bench warrants, mostly for public intox, but still. What does that man bring to society? You know his daddy’s daddy used to own a whiskey still out on the river. Made a lot of money sellin’ illegal ’shine back in the day, but not anymore. Now they’re all just a bunch of poor, drunk fools, livin’ off the rest of us.”
“Daddy,” I pleaded, thinking more than ever that launching myself out of a moving vehicle sounded like the only appropriate action.
“I mean it, Augusta Belle. Over my dead body will a boy like that lay his hands on you again. Your mama and I raised you better.”
I didn’t bother responding, defeat now weighing down every single one of my muscles with lead.
I would probably never see Fallon again.
I’d be lucky to even survive this school, much less make the grades to get into a college without a swimming scholarship. Good grades didn’t come easily to me. Swimming did, though. Swimming was my superpower, and now they were sending me to some fucking religious convent off in the swamps of Mississippi, and expected me to be my best self?
I’d have to depend on my parents just to come get me out of the hellhole.
I swallowed the ache in my throat, feeling my tears finally dry for the first time in a while. I sat up a little straighter in the back seat, vowing for the first time in my life that now would be the last time I would see both of their faces.
I didn’t need them to succeed; I only needed the strength deep inside myself that I’d been calling on since the first day my parents had begun to lay into each other, regardless of the tender ears hanging on every word upstairs.
They left my home life in a constant state of chaos, nerves on heightened alert as I was always braced to defend myself, fight-or-flight in full effect, twenty-four hours a day with these two.
But not anymore.
They might have stolen my life from me in one sense of the word, but maybe in another, they were giving it back to me.
I would finally be free of them.
I rubbed the spot at my throat where my necklace was missing. The one Fallon had given me.
I nearly lost it then, wishing I had at least that small piece of him to carry with me over the rest of my senior year.
If I was going to make anything of myself, I was damn well determined to do it without the fools sitting in front of me, masquerading as my caring parents.
I could handle the next year of school alone.
I would excel.
And on the day I graduated, I would walk out the doors a fully independent woman, and then head right back to Chickasaw Ridge and track down Fallon Gentry.
We had a life to get started on, and the next few months I was away would just be a small roadblock in our path to happiness. The love Fallon and I had could withstand it. We could withstand anything.
Besides, the only person I knew who was more stubborn than me was Fallon Gentry. He’d move heaven and earth to find out where I was. And when he did, he’d come track me down and steal me away from whatever this god-awful place was they were sending me.
My friends would start calling. Surely, I could write letters. It’d get back to Fallon at some point that I was in Mississippi, and then it would only be a matter of time before he found his way to me.
Little did I know then that the nightmare was just beginning.
It was what came after that ended up unraveling me, one swift thread at a time.
EIGHTEEN
Fallon
“I cried myself to sleep for months,” she whispered, eyes trained on the lines of the freeway blurring out the windshield. “It was unreal. I didn’t think I had so many tears.”
I couldn’t even begin to form words, her story far more fucked-up than I’d thought.
“And then I wrote you a million letters. Three a day for the first few weeks.” She shook her head as if she was embarrassed by the silly girl she’d been.
“I wish like hell I’d gotten those letters.” My eyes met hers across the cab of my truck. “I woulda come for you. I wouldn’t have been able to help myself.” I gripped the wheel, so much regret flooding my body. “Your parents were gone for months, out on their boat, I heard later. Everyone wondered where you went. It was the talk of the town for so fucking long. And then whenever I walked into the corner store, the bar, my goddamn cousin’s auto shop, everyone in the room would hush, eyes following my every move as if I knew where you were. As if I’d done something to you.” I took a quiet breath. “They looked at me like they wondered if I’d killed you.”
She bundled herself up a little tighter in my heavy flannel jacket, sucking in a ragged breath before unbuckling her seat belt and sliding across the bench seat until our thighs were touching.
I breathed a little easier then, havin’ her close.
Like the slow burn of warm whiskey down the back of my throat, tingles left on my lips, and surrender in my tired muscles, touching Augusta Belle Branson had been the only crutch I’d needed to get through some of the hardest revelations of my life.
I’d constructed some sort of story in my head about what’d happened the day she left, but it hadn’t been anything like what’d really transpired.
I slung my arm around her shoulders, hugging her a little closer to me as we drove on toward Tupelo, leaving our pasts behind and confronting something new every mile along the way.
“Hell, Augusta Belle,” I breathed her sweet name from my lips, the sensation it left an intoxicating one. “There was a time I wondered if you were dead.” I shook my head, remembering so many sleepless nights, her on my mind. “Those letters woulda been a game changer.”
She snuggled into the crook of my arm, one of her little hands resting on the rough denim of my thigh. “I kept them for a long time. Years. I didn’t throw them away until I left college. I used to read them on the bad days, but at some point, it was all just too much. I couldn’t keep reliving it.”
I nodded slowly, for the first time wishing I hadn’t been so hard to find. If I woulda parked my ass in Nashville and kept on with the high-profile life, it woulda been easier for her to find me. But that life… I just couldn’t keep fakin’ it anymore.
“So what was it like there? Your senior year at a school for rich kids wh
o sneak out and kiss kids from the wrong side of the tracks?”
Her grin split her face. “It was an all-girls’ school, for starters, with a heavy emphasis on daily routine and discipline. And you weren’t there, so that’s three strikes.”
I laughed, easing the tension inside the cab for the first time in the two hours since we’d left Memphis and hit Highway 22.
Augusta Belle kept working the worn denim of my jeans, a melancholy frown playing across her features.
“Still the saddest girl I’ve ever known,” I breathed into the quiet air.
Her grin tipped up her lips. “Some days lyin’ in bed and waitin’ for the sadness to pass was all I could do without fallin’ apart.”
I knew all too goddamn well what she meant.
Except on those days, I’d had whiskey.
It occurred to me again that I thought a fuck of a lot less about whiskey since she’d come around. There was a time my body would shut down into violent shakes I’d been hittin’ the bottle so hard, but detoxin’ off the hard shit had never come so easy as when I had her to distract me.
Truth was, life in general seemed a helluva lot easier when she was around.
And then I wondered if this was what it would be like to love her.
Let her into my life again.
Let her into my heart.
My palms began to prickle with an unfamiliar ache before I shifted in my seat, eye catching the sign that said we were only five miles outside of Tupelo. I couldn’t believe after all these years her first time back in the state was with me, listening to her tell the story of the first time she was here. I liked the idea of being on the road with Augusta Belle, but no way would I ask her to do this with me full time. This was my life.
This road, my truck, the music.
I couldn’t walk away from the music; it’d saved me probably even more than whiskey had.
I would be a selfish fool to think asking her to live like a nomad with me, guitar in hand, would be anything but awful for her. But the plain truth was, the road was the only place that’d been my home for a long time now, long before I’d even met Augusta Belle up top of the Whiskey River Bridge.
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