He nodded proudly.
“Fuck, well, all right then. Thanks for helping her, I guess.”
“You want to see her?” he asked.
“Uh…” I wasn’t really sure what sorta territory I was in now. “I would.”
He nodded. “My wife is probably already up. She starts her days early, likes to have hot cakes and fresh syrup waitin’ for me when I get off the night shift.”
“She sounds sweet.” I indulged him.
“She is.” He walked around the desk, gesturing me toward the door. “She wasn’t always, but me either. We hung in together, though. Grew up alongside one another. Did my best to hold her in the dark times, and there were a lot of them. Lost our first son to tuberculosis when he was just a baby.”
His admission rocked me, a wave of emotion pushing at my eyelids. “Sorry to hear that.”
“But life goes on. Best you can hope for is someone easy to talk to, to share the days with.” He patted me on the shoulder as he pushed open the door, pointing me across the street. “Little yellow house on the corner. Just walk on in, I’m sure she’s expectin’ ya.”
And in that moment, it felt like I’d overcome a mountain of shame to get here, thankful for the old man watchin’ out for my girl, honored he’d opened up even a little to me, a fucked-up roadie musician who couldn’t even be tall enough to stand for his woman when she needed him most.
I sucked in a cool breath of morning air, nodding at him once before walking off across the parking lot and to the little yellow house on the corner that held my future.
I was finally gonna be strong enough to stand up for it.
And finally, without the whiskey, a soothing tingle ran through my blood.
I was gonna get my whiskey girl.
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.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Augusta
I twisted my hands in my lap, feeling a million miles away from Fallon even though he sat just across the cab of the truck, bench seat stretching lonely between us.
I’d gotten used to sittin’ at Fallon’s shoulder. The reassuring brush of his thigh, the stray touch of his fingertips against my knee something I’d come to live for, but that didn’t change the last twelve hours.
Not in the slightest.
Him disappearin’ just when I’d laid out my most precious secret? How could I be sure that wouldn’t happen again when I said something he didn’t like?
I’d held off divulging everything to him for that very reason, afraid I’d have to watch his back, walkin’ away again.
My eyes held fast on the horizon, truck cruisin’ down an old country road, lush green fields highlighted with the occasional stand of magnolia trees for almost as far as the eye could see.
“I don’t remember Mississippi bein’ quite so…pretty the last time I was here.”
Fallon’s eyes cut across the space between us, fingers twitching on the wheel. “Hard to see the nice things when you’re blinded by heartache.”
I let his words hang heavy, realizing how true they were on more levels than I could count.
“Y’know,” he finally said, interrupting the silence, “Every day, every gig, no matter where I was, in a sea of people, my eyes never stopped searching for you.”
A new ball of locked-up emotion threatened to overwhelm me before I swallowed it down, the reality that he’d ached as much as I had all those years like a fresh wound.
Fallon slowed the truck, sensing everything that still sat unsteady between us, turning into the first pull-off he could find.
I gnawed on my bottom lip as the shade of an ancient stand of magnolias draped in moss nearly swallowed us from the side of the road.
I opened the door to find the palest pink and white petals floating on the breeze, dancing onto the hood of Fallon’s truck, landing in my hair, carpeting the soft dirt under my feet.
“It’s a little like a fairy tale.” I pushed the door closed behind me, coming around the front of the truck and meeting Fallon.
I felt his eyes on me, my only focus on the sweetly scented blooms engulfing us.
“Every day with you is a fairy tale, Augusta Belle.” He followed at my shoulder as I waited at the base of one of the tallest trees in the grove, a pond riddled with moss-covered stone at the base. “I can’t promise I won’t fuck up. I have a bad habit of fallin’ just when I need to stand tall, but I’m serious when I say that ends now.”
His rough palms cupped mine, the gravelly lilt to his voice conveying the emotion he had trouble expressin’ with words.
“Fucked up last night, I’m not proud. Wouldn’t be right if I didn’t tell you that I almost made the mistake of my life last night. Took almost losing it to see the beauty right in front of my face. With you. Even when it’s hard, it’s still so much more fucking perfect than I’ve ever had.” His thumb caressed the sensitive hollow at my neck, eyes clinging to mine as if his life were at stake.
“What I did last night—” he squeezed his eyes closed “—reminded me of all those dark fucking nights I spent without you, looking for happy at the bottom of a bottle. Took till bein’ with you again to remember that I’m not him. I’m the man I am when I’m with you, making music, singing alongside you…” His head dipped, voice lowered. “…takin’ care of you.
“I don’t plan on ever bein’ that man again. Took a flashback of it last night to send me runnin’ the other way.”
Both his arms encircled me then, holding me against his tall body, swallowing me against his form, sheltering me in him.
Right where I loved to be.
He hummed against my ear, swaying me softly as the wind swirled a cascade of blooms around us, the words of the song he’d been working on at my ear.
My rough and rowdy days long gone
You rode the storm and broke the chains
Rain clouds clear and the sunshine came
Aw, you kiss me sweet like honey and whiskey
Your love is warmer than sunshine and whiskey
Your love heats like honey and whiskey
Your love is sunshine and whiskey
We stood like that, heartbeats syncing as the harsh world faded at the edges.
As long as we could do this, everything would be okay.
I’d always felt that way about Fallon, and that feeling only grew with each passing memory we made.
“Sometimes I wish we had a second chance to meet again for the first time.” He brushed his lips against mine, tingles spiraling through every piece of me with his touch. “Don’t know what I would do different, but I’d find a way to do somethin’.”
“I was fifteen, Fallon.” I said the words softly, the inevitability of our outcome settling like a cloud. “There wasn’t a thing else we coulda done.”
He breathed against me, chest pressed against mine as one hand sank into the waves of my hair, lips finally touching mine in the tenderest of kisses.
Soft and slow, reflective and redemptive, our touch healed what our words couldn’t.
TWENTY-SIX
Fallon
“Lived too many long days and dark nights without you, sunshine. We’ve got a past that neither one of us can help. But you and I have a say in our future, Augusta Belle. And I swear I’ll spend every day of the rest of my life making it up to you.” I held her fingers at my lips, leaving kisses over every tender spot.
Her eyes softened, hands wrapping around my neck when my palms cupped her thighs and I pulled her up against my waist, back pressed against the smooth bark of a giant magnolia. She locked her ankles around me, arms held so tight I thought she might suffocate me. And still, I didn’t care, not as long as we were together.
“I love you. That never changed, I was just too stubborn to admit it before now. Marry me, Augusta Belle. Please. Make me the happiest motherfucker south of the Mason-Dixon and be my wife.”
Fresh sobs racked her form, a brilliant and toothy smile splitting her gorgeous face before she cried harder against my lips.
“Next town we’re in, we can go anywhere you want and pick out a ring.”
“Shut up.” She held my face in her palms, peppering my lips with kisses. “I don’t need a ring.” She wove her fingertips into my hair, lips whispering against the sensitive skin at my neck. “But I do need something else.”
I slid her down to her feet, soft pink light showering my girl in a radiant golden hue. “Anything.”
“Sure about that?” A slightly scary twinkle lit her eyes for the first time in hours.
Christ, I’d do anything to keep that amused little glimmer in her eyes every day. “What did I just promise to do?”
“Well, first, you have to understand one thing.” She held up a finger. “I didn’t tell you, not because I wanted to hide anything, but because I had to be sure you were ready.”
“Ready?” I arched an eyebrow.
Her grin faltered for an instant before she rested both of her hands on my forearms, pressing her lips together in thought.
“There’s no other way to say this except that… Well, that name my dad left on the note. It kept eating at me, and then I went digging the night before I left to come see you. And I found—” She pulled a little chain from around her neck, a cameo dangling I hadn’t noticed earlier. One I hadn’t seen in more than a decade.
“The necklace I gave you,” I breathed, shocked to see her wearing it now.
“I found it in an envelope, buried in the same folder as the rest of the other stuff about the fire and your dad’. And then there was this letter.” She stopped, eyes haunted. “One letter.”
“A letter?” I wasn’t sure I was ready for the contents.
“And the only thing that was folded inside the letter was this picture.” She slid a wallet-sized picture my way of a chubby, smiling baby, thighs the size of drumsticks and a shock of wild golden hair.
“Christ.” I held the faded picture in trembling hands.
“A boy.”
Silent tears swam in her eyes as she stepped closer, hand at my arm again. “I think it’s him.”
The earth about fell out from under my feet right then.
Him.
Augusta and I had a son.
Our little boy was out there somewhere.
How the fuck hadn’t it occurred to me that we could maybe find him? Meet him?
“Jesus,” I breathed, handing the picture back as my heart clawed its way out of my throat.
“I had these big plans, so much hope when I was at the school that last month. I thought I would raise enough money for the bus fare back to Tennessee and find you, and then we could find him together. I never signed anything, Fallon. I never said they could give our baby up for adoption. They just took him.”
I nodded, processing the overwhelming information cycling through my system.
“One of the nurses finally told me the baby needed that family more than he needed me, and I realized”—she was talking faster now, emotion clogging her words—“she was right. I couldn’t be anything to him. And I heard so many stories of you in Nashville. I knew…well, I knew we would be nothing but trouble for that baby.” She swallowed down more tears. “After I gave birth, the only thing anyone ever said that even acknowledged I’d had a baby was when the nurse finally whispered that the baby had ‘gone to a good and godly family.’”
Her fingers trembled as she worked at the frayed hem of my shirt, distracting herself as she spilled everything she’d been carrying on her slim shoulders.
“So when I finally graduated high school, the counselor lined up a summer internship at Ohio State. They were the only school still accepting applications, and I thought the farther away I was, the easier I could forget. But at night… The nights used to get to me. The girls in my dorm would wake me up throwing pillows because I would just be crying in my sleep. By the end of the semester, they all knew I’d lost a baby, and they all requested to be transferred to a different floor. It was so hard. And not even knowing, not being able to see the sweet little person
our baby was growing into…”
“Jesus, Augusta, you think that name your dad had written down might be connected to the people who adopted our boy?”
Wet eyelashes framed her big whiskey eyes as she gazed at me with new intensity. “I don’t think so—I know so.”
“And this is the thing you need? To find him?”
She paused, long, quiet beats more deafening than any sound could be.
A thousand thoughts rushed through my head, knowing every one she’d probably already had. She’d had years to process all of this. I had a lot of catching up to do, but the idea that our kid still might be better off without either of us in his life was at the forefront. Sometimes fate had a way of throwing a person only what they could handle. I liked to believe that most days, but Augusta’s tears had me thinkin’ somethin’ else entirely.
“I have to know,” she finally confessed, arms wrapping around herself before I untangled her, pulling her into my arms for long minutes. My chin resting on her shoulder, I held her as her fingers clutched at my shirt and our minds ran away with us.
“I’ll do anything it takes to make you feel better,” I whispered against her sun-kissed hair.
She didn’t reply for a long time, words caught in her throat before she breathed, “Thank you.”
I nodded, rubbing her back and sensing on a primal level this woman needed to know what happened to the sun and stars that were stolen from her universe so many years ago. I understood she’d carried a burden I would never fully understand, nor could anyone else.
I’d do anything it took to help her find the missing piece.
“So, what’s our first step? Researching that name?”
Augusta Belle pulled away, a soft smile turning up her lips as she wiped at the wetness covering her cheeks. “Well…”
“You’ve already done the research, haven’t you?” I knew her, knew she wouldn’t have been able to let it go once she had a name.
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