His For Keeps: (50 Loving States, Tennessee)

by Theodora Taylor

  Apparently Colin, not the cabin itself, was the source of that energy.

  Realizing I’m all alone makes me want to cover myself. But… I soon remember my clothes are now ash at the bottom of the fireplace. I go over to the small closet on the other side of the bathroom and find a few of Colin’s vintage concert t-shirts hanging there.

  I pull out one with “Nitty Gritty Dirt Band” emblazoned underneath a mountain sunrise graphic. Remembering the great cover of “Fishin’ in the Dark” that Valerie used to do, I put it on.

  It fits me like a very short dress and paired with one of the flannel shirts I also find in the closet, it could almost pass as a whole outfit. If I was skinny with long legs and fake glasses, people would probably mistake me for a hipster. In any case, it’s enough clothing to get me through the one gas station I’d have to hit for a fill up before reaching Alabama. And thank goodness, I think, spotting my shoes under the bed, at least he didn’t burn those, too.

  I search the main room’s floor and find my purse on the ground right beside the door. Where Colin must have dropped it when he carried me back into the house over his shoulder.

  Surprised he’d risk me running off while he was gone, I pick it up… and find everything’s in there—except the keys.

  A sinking feeling replaces all my plans. But I yank open the door anyway. I’ll walk back to town, I think. Find a phone. Call Triple A. Prove to Colin that I’m still my own person no matter what I said last night.

  And maybe I would have done it, too… if the faint sound of guitar strings hadn’t hit my ears when I step outside.

  I follow the sound of the guitar playing like a sailor to a siren.

  Colin, I find out after a few minutes of walking, has a creek, too. More like a brook or stream, though. Whatever you want to call it, it’s a lot bigger than the dinky one at my grandma’s house. But it’s just as respectful to the songwriting process. It quietly babbles in the background while Colin sits on the couch afghan, working out the melody to a song that sounds both dark and sexy. Like the hook to Chris Isaak’s “Baby Did a Bad, Bad, Thing” decided to marry a Top 40 country standard.

  I can tell the moment he knows I’m there, because he stops playing, the melody breaking off in an awkward twang of guitar strings.

  He looks over his shoulder at me, his blue eyes glittering and hard.

  “I didn’t say you could put on clothes.”

  “You didn’t say I couldn’t either.” I come over and sit down next to him on the afghan. “It’s cold out here.”

  “September in Tennessee. You never know.”

  I chuckle. “You got that right.” But he’s only wearing a t-shirt, I notice. “You’re not cold.”

  “Nah. Just came back from freezing my ass off in Scotland. I can deal with the 50s just fine.”

  I wrap his shirt around me, wishing I’d found some socks, too, as I bend my legs to tuck my feet underneath my bottom.

  “You ready to eat?” he asks. “I ran into town earlier. Picked up some chicken.”

  I am more than ready to eat. Can feel my stomach gurgle at just the mention of chicken, reminding me I haven’t eaten since yesterday.

  But there’s something I’m more curious about than eating. “Was that a new song you were working on?”

  “Yeah,” he says. He looks away, like the shy kid he might once have been before all the money and the fame. “Thought my well had run dry, but the melody hit me as I was driving back from town. Figured I should come here and work on it before I lost it. Songs don’t come to me as easy as they used to before…”

  He trails off.

  “Before your mama died?”

  He nods, his jaw setting, like his mother’s death is on his list of stuff he can’t do anything about like seasonal hunting laws and property taxes. And that’s when I notice it, hanging under the neckline of his t-shirt. His mother’s silver cross, the one she was wearing when she passed. I can see its simple outline underneath the shirt’s cotton front.

  “You’re lucky then,” I tell him, reaching out. I lay one hand on top of the covered cross, letting him know as best I can without words I’m happy he kept it.

  “I couldn’t write for years after my Paw Paw died,” I tell him. “I thought the music would never come back, and I should get used to being a home aide for the rest of my life. But then one day it did. Kind of like it did with you. I woke up and there was this little song all worked out in my head.”

  Colin’s hand covers mine on top of his mother’s cross, and I can feel his heart beating, painful and fast, like an angry song. Which is why I’m completely unprepared when says, “Alright then, play that song for me.”

  He pushes his guitar toward me, a Gibson, shinier and prettier than anything I’ve ever played, and my hands go up on instinct, afraid to touch it. “No, I don’t… I don’t really play in front of other folks. That’s not my thing. But thank you for the invite.”

  “If we’re going to do this, you need to learn the difference between an invitation and a command, Purple.”

  “I know the difference, but—”

  He let’s go of the guitar, maybe sensing I’ll catch it before letting it fall to the ground. He’s right, and I break off to catch it by the neck and body.

  “Go’on ahead,” he says.

  This, of all the things we’ve done over the course of us knowing each other, makes me the most shy. I shake my head, feeling my face heat up for a different reason this time.

  “No, I really can’t…”

  “You got stage fright.”

  He’s probably expecting me to deny it, like the tough girl I am, but I don’t. “Yes, I do. Real bad. The only reason I played in front of you that one time was because I didn’t know you were there.”

  “How were you planning on recording a demo, then?” he asks.

  I throw him a wry smile. “Oh, it’s one of the things I’m planning to work on next year. My number one resolution. I even downloaded a few e-books on overcoming stage fright from Amazon. I had a plan.”

  His expression doesn’t change, but his eyes are twinkling now, like he’s laughing at me. “Alright, you got stage fright. Know how to get over that?”

  I shake my head. “I haven’t gotten around to reading any of the books yet.”

  “And you don’t need to read ‘em either. Here’s how you’re going to do this, Purple. Close your eyes.”

  I close my eyes. But I can still sense the world around me. The sun, bright and high in the sky. Colin sitting in front of me. The beautiful guitar in my hands.

  “Now I’m going count to three. And when I’m done, you’re going to start playing that song I want to hear. Don’t think about it. Just play. One… two…”

  I wait for three, knowing I won’t be able to do it. My heart is beating in my throat, so fast I’m pretty sure it’s going to punch a hole in the bottom of my esophagus any second now.

  I wait for the three, but it doesn’t come. I know Colin’s still there, but all I can hear is my heart in my ears. I wait. And wait. And wait some more.

  But Colin still isn’t saying three. Eventually my heart slows and I can hear the brook in the background, cruising quietly past as I wait to hear three. Small animals rustling in nearby trees. A birdsong or two. With my eyes closed, it feels just like my creek back home.

  And suddenly I hear something else. The intro to my song about West Tennessee, and then a soft voice singing about blue grass, and the sons of sharecroppers, and farmsteads that nobody tends. About monthly Sunday chicken dinners and an old lady who doesn’t sit on the porch as much as she used to because the man she loved got sent home.

  Eventually the song is finished and quiet descends. The creek is still flowing, but the animals no longer chatter. They seem to be listening, too.

  My eyes are still closed. I’m afraid to open them, because it feels like that would break some kind of spell.

  And then comes Colin’s voice. “Play me one of the ones you’ve been wo
rking on since you started your new job.”

  I shake my head with my eyes still closed. “I can’t. I didn’t bring my journal with me.”

  “That’s even better. Play me whatever you wrote that’s so good, you already got it memorized.”

  Colin’s words pull on my hands like a puppet master’s strings, and before I know it, I’m playing him the song I wrote about watching my mom get on a cross-country train bound for LA. The one he suggested I write.

  There’s more quiet when I’m done with that one. And I begin to feel like a fool, sitting there with my eyes closed, because I’m too afraid to open them.

  But Colin’s voice is all business when it comes again.

  “Go back to that part where she steps on the bus and says ‘See you soon,” but you know she ain’t coming back. That’s your tear cue—the lines that are going make anybody listening cry—so you don’t want to be playing over them. Try that whole verse again, but stop playing on those two lines.”

  I do as he says, and he’s right. It’s way more poignant and I can almost hear the young girl’s broken heart vibrating inside the words.

  Then I’m done again, and this time there’s no quiet. Just Colin taking the guitar from me. I hear the sound of him setting it aside. Then his hand is on my face, cupping it, as he says, “Open your eyes.”

  I do and I’m immediately startled by his tender look. “You have a song about how you got this scar yet?”

  I begin to move away.

  “No don’t.” He uses the hand cupped around my face to pull me closer and a moment later, I’m in his lap, his legs folded under my butt, my legs sprawled out on either side of his. My naked core against his hard length.

  “I just want to know about you, Purple, that’s all,” he says, laying my head down on his shoulder.

  Not having to look at him is a relief, but it’s doesn’t make the bad memories his question brought up go away.

  “I don’t have a song about the scar,” I tell him. “I don’t sing about it. I don’t even talk about it.”

  His body stiffens against mine. “Not even to me.”

  Especially not to him. “No, and please don’t make me. It’s not a story I want to tell.”

  He abruptly stops holding me and starts shoving my clothes off. The flannel shirt is stripped off my body, and the t-shirt pulled off over my head. When I’m fully naked, he catches my arms behind my back and says, “Purple, look at me.”

  My heart freezes at the same time I feel myself clench down below, my body helplessly responding to his rough action.

  His eyes bore into mine, “You understand I could make you tell me.”

  I do understand. And the knowledge scares me to my very core.

  “Nod if you understand.”

  I nod. Scared of him. Even more so of myself.

  And he suddenly lets my arms go, stroking both hands into my purple curls. “But I wouldn’t do that to you, baby. I’m fucked up, and I’m curious about you—” he breaks, kissing one of the shoulders he bared when he stripped me naked. Again. “Damn curious. But I’m never going to force you to do something I don’t think you really want to do. Tell me you get that.”

  I do, and my heart warms with an emotion I haven’t felt for any other man but Beau in a very long time. An emotion I know I shouldn’t be having this soon, or this fast.

  And then he’s pushing into me, and this time it doesn’t even occur to me to fight him. It’s not that kind of fuck. Though somehow the feelings are just as intense as the first time. Colin’s arms around me, his hands holding my wrists prisoner, his head bent and pressed into my shoulder. In this position, there’s no question of whether I’m getting enough clitoral stimulation.

  I am. I so very, very am, and I soon fall apart, my cries echoing across the backwoods along with the animalistic grunts he makes as he thrusts up into me.

  I slump into him, just in time to feel the muscles in his shoulders bunch and hike up. His body stays tight a long time, his whole face squeezed shut, like he’s barely withstanding what’s happening to him. I can feel his release flooding my core in a stream I become afraid will never stop. But then it does, and soon after I feel his large hands back on my body, stroking my back.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  The question should have seemed a little out of nowhere, considering there wasn’t any back and forth like the other times. Just straight up sex. But I get why he’s asking it.

  Before could have been considered fun and games—the kind of things authors put in books to titillate their readers. However, having plain old vanilla sex makes me feel like we’ve just crossed some sort of line.

  I tell him the truth. “Yes, I’m okay, but this is crazy.”

  “Yeah it is,” he agrees. He sounds even unhappier about it than me.

  “I don’t think it’s supposed to be like this. So intense…”

  He nods in somber agreement. “I’m pretty sure it ain’t.”

  Well, at least we agree on that. This is crazy. Sex shouldn’t be this intense. I rest my head against his shoulder, wondering if I’ll ever feel strong enough to put a stop to it.

  22

  Colin is, I’m finding, a man of his word. He makes us a dinner of chicken seasoned with lemon and pepper, and a nice spinach salad to go on the side.

  “This looks delicious…” I tell him when he sets my plate down on the coffee table.

  I trail off when he sets another plate down. It has the same thing on it, times five.

  “It’s a thin line between built and skinny and Fairgood men tend to live and die skinny, except for a small beer gut if they’re lucky,” he explains to me. “I got to hit the protein hard.”

  Fascinated, I watch him eat nearly five times as much as me. Colin seems to enjoy the food for the first two chicken breasts, then it becomes a pretty grim business with him continuing to eat with mechanical bites after I’m long done.

  “Not quite as good as Josie’s chicken, huh?” I say after a while of this.

  “No, it ain’t. Next time I’m in town, maybe I’ll write your grandma about sending over a plate of her chicken. Though I hate to bother a little old lady. Maybe there’s somebody else who could make it for me…”

  I giggle. “Or you could get one of your groupies to make you some.”

  “Yeah, because that’s what blondes with fake tits are known for,” he mutters. “Being real good in the kitchen.”

  “You don’t know! Maybe all they need is a chance to prove themselves,” I answer with a laugh.

  Colin sets his empty plate aside on the coffee table. “You done eating?”

  “Long done. Why?”

  I get my answer when Colin takes me by the hand and pulls me up from the couch. “Time to keep my other promise,” he says.

  So yeah, Colin is for real a man of his word, and like a lot of musicians, good with his hands. Less than ten minutes later, I’m completely bare down below, courtesy of a pink razor he bought during the trip he took into town while I was asleep.

  When he’s done, he throws me a satisfied smile, and says, “My pussy looks good.” He cups me below, causing me to take a sharp breath, because there’s now no cushion of hair to serve as a buffer against his touch.

  His blue eyes turn dark with lust when he looks back up at me. “You want to touch my pussy?” he asks his voice low.

  I hesitate, remembering what happened the last time I tried. And not quite ready to trade in all these good feelings for what came after I disobeyed one of his commands.

  “Go ahead, you’ve got my permission to touch it this once,” he says. A magnanimous king with his possession. “I want you feel what I’m feeling when I touch you.”

  So I do. I tentatively touch myself, and find a much smoother surface now, one that’s way more sensitive to the touch. I dip a finger into my slit and easily find the button hidden within, already engorged and pulsing with desire. Apparently, getting shaved by a country superstar turns me on.

 
“My pussy feels good, doesn’t it?” Colin’s dark voice says above me.

  I don’t answer. I’m too busy exploring, my fingers going deeper and deeper inside me. I should be embarrassed for myself, but his gaze only makes me that much hotter.

  I don’t get much further than that, though. Colin’s hand closes around my wrist. I think just to stop me, but then he’s turning my whole body over so I’m on my knees when he ties one of the ropes still attached to the railed headboard around both of my wrists.

  “No! No!” I say with a moan. “You said I could.”

  He’s behind me now, his hips centered right behind mine so I can feel the muscled front of his legs against the soft back of mine, and his hard length against my quivering core.

  “Calm down, Purple,” he says. “This ain’t about punishment.”

  Then he pushes into me from behind. It’s embarrassingly easy for him to do so. Not just because of the position I’m in, thighs pushed apart with my naked pussy in the air, but also because I’m soaking wet. I feel another wave of shame come over me, because just the act of getting tied down seems to turn me on beyond anything else I’ve ever known.

  “No, this ain’t about breaking the rules, Purple,” he says behind me. “This is about laying some down. Tomorrow I’ve got an afternoon flight to Ontario for the Canadian leg of my tour, and I’m not back for another few weeks, til Columbus Day weekend.”

  My heart shrinks with the reminder that our time together is limited. Which is stupid. Because of course he’s leaving Tennessee tomorrow. And I’m driving back to Alabama in order to get the house ready for Josie and Beau’s return on Monday. Still, I can’t help feeling gloomy, like something magical is coming to an end.

  “You around Columbus Day weekend?” he asks me.

  “Kind of,” I say. “That’s the last Sunday Dinner of the year, so I’ve got to help my grandma out. But I could come here after that, since I’ve got Monday off.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” He starts moving behind me, with long aching pumps. “We don’t need to have that other discussion again, right? I think you get that this pussy belongs to me?” He cups my core in that rough way of his, so I can’t possibly mistake which pussy he’s talking about.