Never is a Promise

by Winter Renshaw

  “Grammys are on tonight,” Rebecca said, handing me a big bowl of microwaved popcorn. I placed it on my belly, which had become a convenient shelf in the recent months. She flipped to the award show and took a seat next to me, covering my bare feet with a fuzzy blanket.

  Two aging country singers stood at the microphone, reading off a teleprompter before the crowd went wild.

  “Wait, what did they say?” I asked. “Turn it up.”

  “They just introduced Beau Mason.” Rebecca seemed slightly less shocked than me. As far as I knew, he was nothing but a big deal in smaller circuits. Beau going prime time hit me like a ton of bricks all at once.

  A black curtain raised, revealing the father of my child with his guitar slung around his shoulders and a shiny, six-piece band; a bunch of strangers who got to spend day in and day out with him.

  “Good evenin’,” he drawled, his voice lower and his accent a bit thicker than before. His lips spread wide and carefree as he strummed his guitar, sending the crowd into an uproar. He wore the spotlight like a well-tailored suit, and damn, it looked good on him.

  Electric currents of invigorating excitement and boiling rage prickled up and down my arms, and my heart sank down to my blanket-covered feet as a lump settled in my throat.

  “Have I been living under a rock?!” I picked up the popcorn bowl and placed it on the table. “When did this happen?”

  Rebecca shot me a concerned look. “You really don’t keep up on him?”

  “I mean, I’ve looked at his website to see where his tours are headed. If he ever came to town, I’d go see him,” I said, running a hand over the underside of my belly. I’d imagined running backstage and showing him my condition. Maybe he needed to see it in person in order to dislodge the giant stick from his fame-whoring ass. “But I didn’t know he was this big.”

  “I heard he secured some endorsement, and he’s going to be a mentor on some country singer reality show,” she said, throwing me an incredulous look from the corner of her eye. “He was on The Tonight Show a couple weeks ago. You honestly didn’t know about any of this?”

  “I’m trying to focus on other things right now,” I said, neglecting to add that I thought about him every single second of every single day. Crossing my arms over the top of my belly and sinking back into the sofa, I watched as Beau and his band performed some upbeat, feel-good number before he shook his ass in his tight jeans and finished with his signature dimpled smile.

  One performance on national T.V. was all it took for me to realize the man I’d loved more than anything in the world was suddenly a complete stranger. He’d moved on and left me in the dust, despite the promises we’d made to each other just six months back.

  I couldn’t blame him. You give a twenty-year old kid from the middle of nowhere a fat stack of cash, millions of fans, and throw his name up in lights, and his priorities were going to change. I hated myself for believing him, and I hated myself even more for believing our love was special enough to transcend our destinies.

  I watched as the stranger on the T.V. gave a final wave and a wink before disappearing off stage.

  “You okay?” Rebecca asked, her hazel eyes kind. Though we were cousins, she was always more of a big sister figure to me. She’d been married to Sam since they were fresh out of high school, and they’d been trying to start a family for years before finding out Sam’s interior plumbing didn’t work right and it never would.

  “I’m fine.” I swallowed my pride and gulped in a lungful of summoned strength. Being weak wasn’t a choice I’d ever had in my life. “I should probably get back to the dorms. I have an eight o’clock class tomorrow.”

  I slipped on my shoes by the door and pulled my jacket over my shoulders, concentrating on the way the soft fleece felt beneath my palms in hopes that it might distract me from the burning tears that threatened my vision. Blinking them away, I pulled the doorknob and gave Rebecca a quick wave, dashing out before she had a chance to see my face.

  Abandonment felt like a swift kick to the gut and a surprise left hook to the jaw all at once. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way.

  He didn’t love me, and maybe he never had.

  Mama always told me boys would say just about anything to get what they wanted.

  Stupid, stupid girl.

  Hot tears burned down my face in thick streaks, and the more I fought them the harder they came. I gave myself all of a ten-minute walk to get it out of my system, thankful for the blanket of night that shrouded campus that evening, and by the time I got back to the dorms, I threw myself into bed and welcomed the sleepless night and the millions of thoughts that raced through my head faster than I could comprehend them.

  Screw Beaumont Mason. Screw his sweet lips and screw his empty promises.

  “Look who’s back, Ruby.” I stood up from the front porch as Dakota pulled into the drive later that Sunday evening. She trailed up the gravel, and the closer she got, the more I saw something different on her face that could only be interpreted as relief mixed with apprehension.

  She climbed up the porch. “Sorry. That took longer than I planned.”

  “That’s quite all right.” I stood up, pulling the screen door open for her and walking in behind. She grabbed her things from the kitchen table and met me in the family room, taking the seat across from me and clearing her throat as she flipped to a clean page in her notebook. “You enjoy your time with your mama?”

  “I did,” she said, crossing her legs. She clicked her recorder on and placing it gently on the coffee table. “All right, so…”

  Her words trailed off, like she was deep in thought. I waited, folding my hands across the back of my head.

  “Sorry,” she said, her usual confidence wavering. “Got lost in thought there for a moment. Take me to when it all began. After you were picked up by one of the Big Three. When did you first know your career was taking off?”

  “The night I played at the Grammys. Without a doubt, that’s when I knew. They had a band back out last minute, and we happened to be in town, so they asked us to fill in. It was right about the time things were taking off, but that just propelled us to a whole new level.”

  “I remember that performance,” she muttered softly.

  “You watched it? I always hoped you were watching that night. That wink I threw to camera one at the very end, that was for you.”

  Her eyes popped open wide, locking into mine for a half second. “I figured you were just winking at the crowd.”

  “Nope.” I shook my head. “That one was yours. They were always yours. All of ‘em.”

  “All of them?”

  “My manager made it my thing after that. Said all acts need a signature at the end. Kind of like signing your autograph and scribbling an insignia underneath.”

  “What was touring like for you?” she asked, her pen tracing circles in the margins of her notepad. Something told me her mind was elsewhere.

  “Like I said, mostly lonely. Most nights we’d hit up a local bar after a show. The guys would go cruising-”

  “-cruising?”

  “Cruising for women,” I said, continuing, “but I was never really into that. I’d have a couple drinks and go back to the bus. Retire for the night. Maybe work on a new song if I couldn’t sleep. Most nights I’d lie in bed and think about you.”

  Her pen stopped mid-swirl. “Right.”

  “I did,” I said. “I thought about you damn near every single night.”

  “Who’s Daisy?” Her question was the journalistic equivalent of a surprise left hook.

  “I thought you didn’t do any research on me.”

  “I didn’t.” She lifted her chin, suddenly more focused than a minute earlier. “Mom mentioned you were engaged or married or something to some girl named Daisy. You said you were lonely, so I was curious.”

  Her question felt more personal than journalistic. “She’s an ex-fiancée.”

  Daisy Foxworthy was a lot of things, but she could never be
Dakota Andrews. A perky cheerleader type with the kind of bubbly personality that would make a man forget his pain from time to time, she was everything Dakota Andrews wasn’t. That’s why I was drawn to her. I needed something different. I needed something to make me forget her. Dakota Andrews was the snakebite and Daisy Foxworthy was the anti-venom. Or at least that’s what I told myself before I wised up and realized there would never be a cure nor a substitute for the thing I needed most.

  “I assume your lifestyle wasn’t conducive to having healthy relationships?” she asked.

  “Curiosity killed the cat,” I smirked. “If you want to know why it didn’t work out with Daisy and me, then by all means, ask. I told your producer nothing was off the table.” I stood up, retrieving a couple beers from the kitchen and handing one to her. “Trust me. You’re going to want this.”

  I popped the top off and handed her the bottle as misty fizz evaporated from the top.

  “It’s just a simple question,” she said. “Many of our fans are interested in your personal life and why relationships didn’t work out. That sort of thing.”

  “Fans, huh.” I took a swig and rested my elbow against my knee, hunching forward and staring at the pretty little thing trying so desperately to pretend she didn’t still give a damn about me.

  “You think I’m being indirect with you. I’m not. Research has shown that fans like to be able to envision themselves with their favorite celebrities,” she asserted. “Discussing failed relationships make you appear real and genuine. It lifts that veil that so few public figures ever lift. It makes you feel attainable, if only as a fantasy. Our viewers will enjoy this information. Believe me.”

  “Viewers.” I took another swig.

  “Your fans. Your loyal fans. The ones who are distraught and heartbroken over your retirement.”

  “I’m not retiring completely. I’m just retiring from performances. I’m still going to write songs. I’ll just let the young bucks and newcomers sing ‘em for me instead.”

  She scribbled on her paper. “Good to know. See, that’s the kind of information I need. Anyway, trust me, I don’t want to hear about your failed relationship with Daisy, but our viewers will. So please. Enlighten me.”

  “I met her at a tour stop in Mississippi,” I said. “She was working at a bar we went to after a show, and we hit it off. She left that city with me that night and never went back until I called off our engagement.”

  “How long were you together?”

  “Maybe two, three years,” I said. “We had a good time and she was a sweet girl, but in the end, she wasn’t that great love of my life and it wouldn’t have been fair to her. I wanted to marry her because I thought she could fix me.”

  “Fix you?” Her lip curled up on the side, as if she found it humorous that I declared myself to be broken.

  If she only knew.

  “I thought she could make me love someone again the way I loved you.”

  Dakota swallowed audibly, clicking her pen and setting it aside before stopping the recorder. She glanced up at me, her hard façade fading into a girl with glassy eyes and the saddest smile I’d ever seen.

  “What are you doing?” Her voice crackled softly like a gentle fire.

  “This is me, Kota,” I said. “This is me honoring my promise. This is me coming back for you.”

  Addison always gave me a hard time for being so cold. She said I was hard like a diamond; that I refused to let people in and show them my flaws. Cracks in diamonds made them weak. I spent my entire adult life convincing myself, and everyone around me, that I was strong. I never let the cracks show.

  And once I married into Harrison’s family, I realized they were all diamonds too; hard and shiny and polished exteriors, hiding their cracks from the rest of the world. It was what people in the Manhattan Elite did. For the first time in my life, I felt like I belonged. I had a place in the world amongst other people who knew how to pretend like everything was fine all the time no matter what, especially when it wasn’t.

  But by the time I realized living life as a diamond wasn’t all I thought it would be, it was too late. It had become me. I wore my perfect façade like a well-tailored coat, taking it off at night when it became too heavy and putting it back on before leaving the apartment each morning.

  “They said you’re not very likable on camera,” Harrison had broken the news to me after my first failed audition at twenty-three. His words scalded my ego, but I was desperate to be better. To be perfect. “We need to change that. Make you softer somehow. I’ll call around tomorrow. Maybe it’s your hair. Too angled around your face?”

  I practiced and honed perfection like my life depended on it after that. Hours spent smiling in mirrors and rolling my Kentucky twang into a gentle Midwestern lilt and learning how to stave off tears during emotional news pieces all paid off in spades the moment I booked the weekend show.

  There I was five years later, sitting face to face with Beau, letting my guard down for the first time in a decade. Letting my cracks show. And it hurt. It physically hurt.

  My words refused to come up for air for fear of what I might say.

  “You okay?” he asked, rising to come my way.

  I envied people like him, people who weren’t afraid to wear their emotions like their favorite old t-shirt; easy and comfortable.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied, waving him away. I grabbed a tissue from a nearby box decorated with rustic birch branches and dabbed the corners of my eyes. I loved Beau. No question. I’d dreamt of the day he’d tell me he still loved me too. But the timing was awful. “It’s a little late, don’t you think?”

  “Late?”

  “To come back for me.”

  “We didn’t exactly set a date.”

  “I know, but too much life has happened. We’re two very different people living two very different lives. The damage has been done.” It didn’t feel the way I thought it would – the way I’d imagined a hundred thousand times before. I shook my head, relishing how wonderful it felt to hear him say he loved me and imagining how horrible it would feel when I told him about the child he never knew existed.

  His child.

  “What damage?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I’m not the same girl anymore. I think you’d be disappointed if we were to entertain anything as crazy as getting back together at this point in our lives.”

  “I may not know you anymore,” Beau breathed. “But I know what I feel. And damn it, Dakota, you’re the only thing that feels like home to me.”

  “You’ve spent all of five hours with me in the last eleven years,” I laughed. “You just want me to be who I used to be. I’m not her. I haven’t been her for a very long time, and I’ll never be her again.”

  “I missed you like crazy,” Beau said, placing a hard-wearing hand across his heart. “Sometimes it came in waves. Sometimes it drowned me.”

  I wanted to tell him the feeling was mutual. Instead I held my cards close and played dead.

  “There are pieces of you in every song I ever wrote.” He stood up, walking over to me and staring down into my eyes. He leaned down, taking my hand and pulling me up into a standing position. Beau’s hand cupped my cheek, forcing my heart into a runaway gallop. It wasn’t but two seconds before my lips parted, silently inviting him to crash into me the way he had earlier that day.

  I’d forced the kiss from my mind the second Ivy showed up, but I couldn’t ignore what was going on between us any longer. I was drowning too, and he was the air. His lips claimed mine harder than ever before, breathing life into me and igniting a flurry of butterflies in my core. Beau was a man now. A grown man. He’d filled out and bulked up. He’d matured and slowed down. He was a man with power. A man who knew what he wanted and wasn’t afraid to take it.

  He wanted me.

  He could have any woman on the face of the planet and still, he wanted me.

  Over a decade had passed, and he still had the ability to make me feel like I w
as the only girl in the whole wide world when we were together. I hated him for that.

  But I was strong, and I wasn’t caving in so easily. My heart was wrapped in a custom blend of fear and anger, thick like wool and sharp like barbed wire; well insulated and guarded from any and all potential hazards.

  “You have no idea what you do to me, Dakota. What you still do to me after all these years.” His voice was a low growl between kisses. His lips left mine, grazing down my neck as his hands slowly traveled my sides. Tugging up on my shirt, he pulled it up and over my head, attempting to take what he deemed his even to this day. “God, you’re so damn beautiful.”

  His fingers gripped the waist of my jeans, searching for the button as he continued peppering soft, hungry kisses into my flesh. Pressing his hardness against me, shivers ran the length of my spine before settling between my legs. My core ached for him in a way I’d never ached for anyone since him.

  “You want to know why I’m really retiring, Dakota?” his voice rasped and drawled and tickled my skin, leaving hot trails with his lips as he lowered himself to his knees. Tugging my jeans down, he started to speak.

  “No,” I interrupted. “Don’t do this.”

  “What?” Beau froze.

  “I don’t want to.” I strengthened my resolve and tried my damnedest to ignore the pleasurable burn in my core that wanted him so much it hurt. My body could beg and plead all night, but in the end my mind would win. It always did. “I don’t want this.”

  Beau backed off, surrendering his hands in the air, though the look on his face gave me an indication that he had no intentions of giving up that easily. I had no clue how to get our interview back on track or if we could recover after that, so I cleared my throat and took a step back.

  “I should go upstairs and check my email. Call my producer.” I hugged my sides. “I’m a little tired. Why don’t we try again tomorrow?”

  Beau studied me, his brows meeting in the middle and his mouth firmed into a straight line as he pushed a deep breath through his nostrils. I’d seen that look before, one hot Kentucky summer when his truck was having engine trouble. He’d taken apart the carburetor and studied it until he taught himself how to fix it. Only took him half a day before it was all put together and his truck was running again. He gave me that same look – as if he was trying to figure me out. I was a broken part, and Beau was determined to put me back together. To make me work again.