Never is a Promise

by Winter Renshaw

  “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into, Kota.” I flashed a warning smile.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” She leaned an elbow against the bar, her dark hair falling down her shoulders. “Maybe I’m not exactly in a mood to care right now. Maybe I’m feeling…nostalgic. And maybe you should seize the opportunity while you still have a chance. You know what they say, here today, gone tomorrow.”

  “Aw, now, that’s just the booze talking.”

  She shook her head. “Not entirely.”

  Waylon sat her martini glass on a napkin and left to help another patron. She placed a single finger into the clear drink and pulled it out, slipping it into her mouth and tasting the cocktail before going after the single green olive.

  “I don’t know why you’re pretending you’re not loving this right now,” she laughed, her hand brushing against mine and sending a jolt of electricity across my skin. “You’re eating this up.”

  “I’m not pretending anything. I’m taking my time. Going to make you work for me, honey.” I finished my beer, and the second the final drop slid down my gullet, I knew I had to get her home before she changed her mind.

  We danced a fine line, power transferring back and forth between us with each exchanged look, each wicked smile, and each raised eyebrow. Second by second, her tenacious façade faded and my determination to make her mine all over again thickened.

  “I hate to interrupt, but you two are making me very uncomfortable right now.” Ivy hopped down off the bar stool, and I caught a slight flush in Dakota’s cheeks as we both realized Ivy’d been sitting there the entire time. “I’m no fortune teller, but I can see where this is headed, and a girl knows when she’s outstayed her welcome.”

  Dakota hung her head, dark hair falling into her face as she attempted to hide a smile.

  “Goodnight, sis,” I said. “Kiss those babies for me.”

  Ivy threw me a wink as she hitched her purse over her shoulder, giving me a kiss on the cheek and rubbing Dakota’s back as she headed out.

  “Waylon,” I said, turning his way. Pulling my wallet from my pocket, I slapped some bills on the counter and slid them down. “We better be on our way. Thank you kindly for the good time.”

  Dakota’s eyes widened as I took her hand and pulled her out to the car.

  “We just got here,” Dakota said.

  “Yeah, and now I’m taking you home.”

  The second she reached for the door handle, I placed my hand over hers, stopping it. With my body pinning hers to the car and her back pressed against me, I ran my fingers through her dark hair, pulling it away from her neck. Whispering into her ear, I said, “You’re mine, Dakota. You always have been. You always will be.”

  A soft sigh left her mouth as my lips burned into the flesh of her neck, just above the bend of her shoulder.

  “And I’m yours. I don’t belong to anybody else but you,” I breathed. Kissing her detonated an all-consuming animalistic passion deep within me. “I have half a mind to take you right here in the parking lot and show you exactly how much I’ve missed you, but I won’t do that because you’re a proper lady, and my daddy raised me right.”

  She melted back against me, her head resting against my shoulder. I watched as she bit her lip, waiting for me to make the next move. With my hands gripping the indentation above her hip, I spun her around to face me.

  “If I lived a hundred lifetimes, Dakota, I’d still choose you every time,” I said, crashing into her mouth and taking her full bottom lip between my teeth. The day I found her again, it was like everything I’d ever lost had come back to me. And seeing her again, though time had changed her and made parts of her barely recognizable, I could still see through to the heart of her. “You should know that.”

  Her hands lifted above my shoulders, her fingers tugging on the ends of my hair as she kissed me back. My mouth lingered in the space above hers for a moment before claiming her berry lips all over again, breathing my soul into hers and hers into mine.

  “You’re the notes,” I sighed, breathing her in. “The lyrics. The music. The paper. The ink.”

  The wind played with her long hair, wisps tossing themselves in her face. We were all trying to get a piece of this beautiful woman. Me. The earth. Her fans. Her job. Everyone who’d ever come into contact with this fascinating creature had somehow dug their claws into her, and no one had the good sense to let go.

  She pulled away from my kiss, resting her head flat against my chest. While the rest of the world saw an impeccably outfitted, successful woman with a dazzling smile who oozed grace and elegance the way most twenty-somethings never could, I saw a sweet-natured girl who’d been stuck in survival mode her entire life.

  “Take me home, Beau,” she whispered. “I want to feel again.”

  “Feel what, darlin’?”

  “Everything at once. The way I used to when I was with you. I’ve missed that.”

  I helped her into the car before hopping in myself and heading back toward the ranch. She stayed mum in the car, leaning her head against the cool glass and staring up at the starry sky through the glass roof of the T-top.

  “You all right?” My hand found hers, resting on her thigh. I glanced over at one girl who epitomized a thousand feelings all at once.

  Her lips curled slowly upward. “I’m fine. Honest.”

  She flashed me a look – one I’d seen a hundred times before, and within minutes we’d arrived back at the ranch. Climbing the stairs to the porch, I reached for her arm, tugging her backward into me.

  “Once we get inside that house, you’re all mine,” I warned, cupping her face.

  Her blue eyes widened, locking with mine as she gave a slight nod. “You can have me, Beau. Tonight, you can have me. I won’t make any promises for tomorrow. But just for tonight, I’m all yours.”

  She looked at me as if it was just something she had to do.

  My body ached for hers as my lips found the soft flesh beneath her jaw as she tilted her head back. “I’m warning you, Dakota. Once I start, I won’t be able to stop.”

  “Okay.”

  One simple word was all it took for me to sweep her up in my arms. With her legs wrapped around my hips tight, I carried her inside with no intentions of letting her go until we were a heaving, breathless pile of naked bodies wrapped in tangled sheets.

  Love is natural and organic in the way it moves. It breathes¸ softens, and decays. It spins and twirls, rocks and bends. It can be defined by one moment in your life or a million tiny ones. It can make your thoughts all jumbled and it can change everything you ever thought you believed about yourself.

  Somewhere along the line, I’d thrown my bitterness out the window with reckless abandon. I’d grown tired of putting up a fight. I’d grown tired of festering hatred and resentment toward the only man I truly ever loved.

  It wasn’t the alcohol at the bar, though that may have provided a little bit of lubricant for a complicated situation. But it wasn’t an act.

  Matter of fact, I didn’t know what it was. It just felt like something I needed to do.

  With my fingers locking around the back of his neck, I held onto him like my life depended on it as he carried me upstairs to his room.

  Laying me down across the center of a sweeping, quilt-covered country bed fit for a king, he climbed over me. His hands finished unbuckling his pants as he pushed them down just enough to free himself in all his aroused glory. My hand found him, the warmth of his erect cock pressing against the smoothness of my palm and sending a burst of warmth to my core as I anticipated his next move.

  He reached across the bed and pulled a condom from his nightstand drawer, sheathing himself before gripping the undersides of my knees and spreading my thighs. Sex with him back in the day was a bumbling mess of experimentation and exploration. This was a man who knew what he was doing; a sexually mature man with the power to liquefy my desire in two seconds flat.

  “I’ve waited years for this,” he whispered
while I ran my fingers through his dark hair. He gripped his cock and placed it at my apex, pressing inside me one tantalizing inch at a time. Beau lowered his mouth to my breasts, tugging down the fabric of my bra and capturing one nipple between his teeth before sucking and letting it go. My hips bucked against his, wordlessly urging him to keep going, though it seemed he had other plans.

  As my fingers explored the satin-smooth brawn of his shoulders and trailed down the pulsing muscles of his corded steel arms, his mouth sampled every square inch of my body that lay within tasting distance. His triceps tightened with each thrust, and soft sighs escaped my lips in response.

  “God, you feel so good,” he groaned, the speed of his movements picking up in intensity. Beau’s mouth was in limbo above mine, lowering himself and dipping his tongue between the crease of my lips. “I could do this all night long.”

  He gripped my hips, using them as leverage as he pressed himself deeper inside me, as if he couldn’t get enough of me. The feeling was mutual; at least for the time being. I spread my legs and accepted as much of him as I could take. Every muscle in my body melted, heeding to the intensity of his raw power.

  We’d come a long ways from sneaking off at night and screwing like rabbits in the back of his truck. The soft mattress beneath my hips was a welcome change.

  He gripped the back of my neck before gathering my hair into a ponytail in his wide hand and lifting my mouth to his once more. My core throbbed and tingled before tightening around his shaft, and his breathing intensified. A wave of pure intensity washed over me, and my thighs widened to accept his final thrusts before we both collapsed into a melded, sticky mess.

  He peeled himself off me and climbed to the spot beside me on the bed, tugging a pillow under his neck as he stared at me. Blush rose in my cheeks. Intimacy had a tendency to make me feel painfully vulnerable, and Beau had crushed that barricade with the verve of a man who’d stop at nothing to take back what was rightfully his.

  And I was his.

  I could choose to fight it, or I could choose to find a way to live peacefully beside it, hoping someday it might fade into the background enough for me to move on.

  He’d owned me all those years whether I chose to accept it or not. I’d given myself to him since the day I fell in love with him, though at the time I never knew it’d be the kind of love that would take a lifetime to get over.

  He kissed me again, and I didn’t have a chance. My corded steel resolve, my diamond-hard determination, all of it was blown to bits the second we collided.

  Beau tugged on a blanket, covering our bodies as the sweat of our skin turned into a cool fog around us. Climbing into his embrace, I found a soft spot on his shoulder and buried my face.

  Once upon a time, before I knew any better, Beau Mason was my favorite feeling in the whole world. It took giving myself to him in order for me to discover he still was.

  I felt his eyes on me as I listened to the steady drum of his heart beating in his chest, and I thought about that girl who had the good fortune of falling in love with the most popular boy in school and the bad fortune of losing him at the worst possible time.

  My heart ached for her and everything she had to go through without him by her side. That poor, young woman who’d grown up to become so strong and resilient she forgot how to feel.

  It felt good to finally feel something again even if it was equal parts confusing and wonderful all at the same time.

  10 years ago

  I stepped down from the tour bus, my boots kicking up a small cloud of dust as I stretched my arms behind my head. Ten long hours on the road was all it took to get me from my last tour stop to my hometown.

  Somewhere along the line,everything had changed.

  In the six months leading up to that point, I’d turned twenty-one, churned out one platinum album and three platinum singles, toured in thirty-two cities across the country, and drunkenly slept my way into the hearts of more nameless, faceless girls than I could remember.

  “You’re young and dumb,” my tour manager, Mickey, said as he hoisted my arm over his shoulder and hoisted me into the tour bus the night of my twenty-first birthday. “It’s better that you get it all out of your system now. You’ve got the rest of your life to make up for being a giant asshole.”

  Somewhere along the line I’d lost myself, and somewhere along the line I’d lost the only thing that ever meant anything to me.

  My Dakota.

  “Hey, Beau.” My older sister, Calista, stood resting against her vintage Jeep Wagoneer. Her face pinched as she scrutinized me the way she tended to scrutinize everyone, but that’s what older sisters were for. Had Ivy been the one to pick me up, she’d have come running, jumping, and squealing into my arms. I loved them both the same.

  “Calista,” I said, squinting into the sun. I opened the luggage compartment on the bus and pulled out some bags. I was only in town for a few days, but my daddy said mama was worrying a hole into the floorboards at home and it was time for me to check in and assure her I was still alive and well. “Where’s Ivy?”

  “Probably at softball camp with Addison,” Calista said as we loaded up and drove off. The mere mention of Addison reminded me of Dakota, not that I needed the reminder. She lived in my thoughts, safely tucked away there, where I couldn’t harm her or hurt her. My jaw wriggled back and forth as I thought about Dakota and what she’d think if she saw me then. “She’ll be home for supper.”

  “Is she bringing Addison?” I asked, shielding my curiosity about Dakota with an innocent, unsuspecting question.

  “No,” Calista huffed. “You know how mama is about bringing people over for dinner last minute.”

  ***

  “Beau!” Ivy said that night as she rushed into the house. Her wild hair was pulled back into a bouquet of curls and her face glistened with sweat. She wrapped her arms around my neck, and I hoisted her up, swinging her around as if she were much younger than eighteen because, in my mind, she was still that gap-toothed, freckle-faced, curly-haired kid sister that no amount of time could change.

  We finished supper as a family and sat around the living room as I gave my parents the PG-rated version of my life on the road. And when everyone had retired for the night, I went outside to spend a little time with Ruby and my thoughts.

  “Want some company?” Ivy’s voice said through the screen in the storm door. “Look like you could use it.”

  She stepped out and took the rocker next to mine after reaching down and rubbing Ruby’s thick gold fur until she rolled onto her back.

  “What are we thinking about tonight?” Ivy asked. She’d grown up too much, too fast. The last heart-to-heart conversation we’d had was about the Harry Potter series and how we felt about Dumbledore’s death.

  “Never thought I’d be away from home this much,” I said, clasping my hands across my stomach and using my right foot to rock me back and forth. “It’s like I didn’t come home to the same place.”

  “This place is exactly the way you left it, Beau,” Ivy said. “I reckon you’re the one who’s changed.”

  I huffed a smile, shooting a look her way. “Who let you grow up so fast?”

  “An old man with a long, white beard and a crooked staff named Father Time.” Ivy stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth and rolled her eyes as she snorted.

  “How’s Addison?” I asked.

  “Don’t you mean, how’s Dakota?” she fired back without pause.

  “Busted,” I laughed it off.

  “Don’t play games with me, Beaumont.” She stood up and yawned. “I better get inside. I’m nannying for the Janssens tomorrow since it’s spring break. Those little twin tornadoes wear me out something fierce.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.” I wasn’t letting her get away that easily. “How’s Dakota?”

  “Why don’t you call and ask her?” Ivy said with a shrug. “I honestly don’t know. Addison says she hasn’t come home at all since Thanksgiving. I guess she’s wo
rking a lot and taking lots of classes. That’s about all I know.”

  “Is she coming home for spring break?” I asked.

  “No clue, Beau. Call her.”

  I pulled my phone out the second Ivy went inside. It was a new phone with a new number. My old one was dead and long gone, along with all my contacts. But I’d never forgotten her number. With the keypad on my screen, I pressed it in one slow number at a time.

  My thumb hovered above the call button for five indecisive seconds before I swiped the screen away and shoved the phone back in my pocket. It was late, and I needed to gather my thoughts anyway.

  ***

  The next morning I borrowed Old Blue from Ivy and dropped her off at the Janssen farm before heading into town. A quick pass through Sunrise Terrace trailer court told me Dakota wasn’t at home, or at least her car wasn’t there. So I headed toward the gas station to get a cup of coffee.

  “Beau Mason!” the woman working the cash register declared as I handed her a five-dollar bill. “Look at you. I watched you on T.V. not too long ago. You’re very talented.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “What are you doing back here in Darlington?”

  “Just visiting family, ma’am.”

  She gave me my change, and I slipped the coins into the give-a-penny-take-a-penny tray and slipped the cash into a donation box for a local animal shelter before giving her a nod and slipping out the door.

  “Beau,” a man’s voice called out. He certainly didn’t sound like a raging fan.

  I stopped in my tracks, turning to my left to see a man a few years my senior with white blonde hair and deep brown eyes.

  “Hey,” I called back, squinting as his face registered as familiar in my mind. And then it dawned on me. He was Sam Valentine – the guy who went with Dakota’s cousin, Rebecca. “Sam, right?”

  He nodded, placing his hands on his sides. “So, what brings you back to town?”