Famous in a Small Town

by Kristina Knight

  Savannah was lost, somewhere between dreaming and wake, listening to Collin’s harsh breaths soften and calm. He moved to the side, burying his head in the pillow but leaving an arm across her torso. Their legs remained tangled atop the soft quilt, and Savannah ran her fingers lightly over his arm.

  They should maybe take the rest of the day inside this perfect little cabin, away from the world and phones and bad news. She could stay in this little piece of heaven for the rest of her life, maybe. The thought made her nervous, but the feelings he brought out in her were calming.

  “Someone’s going to have to do some laundry.”

  “I’ll take care of it. Pretend Boy Scout, remember?” Collin raised his head from the bed. “I would have aced both the preparation and laundry merit badges. If I had been a Scout.”

  “You have all the trademarks without any of the merit badges,” she teased. “Poor Collin.”

  “Hey, you have to admit me being prepared was a good thing in this particular instance. And the last one.” He rose from the bed, disposed of the condom in a small trash can beside the bed, and reached for his shorts.

  So much for spending the rest of the day with Collin, his amazing hands and a few more orgasms.

  Savannah found her bikini bottoms and pulled them over her hips. She stuck the top in the pocket of her shorts and pulled her T-shirt over her head before stepping into them.

  Unsure of what to say—she had a feeling an offhand thanks would be rude—Savannah made her way to the door and slipped her flip-flops back on her feet. She hadn’t realized she’d worn the sandals into the cabin.

  “Why a hummingbird?” he asked, stopping her. “I was thinking some kind of tribal symbol or a butterfly. Most girls like butterfly tattoos, or so I’ve heard.”

  “There you go with the old-school thing again. This isn’t the ’90’s. Even if it was, I’m not most girls,” she said, smiling at him as he straightened the quilt on the bed and glanced around the room as if he expected something to be out of place. Nothing was.

  “No, you’re definitely not. So why the hummingbird?”

  She didn’t want to talk about the hummingbird, not yet. Maybe not ever. She tried to change the subject. “Why no tattoos?”

  “Granddad was of the opinion that only soldiers should have tats, and those tats should be their unit numbers or mascots.” He shrugged. “I never found anything important enough to me to make it a permanent part of my body.”

  They walked outside into the bright sunlight and it was as if time had stood still. The sun was still high in the sky, a light breeze filtered through the trees and the scent of pears, apples and peaches filled the air. Somehow, Savannah had expected it to be twilight.

  “Not even your precious fruit trees?”

  He shook his head. “I love the orchard, but it’s part of me here.” He put his hand over his chest. “I never figured I needed it anywhere else.” He waited.

  Finally, Savannah said, “It’s to remind myself to be courageous and strong.” That wasn’t everything about the hummingbird, but Savannah wasn’t sure she could put all of her reasons for the tattoo into words. For the first time, though, she wanted to try. Having sex with the man was one thing. Telling him all her secrets was quite another, but maybe she could tell him just this one.

  “There’s an old legend that Mama Hazel told me once, about hummingbirds being time travelers, because they are the only birds that can fly both forward and backward. The first time she told me the story I was little, maybe only eight. I can’t really remember, but I’d had a nightmare that the people from the state had come to take me away. She said no one was going to take me away. She sang me that old Seals and Crofts song from the ’70’s, ‘Hummingbird’ and after that she started calling me her hummingbird.”

  Savannah sat on the little porch step. “Along with the time-traveler thing, a lot of people believe hummingbirds help us to open our hearts to the impossible. To love. I wanted to remind myself of that.”

  Collin sat beside her and reached for her hand. He didn’t say anything for a long moment and Savannah wasn’t sure what to say. Why had she told him so much? Having sex—twice—didn’t mean he was her confidant. It didn’t even mean he was her friend. He was just... He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand.

  She wanted him to be her friend. If she were completely honest with herself, she wanted him to be more than her friend. She wanted to be the kind of woman who might be worthy of a man like Collin Tyler. God, she wanted that.

  “Why white ink?”

  Maybe he could have one more secret. She’d already told him the rest.

  “Because it’s pretty and because I wanted it to be mine. White ink is definitely visible against my skin, but not as much as black. So unless someone is looking for it, it’s mostly invisible.”

  He held her hand as they sat on the porch. “Most people get tattoos to show them off.”

  “And I’m not most people. I don’t mind people seeing it or knowing about it, but it’s for me. My reminder. My inspiration.” Her hope, too. Because for most of her life she’d closed herself off to love. She’d been afraid to let people in—she was still afraid, to some extent. The hummingbird was a reminder to herself to be strong. Sometimes she was better at remembering that than others. Nashville, really the last two years, were the neon-blinking examples of that.

  He nodded. “We should probably head over to the pears, if you want to see the difference between nearly ripe and ripe.”

  Collin released her hand when she climbed into the four-wheeler, but once she was settled in the passenger seat, he took it again, bringing a smile to her face. He started down the little dirt track, the Gator driving in and out of the dappled sunshine.

  “Savannah?” he asked after a while. She tilted her head toward him and he said, “If I called you sometime—”

  “Yes.” She cut him off before she could think too much about it. “Yes, I’ll answer.”

  Her intention in having sex with Collin was to forget, just for a little bit, the mess that her life was in. Somewhere between that first kiss in the lake, the argument at the farmers’ market and this afternoon in the cabin, and that sweet bed with the old quilt, it had become more. The thought of more Collin made her giddy.

  She ran her fingers lightly over the tail of her T-shirt covering the tattoo. Maybe this time she could fully embrace the hummingbird legend.

  Maybe this time, the hummingbird would truly lead her home.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  AT THE RANCH, Savannah sat on the slanted roof outside her window, watching the sun sink into the forest surrounding Slippery Rock Lake. She knew it was silly to come out here to think, but climbing out the window was habit. She’d been doing it for more than half of her life.

  In the distance she could see the navy metal roof of what would become Levi’s house once construction on the inside was finished. A last brilliant ray of sunlight glanced off it, and she squinted at the glare.

  She’d left Collin’s little cabin in the woods a few hours before. Had driven with him through the pear orchard, and still wasn’t positive she could see the difference between ripe and not ripe. What she was positive about was the man she’d been with.

  Collin was different from men she’d known in the past. He listened when she talked, for one thing. He was careful in every aspect of his life, from the orchard to the high school friendships that were still part of him. He was confident in who he was and what he wanted, and he made her want to be confident about what she wanted.

  So what was it that she wanted? Other than him, of course.

  She pulled her knees to her chest, circling her arms around them.

  She wanted to do something that mattered. Her father and brother ran an organic dairy. That mattered. Collin ran an orchard. Providing food to people mattered.
Her mother baked sweet things that people enjoyed. Even Amanda had a passion and a purpose. If a seventeen-year-old could figure those things out, surely a twenty-seven-year-old could.

  What could Savannah do that mattered?

  She heard the windowsill behind her scrape against the casing as it raised.

  “You haven’t been out here in—what?—ten years,” Levi said, his voice quiet in the growing dusk. He climbed out the window and settled beside her on the steeply pitched roof, but instead of setting his feet the way she had so that she wouldn’t slide right off, he sat with his legs crossed, as if he were on solid, level ground. It was like the laws of gravity didn’t affect him or something.

  “More like five, but you were off playing the football hero for a few of those years.”

  “Deep thoughts?” he asked, nudging her shoulder with his.

  “How’s the new house coming along?”

  “Putting up the last of the drywall next weekend, then it’s just cabinets and the last of the painting.”

  “Excited about not living in your childhood bedroom?” Savannah nudged his shoulder back.

  “It hasn’t been so bad.”

  Savannah raised an eyebrow and speared him with a look. “You’ve been back for a couple of years now. Living with Mama Hazel and Dad has to have cramped your style a little.”

  Levi shrugged. “As much as it’s cramping your style.”

  He had a point there. Not that he knew he had a point. She didn’t think Collin had told Levi about their rendezvous at the lake, and she definitely wasn’t going to.

  “It’s nice being back here,” she said after a while. “I didn’t realize how much I had missed this place until I decided to turn left.”

  “Decided to turn left?”

  Whoops. Probably not the best choice of words. Savannah took a breath. “I, uh, was considering...not coming back here,” she said and swallowed. She should probably keep the whole left-turn, right-turn debate she’d been having with herself that night on the highway to herself. But then, her typical response to everything was to pack it deep, deep inside and pretend whatever the “it” was wasn’t actually there. She wanted to be better than that.

  And she could be better than that. “I messed things up in Nashville. Really messed them up.”

  “I thought you were taking a break.” He tilted his head to look at her, and Savannah was thankful for the growing dusk.

  “It isn’t so much a self-imposed break as being asked to leave the tour.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “I did something I’m not proud of, and I did it because part of me wanted off the tour and out of the circus I’d made of my life when I first went on the talent show,” she said, rushing the words out before she could second-guess her decision to tell her brother. It was crazy to think it had all happened just three short weeks ago.

  “Do you want to go back?” he asked after a long moment. Savannah shook her head. She didn’t want to go back. Not because of the scandal that was certain to come if she tried, and not just because of her past.

  “I don’t want to be a singer.”

  “You love singing.”

  She raised one shoulder. “Loving to sing and wanting to be on a stage are two very different things. I just didn’t know that when I started this whole thing.” She threaded her hands together around her knees. “Do you think Mama and Daddy will be disappointed?”

  “I think they’ll be confused. I know they’ll want to know what you plan to do next.”

  “How did they take it when you didn’t go back to football?”

  “That was different. I was injured.”

  “A partial tear in your hamstring isn’t a career-ending injury.”

  “It was the meniscus, and it was a full tear, requiring surgery.” He waited a beat. “But I could have gone back. Done the rehab thing, made it back on the team roster.”

  “Why didn’t you?” If she knew why Levi had left the limelight of professional football, maybe she wouldn’t feel like such a failure for not wanting the music career that had been at her fingertips. For being so afraid that she’d nuked it instead of calmly walking away.

  “I love football. High school and college and the pros, I loved all of it. But I always knew there was more to life than football. I like being here. I like the work and I like the familiarity. I like that what we do here matters.”

  Savannah nodded and watched as the sky made the final change from purple-gray to nearly black. A few stars twinkled to life over the treetops.

  “I want to do something that matters.” She whispered the words, testing each as she let them slide off her tongue. They felt right. “There was a music program I got involved with in Nashville. I liked that program.”

  “You want to run a music program in Nashville?”

  “No.” Definitely not in Nashville. “Maybe it isn’t a music program at all. Maybe it’s...something else.”

  “What else?” Levi pressed.

  Savannah lay her head on her knees and looked at her brother in the darkness. “I don’t know. I just know that I don’t want to do whatever it is on a stage with thousands of people watching me.”

  “Not even if those people adore you?”

  “Especially not then. I’m not adorable.” She was broken and messy and all the other things that weren’t adorable.

  Levi tweaked her nose. “Sure you are.”

  “Levi.”

  “You’re my sister and I think you’re adorable.”

  Savannah rolled her eyes.

  Levi pulled his knees up, to sit like her on the roof. “Is the thing that matters and that doesn’t think you’re adorable a person? A Collin-type person?”

  Savannah’s eyes widened.

  “What? I’ve got eyes. You walk into the bar and he loses his shit. Quietly, because he’s Collin, but he loses it. You keep disappearing with the four-wheeler, and every time I see you leaving, it’s in the direction of the lake and the orchard. Then, there’s last weekend at the farmers’ market.”

  “You saw that?”

  “I think the whole town saw the two of you. So?”

  “I like him.”

  “Of course you like him. He’s Collin. He’s likeable.”

  “Is it so bad that I like him?”

  “Van,” he said, and then he sighed. “You’re an adult. You can like whoever you want. But Collin’s complicated. From what you’ve told me, you’re already in a complicated situation. Maybe you try to figure that out before you add him to it?”

  “Too late for that,” she said.

  “I figured. Okay, you want my advice? I think, no matter how much fun you’re having with him, you need to figure out what you want in your life before you get too deeply involved.”

  Yeah. Except she was already involved, and not just physically. Savannah twisted her mouth. No, she wasn’t going to lie about this, not even to herself. For all she knew, it was physical for Collin, but it was more than that for her. The physical was good, but just being with him, talking to him...that was the best part.

  Collin Tyler was a good, strong, sexy man. The kind of man she never thought she would have because she had never considered that she had anything to offer a man like him. Still, he was the kind of man she wanted in her life. She hoped he was the kind of man she might deserve.

  * * *

  HE DIDN’T CALL the ranch line. Collin felt weird calling the ranch and asking to speak to Savannah; it was just too high school. He texted her instead, which he acknowledged wasn’t all that different.

  At least he didn’t have to first make small talk with Mama Hazel or, God forbid, Levi. Although he’d have to talk to his buddy sooner or later, Collin knew. Not for permission, just to let him know, man-to-man, that Collin was taking this thing with Savannah seriously. At l
east as seriously as it could be taken when she wouldn’t talk about her future plans.

  He lay in bed on Wednesday morning, hands behind his head, looking at the barn ceiling. With Amanda back on track, he’d moved back to his loft apartment on the second floor of the big red barn.

  Hell, his moving to the barn had had little to do with his sister. It was because of Savannah. He didn’t know what the rules were about older brothers bringing girls home when his impressionable, teenage sister lived right down the hall. Having his personal life enclosed in this small space, assuming he ever brought Savannah here, seemed like the mature thing to do.

  His phone bleeped with a text from Savannah.

  Busy?

  He smiled as his thumbs flew over the phone’s key pad.

  At six o’clock in the morning? What are you doing up? I thought Nashville starlets slept until noon.

  This starlet decided to conquer the milking parlor. Turns out, Levi has the cows on a regimented schedule that includes a predawn milking and a second just before dinnertime.

  Collin grinned.

  Should we alert the presses?

  How about we celebrate with a breakfast picnic at the lake?

  Sounds perfect, but I promised Amanda we’d check on the pears and peaches this morning, then we’re transplanting some of berries from the greenhouses into a new outdoor garden.

  There was a long pause.

  You want to tag along?

  Amanda won’t mind sharing her brother time?

  Of course she won’t.

  By nine the three of them had driven the Gator through both the peach and pear groves, with Collin pointing out the budding trees. Because of the warmer than usual spring, he expected harvesting to begin earlier than normal this year, and he made a note to bring that up in his renegotiation with Westfall Foods at the end of June.

  “What’s over there?” Savannah asked, pointing toward a low area off to the side of the main peach grove.

  Crisp white flowers dotted the limbs of five squat trees that looked similar to the peach grove where the three of them were driving.