His fingers worked the clasp at the back of my neck, the soft drag of his fingers sending a riot of feelings tornadoing through my body.
“Thank you.” I pressed the tiny trinket below my throat, the cool metal a constant reminder of his touch. His love.
“Someday you’re gonna be a star, y’know.” He kissed along my temples, down my cheekbones. “Gonna leave this town and go off to some fancy Ivy League university and forget the name Fallon Gentry. But I won’t forget you.” He placed kisses over both of my eyelids. “Fifteen, sixteen.”
I smiled softly, regretting there was only one kiss left. “I’m not going anywhere, Fallon. I’m stuck here for as long as you are.”
A sad smile danced in his eyes. “I won’t let you.”
I swallowed the growing lump in my throat, anxiety curling around my insides for the first time at the thought of leaving him. “Then you’ll come with me.”
He shook his head. “I’ll make do, singing for tips while you get a full ride somewhere warm.”
A ridiculous giggle pulled from my throat. “A full ride for what?”
“For swimming.” He paused on my eyes, revealing he knew more than I thought he did.
I narrowed my eyes. “What makes you say that?”
He shrugged, breaking his warm gaze away from mine and giving my heart the tiniest of chills. “Saw the sports section of the Morning Star, Augusta Belle. You’ve broken all the state records. You’re a star.”
The lump in my throat had turned to molten lead, landing in the pit of my stomach and stealing the air from my lungs in the span of a single moment.
“It’s just a hobby.” I supposed he was going to find out my age at some point, find out I wasn’t even a senior in high school. I’d refused to tell him my age when we met because I was only fifteen then, and he was older, much older. At least nineteen, if I would have guessed. Fortunately, at least back then, on the off chance my parents had caught me hanging out with Fallon, he looked younger. The clean-shaven face had helped, but lately…
Well, lately he was just a stone-cold fox.
“State-record holders aren’t just practicing a hobby. Why didn’t you tell me?” His eyes were trained on my lips, the pad of his thumbs stroking the ridge of my cheekbone.
“Because it’s not a big deal.”
“Everything about you is a big deal to me.”
I chomped down on my bottom lip, wishing like hell he’d just touch me already. Push his hands between my thighs and make me his in all the ways. “What’s on your mind, Augusta Belle?”
He trailed his nose along my hairline as he invaded every breath of my personal space and had me craving more.
“That you owe me one more birthday kiss.”
His grin tipped up, fingers weaving into the mess of my hair at my neck before he pulled me closer, caging me against his heavenly body. “So I do.”
Our lips connected, tongues pushing past all boundaries before he was hauling me onto him, my knees straddling his waist and our chests melding as he kissed me senseless and gave me the very best birthday of my life.
“I love you, Fallon.”
“Love you more, Augusta Belle, even if you do drive me crazy most days.” He tucked me into the crook of his shoulder, and I sucked in a heady breath of his scent.
“Thanks for being my friend.”
He hushed me, fingertips trailing through the waves of my hair. “As I recall, you forced me up on that bridge that day.”
I grinned, always grateful when he eased the heartache inside me with his characteristic levity. “So I did.”
“That was the best day of my life.”
“The day you almost sorta saved me?”
“The day I found the girl of my dreams.” He hugged me closer, urging my eyes closed as I burrowed into the cotton of his t-shirt. “Happy birthday, Augusta Belle.”
ELEVEN
Fallon
“Why would he leave the house to me?” I cleared my throat, trying to channel my insane sense of exasperation.
She shrugged, dipping a homemade French fry into her vanilla milk shake. “Dunno.”
“Well, that just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, Augusta Belle. So you’re gonna have to do a little more explainin’ than that.” I yanked the milk shake out of her hands and sucked on it myself.
She arched an eyebrow in challenge before swiping another fry through the creamy concoction and dotting some of it on my nose. “He changed a lot the last few years. Started opening up to me after Mom passed. She was diagnosed the same month I was supposed to graduate college.”
“You went to college?” I paused, lingering on all the things she might have made of herself. Law? Engineering?
“I’m a year’s rotation short of being a physician’s assistant.” Her eyes flicked away, avoiding mine. “I moved home when Mama was diagnosed. Daddy couldn’t take care of himself, much less her, and she faded quickly. I couldn’t leave it all for him.”
I set down the milk shake, the urge to pull her into my arms and comfort that sad look off her face strong. “Sorry ’bout that. Guess I still don’t understand why he left me anything, though.”
“He opened up about a lot of things. I was gone for so long, and by the time I came back, I think he thought of me as a different person. Told me one night he wished he could have done more to help you. I didn’t know what he meant. Most of the time, he was too drunk to remember the next morning when I asked, so I took it with a grain of salt. Until I sat down with the lawyer. Until she said your name was in Daddy’s will.” She trained her gaze on me again, eyes heavy with unspoken questions.
“Your dad never talked to me. Didn’t know my pa either, as far as I know.” I shrugged, the memories of my past like more jagged pills gouging my throat on their way down. I swallowed the now familiar ache in my throat remindin’ me it was ’round about that time when I’d be nursing my first glass. “Well, doesn’t matter anyway. I don’t want the money.”
“I figured you’d say that.” She scooted a little closer, knee brushing mine and making my heart leap erratically behind the wall of my chest. I winced, feeling the actual physical pain of having her so close and not being able to reach out and touch what was mine.
What had always been mine.
I swallowed the painful throb. “Why’ve you got that look like there’s something else?”
“Because there’s something else.”
I winced again, not bothering to hide it this time. “Isn’t there always with you?” I sighed, pretty sure I wasn’t prepared for whatever was about to come next. “Go on.”
“I came across this name in some papers in the attic.” She rifled through her bag and thrust out a note, a stranger’s name scrawled in fading blue ink. “I think I should meet her.”
“Um.” I paused, eyes wavering from the note back to her hopeful face. “That’s probably just some chick your dad banged before he met your mom.” I plucked the note from her hand and turned it over, looking for I wasn’t sure what, and not finding it. “What does that have to do with me anyway?”
She frowned, pulling another stack of papers from her backpack. “I found it with this.”
My eyes blurred as the headline jumped across my vision: Fire That Destroyed Mobile Home Possible Arson
A million pinpricks of pain slammed behind my eyelids, and for the first time all day, the only thing on my mind was whiskey.
I needed the smoky burn of that golden elixir to chase away this bitter taste in my mouth.
I snatched the yellowed newspaper clipping from her hands and quickly skimmed the article.
I remember when my dad had called the Morning Star and complained that the sheriff’s office wasn’t doing a proper investigation.
I pushed my hand through my hair, conjuring the taste of that warm honey liquid that numbed my veins.
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“Uh, only everything, if I were gonna put money down.” She tossed the pape
rs behind her and scooched across the seat, both of her palms coming to rest on the hard line of my jaw. “Will you just talk to me? Drop the tough guy shit and just give me Fallon.” Her eyes searched the tired lines of my face. “I know he’s still there.”
I slammed my eyes closed, wishing with every fiber of my being that the goddamn smell of peaches and honey wasn’t invading my nostrils, weakening my walls, shattering me down to the depths of my soul right now. “You don’t know shit about it.”
I tossed the milk shake in the garbage can out my window, refusing to meet her eyes while I turned on the engine of the truck.
More I thought about it, the angrier it made me.
The balls she had to waltz in here and start questioning me about my life.
After everything?
I shook my head, wry grin sliding up the corner of my lip as I slid the truck into reverse and backed up, foot heavy on the accelerator.
“Fallon, don’t.” Her voice was soft, pleading.
I could have used her words that night.
Any words, it didn’t matter.
I needed her, and the one time I’d needed her, she wasn’t there.
“How long you known about the fire?” I was trying to piece together the timeline in my head.
She looked confused, shaking her head as she thought. “Daddy told me your place had burned down. But not until after college. After I’d moved back home. And I didn’t even think about it again until…well, I found the papers.”
I let her words hang heavy in the cab, mind tumbling down an exhausting road of what-ifs and whys.
“Guess there’s one thing you missed in that article,” I finally said.
“What?”
I nodded at the paper settled on the floorboard. “Check the date.”
She scrunched her nose, confusion bleeding across her face before she bent, the feathery wisp of paper—the very key—a portal to the worst night of my life. The night that changed everything.
“Says…” Her eyes began the article again. “In the late morning of August fourth, first responders were called to a mobile home off River Ridge Road after neighbors reported a fireball in the distance…” She stopped, tilting her head to one side like a confused little puppy. “August fourth.”
“August fourth.” My tone hardened with the reminder. “The day you disappeared.”
TWELVE
Fallon—Ten Years Ago
I pulled the top notebook off a stack of old battered ones and opened it to the last page I’d been working on.
A song.
I’d been tossing the words around in my head for weeks now, my mind obsessing over this single arrangement of notes on my guitar until it finally seemed to be coming together.
I’d been playing around with songwriting since I could remember, a way to express shit I couldn’t otherwise articulate. But being with Augusta Belle had kept me so busy I’d hardly had a minute to write anymore.
We spent at least an hour or two together every day, and there were a lot of nights I found myself walking her home, creeping past her passed-out parents and warming myself next to her all night.
I felt like an old dog compared to all the beauty that surrounded her, but I’d grown not to care.
Augusta Belle didn’t care about any of that, so why should it bother me if I was holed up in a mobile home on the rougher side of town while she perched like a princess at the top of the ridge?
“Gave my heart to you, was all I had left to lose…” I wrote down a few notes in the lined margin before a familiar tap, tap, tap against my bedroom window jerked me from my thoughts.
“Fallon!”
I dropped my guitar on the floor and threw the window open without a second thought.
“‘S’wrong?” I wrapped my arms around Augusta Belle’s waist once she’d cleared the single-paned window. “I don’t ever lock it, and if you’re bold enough to face Chuck Gentry, you probably coulda waltzed through the front door.”
“I’m sorry for waking you.” Her voice was small, caged inside the emotion in her throat.
“Babe.” I hugged her into my chest, instantly alert. “What the fuck happened?”
“They’re fighting. It’s so bad, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even hear myself think anymore. I screamed down the stairs at them.” She swallowed, eyes brimming over. “I was about to stomp down the stairs and leave right out the front door, but before I could, Mama stomped up the stairs and…” She shook her head, fighting anger and pain. “Mama opened the door and started screaming about me bein’ at fault for all their fightin’, and then she…” Augusta Belle wiped at her temple, and for the first time, I noticed fresh blood pooling at her hairline.
“Christ, why didn’t you say something?” I launched off the bed to retrieve a cool washcloth before she clutched at my T-shirt, her tiny, red-tipped nails glistening in the dim light of the moon.
“Don’t leave yet.”
Her words slivered my heart in two before I pulled the shirt over my shoulders and balled it up, dabbing it gently at her head to locate and contain the wound.
“Do you think you need stitches?” I asked soberly.
She shook her head, both hands clutching at my forearms then, soft tremors beginning to overtake her body. “Just hold me for a minute.”
I swallowed, for the first time feelin’ an anger so violent I wanted to drive my truck right up the road and lay into them for hurting their daughter the way they did.
Dimming the light she radiated naturally.
“Worried about you, Augusta Belle. If you’d let me—”
“I’m okay, Fallon. This isn’t the first time she’s hit me. It’s just the first time in a long time.”
My eyelids sank closed with the knowledge that something like this had been happening to her right under my nose and I hadn’t done anything to stop it.
“You feel dizzy or anything?” I asked, still concerned.
“No.” She tucked herself deeper into my body.
I frowned, wishing like hell I could steal her away from that house, from those narcissistic assholes that didn’t deserve the special daughter they’d been blessed with. “Wish I could snatch you out of that place.”
Her angelic lips turned up at the corners. “I don’t need a white knight, Fallon.” Her fingers threaded through mine and settled across my bare chest. “This princess saves herself.”
I placed a kiss on the dips of her knuckles. “Think of me as the horse you’re riding in on, then.”
She burst into a soft laugh before stifling it. I pulled another blanket over us, digging deeper into the thin old mattress with the almost see-through sheets.
“Some days I don’t know if I’ll make it to eighteen alive.”
I winced inwardly, thinking not for the first time that she was still the saddest girl I’d ever met.
“You know, I was going to do it that day. I was plannin’ it.” Her lips brushed against my chest. “You already saved me once.”
Augusta Belle’s words destroyed me.
Her touch more devastating when our hearts were shredded raw.
“Save me again,” she breathed, her fingertips trailing up my torso before dusting along the stubble at my jaw.
And in that moment, I knew.
I knew there would be no going back for Augusta Belle and me.
“Augusta…” I husked, pleading. For what, I wasn’t sure.
“I love you.” She peppered kisses along my jaw, sliding her small body on top of mine, all ten fingers lacing together.
I swallowed, feeling like a caged man just given the keys to paradise.
“Love you more, Augusta Belle. But I don’t think—”
“Sick of all that thinkin’ you’re always doin’, Fallon Gentry.” She brushed her lips against mine and the faint taste of whiskey zapped my senses.
Shit, she’d been drinking. Not like her at all.
“Baby, I want to make sure you’re okay.”
“I�
�m so much better now that I’m in your bed.” She pushed the sweater over her head, letting it land in a heap on the old linoleum floor before she was pressed to me again. “Only you can make me feel better.”
An audible groan escaped my lips as I thought about all the reasons I shouldn’t have Augusta Belle in my bed right now.
The second thing that snapped through my brain was that I probably shouldn’t have let things with her get this far to begin with. She was a certain sorta girl, and I really wasn’t the type of guy who came from the sorta family that was accepted by people who lived up on the ridge.
“Augusta…” I groaned when her hand began to dance between her thighs, brushing her knuckles against the cotton of my shorts as soft little mewls pranced past her lips. “You’re gonna be the death of me.”
“I wouldn’t have survived without you.” She hummed, teeth catching my earlobe just as her hips came down against mine and I realized she was naked. Not a stitch of clothing between her and the cotton of my shorts.
Every bone in my body ached as the thought of really having her made itself real for the first time.
I hadn’t let myself go there before.
I didn’t think I’d be able to control myself then.
She stroked her heated core against my cock, teeth whispering at the shell of my ear before her hands cupped my cheeks and she pressed a soft kiss to my lips. “I don’t want anything between us.”
I nodded, blinking once as my palms trailed up her bare torso, the silky flesh of her breasts warm against my rough palms.
She moaned, stroking harder against me before her fingertips were pushing at my waistband.
Something kicked over inside my brain then, a firestorm of need cascading through me that hurtled us both off the cliff.
In the next instant, she was in my arms and I was pushing her against a wall of my tiny room, my hands shoving down my waistband and finding her hot, warm core radiating against my shaft.
She sucked in a breath of air and moaned, and my jaw clenched down so hard I thought I’d crumble my teeth as I held myself just outside her entrance, hovering, breathing, searing every inch of her to my memory.
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