Yes, including the imprint of his gravelly voice in my head so it could keep me awake for another night.
Both sets of my parents had taught me manners and I would use them to keep Tenor from connecting any dots to Rhys. “Thanks for the ride and the food. Sorry to intrude.”
Rhys’s jaw turned to granite and he gave me a curt nod.
I took a mental snapshot of the rugged, bearded man who looked like sex in flannel and got into the pickup.
Tenor chatted for a couple of moments with Rhys and then hopped in.
When we were on the road, he slid his deep-brown gaze toward me. “So that was awkward.”
Busted. “You should’ve seen the rest of the time. He yelled at me during breakfast.”
Tenor’s eyes narrowed. “How bad?”
“Okay, he didn’t yell. He... snapped. I kept doing stuff that interfered with his parenting style, so, I mean, that’s on me. He’s their dad, and I’m no one.” That thought clawed against the divide in my heart. Rhys had never talked to me the way he’d done today. Except for at the funeral. “I offered to give the girls guitar lessons, and he called me selfish.”
I got another side-eye.
“In so many words,” I clarified.
“I see,” he said in a way that meant he didn’t but that he understood I might be sensitive about Rhys and his tones.
He turned down the highway. In front of my dead car was a large truck. Cruz and Lane were hooking my dud to a tow rope. Tenor pulled to a stop next to them.
I rolled down the window and handed my fob to Cruz.
He was almost as big as Tenor now. Mama’s cooking and sunshine were having the same effect on him as whatever had happened to Rhys after I’d moved away. Cruz’s dark hair was long but pushed off his face.
Lane was only a few years older than his brother, but his eyes were more guarded and he was the more cynical of the two. Both he and Myles were wary of the world. Lane was in his midtwenties, but he acted like someone approaching forty.
Cruz behaved exactly like a guy in his early twenties.
“Thank you,” I said to them.
Lane stopped behind his brother. “I’ll take a look at it, but we’re going to have words with that dealer.”
“You’re the mechanic.” Why hadn’t I thought of calling Lane? Mama wouldn’t have questioned him if he’d left late last night. If he’d even been home. “Thank you. I owe you guys.”
Lane winked. “Never saw ya.”
Good. Tenor had talked to them.
“Don’t lie for me,” I said. “But thank you. I just want to lie low for a while. The spotlight was getting too bright.” I said it in a joking tone, but I was dead serious. I’d been burned. Hard.
Tenor rolled the window up and pulled away. “I got a few bags of groceries in the back.”
“I owe you.”
“No, you don’t. We’re family.” He draped his wrist over the wheel. “Unless I need you to keep something quiet. Then you owe me.”
I grinned. The only thing Tenor would hide was a calculation error in one of his coveted spreadsheets. He was too by the book to mess up much.
I propped my elbow by the window and put my head in my hand. Closing my eyes, I sighed.
“You ready to talk about why you left Nashville?”
No. The fatigue flooding every cell of my body wasn’t just from crappy sleep in a perfectly comfortable bed. I finally had the silence I’d been craving while on my last tour. Silence I hadn’t found in a big city. “Just found out that everyone who was supposed to have my back was just stabbing it, in a way.”
