Cameron stops mid-song and sets down his guitar. Standing up, he holds out his hand. “Dance with me.”
I take his hand, and he pulls me up, stepping off the blanket and onto the soft grass. He pulls me into an embrace and whispers in my ear, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
And without skipping a beat, he continues to sing the rock ballad, his words soft in my ear as he holds me close. We sway to the imagined music, lost in our own world.
A wave of something unfamiliar surges through me, and I stop dancing, flustered. I don’t need to catch feelings. And I willmyself to treat this just as it is—a fling. But does what we’re doing even qualify?
Whatever that was subsides when Cam leans down and kisses me softly. We deepen the kiss, our tongues slowly tasting. I gently scrape Cameron’s bottom lip with my teeth, and his hands move down to my ass and squeeze, a shiver running through me at his touch.
“You’re something else, you know that?” He nuzzles my neck, his low words landing somewhere below my good judgment. “I like that you’re real, Mallory.”
I believe him. That’s the problem.
Chapter 9
Walker
I’m awake before my alarm. That’s not unusual after two years on tour buses. What’s unusual is the first thought that surfaces before I’ve even opened my eyes.
The way Mallory felt in my arms last night. So fucking perfect. My little prickly pear, her fingers digging into my shoulders as our lips connected, the world disappearing around us. I hadn’t meant to groan when she bit my lower lip, but the sound escaped before I could stop it, and the satisfied smile I felt forming on Mallory’s lips against mine only made me want her more.
Then there wasI like that you’re real.
I said that out loud. To a woman who doesn’t know my last name. My actual last name.
I stare at the bunkhouse ceiling and let the weight of that settle while Ford snores two beds over. The guilt isn’t new; it’s been threading through every conversation I’ve had with Mallory since the pond. But last night by the river it calcified into something I can’t talk myself around. She told me about herboys. Their father. Her dad. She handed me the real shape of her life, piece by piece, and I gave her a partial name and a guitar.
I’m a self-absorbed jackass. And lying here does no good except giving the guilt more square footage, so I yank on some jeans and a Henley, grab my guitar, and hop in the UTV.
The glamping section is still empty this early, so I take my guitar down to the river and find the same spot where we sat last night. The blanket is gone, but the grass is still flattened a little, and I sit in the middle of that like I deserve it. Don’t care that it’s wet with dew.
I think about Mallory and her boys and what a great stepdad I have. Her having kids doesn’t scare me. It’s the opposite. I want to meet them.
I strum the opening notes of my new song, playing through what I have.
She don’t need the spotlight
She don’t need the noise
She just needs somebody who appreciates her thorns
I ain’t scared of prickly, I ain’t scared of dark
Guess dark and prickly might be just my kind
I stop at the bridge and play the chord progression once, twice. And then something shifts, not in the music, exactly, but in me, and I stop trying to write around the thing I’ve been avoiding and just write it.
But I’ve been half a man
Giving her a name that ain’t mine
If you knew the whole truth of me, darlin’
Would you still want to waste your time
I play it through twice more until it sits right, and then I set the guitar across my knees and look at the water, the current cascading over the limestone bed.
