Would you still want to waste your time
An awareness seeps through me, my face filling with color. I’ve had people tell me I’m beautiful, tell me I’m too much, tell me I’m not enough. Nobody has ever written a song about me. And he started it before the pond, before I gave him any reason to hope. And not telling me who he was cost him something.
His eyes flick to mine as the chorus hits, the lazy smile Walker James is known for crossing his face as he sings.
She’s a dirt road in a concrete world
always holding her own
She’s carved from something true and real
the realist I’ve ever known
I ain’t looking for easy
never was that kind
Turns out that dark and prickly
suits me just fine
I don’t move. I didn’t know a song could feel like being completely known.
As he finishes the song, the lyrics settle into my spirit, proof that some things find you whether you’re ready or not. His eyes hold mine as the last chord fades until there’s nothing left but the ceiling fan and the crickets and the Hill Country dark.
“Cam.” I reach up and touch his jaw, the scruff rough under my palm. “When did you write that?”
The corner of his mouth turns up. “I worked out the melody in my head on the drive to Wild Vista. I couldn’t believe I’d never see you again.”
“Funny how life works sometimes.”
He sets the guitar carefully against the nightstand and turns back to me, his hand pulling mine over his heart.
“I’m falling in love with you, Mallory Jenkins.”
I’ve spent a long time being someone who stands at the edge of things. You can’t get hurt if you don’t put yourself out there. AndI’ve been waiting for a reason to bolt since the pond. But Cam’s given me a reason not to at every turn.
“I’m falling too, Cowboy.”
I tuck into Cam’s shoulder and think about Mason sitting on his foot and Kasen shouting boo into his face, and I smile against his shirt. They already chose him. Maybe it’s time I stop pretending I haven’t.
Epilogue
Walker
One Year Later
There’s a specific kind of chaos that follows Mason and Kasen into every room, and I have never once minded it.
Currently, Mason is wearing my in-ear monitor case as a hat while Kasen methodically empties the contents of my guitar bag onto the concrete floor of the backstage corridor at Boots on the Lake. My guitar tech, Danny, watches with the resigned expression of a man who has accepted his new reality. It’s good for him.
“Bud.” I crouch down to Kasen’s level. “Those stay in the bag.”
He looks at me with Mallory’s blue eyes and puts one more pick on the floor before helping me put everything back. That’s a win. I’ll take it.
“Walker.” My stage manager’s voice crackles through the corridor. “Twenty minutes.”
I stand, scooping Mason up with one arm. He immediately grabs my face with both hands, a habit he’s had since our earlydays. I recently shaved off my beard, so he likes to make sure I’m still the same person. I press my forehead to his before wrangling Kasen up into the other and handing him over to my stepdad.
