He dipped his hand into the waistband of her shorts, parting her thighs and rubbing against her. It should have felt good, but her body stiffened. She couldn’t bear another ounce of sensation.
“I know it’s been a while, but how about tomorrow?” she pleaded.
Roughly, he pulled his hand away. “Sure, fine.” He flipped onto his side, his back now facing her. It wasn’t fine. But he had known how bad things had gotten for her—she had been too ashamed to tell Shay or her mom at that point—and stayed with her anyway.
She felt like she owed him something.
“Hey,” she said, her voice cracking at its peak. “It’s okay. Come here.”
He rolled over. “Yeah?”
She nodded.
He dragged her shorts down her thighs, pushed her on her back, and pressed his weight on top. His tongue was forceful and flooded her mouth with the aftertaste of espresso and pizza rolls. She fought the urge to gag and focused on proving to him that his invested time had been worth it. That she was worth it.
She wasn’t nearly wet enough and didn’t call his name as loudly as he wanted. She was too disoriented to twist into the positions he liked. But, curiously, when he finished, and she lay awake in the bed, the pain radiating from every cell stopped firing. It’s when she had accepted that if she distracted herself well enough, she could escape almost any pain, even if only for a little while. Eli had ended things a week later, but not before telling her how bad it would make him look to his friends.
But that was in the past.
Rolling onto her side, she squeezed her pillow over her head, smothering her self-doubt. She couldn’t imagine sex with Jamie being anything but spectacular. This was all such a surprise, even thinking of him this way, but as they grew closer, his smiling face had become a solid foundation for her runaway emotions.
Damn, she needed to see him.
At least she’d see him that night at Yeehaw Fest. Unfortunately, so would a gnashing crowd of a hundred thousand strong; the thought of which made her gut seize and stretch like saltwater taffy. But she could handle it, because Jamie would be there to ground her, as he always did.
Clank. Clank. Clank.
That unmistakable noise again. Bleary-eyed and more than a little annoyed that her fantastic sex dream had been interrupted, she snatched her phone from the nightstand. It was 6:03 a.m.
The sound was coming from a large side windowoverlooking the vegetable garden. She kicked the quilt off her legs and slipped out of bed. When she pulled back the curtains, a tiny pebble bounced off the glass. To her surprise—and absolute delight—she followed its trajectory and found Jamie standing in a patch of grass below. He wore his typical jeans and T-shirt, which, to her dismay, he always looked good in. But today, he added an orange baseball cap turned backward. One of those vicious things men did that made them look so lethally sexy despite requiring the same effort it took to blink.
She opened the window. “Are you crazy?” she shout-whispered.
He smiled, gripping something in his hand. “Lordy, woman, you sleep like the dead. I was fixin’ to run out of pebbles.”
She tried to hide the smile bursting behind her lips. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Foreday in the morning.”
She cocked her head, amused. His little folk-isms had grown on her.
“It’s early.” He laughed. “And sorry about that. I was thinking you’d wanna go on a side-quest before my soundcheck? I want you to meet a very special woman in my life.”
“A woman?” Brinton’s heart disintegrated in her chest. There’d been another woman this entire time?
He flicked up his shoulders. “I think she’d like you, and I figured it would add something to your article. You know, see the real people in my life?”
“The real people in your life?”
Un-fucking-believable. Brinton had half a mind to chuck pebbles—or something heavier—down at him.
“My mamaw lives in a retirement community down the road. Loves to watch me sing, but a music festival ain’t idealfor an eighty-two-year-old with asthma. So, I’m gonna bring the show to her.”
Brinton laughed, shucking off her panic. His mamaw—of course. “Give me ten minutes.”
Jamie had parked his truck on a service entrance obscured by tall hedges.
“You look beautiful,” he said, pulling her into one of his famous hugs. She’d changed into a blue seersucker dress with ties at the shoulders and brown sandals that felt meeting grandma–appropriate.
