Page 112 of Sundown Somewhere

Barging through the door, I don’t stop long enough to make sure it closes, charging right on through the small hallway past the formal dining room that we never use and the kitchen toward my father’s office. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of movement in the kitchen, but I don’t stop. I’m on a mission.

“I need Opal!” I declare, word vomiting the first thing that comes to mind.

I feel the movement behind me before I hear my mother, her calm, loving voice not showing even the slightest bit of curiosity.

“The keys are hanging up by the garage. Your daddy moved them after Ken Noble fixed the alternator last summer,” she tells me. I spin around on my heel, ready to head that way, but she stops me. “Why don’t you join us in the kitchen?”

“I don’t have time, Mama. I need to get Opal, and then⁠—”

“I think you have time for a glass of sweet tea.”

A glass of sweet tea? Great balls of fire, what kind of Southern woman’s guide to hospitality does she think she’s fallen into?

Forcing a smile to my face, I step toward her, my heart still racing like it’s waiting on the starting gun at Churchill Downs. I don’t have time to waste. There’s already been too much of that as far as Hux and I are concerned. Decades, really. This is something I should have done so many years ago.

“I really don’t. I don’t even have time to explain. I need to get Opal and go.” I suck in a huge breath, a hiccup escaping. “I promise it’ll all make sense later, but right now…”

I try to sidestep her, but she grabs my arm, jerking me back. Same way she did when I was little and I did something that was out of line. She’s also looking at me the way she did back then too—lips pursed and eyes trained on me like a lion watching its prey.

“Dolly Norah McLain,” she whispers. “I pa-romise you that you have time for a glass of tea…”

Her emphasis on promise brings out her accent in a way that makes her sound so Southern that Scarlett O’Hara herself would applaud. It also lets me know that she means business and that I damn well better listen.

“Tea sounds great.”

Mama loops her arm through mine, her listen to me, damn it look replaced by her bright, beautiful smile as she leads me into the kitchen. For a split second I start to wonder what has overcome her. If maybe she had some kind of close encounter and is the next Roy Neary. But then I look up.

Then I see it.

See him.

Sitting at my parents’ kitchen table, right next to my dad, is the man who stole my heart. Right there, at the same table where I ate dinner every night growing up. The same table he and I did more homework assignments than I can count, shared afternoon snacks, and whispered secrets behind my mama’s back.

Hux Hayes.

The whole world stops, all the air sucked straight out of my lungs. Hell, from the atmosphere. I can’t breathe. Can’t move. Can’t think.

Hux is here.

“We’ll give y’all a moment…” Mama announces, patting my shoulder. “Joe…”

I stay frozen in place, watching as my father nods, both he and Hux standing up and hugging. Like this was any other Saturday evening that he came over for dinner and was simply saying good night. Inside, I melt, unable to hold it together, watching the two men that I love the most embrace like this. One more sign that this is exactly what I want.

Please don’t let that be a goodbye hug from Hux…

“Dolly,” Hux starts, waiting until Daddy is fully out of the kitchen to speak.

But I don’t let him continue.

“Marry me.”

I blurt it out, my word vomit game strong this evening. Hux reels backward, my words hitting him both physically and mentally. His hazel eyes go wide, and I can tell I caught him off guard, and that’s okay. To be fair, I’ve caught myself a little bit off guard as well. But now that it’s out there, I know that it’s exactly what I want.

“We don’t have to do it right away,” I ramble, because why stop now. “We don’t have to have the whole big to-do either—the church, reception, and all that. Just you and me. As it should be.”

Hux stands there, still as a statue. Every inch of me clenches, muscles I didn’t know I had tensing, waiting for him to react. Say something. Do something. Blink. Sigh. Fucking anything.

“No.”