“Dad!” Bethany’s voice rang from somewhere outside. “Where are you?”
June jerked away with a hiss and flattened her hands on my shoulders. I didn’t move. She was stuck between me and the workbench.
“Dad?”
“Go have a snack, and I’ll be right in,” I called out the open door. Where we were, Bethany wouldn’t be able to see us. If she got closer, we’d be busted, but then June would get away and I wasn’t ready to let her go yet.
Her chest rose and fell against mine, those full tits marking me like a brand.
The gravel outside crunched with footsteps.
“Bethany, get inside and have a snack and I’ll be right in.” The steps stopped. “Now.”
“Fine.” The scrape of gravel against shoe soles faded.
Only then did I ease back. The fullness behind my zipper wasn’t going to go away with June pressed against it.
She licked her bottom lip, looking away. “Sorry, I didn’t mean for that to hap?—”
“I did.”
Her gaze flew up to mine.
“Those songs make it sound like I had a ripe fucking time without you. They make it sound like I didn’t suffer for years and that my wife didn’t doubt my love for her every damn day.”
She shrunk in on herself.
“Singing was your dream. What kind of bastard would I have been to stop you?”
“You made the decision for us.” She shook her head. “Am I supposed to apologize because I wrote my pain? Am I supposed to wish that it didn’t resonate with so many people? Was I supposed to just pour beer at the honky-tonk and hope my ass attracted some record mogul?”
I propped my hands on either side of her, blocking her in. The fire was back in her eyes. “Never apologize for your talent. But I might be a little raw when my two young girls are blaming me for being a villain in your story.”
She boldly met my stare, pink dots flushing her cheeks. “I would’ve come back if you had asked me to.”
“Then I really would’ve been the villain.” I pushed away and cool air rushed between us. “And you wouldn’t be the voice of this generation’s heartbreak.” Before I did something stupid like try to kiss her again, I stalked toward the opening. “See you next week.”
“It felt like I was nothing to you. You got married to someone else and had the kids we would’ve had.”
I stopped dead in my tracks. I’d wanted my marriage to be untouched by June, but to hear her talk about it, Kirstin had been dead-on with every one of her accusations. “I was twenty-four. We’d been apart for six years.”
“And I was still watching my phone, hoping to seeyour name pop up. Instead, Summer sent me a picture of your wedding invitation. I wrote ‘Emerald Rain’ the day of your wedding.”
June
His back was to me, his head half turned. “You hated me for getting married?”
My answer was a bitter stain on my tongue. “Yes.”
He slowly pivoted on a heel until he faced me. “Do you still?”
I shook my head. This time, the answer came easy. “No, Rhys. My life would be so much easier if I hated you.”
He strode toward me, giant steps that ate up the distance between us. In two heartbeats, he towered over me. “Then we agree that our lives would be a lot fucking simpler if we could get over each other.”
Ifwe could? He wasn’t over me?
He traced a finger down my cheek. “The girls know the whole story now. There’s nothing to hide.”
