“Wait, I have a website?” I plopped down on the seat beside her. She scooched, making room for my big body. Still, our bodies touched, elbows rubbing, thighs kissing. I settled one arm across the seat behind her, reminding me just how easy it was, being with her. Not a thing had changed. Except everything. Some errant lightning stroke of pain struck my heart thinkin’ about all we’d been through, wonderin’ if there was even a possibility of starting over for us.
I didn’t think so.
Augusta Belle Branson had torn my heart from my chest. No way was I letting that thief back inside.
“Tons of websites. The Fallon fangirls are still loud and proud. But I also talked to your sister,” Augusta stated. “Said she hasn’t talked to you in almost a year, beyond a text once in a while. I’m afraid to ask, but is this what you’ve been doing? Playin’ music at night and drinkin’ and drivin’ all day? Because if that’s the case, you need me even more than I thought.”
“No.” Realization that it was exactly what I’d been doing went down like a jagged pill. “Notallday. And I don’t need your shit. I’m doing fine.” The words were hollow even as I said them.
I jumped out of the truck, heading around the front and tossing her backpack into the cab before climbing behind the wheel and turning over the engine. “I’ll take you to Memphis, but that’s it. After that, you and me, us—” I pointed back and forth between us “—ends.”
Her face fell a fraction, but she recovered quickly. Someone else may not have caught it, but even after all these years, it felt like I knew her better than the back of my hand.
Augusta Belle Branson was embedded like barbed wire around my soul.
SEVEN
Fallon
“I wanna break away…be myself sometime…but all I see is pouring rain…all I get is more of your pain…”My fingers tapped out an absent rhythm against the steering wheel, my mind matching a melody to the somber words that’d been playin’ in my head the last few days.“You only get a little while to shine before you fade away…but out here on the highway, your ghost is more than I can take…”
“That’s beautiful.” Augusta breathed, reminding me she was there.
Hell.
I’d done a damn good job ignoring her the first thirty minutes on the road. So well she’d stopped asking me about myself and minded her own damn business.
I flipped on the radio, cycling through a few country stations before I settled on a Johnny Cash song.
“You gonna talk to me at all this trip?”
I shook my head, lips tight, eyes trained on the pavement.
She groaned, adjusting in her seat before she unbuckled her seat belt, turning in the cab and reaching for her backpack. I heard the zipper a moment later before she yanked the long-sleeved shirt off her torso and balled it up, throwing it behind her. She appeared front and center on my bench seat a second later, toothbrush and toothpaste in hand. “Can we stop at a rest area? I have to brush my teeth. I didn’t have cash to stay at a hotel last night, which means no sink to brush my teeth this morning. Y’know that furry feeling your teeth get? Yeah, that’s what I’m dealing with right now.”
“Hang on, where did you sleep last night?” I finally broke my silence. Begrudgingly.
“I could ask you the same thing.” She buckled herself into the seat next to me, elbows rubbing, thighs kissing again. Just like when we were young.
I hated that I kept thinking that.
Augusta Belle and I were two totally different people. Always had been. Different sides of the tracks. Whatever we were to each other for that brief moment in time was what we’d needed. But not anymore. Not ever again.
“Slept out under the stars. I do it now and again. Good for the constitution, Pa used to say.”
“Sure.” I caught the roll of her eyes.
“And you slept where?” I urged.
“Your truck.”
I nearly veered into opposing traffic. “What?”
“Where else was I supposed to go? And you were generous enough to leave me with your keys, so—”
“I didn’t leave you my keys. You stole them!”
She shrugged, punching at the radio tuner once and letting it settle on a Reba song. “This is my favorite.”
