He just reaches for the marker. Uncaps it with his teeth. His eyes find mine.
“Hold still,” he murmurs. “I've got another line.”
One hand spreads flat and warm against my back, steadying me, and then the marker finds my breast and traces slowly along it. The tip of it cool against the skin his mouth just warmed up.
He leans back and plays another few bars of the song. I’m still half naked, splayed across the nest of quilts and pillows, feeling like one of those women in classical paintings. I’ve never felt more beautiful. More free and bohemian andme.
“Okay,” I say, when he pauses. “What about… ‘but I could still see the blush on your cheeks in the pink neon light?’’
His fingers still on the strings.
“For the chorus,” I say. “After the line about the girl not seeing his red flags because she’s wearing rose-colored glasses. But he sees her pink cheeks even in the pink light, because he understands her innocence no matter what.”
He looks at me for a long moment. “Damn,” he says softly. “I'm never writing without you again.”
I wish that could be true.
Maybe it can be. For the next six weeks, at least.
He sets the guitar down.
Slowly, he lifts the hem of my skirt. His eyes stay on my face the whole time. The marker uncaps. He presses it to my inner thigh and writes the whole chorus there, his hand warm and steady against my skin.
When he pick up the guitar again, he plays the whole thing through from the top, the words from my arm and collarbone and thighs all threaded together now. His unmistakable, raspy twang adds so much depth to the words.Gives them life. The song that's coming out of him in the dark of this truck in this Montana pasture is…
It's beautiful.
It's raw and specific and real in the way his best work has always been real, the way all his songs used to, back when he was still making the music of his soul.
“I think we got a song, baby,” he says at last.
“Yeah we do.” I come up to my knees and take his face in my hands. “You did it, Walker. You’re making music again. You got a title for this one?”
He doesn’t even hesitate. “Red Flag.”
Of course. He's talking about me in that dress, his words, waving a red flag in front of a bull. He's talking about himself, a red flag of a man. And he’s talking about him being worried I’m wearing rose-colored glasses, so those red flags just look like flags.
Pure Walker Rhodes. Double meanings, deep personal lore, passion and anguish all intertwined.
“It’s perfect,” I tell him. “Perfectly imperfect.Yes.”
Chapter 31
Fireworks
SADIE
Ikiss him softly, and he kisses me back.
“We did it, darlin’,” he murmurs. “This is your song too.”
Above the valley the first firework goes up, a single silver streak climbing fast. It bursts into the dark in red, white, and blue light raining down over the mountains. The deep thud of the explosion rolls across the mountains a half-second later.
Walker sets the guitar against the side of the truck.
Then he pulls me into his lap in one motion, my legs straddling his, and kisses me the way he kissed me that very first time. Like it’s a revelation.
His hands are warm on my waist, sliding up under the hem of my dress. The fireworks keep blooming over the valley, shimmering explosions in the sky.
