He looks up, whipped cream on his nose and says with dignity, “Now you get why I was so upset about missing that last slice.”
I do. It’s a top-tier strawberry shortcake. A recipe that deserves to be passed down through generations of Rhodes.
Walker confirms it too, when he and I make a midnightsnack of it. And then he “accidentally” drops a dollop of whipped cream on my boobs and licks it off, and I end up on the kitchen counter with my legs wrapped around him while he fucks me on the countertop.
We're having a lot of sex. Sneaking it anywhere and everywhere we can. His bed at night, the sheets tangled around us as his hands finding me in the dark. Again in the morning before he leaves for work, with time to make it back to my room before Jonah wakes. The tack room one afternoon, the scent of leather wrapping around us, Walker’s belt buckle cold on my hip while he fucks me against the wall.
He goes down on me all the time, and though I don’t have much basis for comparison, I get the feeling I’m pretty damn spoiled in that regard.
He’s taught me how to go down on him too, and I’ve come to love that too. He’s been endlessly patient as I learn, been so happy and grateful every time I put my mouth on him, and that makes it even more fun for me, makes me enjoy it, makes me want to do it again and again until I don’t need any more instruction to make him lose his mind.
And I succeed.
I’ve always been an excellent student.
I went from virgin to “lost count of how many times I’ve ever had sex” in no time flat, thanks to Walker. Not that I’m complaining.
We don’t have a lot of time together.
Neither of us says it out loud. It would only be wasting precious moments to dwell on it.
We fall into the best routine I could ever ask for. Long evenings on the porch after Jonah's in bed, his guitar across his knee, playing me fragments of new songs and watching my face while I listen. Some nights we talk until three in the morning,about music and stories and our pasts. He tells me how his mom is the one that introduced him to country music, George Jones and Patsy Cline and all the shoulders of giants he stands on now. I tell him about how books got me through my daddy leaving and Momma falling into a state of almost catatonic depression.
We exchange a million words except three little ones.
But what does it matter anyway?
I’m not staying.
Except that every day, a bigger part of me wants to.
The album is taking shape. Four songs finished, two more in progress. The notebook has started to look like a conversation. His handwriting and mine running alongside each other in the margins. His lines, my edits, a phrase that started as his and ended as mine or the other way around until neither of us could tell you where one ended and the other began.
Walker writes late at night. Sometimes I hear him get up from bed in the middle of the night and I know he’s writing, because when I wake up in the morning he’s left me coffee and new song lyrics. While Jonah eats breakfast, I scribble my additions.
It’s the second thing Walker does when he comes home now: go to the notebook. The first thing he does is give me or Jonah, whoever happens to be closer to the front door, a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
Sometimes he nearly goes for a kiss on my lips and has to stop himself halfway there.
One Friday, Walker takes a two hour errand to town that he's vague about, returning empty-handed.
It’s not sneaking around the way Daddy used to, off to the casinos and coming back having lost all the money that was supposed to go to our bills. Walker’s coming back smiling, like he’s got a secret he’s dying to tell me but can’t yet.
I trust Walker completely. But I’m also nosy as hell and need to know what’s going on.
“What are you up to?” I ask him directly, because I don’t do subtle.
“Nothing.” The picture of innocence, which on Walker's face is deeply unconvincing.
He looks way too excited for nothing.
“You’re plotting something,” I say.
He looks at me over the rim of his coffee mug with those green eyes and that almost-smile. Absolutely no intention of telling me a single thing.
“You'll see,” he says.
I run through the possibilities. Something to do with the music. It has to be. Maybe studio booking. Someone he's played the songs for coming to town. His record company president, Carter Caldwell, coming to check in.
