“Not like this kind of a lot.”
He pulls his shirt over his head and looks at me steadily. “You've met my family. Let me meet yours.”
I look at him for a moment. Walker Rhodes, who sold out Madison Square Garden three nights running, who has a star on the Nashville Walk of Fame, reaching for his keys to drive me to a trailer park on the wrong side of town.
The things a man says when he's inside you and the things he thinks when he sees your every day life are two different things.
Heat of the moment is one thing. This is another.
I guess we’ll see what happens.
“Okay,” I say. “Let's go.”
Chapter 37
Momma
SADIE
The distance between Wild Rose Ranch and Momma’s trailer is about thirty miles as the crow flies.
Considerably longer than that in every other way.
We come down out of the hills and the road flattens out. The ranches give way to more developed parts of town, and then the good part of Marble Falls gives way to the Route 9 corridor heading east. Older houses. Smaller lots. A self-storage facility. A payday loan place next to a liquor store next to a laundromat with a neon sign buzzing with half the letters out.
Then the trailer park.
The sign at the entrance still crooked on its post. Still the same faded blue it was when I was a kid and we first moved here.
I watch Walker take it in through the windshield. His expression doesn't change.
“Second row,” I say. “Third on the left.”
He nods and turns in.
His truck couldn’t stand out more if we tried. I wish we’d taken his vintage Ford instead of the brand-new Sierra. Momma’s trailer is just much grimier in comparison.
I’ve been pouring all the money from Walker’s way-too-generous paychecks into fixing things up for her. A new AC, window blinds that aren’t cracked, repairing the screen door. But there’s only so much I can do.
Walker gets out of the truck and comes around to my side without being asked. He takes one look at my face and pulls me into his chest. Not a long drawn-out thing, just his arms around me for a moment, his mouth at my temple.
“Now you get to see my palace,” I mumble.
His fingertips skim across my hair.
“There,” he murmurs. “You forgot your crown.”
I meet his warm, crooked smile with one of my own.
He keeps his hand in mine as we walk up the sagging steps and I rap at the front door. “Momma, it’s me.”
The raspy smoker’s voice comes muffled from inside. “What are you knocking for, girl? Forget your key?”
She shuffles to the screen door and pauses. Takes in Walker. His hand in mine.
He nods. “Mrs. Sullivan.”
Her eyes slide to me. “What’s he doing here?”
