Page 60

“You’re all right. Follow my lead. It’s quick, quick”—I make the steps, firming my hold on her back so that she’s pressed against me—“slow, slow. There you go. Simple two-step.”

I wait for Mollie to pull back. Create some space between us.

She doesn’t.

Trouble.

“I feel like I’m Happy, the baby horse.” Mollie glances up at me, my heart skipping at the playful gleam in her eyes. “I don’t know how to use my legs yet, so you have to help me out.”

“You know how to use your legs.”

She finally does smile, this time a closed-mouth thing that makes me think she’s holding back laughter. “That sounded wrong.”

“Only because you’re a pervert.”

“You’re the one who said the pervy thing.”

“You’re the one who pointed it out!”

I don’t realize I’m smiling until Mollie says, “Aha. Maybe you are still fun.”

You don’t know how fun I can be, sweetheart. You want me to teach you how to use those legs? Let me get between ’em, and I’ll show you exactly how it’s done.

“You okay?”

I blink at the sound of Mollie’s voice. “What? Yeah. Why?”

“You just got this look on your face. Like you wanted to punch someone.”

Fuck someone, more like it.

Glancing over my shoulder, I see Roddy staring us down. The second I let this girl go, he’s gonna make his move. We don’t get many visitors here in Hartsville, so you gotta act fast if you want to stake your claim on someone new.

Ain’t happening tonight for Roddy. Or ever.

The chorus rises. I try to focus on anything but the beautiful woman in my arms, the one who’s picked up the two-step in less than a minute. Fast learner, I guess. Good for her.

Bad for me.

I think about all the times I listened to this song in my truck with Garrett. “Neon Moon” is a classic country song, the kind where the guy loses the girl and goes to a bar to drown his regret in whiskey.

Listening to it, Garrett would get quiet, rolling down the window to let his arm hang out the side of the truck. Sometimes, he’d sing the lyrics. Other times, he’d just stare out the window, lost in his thoughts.

I know he was thinking about Aubrey, his ex-wife. I’msure he was thinking about Mollie too. I’m surprised she believes her daddidn’tthink or talk about her.

Then again, Garrett rarely left the ranch. Yeah, he was busy looking after my brothers and me. But we could’ve held our own if he went to see his daughter back in Dallas.

I called him out on this, of course.

But Garrett would just wave me away. “It’s complicated. Mollie needed to live with her mama. They don’t want me around.”

“A kid always wants her parents around,” I replied. “Trust me on that.”

But Garrett and I agreed to disagree on that point. You can lead a horse to water, but you sure as hell can’t make him drink.

Looking down at Mollie, I wonder whyshedidn’t push Garrett more. Maybe she did. I only know one side of this story. And maybe, after putting in so much effort without any reward, she just stopped trying.

She’s comfortable enough with the steps that she’s singing now, lost in the song.