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With that, I slip out from my hiding spot behind the tree, shoot Libby a grin, and move toward the crowd.

Fifty-one

Behind the mic, Bosquints toward the crowd with a half-amused, half-annoyed smirk pulling at his lips. I can tell he can’t see me, but it feels like he’s looking right at me.

“I’m only singing if Birdie comes out,” he says into the mic.

Instantly, the room erupts in a loudboo!,and I don’t bother hiding my amusement from the chair I’m sitting in that’s hidden by the crowd.

“No can do, Bo my boy,” the DJ says smugly. “Birdie gave us very strict rules. She will come out when she thinks you mean it.”

With his words, the crowd howls.

Bo waves a palm toward them like a white flag, gripping the mic in the other.

Ready or not, the music starts. The familiar opening chords to George Strait’s “Check Yes or No” begin playing.

I know he recognizes it because his head drops back with a loud laugh.

Then another when he sees I’ve changed the lyrics that he starts to sing along to.

“It started way back in summer,

I sat at a bar beside Pa-a-am Beesly.

A blue dress, wild hair, and a sticky note,

She kissed me in her minivan, but then she went away,”

He stumbles through it, laughing, and with the last choppy line, the crowd howls. Again, his eyes dart around the room.

New words pop onto the screen, but before he can try to sing them, it’s my voice through the speakers. “I don’t know, everyone; does Bo sound sincere about this? And is it even singing if you have a toothpick in your mouth?” I say into my own microphone I’ve been holding from where I sit, still out of his line of sight.

Another wave of boos comes in response.

“I can’t be sincere if I can’t see you,” he says into his mic, smile wide as he plucks the toothpick out of his mouth.

“Keep singing, Bo,” I tell him.

So he does.

He butchers the chorus, but the audience is nice enough to sing along and help him through it.

He’s nearing the end, singing the final “Check Yes or No” when I step out of the crowd, standing in front of him.

“Yes or no, Bo? What’s it going to be?” I ask with a grin into my mic, staring at him, staring at me, heart pounding in my chest.

He doesn’t hesitate. He drops the mic, literally, and takes one step off the stage, one more to me, and wraps his arms around my waist.

“Yes, Birdie.”

As everyone in Libby’s Outpost roars, a smile splits my face in half, and he presses his mouth to mine. With two fistfuls of his shirt, I pull him to me, kissing him through the cheers of the bar. The taste and feel of him bringing every piece of me home.

When the DJ calls the next singer, I lean close and whisper, “Tell me something you like.”

“You loving me,” he says, tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “You?”

“You singing bad karaoke.” I smile; he kisses me again. Then I take his hand. “I have another surprise for you.”