Page 42 of Hideaway Heart

You have so much, peanut. So much. And I know I haven’t done enough to deserve your forgiveness, but didn’t I take you on my knee and teach you to play the guitar? Didn’t I bring you up on stage with me to sing duets when you were only knee high? Didn’t I plant the seed, telling you you’d be famous one day? Have you forgotten your old man?

And couldn’t I please help him out this one last time? Get him out of a jam? Set him on the straight and narrow so he could be the loving husband and father he knew he could be?

But no matter how much money I gave him or how many times my mother let him back in her bed or how hard we tried to help him slay his demons, it never worked.

I deleted his voicemail and texted my mother.

Can you please ask Daddy to stop calling me? I’ll talk to him when I get back.

I also had another voicemail from Duke, which I deleted without listening to, and one from Wags, which I decided to ignore. In fact, I decided I was going to ignore my phone for the next twenty-four hours. No texts, no voice messages, no emails, no social media. I powered it off and buried it in my suitcase.

After throwing on some jeans and a T-shirt, I pinned up my braids and—just for fun—put on one of the wigs I’d brought in case I needed a disguise. It was black with bangs and a blunt bob cut. Think Uma Thurman inPulp Fiction.

When I came out of the room, Xander stopped and stared. “What the hell?”

“You like it?” I fluffed one side of the dark wig.

“I think I prefer the red.”

“But the red might give me away. What if someone recognized me in the produce aisle? Or the frozen foods section? You might be tempted to kiss me again to protect my identity, and we can’t have that.” As I walked by him, I took the opportunity to smack him on the chest again.

He caught me by the wrist, his fingers like a padlock. “You’re going to have to stop touching me.”

“Jeez. ‘No kissing, put on pants, stop touching me.’” I shook my head. “Are you this much fun in bed?”

He stared me down hard. “What I’m like in bed is none of your business.”

“Okay, okay.” Yanking my arm from his grasp, I headed for the door, but just as I reached for the handle, he spoke again.

“But for the record, I am a fuckingriotin bed.”

TWELVE

xander

“So this is it, huh?”

Kelly surveyed Buckley’s Pub from the vantage point of the entrance, her eyes scanning the cement floor and brick walls, the huge TV screens, the curved booths upholstered in tufted leather, the industrial pendant lighting, the mirrored shelves behind the bar.

I stood behind her, my eyes greedily drinking her in from head to toe while she couldn’t see me.

She wore a butter-yellow dress with flowers on it and these red cowboy boots that were knocking me out. Every time I looked at her, I felt like those boots were stomping on my chest.

It had taken every last ounce of my strength not to throw her over my shoulder and take her to bed last night. Even after I’d regained control of myself and reset the appropriate boundary, I’d watched her walk away with an ache in my balls and a gargantuan hard-on that refused to subside. Later, I’d stood outside her bedroom door, my fists clenched in agonized indecision, my head saying one thing, my body begging for another.

But in the end, my sense of right and wrong won out. She was under my protection. She’d been drinking. She might not even have meant those things she said.

I couldn’t risk it.

So I’d taken care of business myself, desperately hoping she wouldn’t hear me grunting out a fast, frantic orgasm on her couch, then quickly cleaned myself up with paper towels in the kitchen, which I shoved into a plastic grocery bag and buried deep within the trash.

She had me acting like a fucking teenager.

She’d only made things worse this morning, hinting that she’d done the same thing.

I wasn’t sure I could survive two weeks like this. It had only been two days, and I was going out of my mind. How was I supposed to last?

“This is it.” I moved past her, frowning at the missing barstools and hanging pendant lights that hadn’t come on.