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“She always hated me,” Cash says.
“She hated everyone,” I reply, “except for Olivia. She always had a soft spot for her.” Olivia was basically my sister growing up. She spent more nights at my house than at her own. And when her parents left Heatstroke, she stayed with us. I glance over at Alex, checking she didn’t overhear me. “Sorry.”
Cash shakes his head. “Alex knows who her mother is, and she knows that Olivia leaving isn’t a reflection on her, but on Olivia herself. It’s okay to mention her. I don’t keep secrets from my daughter.”
Oh, my God. Take me now. “Right,” I say. “Well, that’s good.”
The easiness of our conversation has lulled me, and I realize that I’ve stepped closer to Cash, or he has to me. We’re so close, I can feel the heat off his body.
He’s captured me with his eyes again, and I can’t break the stare. I can’t shake the memory of his hands on my body, us dancing at Longhorn’s, how little he cared about the attention on him. How I was his only focus. Cash, the celebrity. No. Just Cash, my friend.
Alex shrieks and darts past us, closely followed by Jesse, who roars like a lion. “You better run.”
“Hey,” Cash barks, “be careful. There are power tools right there.” He points at the bar.
Jesse rolls his eyes. “Oh, lighten up, man. We’re just messing around.”
I let out a breath. “Picnic time!”
That puts an end to the game of tag, and we settle down at one of the old tables in Chuckles Bar to eat.
But I don’t have much of an appetite.
The longer I’m near Cash, the more difficult it is to resist him.
Twenty-Four
CASH
I getout of the pickup into the fading sunlight. I’m tired from a long day at the bar and spent thinking about June. She’s going to leave after the summer. She acts like a friend, but she wants me. I can see it in the way she moves when she’s near me, the way she gravitates toward me.
I stand with my hands tucked into the front pockets of my jeans, staring up at the house that I grew up in. The one that was filled with noise and joy but was silent when I moved home. Except, now June’s back and it’s full of life again.
She’s not yours to keep.
I want her to be mine. I want to be selfish and claim her. Protect her. But that would mean having her in my life, and that’s a recipe for disaster. I’m not going to become a shell of a man when she eventually leaves.
The sounds of singing stop me on the threshold.
I don’t usually play music around the house. The only music I allow is what Alex listens to—old school rock rather than country. I like to limit the chance that I’ll hear something of mine on the radio.
But this isn’t music from the radio.
Upstairs, the door to the main bedroom, the one I converted into a library, is ajar, and the singing drifts out of it.
Alex and June are inside, among the bookshelves, sitting on the floor rather than the comfy armchairs.
June’s singing a song for Alex, one I don’t recognize, but she sounds like a fucking angel.
June pauses. “So, do you get what I’m saying?”
Alex nods and then starts to sing. My throat tightens as I witness my daughter practicing. I don’t want her to go through the pain I went through, but I do want her to have a love for music.
This is not part of June’s job description. And this is really something I should teach my child, but I’m awestruck by how beautiful they both sound, and how gentle June is as she teaches Alex.
It reminds me of our jam sessions when we were teens. Olivia never joined in. She always claimed it was “our” thing.
I squeeze my eyes shut for a second and back away from the door. I go to my bedroom and lift my guitar off the wall. I tuned it recently, after June moved in, but I haven’t played it in years.
