Chapters (43)
- Cover
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Epilogue
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Readers Guide
- QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
- About the Author
- What’s next onyour reading list?
And that’s all it had been. He’d always known that someday, his mama would no longer be able to work and he’d have to support both of them. He’d known that until you made a name for yourself, the show industry paid only starvation wages. But he’d been stubborn and ignored those realities as surely as he’d ignored Bill Lawler’s ultimatum. In the end, all that dreaming didn’t do a thing. He grew up in the streets of New Orleans, and that was where he was always going to end up, working a job that filled his stomach but not his heart.
The porch swing creaked as he waved away a mosquito, focusing for the first time on the street he stared out at. The freshly painted red stairs up to the Robinsons’ porch looked good but almost garishly cheerful next to the flaking trim that was waiting on next month’s paycheck. The drooping sun struck a green glow among the lush weeds of the lot next door, the Graviers’ vacant foundation peeking up like bleached gray bones begging to be buried.
LJ closed his eyes, and this time it wasn’t his mama’s slack face that appeared behind them. It was Andra’s fingernails, scraping at the paint of her windowsill before she found the latch and threw the window open. How her naked back had heaved as she sucked in the air that was clean of his scent, safe from memories he couldn’t shield her from.
She was probably relieved she didn’t have to see him after that. He sure didn’t feel like the same man who’d sat a saddle on so many of her family’s horses. And even when he’d been that man, he hadn’t been different enough from her bad memories to make new ones with her.
His hand tightened on the swing’s armrest, a splinter of the weathered wood driving deep into his palm. It was no wonder. To teach her how to feel safe again, she needed something better than a man who lost his temper at grocery store inventory and an air conditioner that wasn’t even broken yet. Her father, his mama, his own instincts: they’d all been telling him the same thing, and it was about damn time he started listening. Probably Andra would be a lot better off if she never heard from him again.
Twenty-three
Andra threw her truck into reverse, backed up four inches, cranked the wheel, and crept forward five. She reversed again by centimeters, wincing as she watched the bumper of the Honda behind her, half expecting a crash to announce she’d gotten too close.