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?
Her words warped and blistered inside his mind, peeling away in layers like the flimsy excuse they were.
“No shit.” His voice came out low and dark, and when he scoffed, it did nothing to ease the tightness of his throat. “What did you think was going to happen, Andra? Life is never going to give you a montage where black kids start playing in the sprinklers with white ones and the curtain goes down on racism. You want to pretend the reason you’re uncomfortable here is because you don’t play the guitar, fine. The truth is you came down south, had your eyes pried open, and decided you didn’t want to deal. Plain and simple.”
“This has nothing to do with what I want.” Her face twisted with anguish. “What I want doesn’t change that I don’t fit here, and it’s not any easier for you up there. There’s no place for us to be, LJ.”
“So what, I’m supposed to accept that this is some kind of star-crossed thing because I’m from the city and you wear cowboy boots?” He took a step closer, eating up all the ground between them. “Well, I wear boots, too, not that you probably remember that right about now. Don’t bother with another excuse, because I hear what you’re saying loud and clear. My home and yours ain’t the same. My people and yours ain’t the same. And dealing with that is too damn hard for you.” Heat seared up through his every vein, and he had to grind his teeth to keep his voice from building to a shout. “Fine. Hard ain’t new for me and mine, Cassandra Lawler. When the floods come, we stay.” He slapped his hand against his bare chest. “And you wash right on down the river.” He threw out an arm. “So go. Go back to where it’s easy, because that ain’t ever going to be here.”
Thirty-two
Water.
It was all around Andra: gray concrete and silver water. The sharp flash of sunlight off windshields. She’d taken a wrong turn leaving New Orleans and ended up on a bridge over a lake so big it might as well have been the ocean. Miles of divided highway on two separate bridges left nowhere to pull over, no place to duck off the road and catch her breath. The traffic was all shoving her too fast along the road.
She could barely steer her truck, because all she could see were LJ’s eyes when she’d left, dark with hurt.
Her hands tightened on the steering wheel, the light-pink handcuff scars around her wrists glaring in the brutal sunlight.
He’d started out as just a handsome man with gentle hands, holding a cake. He made her feel safe, and beautiful. He made her feel like it was safe to be beautiful.