That Night in Nashville (Ticket to True Love) Page 5

  Looking through the contracts spread across his desk for upcoming jobs, he saw that none of them could get signed and finished tonight. It was Thursday. If he waited until Friday, Knoxville would clog up and getting out to see his mother would be even harder.

  Fuck it, he thought and stood up to leave. One thing Clayton had taught him was not to let the job run his life. It was a lesson that he hadn't listened to often enough.

  This job paid his mother's medical bills. It covered his father's funeral last year. Just six months ago Adam had gotten himself out from under most of six years of debt. He’d paid off his own car—bought used from a dealer so it was in good shape. He got his mother into something a little bit better to drive and he was still paying on that. He gave his mother money for everything—bills, repairs, sometimes even groceries. She worked, but it didn’t pay well, and his father hadn’t left much behind. His parents had never had quite enough money to send his sisters to college. Adam had pitched in.

  His salary at Clayton Light and Images had made it possible even before he’d bought the place. Sarah had graduated a local state school with a bachelor's degree and was now working. She was married and on her own—for that Adam was grateful. It was a checkmark on a years-long list.

  Rachel had just gotten her associates degree, and she was heading off to nursing school next. Another checkmark. The family had agreed to help her with her undergraduate work, but for nursing school, she would need to take out loans. She was excited, and he'd been excited to write that last check to cover her tuition. Both his sisters were now more educated than he was, at least formally.

  It had been worth it, he’d made a difference. His sisters had been able to go to school. His parents hadn’t lost their house or had to declare bankruptcy. He was confident that his mother’s ongoing illness contributed to his father’s heart attack the year before, but he was also confident that it would have come much sooner without the financial relief his staying behind and working had afforded them.

  Adam reminded himself of this as he drove out of town, as the stoplights slowly and slowly got further apart. The road separated itself from the basic grid of the city and began twisting. The pavement now followed the hills and hollows where he'd grown up.

  He passed churches with ground level signs that somebody put the letters into each week. He drove down long, winding streets where the houses changed style on each lot. Vast, plantation style homes sat next to old, four-room squares whose roofs sagged in the middle. Every tenth house had a junkyard in the front. One had old rusted tractors, another held classic cars damaged enough as to make anyone who loved a good antique cry as they drove by.

  If Adam turned left, he would head down to the trailer park, where Hailey had grown up. Instead, he turned right, taking the road to the house where he'd grown up. His mother greeted him at the door.

  “Hey, baby!” Her hands came up and clasped his face. She looked older. These last few years had been hard on her. He smiled but his mind flashed through to Hailey.

  He’d lost Hailey for his mom and he thought at the time that it was a good trade. He hadn't asked Hailey not to go—only to wait a few years so he could take care of his mother. Hailey hadn't been willing to stay. Not even for a while.

  She was so confident in his mother’s willingness to manipulate all her children that she hadn't believed his mother actually had cancer.

  “Come on in,” his mother said with an overly wide grin. “I made meatloaf casserole. Your favorite.”

  It wasn't his favorite. He did like it, but over the years, it had lost that status. It had come to mean that she had a favor she wanted to ask. “What do you need done, Mom? Let me help.”

  Fifteen minutes later, while the smell of baking casserole wafted up to him, Adam stood in the attic, covered in dust and regretting that he’d asked. This was why she'd made the casserole.

  Meatloaf casserole was a lot of work—he knew. First, she had to make meatloaf. Then there was the assembly and baking of the dish. Yeah, she could have done the job here in the attic. In fact, she was smaller. She fit the space better than his tall frame did. But she'd rather make a casserole and ask him to do it. She’d played the “bad back” card, and then added, “Just leave it if you don’t want to do it. Maybe your sister can do it when she gets here.”

  He now coughed hard three times as he mistakenly breathed in too hard. The attic had clearly been visited frequently but not dusted. Jesus.

  Hailey had been wrong—his mother had cancer—but she hadn't been wrong about his mother.

  13

  Hailey sat on her couch, her guitar resting on her knees. As she leaned forward, she pulled the coffee table up closer and laid out several pencils. Then scribbled whatever she came up with.

  She knew the rule. If she counted any number of songs on the radio, the vast majority of them would be about love—finding it, losing it, being dumb and throwing it away. So she figured she could milk this emotional upsurge she was dealing with for at least three songs.

  Brenda agreed. In fact, Hailey had told Brenda far too much about her relationship with Adam, and not even in the kind of way that one would tell a friend confiding a secret and feeling better at the end. No, Brenda had just wanted to know which pieces of it they could milk for the best songs. So here Hailey was, bleeding again—actively throwing herself back into her high school days. Back to the small trailer and the inability to completely close her door or have someone not watching over her shoulder. To nights of sneaking out and putting a sleeping bag in the bed of Adam’s father's truck and thinking no one knew what they were doing.

  It was eleven a.m. on a Tuesday, and she would have been down at the Heart Beats studio, except for the issue that all the rooms were booked right now. She had an appointment for later in the afternoon, but when the urge struck, it struck. By the time she started writing the thoughts and sounds down, Hailey was glad she was at home.

  It was hard bleeding for her work. Maybe she didn't need anyone peering through a window to see how she was doing or waving and smiling and striking up a conversation. Picking up her coffee to take a sip, she instantly felt that the cup was far too light to have anything left in it. Setting her guitar aside, she stood up. Maybe she didn't need coffee, maybe what she needed was a beer. She was at home and she wasn't going anywhere.

  Honestly, if she was going to bleed for her work, she deserved something harder than a coffee. The writing might even go a little better if she was a little looser. Grabbing a beer from the back of the fridge, Hailey popped the top and took a long pull.

  Ah, yes, this was what she needed.

  She headed back to the couch, plunking the beer onto a coaster and setting the guitar back across her knees. She was in cutoff jean shorts and a tank top, her red hair thrown back over her shoulder. The air conditioning was turned to a temperature higher than she would have liked in hopes of not having a bill that was higher than she was willing to pay. The beer definitely helped with the heat and the heat helped with throwing her back to her high school days and the time she’d spent tumbling head over heels for Adam.

  She drifted back to her first kiss. That had been third grade, Timmy Higgins, and it had been a mess. Definitely not song worthy. She thought about combining several experiences into one song. No one would know. But, as she thought back over a series of first kisses, nothing played out with any drama until she got to Adam.

  She thought about the high school hallway and the first time she'd seen him. It had been the third time she'd seen the hot boy in the grade ahead of her that he had finally looked up and seen her, too. Later, he told her he'd noticed her red hair and the curls. She'd put far too much time and hairspray into her hair the next morning. To this day, it was a decision that she never regretted. Still, it had taken another month for him to kiss her.

  She'd been waiting.

  She'd kissed other boys before, so Hailey had not been shy. When Adam had leaned in gingerly for that first kiss, Hailey had thought she'd k
nown what to expect.

  She'd been wrong.

  Setting her guitar aside and leaning back on the couch, she tried to let the memory wash over her while still keeping it at arm's distance.

  That didn't work.

  Brenda was right. It wasn't enough to watch it play out in her mind, she had to re-live it. That's what made the song amazing.

  She sank further into the memory. They'd been under a stairwell at the high school. Probably more drugs had been traded there than kisses. They'd gone on three dates, all of which had ended awkwardly. Hailey had had enough waiting—he either wanted to kiss her or he didn't—and she was going to find out.

  She was the one who had led him around the corner. “Adam, are you ever going to kiss me?” He hadn't answered, not with words. Simply pulled her books from her hands, set them on the floor, and tugged her into his arms. It was the hardest, sweetest kiss she'd ever gotten. He turned her insides to jelly and melted her heart.

  Then and now.

  He’d been awkward before, but maybe he’d only needed to know that she wanted to kiss him. That kiss had left her dazed to the point where he'd had to lean over, pick up her schoolbooks and put them back in her hands. He’d told her she was about to be late to class. As her eyes glazed from the memory, her body felt the touch of him all over again. The memories were still so strong.

  When she pulled them out, they swamped her. Which was maybe why she’d avoided doing exactly this over the last handful of years. Now, she leaned forward, scratched a handful of words onto the page, plucked a few chords, and tried it again and again until the song matched the feelings.

  The problem was, three verses later, she wasn't remembering things that had happened—she was fantasizing. She lived an alternate life that might have happened had she stayed.

  Adam insisted they would just wait a few years, that they would leave as soon as his mother was better. But even at that young age, Hailey had known better. If his mother wasn't going to let him go then, she wouldn't let him go in three years either. Hailey would have wound up singing at weddings and funerals, maybe opening a few ballgames at the school. If she was lucky, she might get all the way to Knoxville.

  That was the life she’d rejected. But the other part of the fantasy was what gave her pause: a house, a picket fence, a yard. Two little girls, red hair like hers. Dark chocolate eyes like Adam’s.

  Just like that, she was lost, thinking about what might have been.

  He had chosen his mother over her. She had chosen her career over him. But had she also chosen it over an entire life that she would never get to live now? Maybe she had.

  Hailey was sucking in a deep breath—whether it was one of regret or confidence that she'd made the right decision, she didn't know—and she was startled from her reverie as a knock came at the door. She wasn't expecting anyone, and her first thought was that the food delivery had gotten an apartment address wrong again.

  She was pulling open the door, ready to say, “You want three-oh-four not four-oh-four” when she stopped dead.

  Adam stood in her doorway.

  The blue suit showed off the depth in his eyes. The shock of dark hair showed he'd been running his fingers through it as though he’d been stressed. The loosened tie around his neck told her he decided to go into work this morning but had somehow wound up here.

  Had he come all this way from Knoxville?

  He opened his mouth to say hello and whatever else might have followed, she wouldn’t ever know. Reaching out on an impulse borne of all the things she’d been imagining, Hailey grabbed the front of his shirt and dragged him into the apartment.

  14

  Adam stepped willingly into the apartment as Hailey's hand grabbed his shirt and tugged him through the doorway. Backing up as she pulled him forward, she used her free hand to push the door closed behind him.

  Before he could open his mouth to say why he was here, her mouth was on his and he melted into the feeling.

  Her hands, once tugging him inside, now pushed his shoulders. For a moment he resisted until he realized she was working to get his suit jacket off. With a shrug, he let it fall to the floor behind him. Her deft fingers found the buttons on the front of his shirt, and she leaned into him again as their tongues tangled.

  Before he realized what he was doing, he’d slid his fingers under the hem of the tank top she wore. The heat of skin just above the waist of her almost-too-short jeans made him suck in a breath. He could almost feel the humidity of the tent from the Brewers Fest again. He could feel the cosmic pull of being inside her and was suddenly tugging her shirt up and over her head, revealing another lacy bra.

  She pulled back barely an inch, her breasts heaving against him. The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them. “Do you always wear these?”

  His fingers were touching her without thought, without hesitation, and without permission. But she leaned into his hand and her eyes fell half closed as she whispered back, “Only when I'm thinking about you.”

  His brain caught at the thought and he could feel blood rushing toward his already hard cock. What she did to him. She could turn him on with a look, a word, even just a breath.

  With a deep heave of his lungs for air, he dove at her again, the two of them pushing toward each other, fingers searching, as Hailey walked them backward toward an open door.

  Bedroom, he thought. Let it be a bedroom.

  He caught only the smallest glimpses of the place as she tugged him along. The living room, the dining area, and the open kitchen were all cluttered. A guitar laid on the couch where she must have set it to get the door. Others waited patiently in their stands beneath the window. She had papers strewn across the coffee table. One empty beer bottle sat on the counter and another—seemingly more freshly opened—was waiting patiently on the coffee table.

  All of that disappeared as she tucked a finger into the front of his pants, the only thing left to grab him by. All the rest of his clothing had been abandoned, but Hailey didn’t let that stop her as she pulled him into a quiet oasis. The bedroom was done in shades of pale grey and silver. A white comforter added to the feeling of tranquility and the two of them tumbled downward onto it together, mouths fused, bodies and limbs entwined.

  Her hands came up, cupping either side of his head and making him look her in the eyes. He hadn’t even managed to reply to her questioning “Hello?” as she’d opened the door, so she was now giving him a chance to…

  What?

  Back out? Hell no. He was half naked and she wasn’t naked enough. He dove back at her, his mouth searching the breasts that had always fascinated him. Were they larger than when she’d been in high school? He was still a sucker for every part of her.

  Reaching around her back as she arched up, he flicked open the three hooks at the back of the bra and peeled it down her arms before flinging it across the room. It seemed fitting to use his skills on the woman who’d taught him so much.

  She moaned his name, only the second word spoken between them, and arched her back again. He knew what she wanted, but he knew what he wanted, too.

  Their interlude in the tent had been amazing—mind-blowing and unexpected. But this? Now? He wanted to slow down.

  “Hold on, baby. In a bit.” He whispered the words as it hit him that he knew her. This wasn’t some woman he was having sex with, this was the woman who’d taught him how to give and take pleasure. They’d experimented on each other with reckless abandon as teenagers, and he now knew that she would beg him. More. Harder. Faster.

  Adam also knew he could hold back and make her scream.

  Ignoring the deep certainly in his chest that this wasn’t just about the sex, he pushed her back onto the comforter and began his way downward. Flicking the button on her cut-off jeans he tugged while she wiggled out of them and so easily back into his heart.

  Had he ever stopped loving her?

  “Adam! Please.” She whimpered the word and he ignored what it did to him.

&
nbsp; It wasn’t the time to ask himself any deep questions.

  “Soon.”

  15

  Adam was still breathing heavily as he finally glanced up to the ceiling. He wanted to believe that he didn’t know what she’d done to him. But he did know. She was Hailey, and they were like this. Like nothing else he’d ever known.

  Thinking clearly—or more clearly than he'd been thinking, since before he decided to hang a righthand turn and head to Hailey’s apartment unannounced—Adam took a deep breath. Driving the extra few blocks, he’d planned it all out: knock on the door and hope she was home. He’d even pulled a sticky note from the glove box and shoved it in his pocket to leave on the door in case she wasn't.

  In his original plan, he would ask her out on a date. He might even fold and say it was just old friends getting together. Whatever it was, it needed to make up for him suggesting she might run off pregnant with his child and hide it from him. Since he’d had time to think, he’d cringed several times over that massive blunder and he wasn't going to make it again.

  Adam thought he would speak when he got his breathing under control, but he couldn't quite seem to do it. It took another few minutes before he could tell her, “This wasn't what I intended to happen.”

  Beside him, tucked up close, his arm around her, her head on his shoulder, Hailey was easy to read. He felt her answer as she merely shrugged in response. Silence accompanied his wait as he tried to think of something else to say.

  But it was Hailey, and it only took another moment of almost-awkward space before she popped onto one elbow and look down at him, her brows pulling together. “How did you know where I live?”

  “I looked you up. You're not hard to find.”

  “Were you in Nashville today for something else?”

  He nodded to that one. Seeing that Hailey was on a roll, and he was going to get barraged by questions until she had all the answers she wanted, he turned his head until he was looking directly at her. But she was already locked and loaded with the next one.