Anger curls her fist. Griff’s got some nerve showing up like this. Like he didn’t wreck everything in their past. Just another man, another person promising sweet nothings. How long until it blew up in her face? Until they lied, schemed, screwed her over. It was all the same. With Griff. Mort. Landry.
Landry Jones was the first man she had loved since Griff, only to have him take the one song they wrote together and suddenly leave her for a record deal and an agent.
But she never let that get her down. She said fuck him and moved on. It was an attitude well practiced after Griff disappeared. She didn’t have time to nurse a broken heart. After she graduated high school, she packed up her guitar and left for Nashville. She was determined to make it without Griff, determined to outshine the person who had left her behind in Clover.
Only she didn’t.
For Griff, his rise to fame happened fast. For her, it took five years of waitressing in Nashville before she scraped together an album and an agent. And even then, she couldn’t even touch Griff Greyson’s star status. Which was what made it easy, so damn easy, to partner with Mort. She was so desperate, so hungry to make it, she nodded yes to auto-tune, embraced the pop-country princess label, let everyone else write her songs.
Mistake after mistake after fucking mistake.
Alabama hunches forward and cradles her face in her hands. Everything’s a mess. She’s broke as hell. Her father’s lost any pride he ever had for her. Her reputation’s in shambles.
This is her life now, and she was content to leave it like that until Griff showed up. Though his offer has her seeing red, it also has her seeing something she’s been missing.
The music. The real Alabama.
She doesn’t know who she is anymore. For years, she’s been painted up, primped out, jumping through hoops to get scraps meant for the boys. Shit, she didn’t have a number one song until she recorded with Luke.
This could be her chance to change all that. To prove to the world that she can sing. That she can write her own songs and damn good ones at that.
She always told herself she fulfilled her dreams. But were they the right dreams? Were they really hers? Or were they someone else’s?
She doesn’t know. But she could find out.
Straightening up, Alabama digs around in her apron for her car keys. She glances at the clock on the wall and grins. Two a.m.
Perfect.
With a sigh, Griff crosses the creaky floor of his mama’s bedroom. The old stone house feels about as run-down as he does because working up the nerve to call Freddie and tell her Alabama flat out declined ain’t easy. Hell, he’ll just wait until tomorrow. Go back and throw himself on her ice-cold mercy. Shit, commit to rehab or sleep with whoever they fucking want just to keep his label happy.
He flips the penny high into the air and catches it in his palm. He places it on top of the dresser, next to his own. His eyes snag on the color—copper—and a flash of Alabama’s hair, her face, sideswipes his mind.
A frustrated growl escapes Griff at the unwelcome image. Thinking about how goddamn gorgeous she turned out to be is already reinforcing his need to leave Clover and everything associated with Alabama behind. Like this damn penny.
He scowls and rips open his dresser drawer.
Griff puts both pennies in the drawer, burying them among socks and various odds and ends. When his hand bumps against something square and hard, he frowns and pulls it out.
His jaw flexes as he stares at the small box. He doesn’t need to open it to know it’s Alabama’s ring. He had worked two jobs that entire summer just so he could save enough money to propose by the end of it. They were young, and he knew they were in for a hell of a talking-to, but he didn’t give a damn. He knew what he wanted, and that was Alabama.
Only the accident on the Ridge had changed everything. Just like the Jeep he had flipped, that night tossed all their hopes and dreams ass over teakettle.
Still, he forces himself to look at what he lost. Everything he gave up because he was a fucking idiot. He opens the box. The sparkle of the diamond seems to mock him, and Griff chokes down a deep well of bitterness.
He closes his eyes, not even bothering to try and stop the memory from coming. It’s stuck so deep in his mind it’d take a winch to get it out.
He had been drinking that night when Al pulled up to the kegger, at the helm of her daddy’s Jeep, asking him to drive. He should have said no, should have told her he had a few beers, but he didn’t, and he got behind the wheel.
And then he was in the hospital, the side of his face stitched back together, frantically waiting for word on Al, when her father, Newton, took him aside. Her father had never liked him, but he had always held his peace. But that night he finally unleashed. That night in the hospital he told Griff he knew he had been drinking. Had threatened to charge him with drunk driving and toss his ass in jail. “Is this what you’re gonna do?” Newton had said in that intimidating baritone of his. “Drink yourself stupid on the road with my daughter? Drag her down with you? Kill her?” He crossed his meaty arms. “Don’t think, boy. Leave. Or go to jail.”
Though a teenage Griff had outwardly scoffed at Newton’s threats, deep down, he was scared shitless. The thought of his mama, of Alabama, hearing about what he had done ...
He couldn’t hurt them like that. So he ran. Ran from Alabama all the way to Nashville because her daddy told him to.
Griff stares at the ring, his heart pounding hard at the pain of the past.
What kind of fucking man was he?