Alabama rolls her eyes. “Yes, thank God for both of us being well experienced in the sack,” she says dryly.
“It was good back then. It was good now.” He searches her eyes, searches out her face for any trace of regret.
Instead of responding, Alabama reaches out a finger to trace the ink on his bicep. “I remember this.”
The copper penny. Griff remembers having the tattoo artist make it the same color as Alabama’s hair. Then, her fingers fluttering with a delicate grace, she bypasses the penny and stops at a crudely drawn guitar with the word “Outlaw” on its fretboard. Griff’s first tattoo in Nashville.
She lifts a brow. “For the love of the music, right?”
He chuckles. “Right.”
She pauses on a strand of bright blue flowers. At the tilt of her head, Griff offers, “Texas.”
“Ah, bluebonnets.”
Then she’s onto the Waylon Jennings–inspired tattoo: a large W inked along his forearm. His heart hitches when she stops on a delicate cursive script. His mama’s name—Della Ray—scrawled on the inside of his elbow.
Alabama looks up at him with sad eyes. “We missed you at the funeral.”
He stares at her, his chest expanding at her words. “You went?” It’s news to him.
She frowns like she’s insulted he never considered it before. “Of course I did, Griff. Your mama was an amazin’ woman. I loved her—I wanted to be there.”
“She loved you too, you know,” Griff says hoarsely.
Alabama lies back in his arms. She looks up from under her lashes curiously. “Why ain’t you been home, Griff? Everyone’s wonderin’.”
He tightens his grip around Alabama but stares at the ceiling. Guilt, reality hovers around him like a storm cloud. He’s been avoiding going home because of the memories. Because of what he’s become, his selfish, drunken life, and what he’s lost along the way. The shame of Alabama’s father threatening to arrest him. The shame of never coming home for his mama’s funeral. The shame of putting Alabama in the hospital. The thought of facing her father has his anger at a simmering boil. He wants to put a fist in the old man’s face for telling a stupid kid what to do.
Hell, put a fist through his own face for being a stupid kid who listened.
He takes a harsh inhale of breath. And because Alabama’s waiting, he says, “Goin’ back to Clover, it was never an option for me, Alabama.”
“Why not?” When he doesn’t answer her, she leans up on her elbows. Reaching out, she presses a palm against his left eye, against his faded scar. He shivers at her tender touch. “Is this why you left?”
He wants to tell her. So fucking bad. That he didn’t sleep for weeks after he left her. That he’s still got the ring he bought her. That he doesn’t want to ruin the memory of the man she thinks her father is. She was hurt, she needed her father, and she didn’t need that burden laid on her then.
Only what about now?
But he swallows, choking back the truth that threatens to bubble up, and just says, “Al, it is what it is.”
A brief flash of anger appears in her eyes. She wants an answer, she’s burning inside for one, but she won’t beg for it.
“Look, sweetheart, I’m sorry,” he says, wanting to defuse the situation. He just had the best fucking night of his life and doesn’t want to chase her away or piss her off. He reaches out to pull her into his arms. “I know you want more, but the fact of it is that I’m an asshole, Alabama. And that’s one thing you didn’t know about me.” He lets out a long breath, as close to the truth as he can get. “I left because I wasn’t good for you.”
Shrugging off his touch, she leans back to look at him. The confusion on her face is heartbreaking. “What’re you talkin’ about? You were the best one for me, Griff.”
He grunts. “I was an asshole.”
This time, she lets him draw her back into his arms, and even though she curls up against his chest, she doesn’t relax. She’s quiet for a long time. Whether she agrees with him or is silently gathering more ammo to argue with him, Griff can’t tell.
They lie there in the quiet. The only sound the bus’s low humming. He presses a kiss to her temple, breathing in her hair, the scent of her coconut shampoo, and he’s back in Clover. Christ. Griff closes his eyes. How can someone smell the same after all these years? Smell so damn good it tears at his lungs like wildfire. She’s here in his bed, a place he’d never thought he’d find her again. It’s too damn dreamlike for words—lying next to Alabama.
He’s about to doze off, Alabama in his arms, when he feels the bed shift.
Griff sits up, his eyes following her curves as she slips out of the covers, slips from his grasp. His chest tightening, he reaches out to snag her wrist. “Hey, where you goin’?”
She stares down at him, her expression unreadable. “Back to my room.” She disentangles her wrist from his grasp.