“Wait a second,” Robert said. “I’ll come with you and we can get her on speakerphone. Just let me put in my requests. This will be my last karaoke night for a long time. I’ve got to be sure to get in all my favorites.” He turned to Marisol as he slid out of his chair and leaned down to whisper in her ear, “I’m putting in a duet for us, too. Any requests?”
Marisol was about to tell him she didn’t sing for the ten millionth time when he said—
“I know you say you can’t sing, but I want to be up there with you tonight. It’ll give me something to remember when I have to go onstage alone when I’m on tour.”
—and her resistance melted.
“You head out with Mia,” she said, tipping her face up to him. “I’ll fill out the requests. I know what you like to sing.”
“You know all the things I like,” he said, dropping a kiss to her lips before following Mia out the door. The kiss only lasted a second, two at the most, but it was still enough to make her breath hitch, her head spin, and the world feel deliciously off balance.
She recovered in time to catch Sawyer hiding a smile behind his margarita glass.
“Sorry,” she said, still breathless. “We’re trying to get the PDA under control.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sawyer said. “I haven’t known Bubba long, but I’ve never seen him so happy. You’re good for him, and no one here minds a public display. We like to see people in love.”
Marisol nodded, touched, and surprised that a man like Sawyer, who resembled a WWF wrestler more than a poet, was such a romantic.
“Speak for yourself, asshole,” Ugly Ross said, slumping lower in his chair. “Now that Bubba’s taken, I’m going to have to find a new movie date.” He waved his chip in her direction before pushing his wavy black hair from his face. “No offense, of course, Marisol.”
“None taken,” she said, slipping out of her chair. “You guys want me to put any requests in for you?”
“Only if you like the sound a tractor makes when it’s dying,” Sawyer said. “I can’t sing, either, and Mia can barely carry a tune in a bucket. So don’t worry about any judgment from our table when you get up there with Bubba.”
Marisol wavered for a second but decided not to say anything about her experience on stage. It had been so long since she’d sung in public, she might have forgotten how to do it. She might get up there, hit a hundred sour notes, and stink to high heaven, but she didn’t care. And she knew Robert didn’t either. He wanted to sing with her for the memory of a shared experience, not because he cared whether or not she could carry a tune.
She crossed to the DJ’s table and pulled the karaoke books down to the end of the counter, flipping through the faded pages. Some of them were so thin, they looked like they’d been snapped into the binder around the time Marisol was born, and almost every page had drink stains spotting the edges. But the beaten-in, well-loved look of the books only made them more charming, and it wasn’t long before Marisol found herself grinning as she flipped, spotting old friends on nearly every page.
There was Johnny Cash and Tammy Wynette, Freddy Fender and the Country Roland Band, all the musicians she’d grown up blasting in her earphones as she helped her mother clean the house or her father muck out the stalls in the barn. Surprisingly, there were new songs, too, and Marisol had no trouble finding a Josh Turner tune for Robert and a long list of duets. She debated for a moment between an old country standard, and a belty ballad she knew would show off the bigger side of Robert’s voice.
She’d just decided on the ballad when a man in faded blue jeans sidled up too close beside her. Without lifting her eyes from the book, Marisol shifted to the left, hoping the guy would get the message. She hadn’t seen more of him than his legs, but it didn’t matter what the rest of him looked like. She was with Robert and had absolutely zero interest in anyone else.
When a big hand wrapped around her elbow, she didn’t hesitate to pull away, but when she turned to pin the man with a “hands to yourself” glare, she found herself meeting Cole’s clear green eyes.
“Oh…hey. Hi, what’s up?” she said, blinking fast, but unable to completely banish the anger from her expression. She’d only hung out with Cole once. They hadn’t gotten to know each other well enough to be on an elbow-grabbing basis, and she didn’t care for the hard glint in his eyes, so different from the easy smile that had creased his tanned skin yesterday.
“I saw you over there with Bubba,” Cole said, nodding toward the table in the corner. “It looks like things are getting serious.”
Marisol shrugged, barely resisting the urge to tell him how serious she and Robert were, or weren’t, wasn’t any of his business. But she didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with Robert’s family, so she forced herself to smile. “Yeah. They are. I’m pretty lucky. Robert’s an amazing person.”
“He is,” Cole agreed as he reached into his back pocket, pulling out his cell phone. “He’s one of the most solid people I know. He wouldn’t hurt a fly if it flew up and slapped him in the face, and he doesn’t deserve to catch a nasty case of something because he made the mistake of falling for a girl who makes porn in her spare time.”
Shock hit so hard it felt like Marisol’s skin was melting off of her bones. Her face fell and her muscles went slack and for a long, gut-wrenching moment she couldn’t think of a thing to say. She couldn’t even pull in a breath, let alone protest that Cole had no idea what he was talking about. All she could do was fight to swallow past the lump in her throat and pray Cole hadn’t seen what she thought he’d seen.
But of course he had. There was no other explanation. She knew it even before he held up the phone between them and said, “I remembered where I’d seen you before.”
The video looked out of proportion on the small screen and grainy, but it was the same awful, embarrassing, raunchy footage of her and Shane. For the millionth time, she cursed herself for being stupid enough to make a sex tape, let alone a sex tape with half a dozen kinky encounters on it, perfect for cutting into pieces and selling in multiple installments.
She should have known better. Sex tapes are never kept on a closet shelf and pulled out only for the enjoyment of the two people who’d made it. Sex tapes were destined to get leaked, to get out and make some people rich and other people ashamed for the rest of their lives.
“I assume you haven’t told Bubba about this.” Cole mercifully pulled the phone away, jamming it back into his pocket. “My brother is one of the only men I know who doesn’t watch porn, so if you haven’t told him, I guarantee he has no clue.”
Marisol shut her eyes and did her best to force down the bile pushing up her throat like a fist. It didn’t matter how many times this happened, she still suffered the sting of discovery like it was that first time in the grocery store, when a bald man in a suit had leered at her breasts for a long moment before asking how much she charged for a blow job, while she struggled to convince herself there must be some mistake, and that not even Shane could bethatcruel. She still felt scared and ashamed, as exposed as if she were standing naked in front of the man who had seen the tape.
Every time a stranger watched her and Shane make love, he took something from her that she didn’t want to give away. He took a piece of her pride and made her feel smaller, uglier than she had before.
“Listen, I’m not saying people don’t deserve a second chance,” Cole said, his voice softening enough for Marisol to have the courage to open her eyes. “I just want to make sure you’re clean, okay? I had a buddy catch HIV from a girl in Panama City during spring break a few years ago. People are still dying of that shit, and I can’t lose Bubba like that. He’s my baby brother.”