His to Own: 50 Loving States, Arkansas Read online

  “Okay,” she says, realizing as much as she wants to say good-bye to Jordan, she also doesn’t want him to see her die.

  Her eyes flutter. The need to rest, to leave all this drama behind, pulls her under.

  “I think you owe me an apology.”

  Oh, sweet man. He’s trying to keep her awake. He thinks she actually has a chance of surviving this.

  “Okay,” she agrees, though it’s taking phenomenal amounts of effort to get the words out.

  But June plays along. Stays awake for as long as she can. Because she doesn’t want Mason to remember her as the weak thing he found in the Cul. She’s strong now. She killed Razo. She’s a fighter now. Like him. Because of him.

  “Okay, I’m sorry,” she breathes out, past the pain. “I love you…”

  It’s too much. June coughs. Painful and bloody.

  “Okay, okay, I believe you,” he says, letting her off the hook with tears in his eyes. “Help is on the way.”

  Help is on the way…

  That’s the last thing she hears, and Mason’s mournful face is the last thing she sees, before she falls into darkness.

  Epilogue

  After she was fully naked, she just stood there awaiting further instruction, which came about a minute or two later.

  Bair stopped punching and settled into a nearby leather chair. The piece of hotel furniture was standing so close to the punching bag, it had obviously been placed there for this specific reason. Just like in the other six hotel rooms. Bair scanned her naked form for a second. His eyes cold as black frost.

  “Come,” he snarled.

  She started forward again.

  Only to stop short when he said, “You know better than this. Pets walk. Bitches crawl.”

  KABLOOM!!!!

  Theodora is ripped out of the story she’s writing by the sound of a soccer ball crashing into her garage office’s door. Again.

  Freaking neighbors! All the kid across the way seems to want to do in his spare time is hit her garage with soccer balls. His timing is extra bad today because she was finally on a roll with that hot sex scene, but these concentration bombs had been happening ever since the new neighbors moved in a week before the school year began.

  She’d actually gone over to confront the junior high schooler, but then decided against it when the man she assumed was his father, or guardian maybe, answered the front door.

  He had tats running up and down both arms. Ravens and skulls on one. What looked like nails and gravel on the other. His thick, dark hair was cut into heavy side chops and a handle bar mustache. Seriously, they couldn’t have cast this guy better if they’d put out an ad for a vintage biker dude on Casting Choices.

  He looked nothing at all like the short tween she’d seen walking to school on her morning run. Probably adopted. So despite his scary looks, maybe he’s a nice guy. He might even be an actor. A nice actor living with his adopted maniac soccer fiend son…

  Yeah, no. Theodora knows she has an overactive imagination, but there was something sinister about this guy. Something off, she sensed.

  And in any case, she’d never been that great at confrontation, so… instead of complaining about his kid, Theodora opted for, “Hi, I’m Theodora! Your neighbor on the other side of your back fence. Just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood…”

  “Thanks,” he’d grunted.

  And that was all he said.

  After a few more awkward minutes during which she told him to let her know if he and his son had any questions about the neighborhood, she gave him a slight wave and hightailed it out of there as fast as she could.

  I’ll go over after I finish this book, once the kids are back in school, she’d promised herself. Hell, she even put it on her list of resolutions: “Be brave with the neighbor.”

  But the first few months of the new school year came and went. And now it’s Christmas Break, and the kid’s soccer practice isn’t just limited to evenings and weekends anymore. Her backyard now looks like a black-and-white minefield, littered as it is with soccer balls. At the risk of sounding like a cranky old lady, she’s lately starting to identify way more with Mr. Wilson than with that little shit Dennis the Menace.

  Theodora sighs, and goes back to work…

  Yes, she’s been demoted. She’d been told this more than once in the other Benton suites.

  Yet she could never just bring herself to do it. To get down on her knees and crawl to him until he commanded it. Trying to ignore the Radiohead song chewing up her chest, she dropped to her knees and crawled to him naked.

  However, her quiet acquiescence wasn’t enough this time.

  KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

  What now?!

  With a weary sigh, she flings open the front door. Only to stop short when she finds a pretty black woman on the front steps. The woman’s about the same height as Theodora, so short, but with thick hips and softly rounded…everything. Dream curves, she might call them if she were to describe the woman in a book. Except unlike most of her heroines who start off in various states of unhappy distress, this woman is smiling, has a diamond on her left hand, and an extra curve at her front. She’s pregnant.

  “Hi…” Theodora says carefully. She seems vaguely familiar to Theodora and she wonders if she’s a Jehovah’s Witness. For some reason, those folks regularly frequent her neighborhood, and often don’t see or choose to ignore the huge “No Solicitors!” sign on her door.

  “Hi,” the pretty woman answers. “I’m so sorry, but my son has run out of soccer balls, and he wants to know if he can go into your backyard to collect them. But I didn’t want to inflict him on you. Trust me, if I send him over to get the balls himself, you’ll never get rid of him.”

  Theodora relaxes with a laugh. “Likes to talk, does he? Sounds like my oldest daughter.”

  “Oh! I think I met her the other day with your husband,” the woman says. “Told me and Jordan all about the guinea pig she’s getting for Christmas because she kept her beta fish alive for a whole year. She’s very cute.”

  “Yes,” Theodora agrees. “But way too friendly. I keep telling her we’re a family of introverts and she needs to start acting like one!”

  The woman laughs again and before she knows it, Theodora is walking the new neighbor through her house, and into the backyard.

  After all, what kind of person makes a pregnant woman collect a bunch of soccer balls by herself?

  Oh, who is she kidding. As much of a hermit as Theodora is, this might well and truly be her only chance to get up in the neighbor’s business.

  “So…you and motorcycle dude are married?” she asks as they throw several balls over the fence connecting their yards.

  The woman nods. “Three years now.”

  “I honestly thought he was a single dad. I, well, it’s just that we never see you around.”

  “We have weird schedules, that’s for sure. I guess you could say we’re a showbiz family now. I’m on that tattoo show…Lost Angels Ink, and he’s on Bike Kings, the show about motorcycle restoration.”

  “I don’t watch much reality TV,” Theodora admits with a grimace. “And I don’t have any tattoos, but…” she squints at the woman, subtracts a few pounds. “My sister loves Lost Angels Ink, and I’m pretty sure I saw you in an episode last time I visited her. Are you the one who never talks?”

  The woman laughs. “Yeah, but truth is, I’ve had a lot more to say lately. Weird side effect of being pregnant, I guess.”

  “Weird pregnancy side effects are totally unpredictable. I ate a ton of salad with my first, even though I hate salad, and I wanted to spend all my time swimming in the pool with my second. Hey, sorry I didn’t recognize you.”

  “That’s okay,” she replies with a wave of her hand. “We’re kind of over being recognized. And we try to stick to opposite film schedules, so at least of one of us is here on the regular for Jordan.”

  On the regular. She reminds Theodora of her St. Louis relatives. Or maybe she’s fro
m one of the Missouri border states, like Tennessee or Arkansas?

  She opens her mouth to ask, but is interrupted by a deep voice calling, “June! June, where you at, sweetness?”

  Theodora looks toward her gate to see the head of the hulky biker she figured for a single father. He’s peering over the gate, obviously wanting to be let in. She walks over and unlatches it to let him in. The big guy crosses her yard in a few long strides, his wedding ring glinting in the sun as he reaches out and cups June’s stomach with a large, protective hand.

  “Hey, Mason. Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” June asks.

  “We’re on lunch, so I came home.”

  “Did you eat anything yet?”

  “Nope. I’ll grab something from craft services when I get back to the set. How you doing in this heat? I thought it was supposed to be fucking Christmas but it feels like July!”

  “I’m fine,” she assures him.

  “Maybe you should get inside, though.”

  “I will, just as soon as we’re done picking up all these balls.”

  “Kid should be doing that. I’ll talk to him when I get home tonight.”

  But June shakes her head. “He volunteered, but I didn’t want our neighbor to be mad at him for kicking all these balls into her yard and talking her ear off.”

  Mason gives up with a laugh that’s more of a grunt than a chuckle. Then he bends down and starts scooping and throwing the rest of the soccer balls over the wall. Giving his wife a “don’t even think about it” when she tries to help.

  “Sorry about this,” June says to Theodora in a lowered voice. “It took a while and, like, two rounds of IVF to get pregnant,” she confesses. “So he’s a little over protective these days.”

  “Totally okay,” Theodora answers. “I think it’s cute.”

  Which is strange, because cute would have been the last word she’d use to describe her scary biker neighbor or anything associated with him before his wife showed up.

  “Well, alright. I better get back,” Mason says when he’s finished.

  “You know, you didn’t have to come here in the first place,” June says, but her words are offset by her quiet tone and sweet smile.

  He responds to her chastisement with a deep kiss. All but sending June into a full swoon in Theodora’s backyard.

  But just when Theodora starts thinking about inching back into her house to give them some privacy, he breaks it off.

  “Sorry about the soccer balls,” he grunts at her before letting himself out through the gate.

  “No problem!” she calls after him.

  Right then, as if it had been waiting for Mason to leave, a new ball sails over the fence and into the yard.

  “Jordan!” June yells out, not sounding as much like a sweet magnolia as she did a few minutes ago.

  “Sorry, June,” a young voice calls back.

  “I better go talk to him,” she says, waddling purposefully towards the gate.

  “Okay, it was nice meeting you,” Theodora says, striding ahead of June to open the gate for her and latch it after she leave.

  But she stops, throwing June a curious look. As much as Theodora hates interruptions when she’s in writing mode, something about this situation reminds her of that one time in Colorado, when that couple showed up at her hotel room with an off-the-wall story about time-traveling werewolves. Ever since, she’s learned not to ignore her hunches.

  “Hey, would you like to come in for a cup of tea?” she asks June. “You seem like someone with a good story.”

  Heyo!

  Can I tell you how much I hate to let this couple go? Obviously, they’re very close to my heart, and I’m near tears as I write this letter. I began this story purely for June, but was shocked by how much Mason grew on me over the course of it. We can’t swap out our parents or change the past, but we can choose what kind of adults we’re going to be and we always have a choice about how we’ll live our lives going forward. I am so grateful to Mason and June for reminding me of these lessons with their story.

  I hope you super enjoyed reading this! If so, please grant me the further favor of leaving a review, so others might find this crazy, sweet couple. And if you’re wondering about Holt Calson and his mystery woman, check back in with me in 2017. I cannot wait to tell you that story!

  Until then, please enjoy Colin and Dixon Fairgood’s tales, after the next swipe.

  So much love,

  Theodora Taylor

  HIS FOR KEEPS

  That Night

  “Cool. Let’s meet up at my house around eight. Parents will be gone.”

  That was the text that started it all. It was from Mike Lancer. My boyfriend. Well, sort of, but not really. We’d been hooking up all summer, and he only ever invited me over when his parents were out. But his parents were out a lot, so we’d settled into a routine: I was the girl he called when his parents weren’t around. And if I wasn’t due to perform with my mother that night, I was the girl who went over to his place.

  He’d called me his “secret girlfriend” a few times while we were making out, before he stuck it in me. So I guess that made us… something.

  This was his first text message though, because I’d just gotten a new phone the day before. My first cell phone, an early birthday present from my mom, bought because she was feeling optimistic.

  She’d finally landed a gig for the following weekend at The Rusty Roof, one of Birmingham, Alabama’s oldest and most legendary country music venues, and she’d just gotten a call from the club’s manager that Lee Street, from Big Hill Records, was coming all the way down from Nashville to see her perform. Really, he was coming to see the band of twenty-year-olds slated to go on right before her—the club manager told her that straight up. But Valerie Goode had always been on the crazy side of confident about her career prospects.

  She didn’t care who Lee Straight was really coming to see. He’d be in the room. And for a magical thinker like Valerie, that had been enough to make her buy the daughter she called her “right-hand guitar,” her first cell phone. Of course she did it with money she didn’t have, because she was banking on Lee Straight making her a big star after he saw her perform on stage—and/or in bed if need be. In Valerie’s mind, she was always just a performance and one really good fuck away from becoming the world’s first black female country music star.

  As far as she was concerned, the only reason she hadn’t made it to fame and fortune before the age of thirty-five was because she’d gotten pregnant with me in her prime contract-signing years. According to her, my birth ruined everything: her relationship with my father, her ability to get the gigs she needed in order to be seen by the right people. Everything Valerie deserved but had never gotten was because of me.

  We got along just fine for the most part, but whenever Valerie drank too much—which was often—she let me know just how far I’d set her back. I and I alone was responsible for where she was now: thirty-five and pinning every last hope she had on one gig at the The Rusty Roof.

  In reality, this would end up being the gig that finally convinced Valerie she would never, ever make it in country music. The gig that would finally convince her to toss out her “right-hand guitar” and go to L.A. by herself to try to make it there.

  But she didn’t know that the weekend before what happened happened, so she bought me a phone. And the first thing I did after I got my new cell phone was text the only other person I knew my age who also had a cell phone. Mike Lancer, the rich boy I’d met at the state fair. On purpose. I’d cornered him at the cotton candy booth after I’d seen him walking around with Beau Prescott, the quarterback of the Forest Brook Vikings. Beau was the boy I’d been secretly watching from afar for years now. The boy I’d never been able to bring myself to talk to.

  So I’d gone after his friend, a beefy blond who was more than happy to hook up with me as long as I was okay with going straight to the servants entrance when I came over, because, “No offense, my parents would fre
ak if they knew I was hanging out with a black girl.”

  Which was why I was surprised to receive a text message right back from him, just a few seconds after I sent mine.

  “Who’s that?” my mom asked, hearing the ding of my phone. “Somebody about a gig?”

  She was on the couch, one shapely leg bent beneath her as she painted her toenails. Valerie might have been thirty-five, but she looked at least ten years younger thanks to an insane eating regimen, a wardrobe made up of Southern party girl staples, and her insistence on wearing toenail polish the color of candy. Today she was painting them neon pink.

  Pretending to be her manager, so she looked like she’d already had one, was one of the duties my mother had given me, along with playing guitar for her sets and singing back-up when needed. Thanks to an extra serving of T&A that had come in over the past school year, I looked a lot older than fifteen years, especially when I wore stage make-up. Like Valerie, in reverse.

  “No, it’s that boy I met at the fair back in June,” I answered her. “He wants me to come over, and we’re not performing tonight…”

  My mom actually looked up, her heavily mascaraed eyes flicking over my outfit. Denim Bermuda cut-offs and an old Dick Tracy movie t-shirt I’d cut to hang off one shoulder.

  “That’s what you’re wearing?” she asked me.

  “Yeah, I don’t like to look like I’m trying too hard.” Especially with Mike Lancer, who was always more concerned with getting me out of my clothes than noticing what I was wearing.

  But my mom, the queen of trying too hard, just sucked on her teeth.

  “You been taking your pill? You know I’m not—”

  “Taking care of no grandbabies. Yeah, I know,” I finished for her. “I’ve been taking it.”

  Another disapproving up and down, and my mom went back to her candy toenails.