I Run to You (7 page)

“Really good kid too. Normal, pain in the ass
sometimes. But a Coburn.” He laughed but hugged her again, saying
before he let her go. “Coy wasn’t going to let him come. He didn’t
want to upset you. But, Levi would never understand being left out.
I talked him into—.”

“—It’s fine, Max.” She stepped back, their
violet eyes holding. “Who can resent a kid? Really—it was a long
time ago. This is Coy’s family…”

Nodding, Max said, “No one assumed you’d
treat Levi with resentment. It’s just your homecoming, and you and
Coy haven’t spoken in—.”

“—We’ve nothing to say to each other. But if
we do, I can be civil.” She gave a shrug that would not fool
anyone. “It’s water under the bridge. Honestly.”

He sighed, looking totally unconvinced, but
nodded.

“Go. Eat.” She gestured toward the house,
grinning. “Before they leave you nothing but scraps. I’m just going
to steal a beer out of one of these coolers and go sit in the side
yard awhile.”

“Okay. If—”

“I’m fine. Jeez. You and Mom.” She rolled her
eyes, laughed, and pushed him toward the house. “You know how this
bunch is, and their noise level. I’m just going to enjoy a bit of
the nice day before I re-join everyone.”

He kissed her temple and left, sauntering
toward the steps but not without flirting and teasing along the
way. One of the younger boy’s girlfriends turned red and giggled as
he complimented her pretty smile. Her brother did his slow,
honey-dipped Kentucky drawl of, “Y’all be good…”

Brook snorted watching the girl’s heads turn
and observe the smooth, sleek, male walk off, while their
“boyfriends” looked resigned to having “Cuzs” that drew females
like flies.

She found that beer, settling under an oak on
a weathered picnic table, to sip and look around.

For two hours, she was either there or with
the teens. They had her come to one of the SUVs to listen to
music—a few demos’ they’d made too. Many of them played in bands.
Six Coburns’ sang gospel. She was flattered they wanted her
opinion. When they asked her about her experience, she gave them
all the same answer—. Hers had been a cover band. They had not
rocked the charts. It was all about the experience, traveling
around, playing the music they dug. Brook wrote songs, but she had
never offered them up for the group to do. They were a mix of
genres and the band was mostly pop.

She had seen the bad side too, the drugs, the
egos, the players—and they had been taken, scammed a few times.
But, she would not trade the experience, and said so.

“You gonna play around here?”

“Renee asked me to. I’m considering it.”

“You have to, man.” One of the guys holding a
CD she had sent of the group encouraged. “Shit. We are just home on
spring break. With classes, sports, I am lucky I get to listen to
music, let alone play. It’s the same with Kayla and some of the
others.”

She nodded.

One of the girls said, “Mitch and the gang
are always booked somewhere. We do okay with the dance clubs, some
of the hipper bars letting us play. But most of the musicians head
for Nashville or others out west.”

“People have different dreams. Ideas, about
what success is. Some just like making music.” Brook shrugged.

After chatting awhile, she left them and
checked her watch, standing by the edge of the house. Clusters of
people were everywhere, some of them neighbors. It was hard to
believe how time had flown.

Somewhere over the noise, she heard a car
horn and leaned around a group to see a new truck driving slowly by
the house.

People were calling out, and when she heard,
“Dad! Dad, wait!” Brook knew Levi was running down the yard, trying
to flag his father down.

Since the talk died down quite a bit, Brook
got that nape crawling feeling there were eyes on her from the
porch. The group in front of her moved, and some of the teens,
apparently clueless about her and Coy’s past, were adding their
urgings to Levi’s, for Coy to come up.

It was quite a situation. On the one hand,
these were his people and family. On the other, it was her
homecoming. Half the adults, likely some of the younger ones, knew
the details. Many did not. She was okay with not having been family
gossip. So. That was cool. It was just that between it all—there
was likely Coy stopped in the road, feeling put on the spot. Here
she was—not wanting to be the one to get him out of it.

She could always leave. Just walk casually to
her car. Nevertheless, to leave without speaking to Madeline would
make her Mom and Mitch think she had gotten upset about
something.

Feeling nausea and the beer churning, Brook
walked up the steps, intending to go in to the restroom and let
fate sort it out. Suddenly her head hurt too.

She tried to pretend casualness, the way
everyone else did when she stepped up and headed for the door.
Someone opened it, and she went inside. Unaware of anything
unfolding outside, people were in the kitchen and den chatting,
sipping coffee or sodas.

Brook spied her mother sitting with her hand
on Mitch’s thigh as they talked to Ruby and Jude. She cast a half
lame smile and quickly found the guest bathroom

Leaning against the closed door, hands
pressed to her stomach, Brook shut her eyes. Breathe. Relax.
Breathe. She drew air in through her nose and looked sightlessly
around the deep blue and natural wood powder room. It was
soundproof. She pushed away and went to the mirror, patting her
face with cold water.

Her eyes looked too dark, too telling. She
finger combed her wind-teased hair, seeing the tremble in her
fingers. Finally, Brook walked to the big spa tub and sat on the
tile edge.

Arms around her middle, she tried to pull
together what she would do if he came up, and they came face to
face. She had thought of it before. But not in this setting. Not
with everyone watching and his kid here...

Hearing her own deep breaths and exhales, she
realized she could not stay in here very long, or her Mom and Mitch
would freak. They would assume the worse—be damn close to the
truth—that yeah, she had freaked out.

She stood, smoothed the lavender blouse, and
low rise jeans, eyed herself in the mirror; angled face flushed,
lips a little too tense. Come on. Get it together. You are way
beyond it. Years, past it.

Those were young girl feelings. She was a
grown woman now.

Brook took a last in and out pull of air and
grasped the handle. She took the time walking up the hall, toward
the great room, to shed the nerves. Like before, getting on stage,
playing, while boos and missiles were flying. She could do
this.

“Hey.” Her mother appeared from somewhere in
the kitchen. Everything— worry, panic, love, was in Madeline’s
eyes. “He’s—”

“—I know. It’s all good.” Brook really did
not want anyone to see her hanging on her Mom. Madeline meant well,
but Brook was all for looking cool and collected. She said, “Have
you seen Renee?”

“She ran home to get something.” Madeline’s
eyes were searching.

“K. I think I’ll go out and find Jason.”

She tried to relay to Madeline not to hug
her, not to act as if anything was wrong. And Madeline didn’t. She
folded her arms, though, as if she wanted to, even as she stepped
back and smiled, saying, “I think he’s playing his guitar
somewhere.”

Nodding, Brook went out, ignoring searching
looks and asking someone where Jason was.

“Out under the oak.”

“Great.” She smiled and headed down the
steps. Her side vision was fully aware of who stood there— ruffling
his son’s hair, and talking to some of the younger crowd. He had
played pro ball. He was their hero, regardless of her past with
him.

She found not only Jason, but also Max,
sitting on the picnic table. Max was smoking, so she took the
cigarette from his fingers before going around, sitting on the
other aside, atop the table.

Jason finished adjusting the clamp on his
guitar and both their eyes said they knew Coy was there, and why
she was sitting there with them—smoking. He reached down, got a
frosty beer from the cooler, and handed it to her.

Talking around the cigarette in her lips as
she opened it, she joked, “Trying to get me drunk?”

He winked at Max, saying to her next, “We
didn’t get to be a bad influence on you. So were making up for it.
Although,” He nodded his head toward some people walking a path
toward the horse barn. “We all avoid the weed heads in the family;
they’re the French fried branch.”

She laughed, coughed around the smoke, and
muttered, “You’re terrible.” before she took a long pull.

Max, who had laughed, said, “I’m sure she’s
tried it, considering.”

Brook looked between them and sniffed,
“You’ll get no confessions from me. I know you’re just curious
about it because of my wild vagabond life with the band.”

“C’mon on, tell us all your secrets.” Jason
teased. “I’ll tell you all of Max’s.”

Brook took a drag, blew smoke, and shook her
head, grinning. “I’m twenty four. I think that gets me past
confession age. “

Jason played a melody. His eyes went over
her. She felt Max’s too—because despite background noise, they
could hear a chant going up as some of the young men were
apparently talking Coy into playing some back yard football.

Brook smiled crookedly, raised her brow, and
then the bottle in salute, taking a drink, and saying afterwards,
“Play that funky music, white boy.”

Laughing, Jason played, the both of them
singing Big Green Tractor, with more exaggeration than was
required. More twang than either of the half prep school, half-
Coburn (craziness) men spoke with.

Jason was singing and swaying, wiggling his
brows at her while he twanged, “Take ya for a ride on my big Green
Tractor….”

She ignored the fact that Coy was somewhere
behind them in the flat back yard playing ball. Brook finished that
beer, the cigarette, loving her half-brother, her brother by
default, Jason, for distracting her the next hour—singing not only
stupid songs, but also making up words that would make Madeline
wash their mouth out with soap, no matter how old they were.

Some of the lyrics were “dirty”. Some
just…disturbingly hilarious.

At the end of one, they opened fresh beers,
she took water this time, and a piece of gum Jason offered. They
joked back and forth about some woman, Jason apparently had his eye
on, but Max won the date with. Brook was the one who heard Levi
calling out to get Max’s attention.

“Levi is hollering for you.” She touched
Max’s arm.

He hopped down and turned, looking beyond her
as she sat, still with her back to the rear yard and answered,
“Okay, little man. I’m coming.”

Brook watched Jason stand. He set the guitar
in the case. She offered, “Thanks. For the entertainment.” Walking
round to stand beside him, as Max jogged off, she added, “I’m fine.
Really.”

“Miss Fine Thang. I know you are. High
though,” he teased with a white smile. Buckling the case next, and
hefting it to rest on the tabletop.

“Yep.” She grinned, and wished, if only that
were true, and waved toward the house. “See you later.” Brook’s
intention was to leave.

The sun was going to set soon.

She had some pre-set excuses.

She needed to call Sunny about taking that
job—3 days a week hopefully. She needed to unpack some boxes. Oh,
yeah. She could come up with a dozen things. None of them would
make everyone guess the obvious.

However, fate— was real bitch sometimes.

Several people coming down, needing to get to
the cars as they were carrying empty pots and plates, boxes,
blocked her from going up the steps.

What made her look toward the back, she did
not know, but the timing was—shit.

Coy was walking toward a cooler, opening it,
extracting water. He drank one down and got another, having not
looked forward yet.

It just was not fair. Dammit.

He was a grown man. More of— everything. A
sweat-damp white T-shirt enhanced those broad shoulders. A torso
obviously rigid, ribbed—and honed. The jeans molded to his long
powerful legs and lean hips. Television imagery was nothing
compared to Coy in the flesh. A skintight football uniform had
nothing over his casual yet sexy laid-back style.

That face… virile, potent. His hair was wind
tossed, streaked naturally by sun. His skin looked a toasted
almond. The handsome eighteen-year she had last seen… now had a
man’s rugged visage. Lips—she that remembered against her will—that
were soft, sensual. He smiled, laughed, at something someone called
out behind him and glanced that way. Those strong white teeth
flashed, causing her stomach to flutter inside.

Brook felt breath shuddering uneven past her
lips. She had not expected this. She thought she would be cold in
her response. That is what she’d felt, at a distance, time, being
far away. This feeling—was not supposed to be possible. She should
detached, able to view his handsomeness—without feelings—

Coy finally looked forward.

He stilled and blinked. His eyes were
intensely jasper, made more tawny by his dark skin.

In the process of taking a drink from the
bottle, he lowered it.

Brook swallowed and looked away, moving,
turning and jostling people, getting back up the steps.

“Are you okay?”

She swung her gaze toward Renee who had
spoken, just before going through the door. “Yeah, sure.” Brook’s
smile felt strained. “I’m beat. Ready to head home.”

Searching her gaze, Renee nodded. “I’ve made
progress getting a band together. I’ll call you. I’ve talked to
Jordan—the girl who works at Rafe's, about it before. She’s
in—”

“Sure.” Brook was not together, and was not
able to fake it at the moment.

Renee must have sensed it because she let her
go inside.