Out of the Blues (24 page)

“You are my only.” I waited for him to kiss me. He swallowed hard and I could see the war raging in his eyes. “I love you, Mason just you for now, forever, for always. I’ll tell you every day until you believe me.”

“Out of the blue like lightning,” he muttered and the words to that song he sang came back to me. “You hit me in my heart when I was afraid and drowning in grief and you made me face my demons and…”

“You wrote that song about me?” I wrenched my wrist free of his hands. I needed to touch him. “When you were—”

“When I was fighting you with every fiber of my being, I was falling in love with you. My music is my words, my heart, my truth. I didn’t even know it at the time, but there you were, in my music and in my heart. I need you and I’ve never needed anyone before.”

“Me either,” I said because it was true. “Until I met you, I never needed anything and now I can’t live without you.”

He lowered his head to my shoulder and trembled in my arms. I flipped him onto his back and smoothed his hair from his eyes and I kissed him with all of my fucking heart.

Epilogue

Mason’s big fat redneck Thanksgiving.

I leaned against the railing overlooking the back pastures. The ridge out beyond the farm was covered in a blanket of fall color, the summer green just a memory. I shivered. There was a fire in the fireplace behind me. Cozy chairs, a swing, and several cushions waited for our guests to finish dinner. I could hear them inside, my crazy ass family.

He snaked his arm around my waist and wrapped around me, resting his chin on my shoulder. “Cold?”

“Warmer now.” I sipped the coffee I’d escaped the house with. “Too many people inside.”

“That there are.” He took my coffee and drank before handing it back. “Too much sugar.”

“Get your own.” I reached up to caress his face.

“Yours is always better,” he said, kissing the palm of my hand. “Pie?”

“Later, too much turkey.”

The screen door sprang open and slammed behind a shrieking howler monkey in a Bears sweatshirt. He was three. He’d abandoned me for football. The bigger kid wearing an almost identical shirt came running out behind him. “Jayden, you little monster gimme back my football.”

“Nooo,” Jayden screamed as he ran down the steps into the leaf strewn yard. “Travis…nooo.”

The booger monster had finally learned to talk, much to everyone’s dismay.

“I’m going to get you, you little…” Travis stopped his threat when their father came out right behind them. Doug didn’t wear a Bears shirt. He looked rugged and handsome in a plaid shirt and worn jeans. He scooped the older boy up, jumped the three steps in one bound to chase down the sleek footed howler monkey who’d made it to the old tire swing where he spiked the football, and yelled, “touchdown,” while Travis squealed because Doug spun him around and around before tumbling into the leaves with his two sons.

“You okay?” Kilby whispered in my ear and I nodded. Doug had never been like that with me, but I wasn’t jealous of my little brothers.

“I’m good. They’re happy, why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“Just asking.” He laughed when the little kid did a flying leap and tackled the older kid. “Reminds me of Hunter and myself. He was such a little pain in the…”

“I am standing right here,” Hunter said from behind us.

“Ass.” Kilby finished anyway. I could feel his laughter in his chest. It was nice.

“Watch your language, Uncle Kilby, there’s a lady present.” Hunter stepped up to the rail with a bundled up wide-eyed darling in pink fur. She blinked at me and sucked on her own fist.

“She can’t even hold her own head up yet, I don’t think she’s going to be repeating me anytime soon.” Kilby reached over to boop our niece’s button nose. She went cross-eyed, watching his finger zero in and giggled when he said. “Boop your nose.”

“Baby giggles are the sweetest sound,” Kilby said and I think my ovaries exploded.

“Mason has that look in his eyes, Kilby, you should take him upstairs and work on making one of these,” my lovely sister said from my other side. I hadn’t heard her come out. I think I told her to fuck herself.

“We’ll get on that later,” Kilby told her and I groaned because…yeah, baby making practice…I was all for baby making practice, especially when there was no chance of making a baby. Who knew!

Harper laughed and patted my stomach right above Kilby’s arm. “Looking good, Macie, farm work suits you.”

“Don’t murder your sister…not in front of the kids,” Kilby said loud enough for Harper to hear. I think I loved him.

Harper scratched the side of her nose with her middle finger and Kilby laughed.

“I think I’m going to get in on this game of…whatever the hell the boys are playing,” Harper said and left them on the porch. She patted her husband’s ass on the way past and blew him a kiss.

“My sister…just one of the boys,” I said, maybe with more than a pang of jealousy.

“Well, somebody had to be, Princess,” Hunter said and Kilby laughed and god, I hated them both.

“Assholes,” I said when the backdoor slammed again and my stepmother came out. She held the other bundled up slobber-faced-fist-gnawer. This one in Bear blue; poor woman, all those boys, four of them.

“Nice to be the only princess in a family of jocks,” I agreed, looking at the little pink squishy face.

“Hey,” Hunter said, indignant on his daughter’s behalf.

“I shall train her to wear my crown well,” I said, holding out my arms for my niece. “Now go play ball with the other boys.” I shooed him off. “Kilby and I are going to play uncle.”

Hunter transferred my niece into my arms and gave Kilby a significant look before he left us to go play in the leaves. Kilby sighed in my ear and held me closer with one arm while he petted the baby’s downy head with the other. I became spontaneously pregnant.

“We can adopt one day, if you want…I mean…I don’t know.”

I could hear the longing in his voice. I didn’t know either. It had only been a year since we met and not even a whole year of being a…were we even a couple?

I spent more time in Nashville than I did here. We hardly saw each other in the summer months. If I came home at all, he fell into bed exhausted and would be gone when I woke up, to drive back to Nashville. Now was good. The tribute albums were finished and I wasn’t scheduled to record any of my work any time soon. The crops were all in now and the daily cattle feeding runs didn’t take up all of his time.

“She has that new baby smell. We can give her back when she…gets stinky,” I said, but oh, how I could see it. Kids with his eyes and my style filling the backyard with sound and…I sighed. I shivered again. Someone inside laughed and the door opened again. This time it didn’t slam. The other boy held it open with one hand. He wasn’t sprinting across the porch to join in the pickup football game going on in the leaves.

“I think he’s looking for you,” Kilby whispered, taking the baby from me to go settle on the swing.

“Hey, kiddo.” I couldn’t remember his name, the quiet middle one. He bit his lip and stood in the door holding onto the neck of one of Cody’s acoustic guitars.

“Avery,” Gwen leaned over to whisper because I must have looked like I’d drawn a complete blank.

“Avery, buddy, what’s up,” I said as if I wasn’t the most clueless fool on the face of the earth.

He fiddled with the screen door latch and I took him by his hand and led him over to one of the cushions, sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace. “Play,” he said, holding the guitar out to me.

“Okay, sure,” I said, thinking he meant he wanted me to play something.

He sat down beside me on the floor and propped the guitar in his lap. He tried to make the strings work, but he held them flat against the wood. “See, it’s broken, make it work.”

“Oh.” I got it now. He wanted to learn to play it. “Okay.” I repositioned his fingers and then jumped to my feet. “Wait, okay? This…just wait and I’ll be right back.”

The kid looked disappointed. He dropped his head and Gwen gave me a look that said she wasn’t happy with me and I just didn’t…well, hell, what do I know about kids? I waved my hand in a wait gesture and ran into the house, up to the room where I’d stored some of the things I’d brought out of storage when we’d gone down to Georgia to see our newborn niece back in the summer.

I found the case I was looking for and grabbed a package of strings just in case and ran back downstairs.

Avery had left the guitar on the floor and was curled up on the swing between Kilby and Gwen, his little face mottled with red as if he’d been about to cry.

“Hey, Avery, let’s try this one.” I sat back down on the same cushion and put the case on the floor beside my guitar. “Come on, buddy, give it a look-see.”

He sniffled, but curiosity won out. He slipped off the swing and was on his knees in front of me. The latches were a bit rusty from storage, but they gave way and he looked at me as if he’d never seen anything so beautiful in his life. “It’s little like me.”

“Better for little hands,” I said, helping him take out the guitar Cody bought me for my seventh birthday. “This is the one I learned to play on.”

He scrambled to sit beside me and after a quick check of the strings, I helped him position his fingers correctly. “Oh, wow, it’s not too big. I can reach.”

“Yep, now, don’t squeeze the strings and…” he loosened his grip and strummed. “Perfect.”

I looked up as my mother came outside. She sat in the chair not far away. She seemed older than I remember and she drank more.

I ignored her and everything else while I showed Avery a couple of simple chords and in a half-hour he was plucking out a simple kid’s song, his face beaming.

I swear I saw Cody sitting over on the railing smiling like he had the day I’d sat and played that same song. “Good job, kiddo,” I said, but I heard Cody’s voice. “Why don’t you keep that and practice.”

Avery looked up at me then over to his mother for permission. Gwen nodded.

“Mason?” Avery looked at me with eyes that glimmered with happiness.

“Yeah, kiddo?” I thought he was going to say thank you.

“You kissed a boy,” he said and Gwen started to scold him, but Kilby shook his head and she settled back, worry marring her brow.

I looked at the two of them as my mother snorted. I looked back at the little boy who couldn’t be more than six or seven and nodded. “He’s my boyfriend,” I said, hoping I wasn’t scarring the kid for life, hoping the kid wasn’t going to…what…he was a little kid, for fuck’s sake.

He nodded and looked out at our family throwing the football and being boys, even Harper. “I don’t like football,” he said emphatically. “Travis says I’m a sissy.”

“I don’t like football either,” I told him. Because, well, it was nice to not be the only misfit in a football family.

He nodded and strummed the little song that I couldn’t remember the name of, just the tune. “And you like boys better than girls?”

“I like girls just fine,” I said because I was dense.

“But you kiss a boy,” he said. This time there was fear in his voice and I knew where this was going.

I looked to Gwen who sat there wide-eyed with bated breath as if she were trying not to react. Kilby nodded to me. I sighed and rubbed my hands over my face. I couldn’t look out at my father, not right then or I’d never get the words out. “I love Kilby. He’s a man. One day…maybe…we might get married and…oh, hell.” I was going to scar this little boy for life, I was. This wasn’t something he should be asking me…I wasn’t…if maybe I’d had someone to talk to when I was seven and—

“So, you think Daddy will be mad if I want to marry a boy one day? I mean, I don’t know if I want to marry a girl. I think boys are better.” His little hand was wrapped around the neck of the guitar so tight I thought he would break it.

“He’s my dad too, you know?” I said because I didn’t know what else to say.

“What did he say when you told him you don’t like football?” Well that wasn’t the question I expected.

“He wasn’t happy about that,” I told him honestly. The radio came on inside the house and I could hear Darlene singing along. The kid nodded, looking sad.

“And about…” He cut his eyes toward Kilby over on the swing, his voice dropping to a whisper, “You know…kissing boys?”

I had to laugh because he said it so longingly. “Oh, well, he said that was okay, that if I loved him and he loved me then it was okay.”

“But not football?” the kid sounded so forlorn. I looked over to Gwen and she had tears in her eyes, her fingertips pressed to her lips. I hoped she’d handle her kid coming out well. I hoped.

“Afraid not, Avery. We are so screwed on the football thing,” I said as Cody’s song came on the radio. My voice singing his words seemed strange and having this conversation with his words in the background was even stranger.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” he sighed and looked up at my mother and blurted out… “Are you my grandmother?”

I laughed harder than I’d ever laughed in my life.

Because this was what I wanted, love, home, and family, and it was mine, I didn’t even mind the crazy.

I looked over at the man on the swing, he smiled at me with love in his eyes. Sometimes, like now, he took my breath away. My crazy nearly destroyed me. I guess in a way Kilby, with his ability to see past all that, had set me in the right direction when I’d been hell bent on no direction at all. I had my parents, as messed up as they both were. I had my sister, the only constant in my life, for most of my life. I had a stepmother who would never fill Cody’s shoes, but maybe I didn’t need someone to fill his shoes. Maybe I just needed a friend, one who set the example of what a mother should be. I had four little brothers. And a duty to them to be the best brother I could be. If that meant I had to play football, then…I winced. I think that was pushing it. My hands weren’t made for sports. My hands were made for music. And caressing Kilby’s body…because I would never get enough of touching him. I’d never get enough of kissing him either. And to think, I’d once thought kissing boys was gross. I’m pretty sure I’ve grown out of that stage. Because, kissing Kilby Adams qualified as the best thing ever.

Next to his smile.