Never is a Promise(14)

“I was in love with this girl. I wrote some songs about her. I performed them at the county fair. Someone discovered me. I signed a recording contract. Got bought out by one of the Big Three a year after that.” He rested his hands behind his head, leaning back in his creaky wooden chair.

I mouthed thank you from across the table, ignoring his brief delivery and facetious tone for the sake of getting some halfway useable quotes on record.

“Tell me what it was like for you,” I said, forcing myself to look at him as a musician and not my ex. “On the road all those years. Touring. Performing. Recording.”

Beau leaned back in his chair and scratched the underside of his chin as his eyes found their way into mine. “Lonely.”

My heart fluttered. How could a man with the entire world at his fingertips have been lonely? “But surely you were surrounded with people.”

“You’re going to try to tell me how I feel? Like you had any idea. You were off in the big city married to some asshole, completely abandoning the life you had back home. Forgetting the promises you made.”

Heat crept from my neck, burning my cheeks as my thoughts jumbled in my head. So many things I wanted to say to him right then, but everything lodged itself in my throat before I could make sense of any of them. All it was going to take was one tempered moment of me telling him off, and I’d lose the interview and my promotion.

I grabbed the recorder and clicked it off, choosing my words carefully. “You better be damn careful about what you’re accusing me of, Beaumont Mason. You don’t know half of what my life’s been like ever since you left. That’s right, you left. You broke your promises.”

“I promised never to love anyone the way I loved you.” He stood up, pulling off his hat and raking his hand over his hair. “I never broke that promise, Kota. Never. But you? You didn’t wait for me. You married some asshole in New York.”

Harrison was a lot of things: impossibly driven, ruthlessly ambitious, plated in 24-karat determination. But he wasn’t an asshole. And I resented the fact that he’d ever assume I’d marry one. I had standards, damn him. “Don’t talk about my ex-husband that way. You don’t know him.”

“Any man who marries you and cashes out is an asshole, Dakota.”

“It was mutual.” I lifted my chin high. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

“Should’ve waited for me.” He stood up, dropping his empty glass by the sink before he hunched above the window.

I would’ve waited for him. Ten years ago, I’d have waited a lifetime for him. Eighteen-year-old me would have dropped every goal and ambition and hopeless dream and spent my days wrapped up in his loving arms in the world we’d have created together if he’d given me the chance.

His boots scuffed against the wood floor of the kitchen as he headed toward the door with Ruby gimping behind him.

“Where you going?” I called out.

“Outside.”

My phone buzzed in my bag, and I pulled it out the second Beau stepped out.

“Harrison,” I answered. “Hi.”

“How’s it going?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

“You don’t have to micromanage me.” I rolled my eyes, laughing inaudibly.

“Are we getting anywhere? I heard the guy hates being interviewed.”

“You’ve got that right.” I stood up and walked to the kitchen window, watching Beau as he fetched keys from his jeans pocket and hoisted Ruby into the back of his blue Ford pick up. “Let me call you back.”

I flew outside, trotting toward his truck. “Where are you going now?”

“Into town. You coming or not?”

My face pinched. Why would I have stayed? I climbed in next to him, running my hand along the woven, multi-colored upholstery of the bench seat as I slid across it. The truck was exactly like the 1984 Ford he drove back in high school. “This the same truck that you…?”

“Yes and no,” he said, starting it up. The engine rumbled, causing the seat to vibrate. His hand gripped the gearshift as his boots pressed against the clutch and brake. His eyes glanced toward the rearview mirror, probably to make sure Ruby was settled, and he began to back us up and out of the drive. “Ivy totaled Old Blue her senior year of high school. This is New Old Blue.”

I cranked the window open as the sun beat through the hot glass. Clean country air breezed through the wisps of hair that tickled the sides of my face and melted away a small portion of the tension that lingered between us from just a while ago. It felt exactly the way it used to, and it almost made me forget all the reasons Beau made my blood boil.