Take a Chance(45)

“Where are you?!” she screamed into the phone.

“Not in Rosemary,” I replied, then hung up the phone and dropped it. Nan had been a hard lesson to learn. She was the kind of girl her father had warned me about. Loving Nan would only lead to disaster. Good thing I never really fell in love with her . . .

My phone rang again before I could think too much about Nan.

This time it was Rush.

“Hey,” I said, thankful for someone I could actually talk to.

“Just talked to Dad,” was his only reply.

“Yeah. It’s fucked up. I’m headed there now. She wanted to go alone but I want to be there when she leaves.”

“You and her talk things out before all this shit happened?”

We talked it out, all right. We talked it out in ways I hadn’t expected.

“Yeah, we did. We weren’t done but then Dean dropped this on her and she was gone.”

“I’m having a hard time believing this, and it ain’t even my momma. I can’t imagine Harlow is handling this well. She seems so breakable.”

I pushed back the possessiveness that rose up in me. Thinking about Harlow being breakable upset me. I didn’t want to think about that. Not when I wasn’t there to catch her.

“Not gonna lie. I’m pissed at your dad. He just blurted it out—no preparation or anything. That kind of shit needs to be eased into. He didn’t ease into it.”

Rush sighed. “Yeah, well, he’s not exactly good with words. He just says what he’s thinking.”

That excuse wasn’t enough for me. Dean was on my shit list.

“Nan is looking for you,” Rush said.

“She called me,” I replied. This was not something I wanted to talk about with him. Nan wasn’t one of my favorite people but she was still his family.

“She’ll eat Harlow alive. Be careful.”

Not what I expected him to say but I agreed.

“I know. I won’t let Harlow get hurt.”

“If you do then Kiro will never accept Nan. She needs him to accept her. She might not deserve it, but she needs it.”

I should have known his concern was more for Nan than Harlow.

“I won’t let her near Harlow,” was my only response.

“It would be nice if you wanted into the panties of someone who isn’t Kiro’s offspring. Less complicated.”

I just laughed. Yeah, it would be, but Harlow . . . well, she was Harlow.





Harlow


“You can’t go in there looking like that,” Dad said as he entered the room. “You’ll scare her.”

I lifted my tear-streaked face to see my father. I would never see him the same way again. No matter how many girls he screwed around with and how many crude things he did or said. All I would be able to see was the man in there holding my mother’s hand.

“I came here angry. At you. At Grandmama. But now, I’m just . . .” I shrugged. I couldn’t say heartbroken. I didn’t want him to know his pain had shattered my heart.

“I was protecting her. You were a kid. You wouldn’t have been able to understand, and you would have upset her. I couldn’t let that happen, Harlow. I love you, kid. I’ve always loved you. You are the only piece I have of the woman I met and fell completely in love with. But she’s still here, even if that spirit is gone. And I’ll protect her with my life. She’ll always come first. Even before you.”

I just nodded, because I got it. Before I arrived, I’d thought there was nothing he could say that would prevent me from hating him. What I hadn’t expected was that all it would take was to see him with her. He hadn’t needed to say a word to me.

“How often do you come see her?” I asked.

Dad walked over to the fireplace and leaned against the stone. “Three, four times a week.”

“And that’s why you left Vegas? Because you’re about to leave the States on tour?”

He frowned. “She doesn’t do well when I’m on tour. The doctors have to sedate her some days because she gets so agitated. She needs me. She may not be the woman, mentally, that I fell in love with but her heart knows who I am. She wants me close. I can’t do that again. Seeing her smile when I walk into her room makes everything else less important.”

I would not cry again. He didn’t want my tears. I was sure he had cried enough for both of us over the years.

“The band needs you. Maybe you can just fly back a few times and visit so it makes it easier on her.”

He nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that. I just don’t know if it’ll be enough.”

I couldn’t stand here and tell him to sing for millions of strangers when his heart was in that room with my mother. It wasn’t my place. I didn’t understand his torment. I never would. I hadn’t lived it.