Denison picked up his guitar from where it sat leaning crooked against his chair. He wasn’t usually rough with his instruments, and especially not his favorite guitar, but when he’d heard the ruckus near the bar and squinted through the blinding stage lights to see Matt messing with another townie, well, he’d nearly lost it trying to get to her. That guy spelled trouble every time he came in here looking for an easy lay. He was never subtle about his intentions, and when he was rejected, which was often, he wasn’t very gracious about it.
“You okay to drive?” Ted asked as Denison packed his guitar in an old, scratched-up case.
“Old man, you know I don’t drink too much when I have a show. Brighton had a beer, but I’m driving.” His whiskey and coke was all for show. If he nursed a drink all night, the ladies laid off buying him more.
“It’s habit to ask,” Ted called, wiping down the counter. “Same time next week?”
“You bet.”
The conversation went like this every week, on repeat for five years. Denison’s inner animal required a strict routine. Work until his bones were sore on the jobsite as a timber man, indulge in the company of his crew in the evenings, sleep a full eight hours, then do it all again. And on Friday, it was gig time at Sammy’s Bar. Good gravy, life was boring, but it was what his bear needed, so fine.
He lifted his gaze to the road Danielle had disappeared down in that sexy, forest green, jacked-up jeep she’d been driving. Life hadn’t been boring the summer she’d been here.
She looked different now. Her hair used to be long, down to her hips, and as dark as raven feathers. It was still dark, but only fell to her shoulder blades now, and she wore it in soft curls instead of straight. He liked it. She still had those fiery almond-colored eyes, pert little nose and tiny, elfin lips that he wanted to suck swollen, but as far as he remembered, she’d never worn a short skirt in front of him. Not until tonight. She hadn’t the confidence to dress like that when he’d known her before. Or thought he’d known her.
Brighton clapped him on the back so hard it rattled his innards. Right. Back to earth. He settled the guitar case in the back of his old beat-up Bronco and slid behind the wheel. His brother was grinning from ear to ear by the time the engine roared to life.
“What?” Denison asked.
Brighton lifted his eyebrows and shrugged.
“Did you like that little show? Me running after her like a puppy, making a fool of myself? Well,” he said, backing out of the parking space Ted had reserved for talent with a hand-painted sign, “I feel like grit now.”
The two-hour trip back was brutal on account of Brighton leaning back the seat and promptly falling asleep, leaving Denison to try and stay awake without company the entire drive through the mountains. Which meant two hours of summer-kissed, swimming-hole memories with Danielle. He’d watched her open up that season, from a timid bookworm to a woman. He’d thought she was forever, but he’d been wrong. And now, the same devastating hole that had sat in his stomach for a year after she left was back, eating him from the inside out. God, he wished she would have just stayed away. That look on her face when she was crying in the parking lot, like he’d killed her kitten… How was he supposed to get that vision out of his head? Her face all crumpled and tears streaking her cheeks, making dark smudges of sadness under her eyes. And her hands…Dammit, he’d had to fight not to Change and clean her wounds. Her knees had been trickling red, but she didn’t seem to care at all. All she seemed to care about was getting as far away from him as she could.
He’d replayed their last day together over and over, but he still couldn’t figure out what he’d done to piss her off so badly that she’d leave and never come back. Never call or write, or hell, send a damned carrier pigeon. Poof! She just vanished, leaving his bear unmanageable and littering his chest cavity with little shredded pieces of his heart.
And that was the autumn he had sworn off women forever. Brighton had the right of it all along. Don’t let women get close, and they couldn’t hurt him. Not like Danielle had. Never again.
When he finally pulled under the Asheland Mobile Park sign at the entrance of a double row of trailers the Ashe crew inhabited, he was just about dead on his feet.
Brighton stumbled off to his own house without so much as a wave, and Denison dragged his guitar case up the porch stairs and inside his trailer. He poured a drink from the tap, but the water was a little on the brown side from the pipes not being used all day, so he dumped the glass and let the sink run for a minute before he tried again. Tasted a little dirty, but Dad always said that a little grit in his food would put hair on a man’s chest. Whatever that meant. From his experience, women didn’t much prefer heavy pelts.