In Tune (Red Bird Trail Trilogy Book 3) (9 page)

Harper watched Cash
walk in front of her, wondering if she was thinking the same thing men thought when they witnessed woman with a sexy back. His shoulders were broad, but not overly so, and they moved down into a tapered waist; the dips at the bottom of his back were enough to make her drool. It never failed to impress her that she’d landed him.

“Do you have any idea how gorgeous you are?” she asked as he pulled her into the bedroom, shut the door, and pressed her up against it.

“If I’m one-fifth as gorgeous as you, then one day we’ll make amazingly beautiful children.”

The words didn’t even scare her, which is what clued her into how far gone she was with this man. “Don’t make me wait, Cash,” she whispered when she saw him push his sweatpants down over his hips.

“I’ll do me, you do you,” he told her, hopping on one foot towards the bed to pull the covers down.

Harper wasn’t sure she’d ever gotten undressed so quickly, but in the blink of an eye, the two of them were falling against the warm sheets, and he was covering her body.

“Don’t make me wait,” she begged, almost near tears. She wanted so badly to feel the connection she knew they had. The one thing that was hers and hers alone, that no one else could feel with him. That no one else could feel with her. No one could touch them if they stayed strong together.

She could feel him lever off her body and take care of the protection before he joined her again and thrust deeply inside her body. Harper arched her back and neck, taking him as deeply as she could, grasping at his shoulders, scratching at his back, digging her heels into his ass. She wanted all of this, and she’d be damned if either of them held back.

*

Cash sighed. It
was a contented sigh, one he hadn’t had in what felt like forever. “What got into you tonight? What made you decide—not that I’m complaining—that it had been long enough.”

“Doc Jones wants me to go see my dad,” she whispered against his chest.

He tightened his arm around her neck and pulled her closer. “You know if you need me to, I’ll be right there with you. In fact, I’m not sure I want you to go alone.”

“I feel like I have to, Cash. This is about me and him.”

Cash didn’t say anything else, just held her and ran his hand along her back, but he knew whenever the meeting happened, he wouldn’t be far away.

‡
Chapter Fourteen

W
hen Doc Jones
had told her she needed to confront her dad, Harper knew it would have to be soon; otherwise, she’d lose her nerve. Within two days of her meeting with Doc Jones, Travis Steele had provided her with her dad’s place of employment, and now she sat in front of the factory where he worked.

It was funny, really, but his factory faced the Trail. She wondered if he’d ever seen Cash run; she wondered if he’d ever thought about betting on the man who’d stolen her heart.

Travis had told her what time he got off, and she sat in her car, waiting. Part of her hoped maybe her dad wasn’t there that day; the other part of her hoped he would be the first one out. She knew, though, that she couldn’t chicken out on this. This was something she had to do, and she wouldn’t be able to move on until she did.

The factory bell rang, and almost immediately she saw men and women making their way to their cars. Travis had also clued her in on what vehicle her dad now drove, so she had parked next to it. When she saw a man walking towards the vehicle, she knew it was him, even though she hadn’t seen him in years. He’d gotten heavier, and the years hadn’t been kind to his aging process, but she knew exactly who he was. When he got close enough, she opened her door and yelled, “Clayton!”

His head snapped up and recognition flared in his eyes. “Harper. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

She’d wondered for years what she would say to him if given the chance. At different parts of her life, she’d even had scripts memorized. That all left her in this moment. She opened her mouth once, twice, three times, but nothing came out, and what did come out wasn’t what she expected at all.

“You took me with you to rob a convenience store and ended up killing the clerk inside,” she whispered.

She watched the emotions play across his face and watched as he turned to the truck, opened the door, and put his lunchbox on the bench seat. He reached into the console under the steering wheel and she almost hit the ground, wondering if he had a gun. Instead, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

“You want one?” he asked nonchalantly as he beat the hard box against the palm of his hand and then extracted one, lighting it and blowing the smoke away from her.

“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t smoke.”

To her it seemed like the stupidest thing in the world to say, but obviously to him, it was funny. His mouth kicked up on the side, and he let out a small chuckle.

“Of course you don’t. You always were better than I deserved. You always were good and right, no matter what example I gave you.”

She wasn’t sure how to respond to any of this, so she didn’t; she let him talk.

“I didn’t go to that convenience store planning to rob it; you have to know that, Harper. The gas tank was on E, our fridge was bare, and I was out of money for the drug habit I’d picked up in the previous couple of months. I don’t even know if you knew that or not. I was trying very hard to hide it from you, but you were such a smart girl.”

He had a seat inside the truck and slung his arm on the door, holding the cigarette between his middle and pointer finger.

She hadn’t known that. The authorities had asked her if he’d had a drug problem, and she remembered telling them no—numerous times.

“I went in there to get a pack of smokes.” His eyes traveled to the cigarette he held in his hand. “When the cashier opened the drawer, it was packed full; it must have been a long time since she’d done a drop. I had the gun because I’d gotten paranoid. I owed drug dealers money, and they had been threatening the both of us. Without even thinking about it, I pulled that gun and told her to give me the cash. She did, but then she struggled, and the gun went off.”

“That still doesn’t answer why you used your own daughter as a shield.” She crossed her arms over her chest and leveled him with a glare.

“All you were in that moment was opportunity. I’m ashamed to say, now, as a man clean for ten years, I can’t even tell you what in the world I was thinking back in those days.” He ran his hand over his hair. “I want you to know, I understand why you never came to see me, I understand why you don’t think I’ve changed, I get why you can’t have me be a part of your life. Fuck, I get why you won’t speak to Cara.”

“I’ve never needed approval from you.” She lifted her head so that she could look into eyes that were very like her own. “But there is one thing that keeps me from moving on; it keeps coming up, no matter what I do. It’s this fear. This fear that I’m the one who sent you to jail, and you will want retribution. I live with that fear a lot,” she admitted, sounding like the scared kid she was.

“Then stop it, because whether you believe it or not, you saved my fucking life by getting me caught. Do I think we’re ever going to have a relationship? No, and I’ve made my peace with that. I can tell you that I hope like hell you have everything you’ve always wanted because you deserve it.”

Those words, spoken softly, hit a spot in her that she hadn’t realized was there. “Thank you.” It was the least she could do, thank him for giving her closure.

“And I can guarantee you, if I thought for one second I could to do something to you, that boy parked back there glaring at me would tear me from limb to limb.”

Harper turned her head back to where her dad was pointing and saw Cash leaning against his car. He waved a hand to her, and she waved back. “I’m okay,” she yelled.

“I’ll stay here until you leave,” he yelled back, his eyes never leaving her dad.

“Is this what you needed?” Clayton asked, finishing his cigarette and throwing it down on the ground.

She thought about what he’d said. Did she believe him? In the end, she had no reason not to.

“It was,” she told him, holding out her hand to him. She couldn’t hug him, wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to, but she did appreciate his time. It had taken a lot for him to talk to her if he’d felt the way she had about it.

“Take care,” she told him as she turned to walk towards her car.

“You too, Harper.”

As she got in her car and drove away, Cash behind her in the rearview mirror, she breathed easy for the first time in a very long time.

*

“I wish you
would have let me be there to hear what he had to say to you,” Cash told her later on that evening as they sat out on the back porch. They had blankets, and he took a drag off the occasional cigarette.

She reached over and tapped his shoulder, indicating she wanted to take a hit of the tobacco. “It was something I had to do for myself,” she told him as she blew smoke away from him. “He was much scarier in my mind than he was in real life, but I wonder if that’s because he has so much time away from the man that he once was.”

“I don’t know.” Cash shrugged. “I mean think about when we’re kids and we think there’s monsters under our beds. In our heads we make them up to be the scariest things in the world. Maybe your imagination had run away with you. I’m not saying you had no right to be scared—you lived through something traumatic, but while he spent time overcoming himself and being a better man, you were left to fester in the fear. It turned you into another person.”

She thought hard about what he was saying. “You know, you could be right. It’s time for me to take that fear and turn it into something else. I won’t let it rule my life anymore.”

Reaching over, he grabbed her hand, and they lapsed into a comfortable silence. It was in those silences that she knew they would be okay.

‡
Chapter Fifteen