Page 94 of Small Town Hunter

“I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

“Hey. It’s got nothing to do with Jess, honey, and everything to do with you,” he says gently, stroking my thigh through my dress. Funny enough, it’s one of my mother’s.

Mamie was taking none of Mama’s bullshit. Apparently the night I ran off, the Reverend pulled back his support from my father and daddy fled town, leaving my mother in the house alone.

Mamie caught her in the middle of a garden party.

Everything to do with you.

“Me?”

“Yes,” Crash says firmly. “You’re only twenty-three and you haven’t seen the world. This is your first chance to figure out life and I won’t get in the way of that.”

But what use is the world without him in it? I’ll never meet another man like him.

“This is goodbye, Trina,” he says. But instead of setting me down, he holds me tighter. I expect him to get up and leave, but he doesn’t.

“Where is your granny?” he asks.

“In the other room,” I reply, fighting for control over the tears that want to make me look like a lovesick fool. “She has a headache.”

“Okay.”

“You should go, Crash. I’m trying to hold it together but it’s hard.”

“I know. Trina, my sweetheart…”

Neither of us move.

“My daughter is here in Tippalonga,” he tells me, his voice a little thick. “She’s with my sister right now.”

“Is she okay?”

“Yes. She’s perfect. She just had a little cold.” He falls back on the bed, pulling me with him into an entangled embrace. I move closer, throwing my leg between his. Imagining I can trap him there. He turns on his side to take the weight off his injuries. Facing each other, his hand becomes a stronger presence on my thigh.

“I would have courted you proper,” he says. “With flowers and wine. Going dancing on weekends to all the Honky Tonks. Taking you fishing. Showing you some real whiskey.”

“I liked the mango margarita.”

“Me too,” he confesses, and I snort a laugh. I knew it.

“It doesn’t bother me that you have a daughter,” I tell him. “I love children. If we were a couple, I would look after her like she was my own.”

He inhales deeply. “You’re a good woman, Trina.”

“I would be your woman.” I struggle to find the right words. “I would do all the things a wife does, if you have me.”

“All I want is your heart. I don’t need you chasing after me with a vacuum cleaner.”

“I’ll have to, with your birdseed.”

He laughs. “I guess so.”

“You like when I tease you?”

“Of course,” he says. “‘Cause then I can tease you back, and you get mad, and you turn into a spitfire that doesn’t know if she should slap or kiss me.”

“Speaking of that…” I reach up and touch his lips. There’s one thing I can think of to keep him here.

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