Page 51 of Burn the Wild

Tonight is on me. All of it. I miscalculated how much of an asshole I was to her. If I had known she was on the precipice of something this dark, I never would have pushed her. Goddamn it.

Her expression twists, caught somewhere between hope, pain, and suspicion. “Is that an apology?”

“Yeah.” I look her straight in the eyes. “It is. I’m sorry, Reese. I never should have done that to you.”

She doesn’t reply, just turns her head toward the passenger window. Cool night air fills the truck and neither of us speaks. Soon I’m turning onto the old county road.

I reach over and flip the radio to my favorite station. A warbling voice croons through the speakers.

“Conway Twitty.”

I glance over at her, surprised she’s still awake. I expected her to pass out the second her head hit the seat.

Eyes closed, she says, “I love old country songs. My parents and I used to sing ’em at the bars when I was a kid.” A soft, hollow nostalgia fills her voice.

“That’s what you did before you were famous?”

“Travelin’ band.” She smiles. “We played in dive bars across the south. That’s how we made our money. When we needed more, my daddy made guitars. We made something out of nothing.”

I pass the ranch, not wanting to slow the conversation. She’s drunk, but she’s finally opening up.

“What about school?”

“Mmm, homeschooled.” She cracks an eye. “That explains me, right?”

I chuckle. “An encyclopedia couldn’t explain you.”

Wistfulness clouds her voice. “The peach trees were my only friends. I’d sing to them, and we’d talk for hours.”

“Where’d you grow up, honey?”

“Georgia.”

I almost steer the truck off the goddamn road. Another tick on the asshole meter. All this time, I assumed she was faking her accent.

That fucking faint drawl. Blonde. Southern. Beautiful. A lethal combination for me.

“A small town outside of Atlanta. We had a peach farm.”

“I’m from Wildheart.”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“How’d you end up in LA? In…”

“The bowels of hell?” She doesn’t look at me, just wraps her arms around her waist. “My parents gave me to Gavin.”

I shake my head like I’ve heard her wrong. “You wanna say that again?”

She shrugs like it’s obvious. “He saw me singing in a dive bar and offered my parents the chance to make a star out of me. We needed the money and they…they turned me over. Like I didn’t matter.”

My head spins. They gave away their own fucking kid?

I swallow the boulder in my throat. “Shit—Reese…”

“It doesn’t matter, Ford. No one wanted me then, no wants me now.”

It’s a throwaway comment, but something about it twists my gut.

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