Page 3 of Stay A Little Longer
Trent tightened his hands on the wheel. It wasn’t a bad idea. Fate was a small town in west Texas. It was Lemon’s hometown. That was about the only reason on earth anyone outside of the county had ever heard of the place. Nobody would think to look for him there and he hadn’t seen his friend in too long. He could really use a friend right now.
But Lemon was forgetting one major problem.
“I seriously doubt your man wants me crashing in your love shack.”
Lemon’s fiancé hated him. Trent had never actually met Shane Lowry but he knew with one hundred percent certainty that the guy hated his guts. After all, Trent had gotten more than just a little handsy with Lemon at an awards show in front of hundreds of cameras knowing full-well she was in a relationship with the guy. It had been a mistake, one of his many. He’d freaked out when a reporter questioned his relationship with Heath and he’d used her to hide his sexuality. But even knowing he was gay wouldn’t soften a man like Shane. He was highly possessive and protective of Lemon so letting a guy that had stuck his tongue down her throat into their home was not something he would ever greenlight.
“Oh, no. No. You misunderstood.” Lemon snorted, “You’re not staying with us. I love you but I think you and Shane under one roof would be explosive and not in the fun kind of way I’d like to watch.”
He heard a male groan in the background and a stern, warning voice say, “Lemon…”
She laughed, “Uh oh, I’m gonna get in trouble for that one.”
Trent smiled as he listened to the couple tease each other through the phone. From his conversations with Lemon over the past few months, he knew she was happier than she’d ever been. She’d found her home, the place where she belonged and she was building a life with the man she loved. She had a family and three almost step-daughters. But hearing it for himself, after being shot down by Heath then outed and publicly flayed open, made his chest hurt.
“Trent, you there?”
“Yeah.” He answered roughly when Lemon finally came back on the line.
“Look, Shane doesn’t hate you. He feels bad about threatening your pretty face even. I said you should stay with us but he thought you might prefer some time alone. There’s a trailer house that Shane’s brother owns. It’s empty. Seth has been renting it but his tenants moved out a few months back and he hasn’t found anyone to take it off his hands yet. Shane talked to him and you can stay there. It’s out of the way and you’ll have your own space so nobody will bother you.”
“Lemon, I don’t know…” He hesitated even though he wanted to leap at the offer that sounded too good to be true. “It’s a small town. Someone will see me and say something and it’ll spiral and then the circus will descend on you and your hometown instead of mine. I don’t want that and I know that cop of yours doesn’t want his town involved in my shit either.”
“The first thing you need to know about Fate is that we protect our own.” Lemon argued, “Nobody is going to talk about you to anyone outside of this town. Oh, they’ll gossip about you behind your back but nobody’s gonna sell you out. I promise.”
He thought about that. It was true that when Lemon had run away she’d hidden in Fate for a month and nobody had splashed her whereabouts all over the tabloids. The people of Fate were accustomed to having a celebrity in their midst. And he trusted Lemon. More than he trusted anyone maybe. But the last time he’d trusted someone he’d been burned and the flames were still bright in his rearview mirror.
“I’m not one of you though. I’m an outsider.”
“Not if you’re with me. If you’re my friend then you’re Shane’s friend and if you’re Shane’s friend, you have the entire Fate Sherriff’s department at your back and nobody’s gonna mess with you if that’s the case.”
That sounded far too simplistic, “Lem…”
“This is my fault, Trent. I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard to tell that bastard how you felt. Let me make it up to you by doing this.” Her voice softened again, “Please? I want to see for myself that you’re okay. At the very least, stop through and spend the night. We can talk in the morning and if you still want to keep moving, you can.”
He rubbed a hand through his hair for the hundredth time and sighed, “Okay.”
He found himself agreeing before his mind had truly processed it all. It was one night. He needed to get somewhere and sleep. It was getting late and he’d been driving most of the day. He could crash in Fate for one night and if, tomorrow, he still felt the urge to run he’d keep heading west until he hit the coast or the media circus died down or he figured out what he wanted to say to everyone that thought they had a right to know his personal business.
“Seriously?”
“Okay.” He repeated when Lemon skeptically asked if he was serious. “Yeah, I’ll come to Fate.”
“Oh my God, I didn’t think you’d actually agree.” She gave a whoop of delight that almost made him smile, “I’m hanging up before you change your mind. I’ll send you a drop pin for the trailer and you can go straight there. I’ll swing by and make sure it’s made up for you. Crash and call me when you wake tomorrow. We’ll talk more then.”
“Okay.” He repeated.
“See you soon.”
“See you soon.”
The line went dead and silence filled the rental except for the sound of his tires on the highway. A few miles later a notification popped up on his phone giving him the location of the trailer, as promised. He programmed the GPS to take him there and listened as the robotic voice told him that he would arrive in Fate, Texas at approximately 9:57pm. Just in time to fall into a bed, get a few hours sleep and recharge his batteries.
He’d spend one night in Fate and then he would come up with some life-changing decisions tomorrow. It seemed like as good a plan as any. After all, the place was called Fate. Maybe it held the answers he was looking for, even if he wasn’t sure yet what the questions even were.
