“Aw, that’s just a Southern boy trick.”
“Nothing I’d ever seen, that’s for sure.” I add, laughing. “Remember after Prom, Ariela—”
“Uh, yeah,” Dallas says. “Back to Ariela. How did being back here feel?”
“I could see her face everywhere. It made me really sad until about the middle of the game.”
“What happened at the game?”
“You two. Coming back became more about all the fun times. Remember our Sunday morning powwows? Always just the three of us.”
“We need to do that more often, I think,” Dallas says. “Captive was always about the three of us. It’s gotten so big. I know it makes the stockholders happy, made us all wealthy, but . . .”
“What are you thinking?”
“What if we sold off pieces of the business? We had a really lucrative offer come in today from a major player.”
“We’ve had offers before. We always turn them down,” I say.
“Not like this one. And they want to absorb us completely. I did a little digging and found out what they really need is our revenue stream. What if we carved out a few projects and employees we want to keep, negotiate to keep the name, and go back to being a boutique studio?”
I take another hit and pass him back the joint. “We always seem to make our life decisions this way, don’t we? Smoking and talking.”
“How would you feel about it, Riley?” Keatyn asks gently.
And I know what’s she’s thinking. She just offered me the chairman job. Something I’ve worked hard for. “Could I still be Chairman of Captive?” I ask playfully.
“Of course,” Dallas says. “We’d still have our same roles, just have a whole lot less on our plates. More time to golf. And a much fatter bank.”
“I’d want to take Daddy’s Angel and my undeveloped scripts with me,” Keatyn says. “And I have an idea.”
She tells us about Knox’s script and how they want to buy a neighboring farm to build a set.
“If we haven’t signed anything with him yet, we won’t need to address it in the deal. I think that sounds like a really cool project,” Dallas says. “But back to Ariela. We keep getting off track.”
“When we go back home, I’m going to call her,” I say, surprising myself.
“I think that’s a good idea,” Dallas says. “What are you going to talk to her about?”
“Well, why her husband was kissing her, for starters. Then about being here. And probably about what’s next. How do we move forward? How do we move past it?”
“Shit!” Keatyn says. “I just got a text from your brother. I knew we shouldn’t have left!”
“What happened?” Dallas asks calmly as he takes another hit.
“I don’t know. I think maybe he’s drunk.”
“He probably is!” I laugh. “What did he say?”
“He just said cat fight and MEOW. You don’t think Gracie got in a fight, do you? Should we go back?”
A few minutes later, there’s a knock on our hotel room door.
Dallas quickly puts out the joint, while I wave my hands to dissipate the smoke.
“It’s Braxton,” he says, looking through the window. We go inside to see what’s going on.
Braxton is coming through the door with Gracie and Baylor in tow. Gracie’s holding a towel to her cheek.
“What happened!?” Keatyn shrills.
Braxton sniffs the air. “I see you’ve all been having fun while I was babysitting the kids.”
“You weren’t babysitting me,” Gracie says, then she looks directly at Keatyn. “Was he?”
“Do you really think if I thought you needed babysitting I’d leave you with Braxton?”
“Hey!” he says.
Keatyn just grins at him.
“I’m really sorry, baby,” Baylor says to Gracie, causing me to immediately hate him. Because baby?
Dallas must not like it either because he grabs the little piss ant Hawthorne boy by the neck.
“I think we should have a chat,” he says, pulling him out on the deck and telling him to sit.
I follow.
Towering above him, Dallas says, “What the fuck is your deal, son?”
His voice is so authoritative I almost tell him what my deal is.
“I don’t have a deal, sir,” Baylor replies. “I’m sorry Krissy hit Gracie. She was mad at me.”
“Are you fucking her?” Dallas asks him.
“Gracie? What?! No!”
“He means the cheerleader,” I say.
“Oh. Uh, Kinda.”
“Kinda?” Dallas asks, still using his intimidating voice and reminding me of the teachers I had at military school. “Either you are or you aren’t. Or else you just ain’t very good at it. Which is it, boy?”
“Yes, I’ve slept with her. She’s a junior. Pretty. I mean . . .”
“Does Gracie know this?”
He lowers his head and shakes it.
“Why did you ask Gracie to Homecoming? Or was that just bullshit talk that you got caught on?”
He looks up, surprise on his face. “No, sir. I was serious when I asked her. She’s amazing. And she gets me. Gets the pressure of having a last name everyone knows.”