Chance snorted. “Whatever. I don’t believe you.”
“I’m dead serious. Okay, maybe I was six, but I was young, trust me. My parents didn’t care, and it made me feel grown-up. My daddy always said kids stopped being a pain in the ass when they became adults. I was determined to grow up as fast as possible so no one could call me a pain in the ass just for existing. Coffee drinking seemed like a good start. I did doctor it with milk and sugar, but it was fully caffeinated.”
“Your father was a piece of work. No wonder you’re so motivated. You have java juice built up in your veins like plaque.”
She laughed and took a sip. “Maybe so. Now I’m going to go get ready, and I’ll meet you on the front porch. Catfish need to be caught.”
Things definitely felt less awkward this morning, which she was grateful for. She didn’t want to be on the outs with Chance. “I’m glad we’ve moved past our breakup,” she told him sincerely. “I didn’t like being angry with you and not speaking for three months.”
“I didn’t like that, either. Have we moved past the breakup?”
She paused. “Haven’t we?”
He nodded slowly, considering. “I guess I should have sex with all of my exes to get over the awkwardness.”
Just like that, he ruined it. She rolled her eyes and moved past him, cradling her mug in her hands. “It’s like someone is showing you cue cards on all the exact wrong things to say to me. It’s amazing.”
“Jolene—”
She slammed the bedroom door. This was getting to be a habit. Idiot man. Why couldn’t he see that she did not want to make jokes about their relationship? Or talk about it like it was the worst thing ever? She didn’t think she was that hard to read.
Flopping on her bed, she pulled out her notebook and scribbled some lyrics.
He wanted a breakup album. She was tired of the anger. Tired of holding on to it. She wanted to write a love song. A good old-fashioned love song about meeting a boy and dancing in a dark bar and sharing a first kiss.
That’s what she missed.
The first kiss.
There would never be a moment like that time in the back of the limo when Chance leaned over and swept his hand across her cheek and leaned in and brushed her mouth with his. It had been delicious. Like a bite of a hot fudge sundae. Like a garden hose on her head in the hottest heat of the summer. Like the swings at the fair. He could take her there.
When Chance knocked on her door, she had a song and a very serious problem.
She wanted to go back to the beginning and she couldn’t.
Chapter 9
Jolene was back to what Chance considered normal. He wasn’t sure what she had been doing in her room because she’d been unusually reticent about it, but he assumed she was handling the whole media nonsense. He had to give her props. It never got her down for long when she was slammed by the press or the online haters. Now she was just her typical self, all smiles and soft laughter as they settled in on the dock, fishing poles in hand.
He had expected her to be a diva about the bait he’d dug up, but she just jammed that earthworm on the hook like it was nothing. “Damn, no hesitation there.”
“I told you, I fished when I was a kid. Sometimes if we didn’t catch anything, there wasn’t any dinner, so we were pretty persistent.”
There had been a time when he had thought her childhood poverty was exaggerated, to make her story, her package, better for the country music scene. But then he’d heard her comforting her mother after yet another worthless man had treated her poorly and taken off, and he had seen how mature Jolene was. How maternal and matter-of-fact, resilient and creative. It was a sign of a woman who had grown up in the country and who had grown up quickly. Poverty and an abusive parent did that.
“I can’t even imagine going hungry like that. It must have been hard.”
Her look was inquisitive. “Are you expressing sympathy for me?”
“Yes.” He dangled his feet over the dock and tipped his head back, wanting the sun on his skin. He hadn’t spent much time in the country as a kid, and the backyard of their mansion had been manicured and tidy. The gardener had chewed him out when he’d taken it upon himself to pluck some lilies for his mother. As a result, he’d never developed much of a taste for nature, so his claims of being able to spank Jolene at hauling in fish was mostly bluster. He’d done fishing charters in the Keys, but not like this, with just a pole and some bait. But he wasn’t about to admit that.