“Stupid,” she said, taking another shot to tame the void of his absence then, his absence now. She’d harbored the same fantasy for so long, she had expected it to come true. Jace, walking in, his face hard, his eyes determined.
“I’m taking your ass home,” he’d say, and she’d protest, telling him she wasn’t going to be ordered around like a child. And in her dream he’d ignore her, just like he’d ignored her the night she’d left when he turned her over his knee and spanked her ass until she was sobbing with hurt and need.
Oh, that night… their last night together. In the light of morning, shame had dawned with sobriety. She’d felt so conflicted. He’d taken her virginity, but he’d also spanked her. It had left her feeling confused and conflicted. What was she to him? Was she still the bratty surrogate sister he’d been trying for five years to tame? Or was she the woman he loved?
The note had been meant to make him choose, to make him prove she mattered. It had been an invitation to a chase that never happened. It had taken her two months in L.A. to admit that Jace wasn’t coming for her.
She’d pulled up her big girl panties after that. For the first time in Lily Mae’s life, she was not only on her own, but alone in a city that offered no second chances. So she worked and did general courses until she settled on a field of study she’d have never thought she’d enjoy—interior design—and became good enough to get hired right out of school.
But personally, she never recovered from Jace. It wasn’t for lack of trying. Lily Mae’s beauty, southern charm, and sophisticated good looks earned her more than one ardent suitor. But they could never match up to the man who knew all her secrets, the man who once scared her half to death by waiting for and catching her sneaking into her bedroom window drunk as a skunk at two a.m., the man who finally spanked her when he’d had enough of her sass…
She poured another shot.
“Goddamn you, Jace,” she said. Lily Mae had moved quickly from the sadness stage of drunkenness to the anger phase as memories continued to bubble to the surface. He’d been her caretaker, her guardian, her best friend! She’d never asked for his oversight, but he’d given it anyway. And he’d fucked her. Fucked her! And afterwards he’d not even bothered to find out where she’d gone….
She stood up, weaving a little bit. It was high time she gave that sonofabitch a piece of her mind. But where the hell where her keys? Lily Mae teetered as she stepped into her heels. She swayed as she took a couple of steps. She was fine. Just fine. Just a little tipsy was all.
No, she told herself. You’re not drunk. You’ve just got enough liquid courage on deck to finally get the closure you deserve.
The ranch was just seven miles outside of town. A straight shot. She could do this. Lily Mae dumped everything out of her purse as she searched for her keys, and then cursed herself when she remembered she’d laid them on the little table by the door.
It was still raining. She didn’t put her coat on, but held it over her head as she rushed to the car. She considered it a sign of sobriety when she got the key in the ignition on the first try. She could smell the liquor on her own breath, but wasn’t too worried about getting pulled over this time of night on a rural road.
As she pulled onto the road, Lily Mae flipped her iPod to the playlist she kept in her music library but never listened to. It was filled with songs by artists she and Jace used to both like—Kenny Chesney, Brooks and Dunn, Toby Keith, Taylor Swift. She never listened to country music in L.A., but now that she was back home, it felt right. And the strains of the songs they loved only deepened the pain of memories long suppressed.
The rain pelting Lily Mae’s windshield slacked off as she drove, but the relief she felt was replaced by panic when she detected flashing lights in the distance.
“No way there’s a fucking checkpoint out here,” she said aloud, gauging the feasibility of a three-point turn before dismissing it as too risky given the narrow, muddy shoulder of the road. Relief swept through her when she realized it wasn’t a checkpoint, but an accident. A sedan had slid into a ditch, its rear lights blinking almost comically. A cop in a rain slicker was comforting the driver as his partner waved Lily Mae on past. She concentrated on keeping her vehicle straight, which was getting harder to do. She tried to remember how many shots she’d had, and couldn’t.