The first verse repeats and I just stare.
“Did you tell her?” He nods to the paper in my hands. He means have I told Dixie about the shit that happened while she was in Houston. He has no idea what the words on this paper mean to me. Thank fuck. Except . . . I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to tell him.
“Some of it,” I answer. “Not all.”
He arches an eyebrow and folds his arm across his chest. I lay Dixie’s lyrics beside Dallas’s phone on the nightstand, feeling both relieved and bereft when I distance myself from them.
“Thirty-six cities, huh?” I rake my hand roughly over the top of my head. “That’s a lot of state lines.”
We both know I’m not supposed to cross a single one. Hell, even Dixie knows that now. She just doesn’t know why.
Dallas’s shoulders sag and his barely contained bravado vanishes as if he’s been deflated. I glance up to see him giving me that same damn stare his sister pins on people. Somehow they both inherited the ability to see straight through my bullshit. I suspect they got it from their grandmother.
“It’s just . . . I’m not sure, man. That’s a fuck-ton of places where I could be—”
I lift a shoulder instead of finishing my sentence, leaving it there because he knows what could happen.
Dallas clears his throat and relaxes his stance. “I know.” He looks away for a moment and then back at me again. “Maybe we should head back to Amarillo, help Dixie sort out Papa’s stuff, and hold out for something else. There will be other tours, right?” His lips quirk up in a grin that I don’t believe for a second because we both know this isn’t necessarily true. The window of opportunity in our world is small. Like keyhole small.
“Dude. Stop. No.” I shake my head because no fucking way am I going to let my mistakes hold him back. “Do your thing. Kick ass and take names. I have to take care of me, you take care of you.”
Dallas nods. “You’ve always had my back. I appreciate that, but I understand. I don’t know if I’d be willing to risk it if our roles were reversed, and I’m sure as hell not going to ask you to.”
Dallas is a good friend. A great friend. A brother from another mother. I owe him the truth.
“Yeah. There’s more. I would suggest sitting down or backing up because if you punch me, you might hurt your hand and playing guitar at your show in Omaha will be a bitch.”
“Dude, you’re on probation. I’m not going to punch you for—”
“It’s about Dixie.”
He sits.
All I can do is man up and tell him the truth. So I look him right in the eye and do that.
“I love her, Dallas. I fucking love her and I swear to God, I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t even know it could happen. You were right, what you said last year, about my shit and her not needing that. You were right to tell me to keep my loser fucking hands off her when we were kids, too. But that was a promise I couldn’t keep.”
There is visible movement in his jaw. “I’m going to need a little more clarification than that,” he says evenly.
I pull in a deep breath that has more to do with courage than oxygen. “I’m in love with your sister—maybe I always have been. I broke the promise I made you when we were kids and the one I made you last year in about a dozen different ways and as sorry as I am for that, I wouldn’t take it back if my life depended on it.”
I wait a beat for his reaction, wondering if my life does depend on it. A dozen emotions play across his expressive face. He’s a lot like her, I realize. Neither of them has a poker face for shit.