A Crowe's Song Read online

  Emily couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even open her mouth. She sat stock-still, hanging on to every word that filled her with pain and heartache. For the first time in her entire life, she truly wished she had ignored the elephant.

  “Although, he did admit to me that he’d gone to see her over the Fourth of July holiday. So you were right about that.”

  At this point, Emily didn’t care that Bobby had lied to her about where he’d been. She pretty much already knew that. What she cared about was what had happened to Brenda, and what this meant for their relationship. “That was seven months ago, Andy. Did something happen during the procedure? Did she get hurt?”

  “No. When he went to see her, he found out that she didn’t go through with it. She’d changed her mind and decided to have the baby.”

  “Then why hasn’t she come back?” Emily started to question the validity of this story and wondered if it was nothing more than a lie Bobby had used to break them up.

  “Apparently—and keep in mind who this came from—she told him that she didn’t want to raise a baby with me. She said I wouldn’t make a good father, and that they’d both be better off without me.”

  For the first time in two days, she touched him. She reached out and brushed the backs of her fingers down the short hairs that decorated his cheek. It wasn’t the intimate touch they were both used to, but it was exactly what he needed. “You know that’s not true, right? He more than likely went there to get her back, thinking he could use the abortion against her as blackmail, and without the baby, there would be no reason she wouldn’t take him back. I mean, he broke up with me before he left, so he obviously had other intentions than to simply check up on her.”

  Andy couldn’t deny that. In fact, that same thought had crossed his mind, except with all the other emotions running rampant throughout his nervous system, he wasn’t sure what to believe.

  “So when she told him that she decided to keep the baby, he probably got angry and fed her a bunch of lies to hurt her,” she continued with her theory. “Why is he telling you all of this now? Why wait this long?”

  Andy shrugged, even though he likely knew the reason. “You’ve said yourself that he’s been suspicious of us, so this was probably his way of getting me to leave so he can swoop in and save the day.”

  Emily hadn’t given the ramifications of this much thought until this very second. The idea that Andy would leave hadn’t crossed her mind, and now that it had, hopelessness spread inside her. “Well, regardless of why he’s waited so long, what does this mean for you? If you really do have a kid out there—or on the way—what are you going to do?”

  “He told me where she was, so I went there yesterday.” He hadn’t told her that he was leaving town because, until he knew if it’d all been a lie or not, he didn’t want to say anything to Emily and possibly upset her for no reason. Except he couldn’t keep it from her any longer. She could read him like a book; he knew he’d never be able to get away with it. “But I didn’t find her.”

  “So is she not there, or you just didn’t find her?”

  “As far as I know, she’s not there. I don’t know if she left or if he’d made the whole thing up. But I scoured the whole of that town, asked anyone I came across, and ended up leaving with as many answers as I’d gone there with.” Returning home without the truth had only made Andy more upset. The unknown was what really got to him.

  “Have you told Bobby that she wasn’t there?”

  “I stopped him after church this morning, but he didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Maybe she’s just waiting until the baby’s born.” A knot formed in Emily’s throat, making it difficult to speak without losing her voice. But there was one question she needed answered. “If that’s the case and she shows back up with a baby, what does that mean for you?”

  “I guess it means I’m a dad.”

  She cleared her throat and tried again. “Okay, then what would it mean for us?”

  Andy hesitated for a moment, his silence becoming static in the air around them. “I have no idea. I guess that would depend on how you felt about it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m going to be honest with you, Emily…I have feelings for you, serious feelings.” This was the first time he’d ever felt this way about anyone, let alone admitted it aloud. His nerves were already fried, but the sight of Emily’s faint smile gave him the confidence to continue. “I won’t abandon my kid—if it really is mine. I will be there for it and Brenda, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be with Brenda. So, like I said, it depends on you, and if you could be with a guy who has a baby with someone else.”

  It was a lot for Emily to consider. She hadn’t been given as much time to process this as Andy had. Needing a moment to try to organize her chaotic thoughts, she pushed to her feet and turned to stand with her back to him. It was hard enough to work through all the questions and scenarios while next to him, it was impossible while looking at him.

  It only took Andy a few seconds to spring into action. As soon as she turned away from him, he stood and moved to stand behind her, both of their backs now to the roaring river. He gently held onto her hips and lowered his lips to her ear. “I’m sorry, Emily. I never meant to hurt you like this. Trust me, you’re the last person I would ever want to hurt.”

  “Why?” she asked over her shoulder.

  Unexpectedly, his voice cracked when he said, “Because I love you.”

  That was all it took to spin her around in his arms. Her heart came back to life, and the intense ache that had filled her chest a second ago dissipated. “Say that again. You what?”

  His lips split wide, and his dark eyes lit up with affection. “I love you, Emily.”

  She fisted the front of his shirt and pulled until his mouth landed on hers.

  With his fingers still laced through her hair, the back of her head in his hands, he pressed his forehead to hers and huffed. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t make this all go away.”

  “I know, and that’s okay. As long as we love each other, we can make it though anything.”

  “You love me?”

  Warmth filled her, and without understanding why, she felt confident that things would be all right. “Yes, Andrew Crowe…I love you.”

  Those three words should’ve filled him with complete happiness, and in a way, they did. However, they also threw him right into the center of reality, and no matter how he felt about her, he couldn’t ignore the tragic truth that stared them in the face.

  “You know they’ll never let us be together, right?”

  “Who’s they?” she asked, pulling away to see his face.

  His dark eyes were impossibly darker, fear slightly furrowing his brow. His lips, barely parted, almost appeared downturned, an illusion created by the uncertainty in the air surrounding them. They weren’t strangers, though there were still so many things to learn about one another. Emily yearned to understand what his expression meant, hoping to avoid ever seeing it again.

  “Your parents. Bobby.” He shrugged, filled with sudden hopelessness. “The universe.”

  She held his face between her hands, forcing him to look her in the eyes. “Then let’s not give them that kind of power.”

  “How?” He refused to allow the glimmer of hope in, not until he knew it was safe.

  “Well, for starters, we don’t know if what Bobby told you is even true, so there’s no point in making decisions until we get to that bridge. In the meantime, we keep doing things as we are—meeting up behind their backs, keeping our relationship as far from my parents as possible. It’s doable, Andy. It might not be ideal, and it’ll mean more sneaking around, but that’s all temporary.”

  He wasn’t sure how to take that, so he asked, “What do you mean it’s temporary?” He feared she’d suggest that they end things and go their separate ways when they evacuated the town.

  “Well, we all have to be gone in a little over four mon
ths, right? Why don’t we leave together instead of with our families? Depending on where things go between now and then, obviously.”

  He took a moment to contemplate her suggestion. His parents relied on him and his brothers a lot, so leaving them without his help wouldn’t sit well with the family. On the other hand, he knew where the McKinneys were relocating to, and it wasn’t anywhere near the plantation that his family had planned to purchase. He wanted the picture she painted, though he was afraid to buy into it, worried that it would end badly.

  “Forget about everyone else, Andy. This is about us.” Emily pulled his mouth to hers just as she whispered against his lips, “Run away with me.”

  His anxiety seemed to let up some; though like an oil smudge on a mechanic’s cheek, there was still a hint of despair that couldn’t be wiped away. No matter how hopeful he was, a dark cloud hung around, just over his shoulder, forecasting darkness despite the sunshine.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Drew

  Birds chirped outside my bedroom windows, slowly pulling me from the best night’s sleep I’d ever had. I wasn’t ready to open my eyes, though—unwilling to fully leave my dream of Kenny behind. It was erotic and loving. Warm and comforting. But before I could open my eyes, I became very aware of another body in my bed.

  My dream hadn’t been a dream after all.

  I put my arm around her and felt her scootch closer, burrowing her ass into my crotch and arching her back against my chest as if settling into a place made specifically for her—her spot. As if that was exactly where she belonged. Then again, I couldn’t argue with that. Even though we’d just met, I’d become very aware of the space in my life she’d so quickly occupied. And the more I thought about it, the more I believed that she had always owned that space…it’d been sitting empty this entire time, waiting for her to come and claim it.

  I wanted nothing more than for her to claim it.

  To claim me.

  It was a ridiculous thought, one I had to laugh at. This girl had shown up less than a week ago, out of the blue; there was no way I could have feelings for her. Sure, we’d spent quite a bit of time together, but it was in no way enough to feel the way I thought I did. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time left to find out what it was exactly.

  Just as that thought crossed my mind, Kenny stirred awake.

  “I wasn’t snoring, was I?” she asked as she rolled over to face me.

  I pressed my smiling lips to her forehead, thinking about the soft purrs she considered snores. “Nah, not too bad.”

  She pushed against my chest, pushing back enough to look at me. “Not too bad?”

  “No. On a scale of kitten to chainsaw, I’d say you were more of a rolling thunder in the far-off distance. Like really far off.”

  Kenny tucked her chin to her chest and laughed to herself. “Leave it to you to choose thunder. I can’t complain, though; at least you didn’t say an earthquake or the apocalypse or something equally as loud.”

  “I don’t think you ever have to worry about that. You’ve got the cutest snores.” That wasn’t a lie, either. I stayed up a bit last night after she had fallen asleep just to listen to her. Although, that might’ve been a mistake. The thought had crossed my mind that sleep would never be this restful again without the sounds of her breathing next to me.

  I couldn’t think about that. I needed to stay in the moment, not get too far ahead of myself.

  “So, Kenny…it’s your last day. Do you have anything special planned or in mind?”

  The nearly constant sparkle in her eyes dimmed at the mention of her last day at the resort. It made me hopeful that maybe she felt the same way I did. I decided not to bring it up just yet, in the event I’d misread her reaction. The last thing I wanted to do was scare her off this close to her departure.

  Without saying anything, she pushed up onto her elbow and reached over me, stretching the top half of her body across my chest. I swear, I would never get enough of her. The scent emanating from her hair as it fell into my face, as well as the softness of her inner thigh as it brushed against mine was enough to drive me crazy. So I did what any red-blooded male would do—I grabbed her by the hips and pulled her onto me, making her straddle my waist.

  All she had on was one of my T-shirts, so there was nothing preventing us from connecting again. And as much as I wanted nothing more than to push into her heat, I thought better of it. We had quite enjoyed our time together yesterday after leaving The Birdhouse, all the way up until we fell asleep last night. While I could definitely go again, I wasn’t sure how sore or tender she was. I had to remind myself that she wasn’t used to this much activity.

  She rolled her eyes as her neck and cheeks glowed pink and grabbed her cell off the nightstand next to me. “It’s almost nine. Don’t you have to do some work today?”

  “I have a few things to do, but they won’t take long. I can probably have them all done within a couple of hours. And I’ve already told the kitchen staff that I won’t be in tonight, so I don’t have to worry about that.”

  “Why would you cancel your shift?”

  She either truly didn’t know why I would call off work her last night here or wanted to hear me say it. It didn’t really matter one way or the other, because I answered her anyway, “Well, I thought I could spend time with you instead. But if you don’t want to…”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said with a teasing tone and curled lips. “Of course I want to.”

  “Good. But in the meantime, what would you like to do?”

  Glancing at her phone again, she checked the time before returning it to the side table. “Well, if I will be with you this evening, I should probably get all my stuff together so I don’t end up leaving anything. And I have to call my mom. I texted her last night to let her know I was all right, but I’m sure she’ll want to hear from me once more before I leave.”

  I didn’t like the idea of her packing up her things, but there was nothing I could do about it. And I certainly wasn’t going to mention my issue with it, especially when I couldn’t understand it myself, so it wasn’t like I would even be able to explain. It was best to let things play out the way they were meant to and leave it at that.

  “And you have work to do,” she said right before lowering her head to press her soft lips to my neck just below my ear. It was something she’d discovered last night—the sensitivity of that spot and the reaction it caused. So the fact that she did it again meant she either wasn’t as sore as I’d thought or didn’t care how tender she was.

  “Yeah, well…you’re making it kind of hard.”

  “Kind of?” She wiggled her bottom, situating my growing erection between her warm and wet folds. “Feels a little more than kind of hard. Which is actually a good thing, because if it wasn’t, that would mean I wasn’t doing it right.”

  “Oh, so this is what you want?” I flipped her over, pinning her between my body and the mattress. Situating myself between her legs, I rolled my hips, adding pressure to her clit and causing her eyes to close. The barely-there exhales that slipped past her parted lips were enough to let me know I’d hit the right spot. “You’re insatiable, woman.”

  The corners of her mouth curled more and more until her cheeks were high and round. “What can I say…you’re a hell of a lot better than a toy.”

  Grabbing her hip, I slid back, positioned myself at her entrance, and thrust forward, proving just how much better I was.

  There was nothing in the world sexier than seeing Kenny with wet hair. I wasn’t sure what about it garnered such a reaction from me, but I could only assume it was the knowledge that she’d recently taken a shower. Which made me think about her wet, naked body and how much I greatly enjoyed showering with her.

  “Did you get everything taken care of?” I asked as she slid onto the bench seat of the golf cart. Before dropping her off this morning, we’d agreed to do what we needed to get done so we could spend the rest of the day uninterrupted. So the seco
nd I finished dealing with my daily tasks, I raced to her cabin to pick her up.

  “Yup. I’m all yours for the rest of the day.” She leaned against me and planted a quick, intimate peck on my lips. It was the first time we’d greeted each other that way, and while I hadn’t expected it, it was quite a nice surprise.

  It made me wonder what it would be like to experience that every day. I’d spent so long feeling lonely and accepting my fate of never having a real relationship that I’d never let myself imagine what it would be like to have someone waiting at home for me. To have someone greet me at the door as I walked in or kiss me when I entered a room. And that one tiny exchange—likely something she hadn’t put much thought into—was all it took to know without a shadow of a doubt that I wanted to have that.

  “I told my mom about you,” she said, breaking through my thoughts and making me very aware that I hadn’t moved since she kissed me.

  I released the brake and slowly began to turn around in front of her cabin. “Oh, yeah? Did you tell her how amazing I am?”

  Her giggles floated in the breeze and swarmed me like a whirlwind, sweeping me up in the melodic sound. “Pretty much. She asked what I’d been up to and why I didn’t call last night, so I told her that I was hanging out with you. And of course, I couldn’t do that without telling her about you, so I told her about meeting you the first night here and how you kind of own the place. She sounded rather impressed.”

  “Wait…how much did you tell her? Not everything, right?”

  “Should I not have?”

  My stomach knotted and my throat closed, making breathing almost impossible. It also didn’t help that my chest had tightened, squeezing the life out of my lungs, making it that much harder to get the amount of oxygen needed to stay alive. Then again, it seemed as though my options were to die from self-suffocation or by the hands of a very angry mother.