Chapter 24
CHAPTER 24
OWEN
May 12
T he knock at my door is loud and out of rhythm, like Wyatt’s mind is elsewhere. When I open the door, I find my tiny bartender on my stoop in the smallest pair of denim cutoffs, cowboy boots, and an oversize Dolly Parton T-shirt that’s somehow sexier than a string bikini top. Her eyes are smokey, the dark liner thick like a warning, with only a hint of iridescent shimmer on her lids.
And she’s frowning.
“You look like you’re taking your nine-year-old daughter to a Taylor Swift concert,” she says, eyeing my dark jeans and army-green linen short-sleeved button up. My pants are cuffed, and I’m wearing leather loafers with no socks.
“Thanks?” I say, reassessing my outfit, which I thought looked pretty good until six seconds ago.
She huffs out a sigh and pushes past me into the house. “You look fucking hot and you know it. It’s just not the right vibe for where we’re going.”
She’s in my living room now, pacing back and forth in front of the couch. I have to grab her by her forearms, bend my knees, and make her face me to get her attention. “To be clear, you didn’t tell me where we were going. You just said ‘a concert.’”
She bites her lip, her eyes on the ceiling as she sorts through her thoughts. Then she sets her jaw and looks me dead in the eye like a challenge.
“We’re going to see Griffin Stone.”
It takes me a minute to place the name, and when I finally do, I can’t control my expression. “The guy who sings the song about truck nuts?”
She groans. “Yes. It’s a long story.”
And from the look on her face and the way she’s bouncing in her cowboy boots, practically vibrating with tension, it seems like it’s a complicated story too.
And I want to hear it. But more than that, I want her to be comfortable.
“Do you want me to change?”
She eyes me, a slow appreciation of my body that makes my pants go slightly tight in the crotch. Her gaze lingers on my biceps, where the sleeve of my shirt is tight in a way I’m frankly pretty fucking proud of.
“No,” she finally says, a saucy look on her face. “Like I said, you look fucking hot.”
The urge to drag her into my bedroom and keep her there until tomorrow is strong, but she pivots on her heel, and I can’t not follow her heart-shaped ass in those tiny little shorts.
“I’m driving,” she calls over her shoulder as she strides through the door.
“You sure? I’m happy to drive.” I glance at my truck, just a year old and much bigger than her ancient little Toyota pickup.
She levels me with a look that has me shoving my keys into my pocket as I pull open the squeaky passenger door of her truck. Wyatt slides into the driver’s side like it’s home, then reaches across the console to grab a shoebox full of cassette tapes and sets them on the dusty floor.
“Feel free to pick one,” she says as the truck starts with a surprisingly robust roar. Grace has mentioned that Wyatt knows how to work on cars, and I try not to linger too long on the image of her, cheeks marked with grease, wearing a tool belt…and nothing else. We’ve got an hour-long drive and a Griffin Stone concert to get through before I can get my hands on her, so I need to get hold of myself.
I reach for the box. Inside is a pile of tapes in plastic cases, bands my dad loves: Heart, Fleetwood Mac, Foreigner, Journey. There are also several that don’t have cases, just words scrawled on their labels.
“Old-school,” I say, holding up a mixtape with a tie-dye design done in marker. “Where did you even get these?”
“Yeah, the old girl has an old sound system,” Wyatt says, patting the dashboard. “Record stores sell used tapes for cheap. I can usually get them for less than a dollar a pop. But my favorite is finding mixtapes at garage sales and estate sales. I can sometimes get a whole box for a couple of bucks.”
“You mean you didn’t make these?”
“Nope. These are all vintage specimens. I love them. My favorite is when they don’t have track listings on the liner. It’s a fun surprise to hear what’s on them, imagine the types of people who made them, what they were going through. Some of them were even taped off the radio, so I get old commercials and DJ bits.”
We hit the highway, and Wyatt drapes her wrist over the top of the steering wheel, her sunglasses perched on her nose as she leans across and digs into the box. She pulls out a tape in a black case with a handwritten track list.
“I went to this estate sale in Columbus a couple of years ago and found a box of mixtapes. Turns out this guy had made them for his girlfriend, a woman named Debbie, and together they told the entire story of their relationship. It was amazing, like this epic musical about the two of them falling in love.” She holds up the tape for me to take. “This one is my favorite. Check it out.”
I lean closer to read the tiny, blocky text.
Jeff Buckley - Lover, You Should’ve Come Over
The Cranberries - Linger
Bryan Adams - Please Forgive Me
Cake - I Will Survive
Foreigner - I Want to Know What Love Is
Journey - Who’s Crying Now
I gape. “Is this their breakup?”
She grins.
“This guy scored his breakup? And sent it to her?”
“Yup. It’s an amazing listen. I’m guessing it’s got to be from 1996 or ’97. The Cake cover is from ’96, so it’s after that.”
“I don’t know what’s more heartbreaking—that he made this, or that she sold it at a garage sale almost thirty years later,” I say.
Wyatt plucks the tape from my hand, flips open the case and slides out the tape one-handed, popping it into the tape deck. I have to shout over the opening strains of Jeff Buckley. “All these love letters, and this one is your favorite?”
She casts a glance at me sideways, a half grin on her face. “I’ve never lied about who I am.”
“Then why are we going to a Griffin Stone concert?”
She freezes, frowning, then sighs, her chest sinking in on itself.
“He’s my ex,” she says.
Thank god I’m not driving, because I think I would have swerved off the road at that little piece of information.
“Your ex? I’m sorry, you had a boyfriend ?”
She lets out a rueful laugh. “I love that you’re more shocked that I had a boyfriend than that it was that poser douche-canoe.” She tips her head back against her seat and presses harder on the gas. “Remember how you said you were gonna hurt him? Don’t do that.”
I’m putting it all together now: the way she charged into my living room like a lit sparkler, the way she holds back, the walls she’s built.
That fucking guy? Really?
“I think you’re going to do that just fine on your own in that outfit.”
I watch the tension melt off of her as she laughs, deep and throaty. But she doesn’t say anything else, just keeps her eye on the horizon, the two-lane highway rushing at us as we head toward Indianapolis.
“You don’t have to tell me anything, but we’ve got about an hour on the road, so…”
I can practically feel her eye roll, but she starts talking anyway.
“First, I should tell you that we’re not actually going to see Griffin Stone. I don’t plan to hear that asshole sing a note,” she says. “We’re going to see Romy Maxwell, who’s opening for him. She was my best friend and roommate back in Nashville…and I haven’t spoken to her since I walked in on her kissing my boyfriend. Griffin. Well, he was kissing her . But I don’t really know what all happened, because I walked out and moved here the next day.”
It’s then that I realize just how little I know about Wyatt Hart. And it’s not because I’m not curious. She plays her cards so close to the vest that I’m not even sure she can see them.
I let the information roll around in my brain. She poured that story out like it was bullet-pointed, like she was testifying in court. Just the facts, no emotion.
But when I glance over at her, I see that despite the way she’s holding her face still, impassive, focusing on the road, there’s a watery sheen to her eyes that betrays the heft of this situation. When she finally looks over at me, there’s a touch of fear in her expression.
Like I’m going to ask more questions.
Or bolt.
Or both.
Instead, I turn back to the road, settling back into the surprisingly comfortable passenger seat of the ancient truck.
“So what do you need from me?”