CHAPTER THIRTY
WALKER
Leave it to my mom to show up completely unannounced after getting into an argument, but that’s on me. I should have known better. We have never gone more than a few hours with tension pulled between us. It’s not in our nature. It’s one thing that has let me exhale, knowing we would never go to bed upset.
It wasn’t until today that I realized that might not be the case anymore. That the distance might cause the tension to harden between us, but here we are. The tether that is usually stretched across a thousand miles is suddenly two feet short.
“Mama, you’re here,” I say, shaking the shock from my face. “In Michigan. At my apartment.” I curl my fingers tighter around the doorknob, leaning into the side of the door. “Hi.”
“Very observant of you, Peach,” she teases, a smile gracing her lips and brightening the grey eyes we share. She steps forward, lifting her hand up to pat my cheek. Her tone is much gentler than it had been on the phone like all it took was a few hours for the hurt to melt from her voice. “Are you going to invite your Mama in?”
My eyes dart behind me to Sonya, who is still sitting on my kitchen counter. In doing so, my mom’s attention shifts from me as she presses forward to follow my gaze. I pull the door tighter to my hip, filling the space between the door frame and the door to keep her from seeing Sonya, and I don’t know why. Maybe because I’ve kept Sonya to myself all this time. She’s a secret part of my life, of my soul. One I’ve kept safe from my mom, who will read way too much into it, but right now, there is no working around it.
I can’t hide her anymore. Our bubble is about to burst.
“Walker,” she says, lifting her eyebrow at me. “Do you have company?”
I turn my head again in time to see Sonya slide off the counter, her toes touching the floor before her heels find the ground. My mom’s hand comes up to touch my chest, bringing me out of my head and back to reality. “Uh…”
“Cowboy, you really need to stop it with the stuttering,” Sonya chimes in. One of her hands finds the small of my back while the other moves to the door to pull it open as she slides under my arm. “Hi,” she says, a bright smile on her face while forcing me back to open the door. “I’m Sonya. Or Sunny. Either works,” she tells my mom and reaches for the suitcase sitting on the floor next to her. “Let me grab that for you.”
“Thank you, honey.” Mom’s eyes drift from Sonya to me. Before I can say anything to shield Sonya from the line of questioning that is about to come, my mom’s attention is back on her. “Cowboy, huh?”
Sonya brightens at the nickname she gave me all those months ago and shuffles back into my apartment, my mom’s suitcase in her grasp. “Yeah, I wound up wandering into his business writing class last year by accident and quite literally fell into his lap. He was so nervous that when I asked his name, he said he was from Georgia. Been Cowboy ever since,” she shares, setting the suitcase down next to my couch before turning to face us both.
“Did he tell you he spent most of his childhood begging me to buy him a horse so he could be one?” Mom asks, settling at my side. “The rodeo was his favorite time of the year.”
Sonya perks up at that. “Is that so?” she asks, her eyes dragging over to me. “Not a cowboy, huh? We’re just full of lies now, aren’t we?”
I roll my eyes. “I was a kid.”
“Please tell me you have pictures.”
“I’m sure I can find some for you. He never did get to fulfill that dream, but he did get a cowboy hat,” Mom tells Sonya who’s already grinning.
She is well acquainted with that hat at this point. The image of her in my cowboy hat and nothing else is not one I’ll be forgetting anytime soon.
“Oh, I know all about that cowboy hat,” Sonya says before moving her hands into the back pocket of her jeans. “I should probably get out of your hair, though. I’m sure you have a lot to talk about,” she says before nodding towards my island countertop. “I was just dropping off some peach pie for Walker. I’m sure it doesn’t stand up to yours, but it’s pretty good.”
“Oh, you don’t have to run out so soon. I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Mom counters, bringing her hand to her chest and the mama pendant that has hung around her next since I was six years old. “I should have called before I just showed up.”
Sonya waves off her concern, not wanting her to feel put out. “No, really. I have some work I need to get done anyway, but it was really nice to meet you, Ms. Bodie. I hope I’ll get to see you again before you head home.”
“Lillian,” she corrects, stepping forward to rest her hand on Sonya’s forearm and give it a gentle squeeze. They’re a lot alike in that way. The way people just flock to them, like a moth to a flame. They’re magnetic. “And I’m sure we will. It was lovely meeting you, Sonya. I’m just going to freshen up and let the two of you say goodbye.”
“End of the hall,” I tell her, filling the empty space. The air is tense, and I don’t want Sonya to leave. In fact, I want her to stay exactly where she is—glued to my side.
She nods her head, parting from us to head down the hall towards the bedrooms and bathroom. In that time, Sonya has migrated past me and towards the door.
“You could stay,” I say, following her to the door.
“You need to talk to your mom, Cowboy.” She steps into my bubble, her hands spreading over my sides and towards the back loops of my jeans. “It’s going to be fine.”
“Let me drive you home at least,” I plead, bringing my hands up to her arms. Her thumb drags over the fabric on my shirt at the small of my back, distracting me as she steps forward and fills the rest of the space between us. Her chest presses tightly to mine.
Her lips tip up into a smile. “I drove Reid’s truck.”
“But—”
“Walker,” she says, leaning on her toes. Her hands untangle from my waistband and move up my back until her arms are hooked under mine. “Close your eyes.”
“Sunny.”
“Just try.” Her voice is so soft, so angelic. When I squeeze them shut, she unhooks one arm and trails her fingertip up the bridge of my nose to move my glasses up. “Take a deep breath,” she whispers, taking one herself that I mimic. “Good boy.”
“Sunny,” I warn, opening my eyes to find mischief glimmering in her brown eyes and a smile stretched across her lips. “What about holding my hand?”
She moves her hand down my arm and slips it into mine, lacing our fingers together until they fit perfectly. “You can talk to her. You can make this right. She loves you, Cowboy. So much so, she came all the way to Michigan after talking to you this morning. There is nothing to worry about. You’re going to clear the air and have some pie, and everything will be fine. I promise,” she assures me, pressing her lips to my jaw. Her warmth seeps into my skin, telling me I can do this. “We’ll talk later.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Reluctantly, I loosen my hold on her and let her take a step back from me. I shouldn’t be feeling this tense about talking with my mom. I shouldn’t already be missing Sonya when she’s still standing right in front of me, but here I am, missing her. “Sunny?”
She rests her hand on the side of the door, leaning her head against it. “Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
She grins. “Always.”
The door clicks shut, leaving me to stare at it. My chest grows tighter by the second. My body is already aching for her—the way her body molds to mine, her heat sinking beneath my skin, warming me from the inside out, her sugary sweet smile, her mischievous eyes, her citrus smell. I miss everything, and it hasn’t even been a minute.
“I think we have a few things to talk about, Peach.”
I turn my head to find my mom leaning into the archway, breaking the living space from the bedrooms, her arms loosely crossed over her chest. “Yeah, we do,” I say, stepping toward the living room to settle on the couch. “I’m sorry for not being honest with you.”
She nods, sinking onto the coffee table in front of me. “Why weren’t you?”
“I didn’t want to upset you. It’s…” I swallow around the words, leaning forward on my elbows, and sink my fingers into my hair. “It’s always been you and me against the world. I never thought I would ever be this far away from you, but I got here, and it was like breathing in fresh air. Everything I thought I had in Ashmore was just the tip of the iceberg. I realized there was so much more out there, and every time I came home, I’d miss here a little bit more. I don’t know when it happened, but at some point, this became home. I know I should have told you sooner. I shouldn’t have led you on. Do you hate me?”
She rests her hands on my cheek and tips my head up to meet her eyes. “Walker, there is nothing you could do that would ever make me hate you. I am so immensely proud of you and the man you have become. You inspire me, Peach.”
“Mama…”
“I had plans to come here to try and convince you to change your mind, but that would have been selfish of me. To ask you to give this up,” she says, pausing when her hand moves down to rest over my heart. “To leave her.”
I press my lips together and curl my fingers around her hand, ready to pull away when she smiles at me. “We’re just friends.”
She smiles. “Walker, my love, you are fooling no one. Friends don’t look at their friends the way you were looking at that girl,” she says, a teasing tone wrapped in her words. “My mom used to tell me that we each had a person in this world. Someone who understood us entirely. An extension of our heart, walking outside our chest. I never understood that until the nurse was resting you on mine. You are my everything, Peach. All I need to be happy is for you to be happy, and you are happy here, aren’t you? With her.”
“Yeah, I am.”
“Then I want you to take that internship, and I want you to crush it,” she says, squeezing my hands where they’re held between us. “And I want you to get your head out of your ass and tell Sonya you love her because you deserve every ounce of happiness.”
I fight the burning in my chest and the utter relief that coats it at her words. I don’t need her blessing, but that’s what this is. The affection in her voice, the clarity. She’s giving me permission to let go of the guilt I’ve been carrying around. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, Peach.”