Chapter Eight #2
Despite her reservations, Addie spent the day focused on my daughter, agreeing to almost every ride (apparently the spinning barrels made her sick) and even posing for pictures with Skye and the Bravetown character version of a princess—the Pretty Annie Lou, the mayor’s daughter.
The actress looked vaguely familiar from the saloon, and Adriana hovered to chat for a minute after Skye came to check the photos on my phone.
“Can we go to the bookshop? That lady said there’s novels set in Bravetown. So it’s like a book based on a park that’s based on books. How cool is that?”
“Hell yeah. Do you know where the bookshop is?”
That question earned me an incredulous look that really shamed me for not knowing the answer myself.
“Where to next?” Adriana asked when she rejoined us.
“Bookshop,” Skye replied.
“Perfect. Lessgo!” Addie turned on her heel and angled for a specific side street.
As if I couldn’t sink further in my daughter’s esteem, I earned myself another look that practically said, See?
She knows where to go. But hey, if me being the dork in this family meant Skye was cool with Addie’s presence in our lives, I wasn’t going to argue.
Even when, someday in the future, we’d go back to being friends, I wanted her to be part of my life and, by extension, my kid’s life.
An hour later, I was a couple hundred dollars poorer and got my arm workout in by carrying two huge bags of books—fiction, nonfiction, and coffee-table photo books—up the stairs to a reserved viewing area for the daily stunt show.
Skye, deep in conversation with Addie, directed me to sit on the far end, with a certain curly haired blond between us. Apparently, my daughter had deemed me uncool and only Addie worthy of her time.
“Bravetown is really awesome when you love Westerns and a bit of history, but I always wanted to make music. And a lot of music jobs are in Nashville,” Adriana said, trying to make an awestruck twelve-year-old understand why this park wasn’t everyone’s favorite place in the world.
“I don’t think I’d ever leave if I lived here,” Skye mused.
“Well, you do live here now,” Addie laughed.
“Oh. Yeah.” Skye giggled. “I’m never going to leave.”
“Hmm…what if you were invited to travel to archeological digs?”
“I can go for a few weeks. But I’ll come back.”
“Sounds like your daddy did everything right by moving here, huh?” Adriana was technically talking to my daughter, but she turned around, smiling at me over her shoulder.
“Uh-huh.” Skye was checking out of the conversation, focused on the bank robbery starting to go down in Bravetown’s town square.
She pulled her earplugs out of her little bag and had them in right before the first powder keg exploded.
The flames were a little too red and the dust a little too sandy white for the explosion to look real, but it worked for the over-the-top version of the Wild West in the park.
Addie sidled closer to me, slipping one of her hands into mine on my lap. She leaned in, her chin resting on my shoulder. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I replied, swallowing any remark about who was being gooey now.
“If I remember correctly, there’s a little stunt about to happen right in front of us. A lot of eyes in this direction.”
“Got it.” Obviously, she was being affectionate for other people to see. That made sense. I should have known.
Her hand curled around one of my suspenders, using it to tug me close enough for her warm vanilla perfume to engulf me. That seemed more like something she’d do than shoulder snuggles. “Do you think that’s visible enough?”
“Well, we are out in the open…”
“The ring.”
“Right.” The ring on her hand that was on my suspender, on my chest, frontal, visible to anyone who looked up at this viewing area. She was so much better than me at thinking these things through. “Yeah, I think that works.”
The tip of her nose brushed against mine, and while her lips skimmed over mine, barely touching, a feathering kiss, warm and sweet and patient, I didn’t so much as flinch when something exploded just a few feet away from us.
It was the kind of kiss that didn’t leave you breathless and yet still robbed your brain of every sensible thought beyond more.
Addie pulled back, barely, leaning into me and letting her head rest on my shoulder.
Close enough to feel the softness of her body and to inhale her scent with every breath, and yet too far, leaving that little echo on my mind. More.
My trance shattered when Skye shot up from her seat, both hands slapped to her head, twisting and turning to see every detail of how the bank robber kidnapped the mayor’s daughter.
“I love how enthusiastic she is. I miss feeling like that,” Addie said under her breath.
The Adriana I knew had been in love with making music.
Humming all day, scribbling lyrics on any scrap piece of paper.
I’d been so caught up in making the move to Wild Fields, and everything that entailed, I should have realized earlier that Addie hadn’t just grown up, she’d grown quiet.
Maybe this arrangement would have to do more than put her back on the map.
Visibility was one thing I could offer her.
But being seen, not heard, wasn’t the point.