Some memories hit hard so hard they hurt.
I’m waiting for Roland to tease me, to brush it off, whatever...but there’s no edge in his voice.
“Where’s your mother now?” he asks with an unexpected gentleness.
“Oh, she stayed in New Orleans after the divorce.”
“Do you miss her?”
“I see her pretty often now. Enough not to miss her. Growing up, I lived with her, but spent a lot of weekends and summers with Dad.” I swallow, trying to clear the rock in my throat. “What I really miss is them.”
“Before the tabloids ruined Alvin, you mean,” he offers with a touch of bitterness—and yet it doesn’t seem directed at me.
More like it’s aimed at himself.
Why?
I close my eyes, my hand clasping the sun-warmed metal pole.
“I mean, it wasn’t just the tabloids,” I admit. Grudgingly, but I do. “All they did was document the fall, I guess. Dad was like a lot of those old eighties rockers. He didn’t do well with fame and money. It kind of messed him up. He got in with fast crowds and might’ve even done hard drugs a few times. I know he was drinking a lot, and I don’t...” I pause, taking a shaky breath.
“Callie,” he whispers, brushing my hand, giving me strength.
“There was a story—this photo, him with this half-naked girl from another band hanging all over him. Kissing him. Ugh. He says he doesn’t remember that night at all. He doesn’t know if he cheated on Mom or not. But for her, it was the last straw...”
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“Not your fault. A week later, she packed up and took me with her. I was only ten.” I close my eyes with a heavy sigh. “I don’t completely blame him. I love my dad. And I want to believe that nothing happened and he was just too blackout drunk to remember. All that attention and pressure is hard, but I just wish...” Opening my eyes, I trail off and stare blankly out the window over the head of a little granny clutching her paper grocery bag to her chest. “Maybe he’d have handled it better if people weren’t stalking his every move.”
“Maybe,” Roland agrees, curling that massive, warm hand of his around my shoulder.
It’s only there for a few seconds.
There’s a heat, a reassurance, a kindness that blitzes through me in the wildest way as Roland squeezes my shoulder and his hand falls way.
“I’m sorry,” he says again.
I force a smile and lift my head, tilting it back to look at him.
He’s looking down at me with his gaze as intense as ever, and yet there’s something I don’t recognize.
It’s like he’s seeing me—really seeing me—for the very first time.
“You didn’t do it. Stop apologizing,” I say.
His lips form a rueful smile.
“You understand why I did, no doubt.”
The trolley stops suddenly.
Roland lifts his head, his gaze scanning back and forth.
“This is close enough,” he says. “We can take the tour bus from here.”
“Tour bus?” I ask, but he’s already forging through the crowd, parting the sea to make a path to the exit.
“Faster to follow me and find out,” he calls back, laughter in his voice. “Come.”
Well.
I guess there’s nothing for me to do except come.
So I follow, skipping through the tangle of bodies before they can split us up, and go tumbling down onto the sidewalk.
It’s quieter at Roland’s side.
We don’t have to go far. There’s apparently a tour line that covers Austin’s coolest places, and as we step up to a massive parking lot with a fleet of buses, Roland checks his watch.
He produces a pair of tickets from his pocket with an exaggerated flourish.
“Right on time.” The cocky look he flashes is slayer material. “I planned for a few detours. I had a feeling you wouldn’t adhere to a timetable, Miss Punctuality.”
“Oh, screw you.” I stick my tongue out, but I’m laughing as I accept my ticket and join the line piling onto one of the buses with him. I squint at the print on the ticket, but it’s all shorthand. “Are you still not going to tell me where we’re going?”
“You have no patience at all, do you, Miss Landry?”
“Callie.”
“Callie,” he repeats in a drawn-out, husky groan.
I freeze, glaring at him with the force of the sun.
“Hmm. Maybe you should go back to Miss Landry,” I bite off.
“Too late now. You gave me permission.” And with that awful smile that brings me to my knees, he hands his ticket over and boards the bus ahead of me.
God.
I’m inwardly grumbling as I follow, turning over my ticket and edging into the narrow aisle of the bus.
He’s waiting, one arm stretched along the back of a couple seats.
He gestures for me to sit first, giving me the window seat.
Lovely. How can such an old-school gentleman and such a bastard coexist in the same person?