Most of the rough stockers and their women were crowding closer to him when Lyric slid herself down his body.
“What’s goin’ on?” he heard someone ask.
“King’s been invited to be on Edge,” Lyric answered. “Only the biggest singing competition in the universe.”
“He’s been invited to audition,” the man who had delivered the envelope corrected her.
“Oh, he’ll be on. You mark my words. Once those judges hear him sing, he’ll win the whole damn thing.”
The Promise
She closed the car door, and zipped her jacket. The blue sky and bright sun were misleading. This close to the ocean, the wind could be fierce, even on the sunniest days.
From where she stood in the gravel parking lot across the street, she saw a man walking toward her small town’s only supermarket. There was something familiar in the way he held himself. His worn barn jacket was taught across his shoulders, but hung loose over his narrow hips. Although his jeans were more metro than ranch, his boots were all cowboy, and so was his black, felt Stetson.
Peyton took a deep breath. It wasn’t the first time her mind played this particular trick. She looked left and right once she got inside, but didn’t see the man who’d probably been a figment of her imagination anyway.
Growing boys needed milk and orange juice, so before she’d even left the first aisle, her cart was half full. She was reading over her shopping list, on her way to the produce section, when her eyes met a pair of hauntingly familiar deep, blue eyes—eyes of a man she thought she’d never see again. Her disappointment was palpable as she scanned his face. The eyes were familiar, and maybe even the way he held himself that had her heart skipping a beat. But the man standing in front of her, whose eyes took in every inch of her in the same way her gaze traveled from his face to his hands, was not who she thought he was.
He raised and lowered his chin, “Hey.”
Peyton nearly closed her eyes. She knew the deep timbre of that voice intimately. “Sorry, you look so much like someone—” What could she say? Someone she used to know?
“Yes,” he murmured.
“Get that a lot?” She tried to laugh, but the pain she felt whenever she allowed herself to think about Kade Butler brought her closer to tears than laughter.
“No, I don’t.”
“I’m sorry, you don’t what?”
“Get that a lot.”
“Oh…uh…well.” Her hands gripped the shopping cart handle, but before she could move it forward, he grasped the wire basket.
“I’ve been looking for you.”
“Excuse me?”
“Name’s Brodie. Brodie Butler.”
Peyton closed her eyes just long enough that the tears she thought she held at bay flooded over her lids, and down onto her cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Peyton. I didn’t mean for it to happen this way.”
“But you meant for it to happen?”
“As I said, I’ve been looking for you.”