Fast Lane - Kristen Ashley Page 0,28

him have that because I’m burying my mother.”

I was breathing really hard as I made to move around him.

“You can keep the coat,” I spat.

And then he was in front of me.

“Baby.”

I kept going, sidestepping him toward the door.

“Keep away from me, Preacher.”

“Lyla.”

I was almost to the door.

He wrapped his fingers around my arm.

I whirled on him. “Take your hand off me!”

“I didn’t know.”

“You thought I came up here because you’re opening for the Mustangs? I hate the Mustangs. They suck. Petty wannabes. And Petty sucks!”

“Now, cher, don’t be talkin’ smack about Petty,” he muttered.

Was he serious?

“Get your hand off me, Preacher McCade.”

“Come back into the room. Let’s talk.”

“We are not talking.”

“Lyla—”

I got up on my toes, as close to his face as I could get, and snapped, “Screw you! I needed to talk to you a year ago. I needed you when she was diagnosed. I needed you when she was dying. I needed you when Dad started pulling his crap.”

“What’d your dad try to do?” he growled.

“He didn’t try to do it. He did do it. He’s got Julia.”

His face turned to stone, then it gentled, and he tried to pull me to him, murmuring, “Baby.”

I pulled hard back, got free, slammed against the door, banging my head.

And then I was in his arms.

Oh God.

Oh God.

Those arms.

Those strong arms.

They felt so good.

I couldn’t bear it.

My legs gave out and I started crying.

Bawling.

God!

He somehow got me across the room and on the couch, and I pushed at him and tried to pull away.

But he clamped on tight, fell sideways, I went with him, then he rolled on top and he was heavy.

A heavy that felt awesome.

Damn it.

“Okay, Lyla, okay, cher, cool it enough to tell me what’s happening.”

“He-he…she wasn’t even in the dirt before he petitioned for custody. G-g-gram and Gramps t-t-tried to fight him but, money was tight, and our l-lawyer wasn’t very g-good and…and…her senior year! She’s with Dad!”

I gulped, choked, coughed, hiccupped, then kept bawling.

I shoved my face in his neck and used his skin to wipe my cheeks then pulled away and looked away, straining to get out from under him.

“I was so s-stupid to think you…just, you know, would want me and that you c-cared.”

I stopped straining, moving altogether, talking and crying when his big hands framed both sides of my head and he forced it to face him.

“You know better than that, Lyla,” he bit out.

I blinked tears out of my eyes.

“I was giving you space,” he clipped.

“I didn’t want space,” I shot back. “I told you to call me.”

“You were seventeen years old.”

“I know, that’s why you wouldn’t kiss me and…say, one of a myriad reasons why you wouldn’t call me.”

“Goddamn it.” He looked over my head. “Shit is real and she’s sayin’ words like ‘myriad.’”

“Preacher,” I snapped.

He looked down at me.

“I did not want to be that creep,” he stated.

That made me mad.

“You’re not a creep,” I retorted

“Not a creep, cher, that creep. That creepy twenty-somethin’ guy who preys on a seventeen-year-old.”

I blinked again for a different reason.

“Oh,” I mumbled.

“Yeah, oh,” he bit off. “And I did call.”

Uh-oh.

“You did?”

“On your birthday. After your birthday. At least a dozen times between your birthday and when we got back to Indy. And I’ll just say, your gramps thinks I’m a twenty-somethin’ creep.”

I rolled my eyes to look over my head.

“Babe,” he growled.

I looked back at him.

“Okay, just to say, we didn’t have a lot of time together so I might have been remiss in sharing my grandfather is a tad overprotective.”

He just growled with no words at that.

“And you know, I might have been so excited I met you, I told everybody, and well…he wasn’t a big fan of his granddaughter meeting some guy in a band.”

“You don’t say,” he drawled sarcastically.

“I didn’t think he would withhold your messages,” I told him.

And I didn’t.

“Well, I’m seein’ we both now realize, he did,” Preacher pointed out.

Yes, we now realized that.

But I also realized I had the answer to why Gramps was always racing to be the first to the phone for that stretch of time around my eighteenth birthday.

He lived with four women. He never raced to the phone.

I did not share that dawning knowledge with Preacher.

I just drew in breath and held it.

I let it go to say, “I didn’t come up here because you’re famous, Preacher.”

“I’m not famous, Lyla.”

“I didn’t come up here because you’re semi-famous and about to be super, double, extra famous, Preacher.”

He grinned at me.

Damn.

I looked away.

“Baby,” he whispered,