us, that she and I need to pull the hell back before she gets her heart crushed. I swear on a stack of Bibles, the words are on the tip of my tongue when an old George Strait song comes on.
It’s like a switch flips in my brain, pressing past all the fucked-up confusion of the present and taking me right back to being ten and in the kitchen with my mama. She was cooking her famous seafood stew, and this song came on.
“C’mon over here, good looking.” She smiled at me and put her wooden spoon on the counter. “When George gets to singing with that fiddle, this mama’s feet have to dance.”
“Aw, Mama, I don’t wanna dance,” I complained. “If the other guys come in, they’ll tease me.”
Her smile got wider and she took me in her arms. “Beautiful boy, I taught every one of those fat heads to dance. Now it’s your turn. Before I know it, you’re gonna be taking pretty girls out to dance till all hours of the night. And no boy of mine is going to be out in this world without knowing how to two step properly.”
“I can’t stand girls,” I protested, buy my mama just laughed, turned the stew down, and held her hands out. “Trust me, baby, you’re gonna look just like your daddy, which means you’ll have so many girls chasing you, you’ll have to carry a stick.”
“Sounds good to me,” I muttered.
“C’mon, sourpuss. I won’t be happy till you let me show you how to dance.”
I stepped into her arms, breathing in the comforting smell of my mom’s sweet perfume and the seafood stew bubbling on the stove. She took me through the steps, quick-quick, slow, slow, quick-quick, slow, slow...
“Not so bad is it?” she asked, and I smiled sheepishly. “That’s my love. You’ll make some girl very happy one day.”
“Gunner?” Harlow asks, her face pale. “Are you okay?”
She’s worried, I realize. Worried about me. Hell, my mama would have loved Harlow so damn much. It breaks my heart she never got to meet her.
I gather Harlow in my arms without another word and feel a smile on my lips when she laughs loud and long.
“Gunner Hunt, you can dance! Holy hell, you sure can dance.” She looks down at my boots like she’s wondering if maybe I switched feet with someone else.
“I can’t hold a candle to you,” I say. Fuck, she feels good in my arms, warm and right. “My mama taught me while she cooked dinner. Said I’d meet a pretty girl one day, and it’d shame her if I didn’t know how to dance properly.”
The smile that curls on her lips makes me catch my breath in my throat. “I would have so loved to meet your mama,” she says, holding me tighter as we whirl across the floor. “She sounds like an amazing woman.”
“She would have loved you.” I blurt the damn words out before I really have a chance to think things through, before I realize that I’m opening up old wounds best left closed.
Harlow stops us on the dance floor, grabs my face, and kisses me full on the mouth. Her lips go close to my ear and she whispers, “She would have been so damn proud of you.”
The sad thing is, Harlow means it. She means it from the tip of her little toes to the top of her gorgeous head.
And she couldn’t be more wrong.
My mama would be appalled if she knew what a coward her son turned out to be.
The song ends and another picks up. Harlow bites her bottom lip and grabs onto my hands expectantly.
I know I’m going to regret this tomorrow. I know this is a train wreck going out of control, but tonight, instead of the devil whispering in my ear, I feel like it’s my mama. And she’s telling me to keep this amazing girl close. So that’s what I plan to do.
“Come do a shot with me, and I’ll dance till my feet bleed,” I vow.
Her entire face lights up, and it doesn’t make me feel good at all. I feel like a prick. Just agreeing to dance with her has her lit up bright, and I’ve never offered to dance with her before. Up till now, all I was doing was pushing her away or getting my rocks off with her.
It’s not just my mama who would be disappointed. I’m disappointed in myself. It’s a feeling I’ve numbed away the last