Bounty (Colorado Mountain #7) Page 16

  This bringing on giving him my first name and coming clean we’d met before.

  It was ten minutes seven years ago, but if he remembered the name Justice, that would have to happen.

  “Krys says Bubba’s has a band coming in tomorrow night,” I told him. “Feel like meeting there, throwing a few back?” And me sharing a bunch of shit that might piss you off but you need to know and my best bet is to tell you in a public place so if you lose your mind, our location might help contain it so I’ll have the chance to explain, I didn’t say.

  “Got plans.”

  Arrow through the heart.

  Plans on a Friday night for a man who looked like Deke.

  I didn’t want to know, and there were other options, but if the one I figured it was actually was…

  I didn’t want to know.

  “Okay, Deke,” I replied but kept trying. Sooner rather than later. Don’t procrastinate. I’d done enough of that already. “Wanna come over tonight?” I shot him a forced grin. “Go into town, get takeout from the Italian place. I’ll drink wine out of a red Solo cup, doing it with guilt heavy at what that cup will mean to the environment. You can have beer. And we can toast to my addition of kitchen utensils, that being after I buy a wine opener.”

  “Wiped, Jus. Thanks but work like today takes it out of you. But just so you know, talked to Bubba. He’s on for Saturdays as long as that lasts.”

  He wasn’t being an ass and he wasn’t being closed off.

  Yet he was for that last.

  With no other choice, I nodded. “Sounds good.”

  I said that but I did not like this. Bubba coming tomorrow through Saturday, I wouldn’t have alone time with Deke until Monday.

  Maybe I could get Krystal or Jim-Billy to tell me where he lived and pop by on Sunday.

  Though, if there was a woman, a woman who, say, packed bologna sandwiches for Deke’s lunches, I didn’t want to hit his place on Sunday (not a circumstance I’d considered after he’d picked up the chick at Bubba’s that day I’d closed on the house—then again, that chick might have had staying power, another reason he held us at friendly).

  But what woman would let her guy go for hot dogs and s’mores with another woman, alone, even if they were friends, especially if her guy was Deke?

  Maybe they were new and she didn’t pack his bologna sandwiches for lunch every day. Just the mornings after the nights she stayed after he fucked her.

  Shit.

  “Jus?”

  It was me who gave a weird jerk when I focused on him.

  “You good?” he asked.

  I was not.

  “Yep,” I told him.

  “Good. See you tomorrow.”

  “Okay, Deke. See you tomorrow.”

  He did a farewell head tilt and off he went through my door, into my bedroom, sauntering through it like it was his bedroom, and he disappeared into the shadows of the house.

  “Okay,” I whispered to the windows. “That was weird and it was a bad weird and it could be a very bad weird.”

  It might have just been me, but it seemed the windows agreed.

  * * * * *

  “We don’t do this that often,” Lauren, Tate’s wife, shouted at me over the band playing at Bubba’s the next night. She was sitting on a stool in between Jim-Billy and me at the end of the bar. “Krys introduced it a while ago. Hit big.” She grinned. “As you can see.”

  I looked from her gorgeous face to the bar, which was heaving.

  An aside, to say she suited Tate was an understatement. They were like Barbie and Ken in their forties, with Barbie having a killer ass and Ken not being Ken but GI Joe except with longer hair, a beard and a lot more badass.

  “Couple of bars in Gnaw Bone have live music,” Lauren kept shouting to me. “They rake it in. We’ve got some friends, Zara and Ham, live in GB. Ham runs one of the bars there. It’s the competition,” she said, still grinning, like it actually wasn’t, or if it was that competition was friendly. “It gave Krys the idea.”

  I nodded, shouting back, “It was a good one!”

  She returned my nod and twisted back to the band that was also good. Obviously, I’d heard better and this was in my dad’s living room, but they didn’t suck.

  I’d done my best to slink in unseen because the peace of being just Jus might be done for me with Krys, Jim-Billy, Bubba, Tate, Lauren, Sunny, Shambles and soon Deke, but it was still there for everybody else.

  And with musicians around, I knew better than to waltz in as Justice Lonesome.

  I was no Johnny and I was no Lacey but I was a singer, songwriter, producer, guitar player and many in the biz, precisely those who’d play a biker bar, no matter how removed from the glitz (and perhaps precisely those) had no interest in Lacey Town, who didn’t write her own music or play an instrument.

  But they’d know the likes of Jerry, Johnny, Jimmy, Tammy, the Blue Moon Gypsies…and me.

  It seemed I’d pulled it off, doing it enjoying a few brews and getting to know Lauren better.

  Now the band had begun playing, they were loud and there was no getting to know anyone better without shouting.

  And I had a strict philosophy. If someone was on any stage and I was in the same room with them, my attention was on them. They deserved that respect. Lauren shouting a few words to me was one thing. But I was not one of those douchebags who sat while a band was playing their heart out or a singer was belting it out and held a full-blown conversation. If I needed to do that, I walked out of the room.

  So I was trying to get into it.

  But my mind was on other things.

  That day Deke had again not been closed off, even if he had, but he could pull this off with Bubba around because Bubba was what I’d clocked him as when I first met him. A good ole boy filled with jokes and stories and a never-ending supply of camaraderie.

  They’d be back the next day so I couldn’t sit down with Deke. I’d have to get through more weird and after that wait until I had him on Monday.

  And that was a lot of time to be stuck in your head thinking over all the possible reactions, coming up with none good and letting that devour you so you were a nervous wreck and fucked it all up by the time you actually had your shot to set things right.

  I’d already fucked up. I should have told him early—about all of it.

  Mr. T would be disappointed with me.

  I looked to the front of the bar where they’d pushed back and scrunched together the tables so they could lay the makeshift stage. And I watched and listened to the band, remembering Granddad telling me the stories of the road. The dive bars. The honkytonks. Playing for cash handed over at the end of the gig, cash barely enough to gas up the car and buy the band an end-of-gig meal at a late-night diner. Sometimes the cash was short so things would get dicey. So as they got bigger, more well-known, which meant more asses in seats and even traveling groupies, they’d actually had to employ a manager who was mostly an enforcer so no one would fuck them over.

  Dad had had a little of that. He’d had to pave part of his own way. Prove his salt. Show he had what it took and could give all he had to give.

  I hadn’t had that.

  I’d had three record labels gagging for it and my choice of producers.

  I looked around the bar, seeing folks chair dancing, others off to the sides on their feet just plain dancing.

  And I looked around, a funny feeling in my stomach—the bad kind of nostalgia.

  But also the kind of feeling I sometimes got around Deke. Having something so close that I wanted so badly. Something that I had a taste of, a piece of. But I’d never taste it fully, have it be mine.

  I was feeling all of this thinking I could have killed the road if it had been like this for me.

  People out on a Friday night for a good time, a few drinks and that vibe. Just the love of the notes through the amp, the lyrics through the mic, so close to your audience you could see it move over them. Their heads bobbing. Their lips moving. Their bodi
es swaying. Loud or quiet, the moment of connection lasted as long as the set. And then the next one. In between and after the gig was through, you drank at the bar amongst your people. You weren’t whisked to a dressing room.

  You were always right in the thick of it, creating it, building it, that connection. Music, one of the few things that did nothing but make life good, you were it, down to every note for that night in a bar in the middle of nowhere.

  The song ended and I stopped bobbing my head, looking to the lead singer as the band didn’t go right into another song.

  He started talking.

  “No possible way to believe that we’d hit this joint and be in the presence of greatness.”

  My scalp started tingling.

  Uh-oh.

  Lauren and Jim-Billy’s heads turned my way.

  Maybe I hadn’t slunk in under radar.

  Shit.

  “But we are and damn,” the lead went on, “I know you know it’d be more than cool if we could talk the beautiful, the talented, the kickass Justice Lonesome into comin’ up on the stage and joining us in a couple of songs.”

  Nope.

  Not under radar.

  “Shit, crap, shit, crap, shit,” I chanted, doing that trying not to allow my lips to move, staring at the stage where the lead singer was now giving me a broad, in-the-zone rock ‘n’ roll smile.

  You could not say no to this.

  No one could say no to this without looking like a douche.

  Hell, I’d been out with my father on more times than I could count, in a dark corner, thinking we were incognito, just wanting to take in a local band, and he got called out.

  He never refused to take the stage.

  Not once.

  “Shit, crap, shit, crap, shit,” I chanted again.

  “What do you say, Justice?” the lead singer prompted, his smile faltering, and I felt but did not look to see folks peering around to find out who he was talking about, spurred to curiosity not only at the man’s words, but at the mention of the name Lonesome.

  Or who knew me and were just looking to find me.

  “Don’t worry, sister, got my shotgun in the back.” I heard Krys decree and turned my head to see her moving out from behind the back of the bar.

  I looked at her, shocked to shit that Jim-Billy had not lied.

  She was heading for her shotgun.

  “No!” I whispered loudly.

  Shit, crap, shit, crap, shit.

  Krys scowled at me.

  “It’s good,” I decided verbally. “It’s time. It has to come out. It’s a great vibe. Might as well be now. I’ll do it.”

  She kept giving me a glare that was also an inspection. “You sure?”

  I was not.

  “Sure,” I replied.

  Krys’s eyes went beyond me to Lauren. “She ain’t sure.”

  “Whatever, shut up, I’m going,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me to shut up,” she snapped.

  I could not do this with Krystal now.

  So I didn’t.

  I looked through Lauren, saw Jim-Billy watching me and felt his hand grab mine and give it a squeeze as I walked past him and heard the stilted clapping that got less and less stilted, stronger and stronger, until there were a couple of hoots and a couple more hollers as I took my first step on stage.

  I smiled my stage smile, giving handshakes to the band, getting their names, feeling them move close in a huddle and one of them handed me a guitar.

  Then he handed me a pick.

  “Extra,” he said. “Amped you up. You’re good.”

  Fabulous.

  “‘Chain Link,’” the lead singer declared. “Vibe’s for rompin’ stompin’ but it would be fuckin’ amazing, Justice, doing ‘Chain Link’ with you.”

  He was jazzed. I saw it. He was beside himself he was standing onstage with a Lonesome.

  But no way in hell I was doing “Chain Link.” I didn’t want to let the guy down, not any of them, but that was just not happening.

  “This vibe, this bar, boys, I got a better idea,” I told them.

  They huddled and they must have more than known me because they were all fired up to give up “Chain Link” to do what I always did at my own gigs.

  An homage to my mom.

  I pulled the guitar strap over my head, settled it on my shoulder.

  I moved to the mic stand, adjusted it for my height.

  The boys moved to their places.

  I looked out at the crowd and put my mouth to the mic.

  “Hi. I’m Justice.”

  Everyone shot to their feet, cheering and shouting, even if they didn’t know me, the word had gotten around from those who did.

  Or they just felt it.

  Onstage, Jerry, Johnny, Justice, it just seeped out of us.

  No holding it in.

  Shit, crap, shit, crap, shit.

  “Gonna give you a little bit of what my dad Johnny gave to me and do it through some songs my mom loved,” I told them.

  More cheers.

  I looked down to the guitar, took the pick to a few strings.

  Standing on that stage in front of that crowd, the nothing notes flowed out of the amp.

  And right through me, filling me, saturating me, adding something to my system as integral as water, calories, oxygen.

  When I felt that—a feeling that was like a lost limb had grown back, or four of them—without hesitation and with a need I’d denied for half a decade, I shot a glance over my shoulder at the band, turned back to the mic, put my fingers to the frets, played two notes and sang three words into the mic…

  Then those two notes again and two more words…

  And it happened.

  A broad smile spread on my face and the Lonesome shot right out of me as I played and sang Linda Rondstadt’s “When Will I Be Loved.”

  The crowd went crazy.

  And with a band of boys whose names I didn’t remember, to a group of locals I’d have to live among, smiling no stage smile but feeling the rapture of rock ‘n’ roll shine right through, we gave them Linda’s country rock anthem.

  Two minutes of pure brilliance.

  And dancing, clapping along and shouting the words, the crowd gave it back.

  Everyone was out of their seat when we finished so I could offer what anyone onstage feeling what I was feeling, giving what I was giving, getting what I was getting, the two words that said it all but never near enough.

  “Thank you.”

  More cheers.

  One of the boys threw out the beginning of “It’s So Easy” and I went right back to the mic, drawn to it in a way I didn’t even try to resist.

  We hadn’t cleared the first verse when I looked out the sides of my eyes to take in the audience to my right and I saw him.

  Deke head and shoulders above the back of the standing crowd pressed close to the tables.

  No.

  Shit, no.

  The show went on. It had to.

  No matter what.

  So I kept singing, turning my head and staring at his blank face.

  His expression showed nothing but his eyes were glued to me.

  It was a great song. I loved that song. My mother loved, then hated (due to Dad and what that song turned into), then loved again that song.

  But right then, staring into Deke’s eyes, it said way too much.

  I kept singing it right to him. I couldn’t stop. Music was moving from me, communicating through me (this time right at Deke), and I was a Lonesome. That was in my DNA. If I could use it to say what I had to say, I would do it and my brain couldn’t stop it.

  You’d have to rip the guitar from my hands and gag me.

  And “It’s So Easy” didn’t have a lot of different words.

  But for Deke, it still said it all.

  I managed to tear my gaze away during the twanging guitar solo.

  But during the harmony at the end and my final notes, my hair flew everywhere as I yanked the guitar stra
p over my head, holding the guitar out to no one, saying into the mic when the song was done, “Thank you. Thanks for listening. Now keep enjoying this awesome band.”

  I did this because Deke was prowling out.

  One of the guys in the band took the guitar. I quickly mumbled my thanks and other musician brethren stuff and ran off the stage, jumped down, pushed through the applauding, shouting crowd and hit the door to hit the chilly night and see nothing but a full parking lot.

  I looked left. I looked right. And lucky for me (or not, as the case I would have to find out would be), he was a man who was easy to see, even at a distance.

  “Deke!” I shouted, dashing that way, my long, spangled gypsy skirt flowing back, my cowboy boots hitting the pavement not drowned out even if the music inside was leaking through the concrete walls of Bubba’s. “Deke!” I shouted again as I saw him throw a long leg over a bike. I was no longer dashing, now I was sprinting.

  He looked at me and watched me make it the last fifteen feet, stopping on a near-skid at his side and taking in a huge breath.

  I peered into his impassive face.

  “Deke,” I whispered.

  “Shouldn’t’ve cut the set short,” he replied.

  “I—”

  “Get it, Jus,” he stated, his words clipped. “You bein’ Jus. Just Jus. That bein’ important to you, ’specially at a time like this. Get it. Probably not easy bein’ you. Dad like that. People wantin’ a piece of you.”

  I moved closer, not sure whether to lift a hand and touch him, watching his face intently.

  “I was gonna—”

  He jerked his head to the bar. “You got what your dad had. You should do something with it.”

  My mouth snapped shut.

  He didn’t know me.

  Or at least the Justice Lonesome part of me.

  Then he proved me wrong.

  Partially.

  “Gettin’ this out there, we met,” he announced.

  “What?” I was again whispering.

  “Years back. Night my ma had her first heart attack. We met at a bar up in Wyoming.”

  He remembered?

  Wait.

  The night his mother had a heart attack?