Dirty Rowdy Thing (Wild Seasons, #2)(85)

IT’S A HALF-HOUR drive from her hotel to my neighborhood bar but the trip seems to fly by in only a matter of minutes. What Harlow is going through with her mother is nearly identical to what I went through twenty years ago. Except she has the emotional maturity to deal with it far better than I did, and treatment is better now. Mom was diagnosed when I was ten, and I was alternately terrified of losing my mother and irritated by the responsibility I was left with because of her illness: Levi was only four, and when Mom died two years later, I was left to run the household for the two years it took my father to get his words back, to stop burying himself in sixteen-hour shifts on the boats.

If I could go back and do it all over again, I would do exactly what Harlow does, and I can tell by the doubt in her voice—Is she going over there enough or too much? What will her mother need when this second round of chemo starts? How long can her dad be the sole caregiver before he burns out?— that she needs to hear me say it out loud.

“You’re doing it just right, Snap. If I could do it all over, I’d want to handle it just like you.”

Her head whips to me. “Really?” she whispers.

“Really.”

“I’m scared it’s going to get worse.”

I pull into the small parking lot behind Dockside and shut off the engine. “It probably will for a while. But you don’t have to navigate this all on your own,” I say, repeating her words back to her. “I know I screwed up with you when I left town, but do you trust me?”

Harlow leans over and kisses me once, full on the mouth. “I do.”

For a Tuesday night, the bar is pretty busy, and I know it’s because the weather has been unbelievable. Nothing makes for a thirstier town than warm weather in October, no rain, and a day of big fish.

We enter Dockside to a burst of cheers and shouts, congratulating me on the show. Fuck, I really hadn’t considered this. I’d been so wrapped up in Harlow, I’d forgotten for a second that no one here would ever look at me the same. Leading her to the bar, I pretend I don’t see every f*cking head turn as she walks by.

The questions everyone wants to ask come from the bartender, Nick, who graduated a year before me in high school, went to Harvard, and returned here because he couldn’t find a more beautiful place in the world to live. “Finn, who’s the guest?”

“I’m Harlow,” she answers before I get the chance.

“You Finn’s long-lost sister?” says Kenyon at the end of the bar. “Please say yes.”

Harlow winces with a playful apology. “I’m the mail-order bride. He told me he has a castle. Does he have a castle?”

“Sorry, kid,” Kenyon says, laughing. “Just a fancy television show and a lot of groupies.”

“Groupies?” Harlow asks, looking at me.

I order two beers and a basket of peanuts. “Come on.” I guide her to two empty seats at the quieter end of the bar.

She sits down and turns to face me. “You have groupies already?”

“Kenyon is a shit stirrer.”

“Because there were groupies?”

Laughing, I tell her, “There were some girls down at the docks today when the announcement came out.”

“You mean the girls who are over there playing darts and staring at you?” She lifts her chin and looks across the bar.

I tilt my beer to my lips, surreptitiously looking at where she’s indicating. There are a half dozen college-aged girls staring directly at us. “Yeah. That’s them.”

“Pretty sure they read between the lines on that Variety article.” She lifts her beer and drains half of it. “Bet this bar is about to get a lot more business. Bet every place in this town is about to get more business. And I bet those girls are all over Twitter talking about you being here.”

I hadn’t considered any of this, that by doing the show we might be helping more than just ourselves. But I can’t really focus on any of that with the way she’s looking at me. I take another sip of beer, studying her. “You jealous?”

She laughs. “Nope. You just blew your wad inside me in under two minutes, about an hour ago. I think I have you locked down pretty tight.”

“Gross. I f*cking love you.”

Harlow leans on the bar, gazing up at me. “Let’s go get matching tattoos.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Mermaids or skulls. Your choice.”

“Mermaids?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Think of all the great conversation starters about your huge trident.”

I rub my jaw, staring at her perfect f*cking lips. The only marks on her skin will be from me. “I don’t think so.”

“You could get a hook.”

A laugh bursts from my throat. “I’m not getting a f*cking hook tattoo.”

She falls quiet with a little smile pulling her lips up into a kissable curve. I bend, kissing it.

“You make me happy,” she says.

Fuck. This girl. “You make me happy, too.”

She straightens, eyes narrowing. “There will literally not be one other girl kissing you on this show or otherwise. Dates? Okay. But they have to be hilariously miserable to make good television and then you sneak out and come see me and put bite marks all over my thighs.”

I blink, nearly choking on a peanut.