Loving Dallas(48)

Her brow crinkles. “Yeah?”

“That’s a load of malarkey and you know it, Breeland. If anything, you keep me grounded so all of this craziness doesn’t go to my head.”

She smiles. “Well, someone has to.”





28 | Dallas

SOUND CHECK AT THE GEXA ENERGY PAVILION DOESN’T TAKE TOO long and I’m glad. Dixie texted earlier that she’d come early and she’s bringing Robyn’s mom. I’ve always loved Belinda Breeland like she was my own mother and I wasn’t kidding when I said I was wounded at the thought of her liking Jase Wade more than me. I never claimed to be mature. Blame the testosterone.

I brought Belinda a giant box of her favorite Godiva chocolates. Maybe she’s still a little mad at me for not working things out with Robyn back in the day, but I am determined to win her over.

After I’ve put my guitar aside and cleared the stage so Wade could warm up, I head back to my bus in hopes of catching a quick nap before the show. Feels like I haven’t slept in a month.

Halfway there I see my sister and Belinda making their way backstage and I stop dead in my tracks.

“Stop gaping at me like I’m about to faint dead away, Dallas Lark,” Belinda says to greet me. “I’m fine. I’ve been in remission for months now. I just wear the scarves still because I like them and I’m not used to the short hair.”

She’s about twenty pounds thinner than I remember and even with the scarf I can tell that her once-long red locks are now cropped in a short pixie cut. She didn’t come to Papa’s funeral. Robyn mentioned that she was ill and couldn’t make it. I thought she meant like a cold or something.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know . . .”

“That I was in remission? Surely Robyn told you.” She shakes her head. “That girl acts like I’m going to relapse any second, though. You should see the stuff she makes me eat.” Belinda laughs lightly, probably hoping to break the tension I’ve suddenly created with my inability to conceal my shock. “When the doctors gave us the lists of restricted and recommended foods, you would’ve thought they were handing her a dietary Bible.”

Apparently I could fill a f*cking book with the things Robyn hasn’t told me. The pieces of the puzzle that is Robyn Breeland are beginning to take shape in my head. The food. The obsession with healthy eating and all her overzealous ordering habits.

“Oh my God,” Belinda practically squeals, sounding more like a teenage girl than a grown woman. “There he is. Can we get closer to the stage?”

Dixie and I both follow her line of sight to where Wade is now warming up.

Grrr.

For this woman, though, the one who made me homemade chicken noodle soup when I had the flu, I’ll endure it.

“Come on,” I say, offering her my arm. “I can do better than closer to the stage.”

Once I’ve escorted them both past security and up the stairs to the restricted backstage area, I tug my sister’s elbow and pull her aside.

“Tell me what the hell is going on.” I nod toward Belinda.

Dixie shrugs. “She’s a huge fan of his—”

“I’m not talking about that.” My jaw clenches and I have to swallow several times to get my emotions in check. “Remission. When did she have cancer? Did you know? Did Robyn tell you?”

Dixie and I have had our communication issues lately. She keeps the details of her relationship with Gavin off my radar and I haven’t exactly filled her in on what Robyn and I are up to. But if she tells me right now that she’s known all this time that Robyn’s mom had cancer and she didn’t tell me, I don’t know how I’m going to keep from losing my shit.

“She didn’t tell me, either,” Dixie informs me, choosing to answer my last question first. “Belinda seems to think we knew. I practically yelled at her on the way here. Obviously if we’d known we would’ve been there, would’ve visited her in the hospital.”

I watch the woman with stars in her eyes staring at Wade onstage. She turns to me and gives me two thumbs up and she looks so much like her daughter I’m struck with a pang of longing. I want Robyn here. Mostly so I can demand to know why she didn’t tell me her mom had cancer, but also because I want to hold her. To kiss her and tell her I’m sorry I wasn’t there for her, for both of them.

After Robyn’s dad died I made sure to cut their grass, change the oil in their cars, and take out the garbage as often as I could. I wanted to make sure they didn’t have to feel his loss in those ways as well. Belinda eventually “fired” me and told me I wasn’t the hired help before she hired actual help to take over the landscaping duties. She told me the McKinley boys at the garage could change her oil just fine.

Those Breeland women. Self-sufficient pains in my ass they are. But God help me, I f*cking love them.

“How bad was it?”

Dixie’s mouth tightens at the corners. “Bad. She had to do two rounds of chemo. Had an awful reaction and didn’t respond to the first round well at all.”

“When?”

I don’t know why I’m asking. I already know.

“That summer,” Dixie says softly, almost so softly I don’t hear her over Jase’s guitar.

She doesn’t clarify which summer. She doesn’t have to. The summer before I turned twenty-one, Robyn began acting strangely. Up until then, she’d done all the social media and online outreach for the band. She’d gone overboard in her typical way, acting as our manager and our agent even though she didn’t know a whole lot about the music business. What she did know was how to reach people and to this day I’m certain she is one of the main reasons we had such a large local following.