Loving Dallas(55)

“Oh, baby,” I say once I see who it is. Robyn is bent over yakking into the bushes. The force is jolting her body forward hard. I grab her hair with two hands and pull it out of the line of fire. Once I have it secured to the nape of her neck with one fist, I use the other hand to rub circles on her back. “You’re okay, sweet girl. Just get it all up. It’s okay. I’m here.”

“I don’t want—” She surges forward again and heaves but I think she’s out of ammunition. “You here,” she finishes.

“Well, tough shit, sweetheart. I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”

“Don’t want anyone,” she begins, pausing to stand and wipe her mouth, “to see me like this.” I release her hair and she glances around. Noticing her purse on the ground, I pick it up. At least it didn’t get puked on.

“Come on. We’ll take one of the sober cars back to the hotel.”

I wrap my arms around her and guide her to the nearest valet. Once they’ve located a car for us, Robyn slides in and I follow.

The driver is a gray-haired man with a gray wool cap on. “Where to, kids?”

“The nearest urgent care center or ER,” I answer.

Robyn looks like I’ve slapped her. “No,” she practically shouts. “Just take us to the Hutton, please.”

“Are you serious right now?” This girl. She’s practically turning green right in front of my eyes. “We need to get you checked out.”

“The Hutton, please,” she tells the driver while ignoring me. “I swear I’m fine.”

“You say that, but you don’t look fine,” I tell her. “And if you think I’m just going to dump you off in your room, you’re crazy.”

The driver ends up taking us to the hotel, where I take Robyn to my room so she doesn’t keep Katie up all night.

After a pack of saltine crackers and two Gatorades, she takes a shower and comes out looking like a new person.

“I’m telling you, it’s just a stomach bug. It’s on its way out.” Robyn promises me she’s on the mend and that if she gets sick again like that she’ll make an appointment with her doctor.

She’s nearly asleep in my bed when she blinks her sleepy eyes up at me and says, “I’m sorry you had to leave your party. And that I didn’t tell you about my mom.”

“I don’t care about parties, Robyn. But can you just tell me why? Why you didn’t tell me about your mom that summer? I could’ve—”

“You could’ve canceled the shows you were so excited about. You would have.” Robyn sighs against my chest before raising her eyes to mine. “Your grandma had just passed and you’d already put everything on hold once. I didn’t want to be the reason you sidelined your dream again.”

“So you didn’t actually want to break up, you just couldn’t go on the road and you didn’t want me to stay?”

“I wanted you to stay,” she says quietly. “I just didn’t want to want that. It was selfish and unfair. And I wanted you to have your shot at your dream more than I wanted to have you hold my hand in a waiting room all summer.”

My whole life I’ve put everyone else first. My sister. My grandparents. Gavin. I’d never realized someone had been putting my dreams before their own needs.

I can’t explain how her confession makes me feel right now so I don’t try.

I lean down and kiss her on the forehead. “Get some rest, pretty girl. We can talk about this later.”

She surprises me by grabbing my shirt. “Spoon me for a while? Until I fall asleep? Pretty please?”

“I never could turn down ‘pretty please.’ ”

She rolls over, curving into me with her backside, and I drape my arm over her body.

More of my granddad’s wisdom comes to mind. “A woman’s like a guitar, son. It’s all in how you hold her.” After that he’d added, “Get comfortable with her but never take her for granted, appreciate every single inch and curve. The imperfections are what make her unique, what make her yours.”

“Please don’t hate me, Dallas,” she whispers. “I couldn’t stand it if you hated me.”

“I could never hate you, Robyn. Go to sleep, sweetheart.”

Jesus. I was mad as hell that she didn’t tell me about Belinda, but I didn’t say anything about hating her. Watching her drift off to sleep so peacefully after her night full of outbursts and erratic behavior makes me wonder if she’s a pod person or secretly has an evil twin.

But it was a sexy jealous evil twin and when she dozes off in my arms, I stay awake watching her to make sure the vomiting really has passed. By daybreak I’ve decided to keep her, evil twin and all.

Robyn is still recovering from food poisoning or whatever the hell she had so she isn’t coming to the show in Nashville tonight. She texts me a “have a great show” message but when I respond by asking if I can come by her room and check on her after, she doesn’t answer.

Mandy told me to meet her on Wade’s bus before the show at the Woods Amphitheater at Fontanel. After making sure that Katie was in their room to keep an eye on Robyn, I left the hotel and joined far more folks than I expected on Wade’s fancy-ass bus.

The built-in furniture is all black leather and sleek marble surfaces. There’s a flat screen against the wall that’s nearly as big as the bunk I sleep on in my bus.