Missing Dixie(27)

“Two minutes,” he says, shoving the phone at me. “I mean it.”

“I’ll keep it to one,” I say, just to aggravate him because he makes it so easy. Once he shakes his head and moves out of earshot? I lift the phone to my ear.

“I told you not to call me at work. We had an agreement. I can’t keep doing this with you—”

“Garrison?

Fuck me.

“Dallas Lark. Holy shit. How goes the honeymoon? Y’all make a sex tape yet? ’Cause I can probably find a buyer.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t know it was me,” he practically growls through the phone.

“Yeah, no. My bad. Thought you were someone else calling.”

“I gathered that. Something going on?”

“Nah.” Not anymore, anyway. “What’s up? Other than you being married and all?”

“The sky. Sorry about calling you at work but I tried your cell and it was off.”

Yeah. There’s a reason for that. One I have no desire to discuss with him. “It’s fine. Just make it quick and I’ll call you when I get off.”

Dallas chuckles. “All right. Well, here goes.”

I shove my palm against my free ear to close it off from the commotion in the bar.

“I checked in with Dixie about the competition. Funny, she said you hadn’t mentioned it, you freaking pansy.”

The bottom drops right the f*ck out of my gut. Between him and McKinley, everyone is going to ruin my chances with Dixie Lark before I’ve even begun to have one. “Sorry. The opportunity to discuss it just didn’t quite present itself.”

“Well, I just talked to her and I have to tell you that she sounded kind of stoked about it. She doesn’t know I got released from my label and I don’t want to dump that on her while she’s trying to decide. Nothing’s for sure, but she was definitely interested.”

“Shit. They dropped you? As in do not call us we won’t call you?”

“Yeah,” Dallas says slowly. “I’m not all that surprised but I don’t want it to influence her decision. I want her to do this because she wants to, for her, you know? So could you and her maybe rehearse one day this week? Get a feel for if you can handle your romantic drama and get a handle on it so after I get home and get the nursery set up we can get to rehearsing?”

My eyes close involuntarily and my throat constricts. If McKinley tells Dixie what he knows about me, she will have no interest in ever seeing me again. Which I will fully deserve. “Definitely. I’ll see what we can work out.”

“Awesome. And, Garrison?”

“Yeah?”

“You know I love you like a brother from another mother, but seriously, I will end your young life if you hurt her again. I won’t tell you to stay away because Robyn has convinced me that it would be unrealistic and futile for me to try and enforce that. But I will tell you that life has a way of catching up with you when you least expect it and if you don’t tell Dixie everything soon, it might get out of hand before you get a chance, and if that happens in the midst of this competition, I will be ridiculously pissed for multiple reasons.”

Says the dude not telling her he got dropped from Capitol. But he’s right. “Roger that. I know, man. Believe me, I know. I gotta get back to work but send me a list of songs you’re thinking about.”

“On it. Talk later. I have to go make sweet love to my wife.”

“Poor Robyn. It’s bad enough you knocked her up—now she has to see you naked for the rest of her life.”

Dallas chuckles, or he’s choking to death. I can hardly tell over the noise in the bar.

Before we hang up I need to ask him one more thing. “Hey, quick question.”

“What’s that?”

“How’d you know Robyn wouldn’t shut you down? I mean—you left the tour. Walked away from everything. Got dropped from your label. That’s f*cking huge. What if she’d told you to go straight to Hell?”

Dallas is quiet for so long I think we got disconnected, until I hear him clear his throat.

“For years I told myself she was better off without me. I couldn’t give her the perfect life, the picket fence and all that. But it was the damnedest thing. Robyn didn’t want the perfect life or the picket fence. She just wanted me. Once I figured that out, it was either risk it all and tell her how I felt or live the rest of my life wallowing in regret. Thank God she said yes.”

“You got lucky,” I say, not in a sarcastic way but in an honest-to-God happy for him way. “Still . . . that’s a huge-ass risk, man. I’m glad it worked out how you wanted it to. Good thing Breeland kept her standards low all these years.”

I’m screwing with him. I am also jealous as hell.

“No shit,” he says on a laugh. “You know, it’s funny. I thought music was my first love. All I’d ever dreamed of was making it big. Then I did and I realized that without her, it didn’t even matter. None of it. You know?”

Yeah, I knew. Or I could imagine a pretty close scenario at least.

“I need to get back to work.”

“Hey,” Dallas begins, sounding like he has one more urgent detail to share. “My sister is going to be pissed at first, but you know her. She loves you and when she loves someone, that’s that. She’ll come around eventually.”