Side Trip(84)
“Someone’s going to swipe this as soon as we leave,” she complained.
Probably. But he figured she’d feel better having done it. He was still reeling from earlier. How in the world had she kept that secret for over eight years? He admired her more now than he had before she’d told him. She had a strength he didn’t possess.
He put his arm around her waist. “Anything you’d like to say about your sister?”
“Yes, a confession.” She moistened her lips. “I was thirteen when I read Judy’s Route 66 Bucket List for the first time. I knew one day that I’d take this trip for her. It only seemed fair, since I took the opportunity away from her. I thought I wouldn’t feel so guilty about what I’d done.”
“Did it work?”
She frowned slightly, pausing to think, then nodded vigorously. “Yes . . . yes, it did.” She looked down at Judy’s flowers. “I miss her.”
“I know.” The ache in her voice made his own heart ache. He pulled her close and dropped a kiss on her head.
Joy cleared her throat. “Your turn.”
He dug his hand into his front pocket for the Dunlop he’d stashed there before lunch. He’d used the slate-gray tortoiseshell guitar pick throughout the trip. It seemed appropriate to leave it at the spot where Jack’s professional music journey had started.
Too bad Jack’s Pontiac barely made it to the California-Arizona border. He would have abandoned the heap of junk here and walked away.
He flipped the pick like a coin and tucked it into the bouquet’s plastic wrap so that it wouldn’t be swept away into the gutter. He stared at the pick and thought of what to say about Jack. He frowned. Nothing worthwhile came to mind, no eloquent words or thoughtful phrases. No earth-shattering I-want-to-be-a-rock-star epiphanies.
He shifted on his feet and pursed his lips into a lopsided grimace.
Joy glanced up at him. “What’s wrong?”
He pressed a fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. “I don’t know what to say about him.”
“Nothing at all?”
He blew out a breath. “Other than Jack was a dick and sending me on this trip was a dick move? No, nothing.” His father was the only guy Dylan knew who was as selfish in death as he was in life. He still refused to acknowledge Dylan’s stage anxiety.
“All right, try this: What did you learn on this trip?”
“I still have no desire to be a rock star, but . . .”—he added with a self-deprecating grin—“I did gain an appreciation for sharing my voice with an audience, even if it’s an audience of one.” He squeezed her hand and she gave him a winning smile.
“Maybe that’s what your dad wanted you to learn all along. I wonder if it’s that simple.”
“Maybe.”
“Do you miss him at all?”
Dylan thought of his childhood. Jack didn’t read him bedtime stories or make Sunday morning pancakes. But they had music. Their offstage and in-studio jam sessions were epic. Dylan missed those days.
“Yeah. I do.”
“What’s your uncle going to do now that your dad’s gone?”
“Last I talked to him, he wasn’t sure. He’ll probably launch a solo career. He’d be damn good at it, too. Between us? He’s more talented than Jack.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.” Joy mimed locking her lips and tossing the key, exactly what Dylan had done the day they’d met when he’d promised not to ask questions about Judy. A lot of good that had done. If he’d learned anything, it was that Joy was far better at keeping promises than him.
“Ready to go?”
Joy took one last look at the Route 66 sign and blew a kiss to the pink rose bouquet. He dropped an arm around her shoulders, and she drew hers around his waist. “Let’s go.”
They spent the next forty-eight hours in Chicago, and they were more mind-blowing than the past twenty-seven. Dylan booked a suite at the Hilton and they only left the room twice, once each night for his gig in a shady bar in a sketchy part of the city. If his time with Joy hadn’t been limited, he would have insisted she wait for him at the hotel. The crowd even made him uncomfortable. But Joy wanted to hear him sing and watch him give his guitar a workout. Fine by him, but he insisted that she sit as close to him as possible while he was onstage, like within arm’s reach. He could yank her out of harm’s way should a fight break out.
When they returned to the hotel after his first Chicago gig, Joy didn’t silence her phone. After a final call to her parents, then to her best friend Taryn, and finally to Mark to report where she was staying (not at the Hilton) and when she expected to arrive in New York (she wanted to stay an extra day in Chicago since she’d lost a day because of the storm), she turned off the device and buried it in her luggage.
“Mark isn’t going to freak when you don’t call him tomorrow?” Dylan asked.
“Of course he will. I’ll say I lost my charger and didn’t have enough money to buy a new one.” She ran her hands up his chest and locked her fingers behind his neck. “Forty-eight hours, Dylan. I’m all yours.”
“Forty-eight hours,” he echoed with a kiss that lit him up like wildfire. For forty-eight hours, aside from one more gig, there wouldn’t be any interruptions. For forty-eight hours, Joy would be 100 percent his, and he would be hers. The suite would be their world. He wouldn’t think about the past or worry about the future.