Melody of the Heart (Runaway Train #4)(32)

“I promise it won’t be that long. I want us married and having kids before we’re twenty five.”

My eyes bulged. “Twenty five? That’s only four years. Please tell me you just want us to get started having kids at twenty five.”

He grinned. “Maybe. I just know I want a houseful. I don’t care if they’re boys or girls. I just want them to be as good looking as you and have your sweetness and beautiful blue eyes.”

“I hope they’re as talented as their father. And have his warm, caring heart, along with his looks.”

“We’re going to make beautiful babies.”

“Someday.”

He ducked his head to kiss me. “Someday.”

LILY

THE PAST

ONE YEAR LATER

“That’ll be a hundred and twenty dollars,” the cashier at the Shop and Go said.

Brayden reached into his wallet and handed the woman a credit card. It was known among the five of us as “The Runaway Train” card. It paid for gas in the bus and groceries and food. At the end of the month, the guys just divided the bill equally among each other. It had been a necessity when we started out on the road two weeks ago.

When I eyed all the shopping bags, I whistled for the others. “Little help here, guys!”

AJ and Jake quickly shoved the magazines they were reading back into the rack and then scrambled to grab some of the grocery bags. “Where’s New Guy?” I teasingly asked. Poor Rhys, the new bassist, was constantly being called New Guy, rather than his name. I think it was some sort of initiation shit the guys were doing, and I had picked up on it.

Jake grimaced. “He got a call from the rents. Didn’t sound pretty.”

“Oh,” I murmured. I didn’t know much about the newest member of Runaway Train. Rhys had joined the band just two months ago. Teague, Jake’s cousin and the bassist, had decided that he didn’t want to embark on the summer tour with the guys. He felt like he really needed to focus on school. After he quit, the guys worried about finding another bass player who would mesh with them all.

Then they remembered a guy who had been coming to some of the Runaway Train shows at Eastman’s. His name was Rhys McGowan, and he was two and half years younger than the other guys. He’d graduated high school at sixteen and was already working on his pre-law degree at Emory in Atlanta. Besides being a genius, he had mad skills at playing the bass guitar, which he had taken up only after he’d mastered the cello.

Because of my crazy school schedule, as well as preparing to be gone for the summer with Brayden, I didn’t get to meet Rhys until I stepped on the bus two weeks ago. So far I liked him a lot, maybe even more than Teague when it came down to it.

As we started out to the parking lot, I cocked my head at Brayden. “What’s his favorite meal?”

“Whose favorite meal?”

“Rhys’s.”

“How the hell should I know?”

Rolling my eyes at him, I countered, “Maybe because he lives with you and is your bandmate.”

Brayden snorted. “We’re guys, Lils. We don’t talk about what our favorite foods and shit are.”

“Impossible,” I muttered.

Shifting the bags in his arms, Brayden cuffed the back of my neck playfully. When I cut my eyes over to him, he was grinning at me. “What?”

“I was just thinking how sweet you are to want to make things better for Rhys by making his favorite meal.”

“The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, you know.”

“I agree with that. Although I would also argue, that it’s through his dick too.”

“You’re such an ass,” I replied, but I couldn’t help laughing.

“Yeah, but you love me.”

I grinned. “Yeah, I do.”

We strolled up to the bus that would be our home for the summer. The guys had bought it from AJ’s uncle a few weeks back. They’d each taken turns learning how to drive it. It wasn’t a total hunk of junk. The inside furnishings were dated, and it had some mileage. But it also had enough storage beneath for the guys’ equipment, and it would get them back and forth across the country to the festivals and venues they would be playing at.

In exchange for food and boarding on the bus, I would pull my own weight as cook, stylist, and merchandise pusher. At each of the festivals, I would sit at a table selling Runaway Train’s debut CD and some of their shirts. Brayden thought it was ridiculous I felt the need to earn my keep since I was his girlfriend, but I didn’t want the guys to come to resent me.

I started up the steps, but then I turned back when I realized Brayden wasn’t behind me. It only took me a minute to see what he was staring at. It was a Challenger, just like the one he had sold four months ago. If he hadn’t sold the Challenger, we probably wouldn’t be on the road. Brayden financed Runaway Train’s first album with the car, along with hiring a promoter to get them into shows.

The longing expression on his face broke my heart. “Babe,” I murmured softly.

His gaze snapped from the car over to me. “Sorry. I’m coming.”

When he tried to ease past me on the stairs, I stopped him. “It’s okay to be sad about the car. It was your pride and joy.”

He glowered at me. “I know I can be sad. It’s just I look like a major * mooning over a lost car.”