“Better?” he says.

  “Yeah, better. You make me feel alive, Jonny.” I want to touch him, but I’m afraid. I don’t know what to do with my hands. “I’ve been . . . floating, for so long, just surviving. Getting through each day, taking care of Alex. Get laid occasionally, get drunk alone at home after work sometimes. Pathetic and lonely, that’s how I’d describe my life. And now, being near you, I feel like . . . God, I don’t even know how to describe it. It feels like life has some kind of meaning, even though nothing is different, except you’re near me. And I . . . I want that feeling, Jonny. I want it all the time.”

  “Delta, I—I want that too.”

  “But how, Jonny?” I shake my head. “I don’t see how I can have that without stealing your sealskin, and I’m not going to do that.”

  Jonny frowns at me, confused. “Sealkskin? What are you talking about?”

  “Remember Christian’s short story for Ava?”

  “Oh yeah, that.” He moves so he’s looking directly at me. “I’m not a selkie, Delta, and I’m not Christian. So . . . if I choose to stay, that’s not you stealing anything, or forcing me to stay, or tricking me. It would be a choice I make for my own reasons.”

  “You’re a sailor, you sail—that’s what you said to me.”

  “I know what I said.”

  I’m puzzled. “Are you suddenly not a sailor anymore?”

  “I don’t know what I am anymore,” he says. “Except . . . I’m falling in love with you.”

  “Goddammit, Jonny.” I shudder, trying to keep the tears at bay. “You can’t say that to me.”

  “Why not? It’s the truth.”

  “Because I want that so fucking bad!” I stand and pace past Jonny, my guitar slinging around to bump against my butt. “I’ve never had anyone, and I—I want you! I want to be with you. There, I said it.”

  “Okay, so—”

  “But I couldn’t handle it if you changed your mind. What if you settle for life with me, on land, and discover you hate it. What then? And, besides, what would you do? How would it work?”

  “I don’t know!” he shouts and then repeats it more quietly. “I don’t know, Delta. I don’t have that figured out. I only know I’ve been going crazy the last few weeks, working myself to exhaustion trying not to think about you, trying to convince myself I don’t fucking miss you. Then I heard that damn song of yours on the radio, and then I kept hearing it everywhere I fucking went, and each time I hear it it fucking kills me!

  “I didn’t want to walk away, but I thought it was for the best, for you and for me both. I thought it was what I was supposed to do. We talked about it—we agreed. But try telling that to my fucking stupid heart.”

  He’s been pacing as he speaks, but now he turns and stands right in front of me. His hands grip my waist and stares hard into my eyes. “I don’t know what it would look like, or how it would work,” he says. “All I know, Delta, is I want it. I want you. I want us.”

  “Don’t tease me, Jonny. Don’t make me want something I can’t have.” I stare at him, my eyes wet with unshed tears.

  A single tear trickles down my cheek, and he brushes it away with his thumb. “I’m not teasing, Delta. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not exactly a laugh-a-minute sort of guy.”

  “I can’t handle more disappointment, Jonny. I can’t take any more heartbreak. I stopped trying to care about anyone except Alex a long time ago. I’m not sure I even know how to . . .” I trail off, laughing. “It’s easy to write about this in a song, easy to sing about, but to honestly talk about . . . love for myself? It’s fucking hard.”

  “I know what you mean,” he says. “I’ve never been in love before, never stuck around any one place long enough to let anything like that happen. Nobody has ever . . . meant anything to me until I met you. So I have to be honest, and I really don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

  “Same here.” I lean against his solid form, and let him hold me as I let out a long breath. “If neither of us has had a real relationship before . . . where do we start?”

  He laughs. “You’re asking me? I have no fuckin’ idea, babe, I just know I want it.”

  “Just . . . don’t break my heart, Jonny,” I whisper. “I won’t survive it, and I have to survive for Alex.”

  “Delta, listen—I’m from Latin America, and if you know anything about our culture, as men we aren’t really big on mierda like talking about our emotions, or being in touch with ’em. I grew up taking care of my family, with no real father figure. I’ve always been alone, kept my own company and kept my own counsel. Emotions are hard for me. To be honest, I’ve spent most of my life avoiding the way I feel about anyone or anything. So it’s hard for me to admit this, is what I’m saying, but . . . the way I feel about you fuckin’ scares the shit out of me. I don’t know how to deal with it.” He caresses my cheek with my thumb. “You have this . . . power over me, honey. You could fuckin’ wreck me. You could . . . you could destroy me. The way I feel, it’s . . . I wouldn’t know what to do without you. God knows I’ve tried, and I’ve frozen. That’s why I’m here, at this concert, working security. I had to fuckin’ do something, because I couldn’t make myself leave. I’d think about getting a berth on a ship, and I’d freeze up. I couldn’t do it. Because you were here. If I left the States, I’d be leaving you for good, and I couldn’t do it. And now you’re here, I’ve got you in my arms again, and I fuckin’ . . . I can’t handle losing you again. Walking away the first time damn near gutted me, and there ain’t no way I could do it again. So if . . . if you and me ain’t gonna work, I . . . I don’t know . . . I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  I blink at him, fresh tears sliding down my face. “Oh, Jonny.”

  “What?”

  I palm his cheek. “I . . . I fucking love you, that’s what.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, you loco man, I do.”

  And then he kisses me.

  Slowly, deeply. Taking his time, relishing the feel of my lips pressing against me.

  I try to hold back my need . . . and fail. My attempts to keep this to just a kiss are ruined by the way I cling to him. I grab his shirt and lift up on my toes; my heart is hammering and I can feel his hard cock behind his zipper. His hands go to my backside, palming my ass. I can’t help myself, letting out a deep moan at his hands fierce grip.

  “God, Jonny,” I murmur. “I need you.”

  “You can’t say shit like that to me,” he whispers to me.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m barely controlling myself right now.”

  I look at him, and I know my eyes are as wild as I feel. Moments pass, my eyes are on his, and then his hands claw into the meat of my ass and my hips press hard against his throbbing erection, my breasts flattening against his chest. Both of us are breathing hard, resisting, needing, desire battling against the fact that we’re in public.

  12

  Delta leaps onto me, wrapping her legs around me, clinging to my neck and shoulders. She kisses me, and the ferocity of her kiss is a drug, sending euphoria through me, sending me to heaven and undercutting the last of my self-control. I moan as her tongue slips into my mouth, and I walk with her to the wall.

  I pin her spine to the wall and delve deeper into the kiss. She whimpers, and her hips swivel, grinding into me. She releases her legs and slides down her feet, my hands buried in the soft cotton of her dress, gathering it in my fist and lifting it. I hold the hem of the dress up around her waist with one hand, and trace the damp seam of her pussy over the silk of her underwear with the other.

  She whimpers again, pressing into my touch. I slide a finger between the gusset and her flesh, and find her clit, damp with desire and hard. A few slow circling touches and she’s grinding into my finger and gasping as I kiss her. Delta’s hands are fumbling for me, bunching in my shirt and sliding under the hem to palm my stomach.

  I’m seconds from ripping her underwear off and taking her right now. Instead, I break the kiss and slip my finger out.

  She gasps and stares at me. “Jonny . . . why the fuck did you stop?”

  “We shouldn’t do this here, Delta,” I growl. “Any more, and I’m not gonna be able to stop myself.”

  She blinks and something shifts in her gaze. Wildness and ferocity blossom into primal need.

  With a shimmy of her hips, Delta lowers the tiny blue thong she’s wearing and tosses it onto the floor. She lifts it with her toe, snags it with her finger, and stuffs it into the back pocket of my jeans.

  “Who asked you to stop?” she asks, reaching for my belt buckle. “I sure as fuck didn’t.”

  “Delta . . .” I breathe.

  “Jonny,” she says back.

  She stares up at me, loosening the tension on my belt and unthreading it.

  “Here?” I ask.

  She unbuttons my jeans, lowers the zipper. “Here. Now.”

  “This is crazy.”

  She reaches in and fists my erection, baring me. “First time was on a beach at sunrise, a few days after a hurricane. Second time might as well be in my dressing room after a gig, Everything about us is crazy.”

  I tug the neckline of her dress, exposing her tits. I bend to kiss them, licking her nipples, moaning at the taste of her skin. “Mierda, Delta. You taste so good.”

  She clings to my neck and leaps into my arms again, wrapping her thighs around my waist. “I’m gonna feel even better, once you’re inside me.”

  I growl at the slippery warm silk of her thighs against my bare waist, at the wet warmth of her pussy against my erection. Moan at the sudden onslaught of her kiss, the wild hunger of her mouth on mine, which I return and match with an urgency of my own.

  She leans back, palms my jaw. “I need you inside me, Jonny.”

  Reaching between us, she guides me to her entrance, fits me inside her, and sinks down around me; we both moan breathlessly.

  I pin her against the wall, my hands on her ass, holding her up, flexing my hips to slide deeper. “You feel better than you did the first time,” I say.

  “Feels like being home,” Delta mumbles. “Your cock inside me . . . you kissing me . . . it’s home.”

  “Never had a home,” I breathe.

  “You do now,” Delta says, nipping kisses to my jaw as I move inside her; her kisses graze across my mouth and she bites my lower lip, then kisses me, softly, quickly. “Me, I’m your home.”

  We move in synch as I kiss her and thrust into her, holding her, feeling her arms surround me and her pussy tightening around me. Our breathing is matched, intensity ratcheting to a frenetic frenzy. I can’t hold back, can’t wait, and don’t try. She’s there with me, gasping and groaning.

  “Jonny, shit . . . I’m gonna come,” she gasps. “Come with me. Come inside me,” she shrieks.

  “I am, Delta, I’m coming, mierda, Delta . . .” I moan, then I’m coming and she’s coming with me, exploding around me, clinging to me fiercely and biting her lip to quiet her desperate shrieks. “Te amo, eres encantadator mi amor . . .” and I lose track of what I’m saying, unaware of whether I’m speaking Spanish or English, or a mixture of both. I know I’m telling her I love her again and again.

  Finally, Delta lifts up to slide me out of her and regains her feet, and I hold on to her, clutching her against my chest, both of us gasping for breath.

  After a few moments, neither of us totally put together or in control of our breathing, we hear a knock at the door.

  “Delta? You in there, girl?” A gruff male voice calls.

  She laughs and straightens her dress, tugging and stuffing and shimmying until she’s presentable, combing her fingers through her hair. “I’m here, Rob,” she says as she opens the door.

  “Ah, right. Sorry to interrupt,” he says, a little sheepishly.

  Delta wraps an arm around my waist. “I needed a few minutes with Jonny.”

  Rob’s gaze is knowing. “You two figure things out?”

  She shrugs. “We’re . . . still working on it, but getting there.”

  “Well, you’ll have to work on it later, because Miranda is asking for you to join her on a few songs,” Rob says. “So, you know, freshen up a bit and get your ass on stage.”

  Delta blinks. “She’s . . . what?”

  “Miranda is asking for you to go out there and play with her,” Rob says. “Like, now.”

  Delta stares back blankly. “She is?”

  Rob claps his hands, suddenly, loudly. “Yes! Now get out there, girl! Don’t make the woman ask twice.”

  Delta takes a quick peek in the mirror, exclaiming, “Holy shit! Holy shit I just need to use the bathroom real quick, and then I’m out there. Five minutes—no, less than that! Two minutes!”

  She pauses, glancing back at me. “Jonny, I—”

  “Mujer loca!” I cut over her, waving her away. “Go!”

  She vanishes through the doorway, and I watch her leave. Rob stays back, and faces me once Delta is gone. “She’s been a mess about you, son.”

  “I’ve been a mess about her.”

  He gestures toward the entrance to the stage. “This is her big break. Don’t fuck it up for her.”

  “No way.”

  He eyes me, the security shirt, the switched off two-way radio. “You know, she could use a full time bodyguard. Things are about to get crazy for her.”

  “Whatever I gotta do, I’ll do,” I say. “I’m just not leaving her again. If you want me to head up her security team, I’m your man.”

  He nods. “You’re hired, then. First job is to make sure she gets on stage ASAP. Go!”

  I find her exiting a bathroom, her hair touched up, makeup fixed. “Guess I’m your full-time security guy now.”

  She smiles. “I feel safer already.” She touches her hair. “I look okay?”

  I laugh. “You look incredible.”

  She leans close. “Do I look like I just got fucked?”

  “Maybe a little,” I tease. “Kidding. No, you look perfect.”

  She blows out a breath. “The only thing bigger for me than opening for Miranda is playing with her. This is huge, Jonny.”

  I gently guide her to the wings of the stage, where the star of the show is playing a slow, sad song about a tin man. “Go, baby. Be awesome.”

  She eyes me, laughing. “Nothing like going out to perform with one of the biggest stars in country music . . . with come dripping down my thigh.”

  “I thought you cleaned up.”

  “I did, but . . . there was a lot.”

  “Sorry.”

  She lifts up, kisses me. “Don’t be—I’m not. And you’ve still got my thong in your pocket, you know.”

  “Want it back?”

  She laughs again. “Hell no.” She shakes her hands, bounces on her toes. “Wish me luck.”

  “You don’t need luck, babe, you got talent. You’re gonna kill it.”

  She takes a few steps onto the stage, and when the crowd sees her they cheer wildly.

  “Hey!” I call out, and she turns to glance at me, walking backward. “I love you.”

  She grins ear to ear, but there’s no time for anything else, because a guitar tech is handing Delta a guitar and Miranda is welcoming her on stage.

  “I was wondering when you’d find your way back on stage,” Miranda teases.

  “Sorry, I had . . . a situation.”

  “Is that a situation of the tall, dark, and handsome variety?”

  Delta laughs, ducking her head. “Maybe?”

  “That there is a good-lookin’ situation,” Miranda says glancing at me, laughing, and then turns to Delta again. She strums a chord then another one. “I saw a video online of you doing ‘Another Bar, Another Mic,’ looked like a video someone had taken with a cell phone or something. I wanted you on this tour with me based on that video. I’ve always loved that song, and I feel like you and me should give it a try.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Delta replies, to loud cheering.

  And then they’re off, playing that song. The last time I heard it, I was on the beach, about to walk away from Delta. Things are . . . a little different, this time around.

  13

  Playing with Miranda is . . . beyond a dream come true. I’ve idolized her for years and have followed her career every step of the way. And now I’m onstage with her? Doing a duet of my song with her? It’s crazy. We play two more songs together, and then I get the signal to get off stage, but before I do, Miranda hugs me.

  “Go get him,” she whispers.

  “I already did,” I whisper back, giggling. “That’s why I took so long getting out here.”

  Miranda laughs as I stride off stage, and then the lights come down and a tech is taking her guitar, and another one is taking mine, and the crowd is howling, cheering as Miranda plugs me one more time.

  I’ve only got eyes for Jonny, though, and as I exit the stage I see that Alex and Ava are standing beside him.

  I got them tickets for the show, and I haven’t seen them since lunchtime. Somehow they found their way backstage and bumped into Jonny. Ava’s got a confused look on her face, but Alex is taking it in stride, the way six-year-olds tend to do; he and Jonny are talking like old friends.

  Seeing my happy face, Ava hugs me and simply says, “You deserve this, honey, all of it.”

  “Hey, Mommy!” Alex yells. “I made a new friend. His name is Jonny.”

  I smile at Jonny. “Well, hi, there, Jonny.”

  He grins back. “Hi there, Delta.”

  Alex is watching us, head bobbing back and forth like he’s watching a tennis match, clearly knowing something is weird, but he can’t figure it out. “Can we go now?”

  I laugh and nod, and lead us all out of the backstage area. We reach my dressing room and Ava excuses herself to go to the ladies’ room. I take seat on the couch and pull Alex down next to me. “So, did you like the show?”

  “I loved it,” Alex exclaims. “One of the guys showed me some of the guitars, and a lady let me and Aunt Ava take anything we wanted from the snack table . . . I took M&M’s”