Find Me
by
Afton Locke
Can a civil rights attorney and a Southern rocker find love at a Confederate statue rally?
Weary of climbing the corporate ladder to care for her aging hippie parents, Dee Dobson marches in a rally. When violence erupts, Rodney Walker, lead singer of Breeze, comes to her rescue. Their dramatic picture hits the papers, but an interracial relationship is out of the question for both their careers.
Between a long-distance concert tour, her endless overtime, and his racist brother, Jack, they struggle to build a future from their powerful connection. When a senator pursues Dee and helps her run for political office, things get even more complicated.
But their biggest obstacle is Jack. As a Southern gentleman, Rodney values family above all else. Due to a long-buried secret, he always gives his brother the benefit of the doubt, a decision that could cost him and Dee everything.
*Warning: This book contains some racial triggers that may make some readers uncomfortable.*
Dedication
This story is dedicated to Barbie, superfan. The muse wasn’t planning on writing a sequel to Follow Me until she asked for it.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Kass for answering my questions and being a sounding board.
Author Note
The rally described in Culpeper is purely fictional.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Epilogue
Other Books by Afton Locke
About the Author
Connect With Me
FIND ME
by Afton Locke
Copyright © 2020 Afton Locke
FIND ME © 2019 Afton Locke. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part or the whole of this book may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted or utilized (other than for reading by the intended reader) in ANY form (now known or hereafter invented) without prior written permission by the author. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal, and punishable by law. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional and / or are used fictitiously and are solely the product of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, places, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental.
Edited by: Wizards in Publishing
Prologue
Louisiana
The man groaned and rolled to his side. He found himself on soft ground, seemingly in one piece. More than he could say for the airplane in jagged chunks around him. Trees in its path were broken off like matchsticks.
His shoulder hurt like a mother. So did his chest.
Shit, I can hardly move my arm. What the hell…happened?
The sickening smell of fuel filled his head, making it hard to think, let alone breathe. Snippets of the last concert filled his mind. Next stop, New Orleans. Guess they wouldn’t make it…
He blinked and pushed long, bloody hair out of his eyes with a shaky hand. Took a look around to see how the rest of the band had fared. A few bodies lay near him. One half in, half out of the plane. Bare bones and blood. Lots of it.
Nobody made a sound. He merely heard the plane dripping something. Were they all dead, then?
Holy hell. This can’t be real.
The plane had just missed going over a bank into the swamp, and he was awfully damn close to the edge.
He needed to find his brother. The one ultimately responsible for this clusterfuck of tragedy. When he took a closer look at the body closest to his, his heart skipped a beat. It was him.
“Hey,” he called out, giving him a little shake.
No answer. Not so much as a moan. He was full of blood and cuts, but that didn’t tell him shit. So was he. Groaning from the movement, he shifted closer so he could lift his brother’s T-shirt and look for injuries. Like his, it was black with the band’s logo on the front.
The first thing his fingers found was a leather wallet, hanging halfway out of his back pocket. He grabbed it and tugged out his own, forgetting about his pain. After pausing only a split second, he switched them.
Why had he done that?
The shock and pain must be messing up his mind because he couldn’t explain why he clambered to the other side of the man.
And pushed.
And watched while the black swamp water below sucked his brother down.
Chapter One
Wheeling, WV ~ several months earlier
When Dee Dobson arrived at her old homeplace in Wheeling, Ma was carrying a basket of laundry across the porch. The sound of a train whistle from over the river told her she was home.
Ma dropped the basket when she saw her. “Hey, baby girl!”
Dee squeezed the smaller woman and planted a kiss on the silvery hair near her temple. “Can I help?”
“No, I just took these clothes off the line.”
After embracing commune life in the late sixties, Dee’s parents still lived off the grid. Although she’d been raised with no electricity, she’d taken too much of a liking to hot showers and the Internet to follow their path.
“Come on, Ma. Let me buy you a fancy washer and dryer. It’ll even do your nails and hair for you.”
As a senior associate attorney at Willis and Greene, a civil rights law firm, she could afford some comforts.
“No way,” said the man who stepped onto the porch. “Nothing but the sun and wind can make our clothes smell so good.”
“Dad!” she squealed, embracing the bearded man.
That same sun and wind had buffed his face and hands into fine leather. While Ma’s gray hair was concentrated on the top and sides of her Afro, his dark locks were shot through with silver strands. A perpetual hippie, he still wore it to his shoulders.
“To what do we owe the pleasure?” he asked. “Need to escape the rat race for a while?”
“Actually, I came for some advice.”
“Now, when have you ever listened to our advice?” he asked with a wink.
“I want to participate in a protest.”
Ma’s eyes widened. “Oh Lord. We’d better go inside and sit down.”
The living room
