She smacks his chest. “Aren’t you the funny one!”
It’s a joke between them, since he lives with his parents. Everett moved back in with them two years ago when his dad’s diabetes forced him to retire early from his plumbing job and when . . . Everett can’t bring himself to think about the when. Living at home isn’t all bad. Being able to help out with the bills gives Everett satisfaction and his mom peace of mind. While he’d rather not have to see his father’s angry mug every day, his mom’s cool. But she would freak out if he brought someone home. Even Carla. His mom adores Carla.
Jumping into his truck, he tosses Louie’s envelope in his glove box and follows Carla to her apartment. During the twenty-minute drive, he listens to outlaw country radio on Pandora as he reflects on his conversation with Wade. You’re the next Johnny Cash . . . All the more reason to make the break now . . . If you’re willing to work hard, you can go all the way to the top.
Johnny Cash, wow! Everett wants success so bad he can taste it. Is he ready to leave Louie and the band behind? Heck yes! What about Carla? How will she take the news? She knows their relationship isn’t permanent. He can’t break the news to her tonight, not until he tells Louie first.
Inside the door of her apartment, Carla tears off her clothes first and then his. Everett picks her up, and she wraps her legs around his waist. Her fingernails dig into his back as she smothers him with kisses. Walking her to the sofa, he trips over a small table and knocks it over. When Carla bursts out laughing, he silences her with his mouth.
Two hours later, having moved from sofa to floor to her bed, they lay spent in each other’s arms. He’s drifting off to sleep when Carla, says, “We’re good together, aren’t we, Rhett?”
Uh-oh. That dreamy quality in her voice has nothing to do with the stream of orgasms she just experienced. “Sure.” His eyes remain closed, and she pinches his nipple to get his attention. “Ouch! Jeez, Carla. That hurt.”
She sits up in bed, not bothering to cover her milky plump breasts. “I’m trying to tell you something, Rhett. Neither of us is getting any younger, and . . . well, I’m pregnant. And don’t insult me by asking if the baby is yours, because I haven’t slept with anyone else in over a year.”
Everett takes the sheet with him when he scrambles out of bed. “Pregnant? How did this happen, Carla? You told me you were on the pill.”
She gnaws on her lower lip. “I was on the pill. But then I stopped taking it.”
“Why’d you do that?”
“Because I’m ready to have a baby. If you won’t marry me, I’ll raise it on my own. You’re a good guy. You’ll be a part of his or her life, won’t you, Rhett? You’ll make such a wonderful daddy.”
Daddy. Seriously? “I don’t even know what to say to you Carla. You’re trying to trap me into something I’m not ready for.”
Finding it difficult to breathe, he hurries from her bedroom. He gathers his clothes and is tugging on his jeans at the front door when she comes at him, pressing her naked body against his. He pushes her away, and she snatches his shirt off the floor, hiding it behind her back.
“Please, Rhett! Don’t leave angry. We can work this out.”
Grabbing his boots, he flees her apartment barefoot and bare-chested, slamming the door behind him. He makes a pit stop at home, the one-story brick rancher in a neighborhood of cookie-cutter houses out near the Atlanta airport. He stuffs as many clothes as will fit in a duffel bag, powers off his phone, and slides it under the mattress.
His father is passed out in his lounger while his mother sleeps with her head resting on the back of the sofa and her latest sewing project abandoned in her lap. Placing the sewing on the coffee table, Everett lifts her legs onto the sofa and covers her with a blanket. He’s kissing her forehead when he notices his father watching him.
“Where you going?” his father grumbles, eyeing the duffel slung over his shoulder.
“Away,” Everett says. “Can I count on you to be good to Mom?”
His father grunts and closes his eyes again.
Everett bolts out of the house, despite the feeling of dread gnawing at his stomach. He gets on the interstate intending to land in DC or New York. But as he’s driving through Charlotte, on a whim, he veers off toward the mountains. Hours later, he stops at a roadside motel on the outskirts of Hope Springs. The following morning at Caffeine on the Corner, when he overhears a customer say the Inn at Hope Springs Farm was hiring, he applies for the job as bartender and begins his self-imposed exile.
In hindsight, Everett doesn’t know what prompted him to run away that night. He just freaked out. Two monumental events happened to him in a few brief hours. Wade offered the fame he coveted, and Carla broke the news that she was pregnant with his baby. But once he started running, he kept on going.
He forgot all about Louie’s envelope until a week later when he lost his sunglasses and was searching his glove compartment for his extra pair. Everett is not a thief. But the more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that he was owed money. Louie is the sketchy sort. He could see Louie working deals on the side that would enable him to keep some of the proceeds from their gigs. Regardless, Everett hasn’t touched the money. The envelope is hidden in a zippered pocket in his backpack in his closet. But desperate times call for desperate measures.
Reluctantly, he puts his guitar away and
