How he seems to be trying to atone for something, and I can’t imagine what.
I have a feeling it has to do with his dead wife.
Andrea’s mother.
Maybe he’s apologizing to his daughter all the time for being the one she was left with.
It makes me wonder what kind of woman her mother was, considering things hadn’t worked out between her and Blake.
But Blake must’ve loved her once, even if things went sour.
So what kind of woman did he love?
Enough love to have a daughter as feisty and smart as Andrea with?
I’m so caught up in it I almost miss him speaking again.
“Hey, I know the bookstore’s restocking titles tomorrow, right?” he draws. “Bet he’ll be there after school. Why don’t you show up too?”
“Eep.” The girl makes a mortified sound. “Won’t that seem weird?”
“Nah,” he says. “You’re just there to pick up a new comic or two, right?”
“R-right,” the girl says, then a bit more brightly. “Right! So I just...what? Talk to him?”
I cover my mouth, suppressing a giggle.
“That’s all it takes, sweetheart,” Blake says, his voice low thunder. “In the end, that’s all relationships are. Two people who like talking to each other more than they like talking to anybody else. Then they get to that point where they don’t need to talk at all, and it’s good to just be together without saying a single darn word.”
Okay. I can’t help a soft sigh. Or three.
I’m as bad as that high school girl. But the man has a way with words.
I’d love to find out how they fit into his life.
Talking to Blake until all hours of the night, until we don’t need words at all.
And maybe we could talk with lips, with hands, with skin...
My stomach tightens, my thighs tensing, this fierce pulse echoing in my blood. And I try to drag my mind from the gutter.
Not so easy. Not when his smooth as bourbon voice pours over me in shivers, like rough fingertips over my skin, submerging me in heat and friction from head to toe.
You ever get hot flashes before?
I know that makes no sense, but it’s like your body gets so warm it makes you shiver, and it gets your nerves all crossed so they make you feel cold while you’re still hot.
That’s how it goes listening to Blake.
He’s sweet, sending the girl off with a little more encouragement.
“Next caller,” he says.
Only for another male voice to come over the radio, one that sounds almost like Blake’s, but darker. Slicker.
This purr, dark and heady and a little too knowingly sexual for me.
It’s sexy, kinda, but it doesn’t have Blake’s gentleness, his warmth, his honesty.
And without that, it’s nothing.
“Hey, Blake. I’ve got a question,” the man says. “What do you do when your brother’s a stubborn donkey who won’t listen when you try to make amends?”
Whatever I’m expecting, it’s not the harsh, cold “Motherfu—” that comes next. Or how Blake clears his throat, probably to stop the station from getting slapped with a fine for live vulgarity.
Oh, crud.
Eyes widening, I shift to my knees, leaning toward the radio, listening closely.
Who is this guy?
And why does Blake sound so angry?
“This isn’t funny,” Blake bites off. “Why’d you call here?”
“Because you wouldn’t pick up your phone, brother,” the stranger says.
Okay. Wow. Crap.
So his life is more complicated than I realized.
Suddenly, I wonder if I’m just making things harder for him, wanting to self-insert in his world.
Sometimes, somebody wanting to comfort you can just be too much when you need time alone to clean up your own mess.
Blake lets out a soft snarl. “You’re not broadcasting our business to the entire town. I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“Too bad,” his brother says. “I have a lot to say to y—”
He’s cut off, abruptly. There’s a long pause before Blake sighs, soft and defeated. “Sorry about that, folks. Prank caller. Some people like to be knuckleheads.” He pauses, then asks, “Do we have another caller up, Mario?”
That older male voice I heard the first night answers. “Not yet. You want to go to commercial or put on some tracks?”
No, no—don’t!
Not yet, I think, and I scramble for my phone.
I’d saved the call-in number a few days ago, just in case I ever got brave.
And now I frantically tap the button before I can ask myself what I’m doing. Why I’m doing this, when just five seconds ago, I’d been questioning the wisdom of trying to get closer to Blake and possibly making things harder for him.
But I can’t stand hearing the pain in his voice. The frustration. The sheer, quiet agony. The anger.
I’ve made it my life’s work to soothe other’s pain.
I can’t not try.
So I listen with my heart in my throat as my phone rings against my ear, waiting for someone to pick up.
“Oh, wait,” the older man says on the radio. “We’ve got a new caller!”
“Great,” Blake says, though he sounds resigned for a moment before it picks up, a smooth warmth slipping into his voice again.
I hear a click, then an echo on both my phone and the radio.
“Hey, caller. What can I do for you?” Blake drawls.
“I—”
I wince, stopping as there’s a weird feedback screech, jerking the phone away from my ear.
“Ow!”
Blake lets out a startled laugh. “Darlin’, you gotta turn your radio off while we’re talking.”
Oops.
I reach over and turn the volume down to nothing on the clock radio, then murmur into the phone sheepishly. “Sorry. My bad.”
“It’s all right,” he soothes. “First-time callers do it a lot. And if you’re a first-timer...you ain’t from around here, are you?”
My turn to eep!
Does he recognize my voice?
Does he realize it’s me?
“Not from Montana, no,” I say. “I guess I blew in on the autumn wind and decided to stay for winter.”
“People do that around here a lot,” he says. “Though some people come here to run away, too.”
“I don’t know if I’m running away,” I admit. “If I’m running, then I’ve been running for a long time.”
“How long?”
I pause, then say softly, “Probably for most of my life. Ever since my dad died, I just...”
He’s silent, then prompts gently, “You just what, darlin’?”
“I think I’m scared to get attached to anything,” I say, slowly and carefully because God I don’t think I even realized it until I was saying it to him. “It’s crazy. He was everything to me, and then he just went away and didn’t come back. It still doesn’t feel real. He was overseas when he died. Like, in the back of my mind, he’s still alive, out there somewhere even though I saw his body at the funeral, flag-draped coffin and all. But that wasn’t him. It was just this show, and maybe if I keep running...maybe I’ll run away from losing someone ever again, and one day I’ll figure out where he’s hiding. Like he’s waiting for me out there somewhere. Crazy, right?”