My Soul To Keep (Soul Series Book 1) (28 page)

I’VE BEEN TIRED BEFORE. GOING ON
the road touring by the time I was ten years old, I’ve got some miles on these tires. I know the exhaustion of staying up three days straight working on an album. All night jam sessions? Been there, done that. But this fatigue digs into my bones.

And I can’t wipe this shit-eating grin off my face.

Last night after the church service, we came back to Kai’s house. I thought that might mean some time alone with her, but I didn’t realize Aunt Ruthie lives in the house too. I didn’t realize they live on the top floor, and the Glory Bee occupies the bottom. I didn’t realize they spend Christmas morning cooking and serving breakfast to a hundred people. I’ve never seen anything like it. And somehow I found myself serving eggs and gravy and grits all morning. Not saying I was great at it, but I did my part. And no one asked for an autograph or a single selfie. Kai made sure they got that memo.

“You doing okay?” Aunt Ruthie wipes down one of the wooden tables in the quaint dining room.

“Yeah.” I glance at the register where Kai rings up a customer. “Is that the last of them?”

Aunt Ruthie presses her hand to the small of her back, stretching out muscles that must be aching.

“Yep, and now we can have
our
Christmas.”

“It’s good you found someone who could take Kai’s mom’s place cooking in the kitchen.”

A sad smile graces Aunt Ruthie’s face before fading.

“No one ever really could take Lin’s place, but Marilyn does all right.” Aunt Ruthie eases down into one of the hard-backed seats and gives me a searching look. “You and Kai seem to be real close.”

I proceed with caution. I didn’t miss the look Aunt Ruthie gave Kai last night when she offered me the couch upstairs in their small living room. Of course I didn’t expect to share Kai’s bed. Aunt Ruthie looked like she wasn’t so sure. She wonders what’s going on between Kai and me. Rest assured, our first time making love certainly won’t be in Kai’s childhood twin bed with Aunt Ruthie listening through the wall.

“We’re really good friends.” I sit down too, propping my elbows on the table and coupling my fists under my chin.

“Friends, huh?” Aunt Ruthie’s skepticism sends one brow up. “But let me guess. You want more.”

Kai walks the last customer out the door and onto the porch, chatting and laughing. I’m not sure she’d want me saying this to her Aunt Ruthie, but fuck it. I’m just about done shelving what I want.

“You’re right.” I look the only family Kai has left right in the eye. “I want to be with Kai. I care about her very much.”

“You know she’s been through a lot.” Aunt Ruthie’s eyes don’t waver and her mouth is a stiff line. “I won’t see her hurt.”

“I have no intention of hurting her. If she . . .” I clear my throat. “When she’s ready to be with me, I’ll take care of her. Don’t worry.”

“I do worry.” Aunt Ruthie shakes her head, straightening the snowman salt and pepper shakers on the table. “I worry that she works too hard and won’t let anyone help her.”

I check to make sure Kai isn’t on her way back in before leaning forward and lowering my voice.

“I wanted to talk to you about that.”

“About what?” Aunt Ruthie lowers her voice too, looking over at the entrance.

“The money they donated last night for the medical bills, was it enough to pay everything off?”

Aunt Ruthie frowns and shakes her head.

“Not near enough. There’s still a balance of forty thousand. I spare what I can, but there isn’t much left over each month.”

Forty thousand? Kai is working around the clock and neglecting her music career for forty thousand dollars? I get paid that much to sneeze.

“I’d like to help.”

“Does she know about this?” Aunt Ruthie offers a heavy laugh. “That girl is as stubborn as a lid on a new jar of mustard.”

“Exactly.”

“She may not take too kindly to you doing this, Rhyson. She probably wouldn’t take your money.” Aunt Ruthie smiles. “But I will. ‘Bout time somebody looked out for that girl.”

“Why’s she so hard to help?”

“I think it goes all the way back to Jim. To her daddy. When he left, Kai’s mama fell apart. It wasn’t just the money or having to do everything by herself. She needed
him
, and when he chose somebody else, it took a long time for her to be the woman she was before. Kai’s never wants to be that dependent on anyone.”

Before I have time to answer, Kai walks up beside us.

“Last customer gone.” Kai flops into the other chair at our table, long hair scooped up on top of her head and escaping around her ears. “Dishes done and food put away. Now it’s time for Christmas. Y’all ready? Everybody’s already on their way over.”

Aunt Ruthie and I exchange a quick look, a silent agreement to finish this later. She’s given me great insight. Maybe it’s not as simple as Kai wanting to do things on her own. Maybe it’s that she doesn’t want
me
to help. If that’s the case, she’s shit outta luck.

Christmas has never been a big deal for my family. Hell, this was the first time in twelve years I even tried to spend it with my parents, and that turned out
amazing
. I can tell, even with her gone, that Kai’s mother made Christmas something special.

What I would describe as a cast of characters invade Kai’s house over the next hour. Aunt so-and-so. Cousin this-or-that, none of them
actual
relatives. I didn’t know people wore Christmas sweaters in real life, but they are surprisingly—or not surprisingly—popular here in Glory Falls. Aunt Bea, which is literally her name, as in Andy Griffith, wears a 3-D sweater with a red, squeezable Rudolph nose.

I’m tripping.

“If you don’t stop staring at that sweater,” Kai whispers from one corner of her mouth, “I’m dumping this gravy boat over your head.”

I almost choke on my biscuit. I turn my head in Kai’s direction, ready with a snappy comeback, but it dies on my lips.

God, she’s beautiful.

Like steal-your-breath, heart-skip-a-beat, grab-you-by-the-balls gorgeous.

I’ve never seen anything like her. It’s not even just the dark eyes, exotically slanted. It’s more than the sweet slope of her cheeks. It goes deeper than the smooth gold of her skin or the dark hair she braided into some coronet thing on her head today. The long-sleeved red dress she wears fitted to her small, high breasts and the wisp of her waist so closely that I see the flex of muscles in her stomach when she laughs. It’s none of that. Something has changed, almost cellularly. I don’t know if it’s being home again, surrounded by people she loves, or if it’s just the holidays, which are her favorite time of the year. But she looks happy, and it adds something to her physical beauty that I’ll fight to keep. Even if I have to fight Kai herself.

“Are you racking your brain for a quote from
Elf
or what?” Kai slants me a smile.

“As a matter of fact, I was sitting here planning out our whole day,” I deadpan. “First, we’ll make snow angels for two hours, and then we’ll go ice skating, and then we’ll eat a whole roll of Toll House cookie dough as fast as we can.”

“And then we’ll snuggle?” Kai finishes the movie quote, a husky laugh parting her lips, showing me the sweet, pink tongue hiding behind her teeth.

“Hey, you said it, but I’m down if you are.”

She rolls her eyes, but keeps smiling.

“So, Kai,” Mr. McClausky calls from the other end of the table. “How long you been dating a rock star?”

Wow. So that’s how you get this rowdy crowd completely silent. They all stare down the table at us, a menagerie of Christmas sweaters and overalls.

“Um, we aren’t.” Kai turns wide, panicked eyes my way. “I mean, he’s not. That is to say, I’m not and we don’t . . .”

Her eyes beg for help and I have mercy.

“We’re just friends,” I say, even though every fiber in my body resists admitting that when she’s
mine
. But I don’t want to fight on Christmas in front of all her friends and family who have been so nice and accepting and all around cool.

“Could have fooled me,” Aunt Ruthie mutters into the silence that follows my statement. She and I share a grin because she knows all the plans I have for Kai. Well, some of them. The ones involving nudity I’ll keep to myself.

“I remember when your Pops saw your Grams for the first time, Kai.” Mr. McClausky nicely segues us out of awkward and into sentimental. “She wanted nothing to do with him. Said she wasn’t marrying no preacher.”

“Grams was kind of wild growing up,” Kai tells me, grinning.

“To say the least.” Mr. McClausky chuckles, shaking his head. “It took him a long time to convince her, but once he did, they had the kind of love most people only dream about.”

“He used to keep mistletoe in the house year round,” Kai says, her voice soft with the memory. “Said he’d use any excuse he could to kiss her all the time.”

“I wish I could have met them.” I say it so low probably only Kai hears me, but that’s okay since everyone else has moved on to old stories about other people.

“They would have loved you.” Kai’s eyes are a little shy, barely meeting mine before falling back to the napkin in her lap

“You sure about that?” I make a bold move, stealing her hand from her lap and linking our fingers on my knee. “Wild, bad boy musician corrupting their sweet granddaughter?”

“You’re not that bad.” She squeezes my hand and flirts with me through her eyelashes. “And I’m not that sweet.”

Oh, she’s sweet all right, and soon I’ll taste for myself.

THE LAST TIME I STOOD ON
this porch, considering this inky sky dotted with dying stars, my mama lay inside and up those stairs drawing her final breaths. My heart was so heavy I could barely drag it up the steps to say good-bye. That night and the months that followed, I often thought my heart would never be light again.

And yet not even a year after Mama’s passing, the first Christmas without her, I laughed all through dinner and couldn’t stop smiling. I could lie to myself and say it was being back home, eating good food, surrounded by Aunt Ruthie, Mr. McClausky, and all the people who helped raise me, but I won’t.

It’s Rhyson. Not just today, but all the days that have come before. All the days he’s made me smile and pulled my heart out of the dark. I hate that things went so badly with his parents, but I’m glad he’s here. It feels right.