Free My Heart for Yours by Jolene Perry, Stephanie Campbell Page B

most about Crawford. Maybe I need a quick trip to the bar first. It’s been ages since I had a beer.
     

     
    “ If it isn’t the great Delia Gentry, come back to slum it up.” Carl, the bar owner, laughs as I walk in. “Are you old enough to be in here?” he teases.
     
    “ You didn’t have a problem with it a year ago.” I raise a brow and take a seat at the bar. I love this old place. It’s run down, and always smells like cigarette smoke, but I used to pass through here a lot.
     
    “ That was more than a year.” Carl turns away, dries a glass, and sets it back on the shelf. The tone of his voice tells me he might be a bit irritated. Or maybe it’s that his loyalties to Tobin run deep. Everyone had to know that we weren’t together anymore. In this small of a town, there were no secrets. Except maybe one. One that my dad, the staunch Pro-Life Republican would do anything to keep from coming to light.
     
    I start to wonder if underneath the surface everyone here suddenly hates me.
     
    “ Did you drive here, Delia?” Carl asks as he fills a glass of beer and hands it to one of the three other people at the bar.
     
    “ No.” I almost laugh. “Not with my jail-keeper.” And then my hand flies to my mouth because I’ve gotten so good at never saying anything bad about Dad.
     
    He chuckles. “Did you or did you not graduate, Miss Delia?” He rests his elbows on the bar, smiling with stained teeth, his blondish-grey hair so short I see more scalp than hair.
     
    “ I did.” But it doesn’t matter. Not to Dad. “But with his job—”
     
    Carl shakes his head. He sees how much of a wimp I am. Not hard if you’re looking.
     
    “ Any chance of getting a beer from you?” I do my best smile and lean over the counter, wondering if a little bit of cleavage will help. I feel completely, scandalously, naughty, and so much of me wishes I was still this girl. Could still be this girl.
     
    If Weston saw me now… He doesn’t even know this Delia exists.
     
    Carl gives me a smile and walks away.
     
    So much for my beer.
     
    “ Delia!”
     
    I spin and squint to see Nelson, a good friend of both Tobin and Eamon, waving.
     
    “ I want to feel like a man. Come over here and let me kick your ass at bowling, would ya?” He slaps the side of a table against the wall.
     
    I stand up and move toward him. “Bowling?”
     
    He rolls his eyes, and lets his head follow. “Shuffleboard bowling? Damn. How long you been gone?”
     
    “ Too long.” I laugh.
     
    “ Delia?” Carl holds up an ice-cold Corona.
     
    “ Thanks!” I grin and jog up to the bar, immediately popping the top. Carl always said if he didn’t open it, he could always say we just stole it.
     
    “ So, you game?” Nelson asks.
     
    I glance back toward the door. Back to Carl standing behind the dark, wooden bar.
     
    “ Got somewhere to be?” he asks.
     
    I want to laugh and giggle and jump. “No. Nowhere to be.”
     
    “ Well, let’s get started then.” Everywhere Tobin’s southern accent is soft, Nelson’s twangs, but it’s such a part of him that I love it.
     
    “ Yeah. Let’s play.” I step up to the table, take a long drink of my cold beer, and can’t believe how long I’ve stayed away.
     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

Eleven
     
    Tobin
     

     
    The bar scene in Crawford is limited, but that’s okay. I’m not looking to have a good time anyway. I pull a napkin from the stack on the end of the bar and spread it out.
     
    “ Tobin! Surprised to see you here. I was real sorry to hear about your brother, man,” Carl, the owner and lone employee of the one and only bar in town says. He’s frowning at me, his eyes full of pity.
     
    I hate pity.
     
    “ Thanks, Carl,” I say, and shake his hand.
     
    “ Well, what can I get you? It’s on the house tonight. Your brother was a good man,” he says.
     
    Was he? I wonder. I mean, he was my brother, of course I loved him, but do good men leave