Free His For Keeps: (50 Loving States, Tennessee) by Theodora Taylor Page B

face. I hear the sound of glass breaking, and then I feel something warm rushing down my face, followed by a much hotter pain.
    Then I hear my mother scream, “Oh my God!” as I tumble from the stool.
    “What is wrong with you?” I hear her yell at the guy who threw the bottle. “She's only a child!”
    “Red.”
    “She's only a child!”
    “Red.”
    The one word pulls me out of the dream. Makes me open my eyes to find for countless time in fifteen years that this is a memory, not something happening to me right now.
    Right now, I'm not in some honkytonk bar, but on a couch, my flushed face pressed against someone's chest. That same someone's fingers on my old beer bottle scar.
    I jerk back into a sitting position, my wide eyes landing on Colin, who's also in the process of sitting up. But much slower with his hands in the air like someone who knows he's been caught doing something he shouldn't have.
    “What were you doing?” I ask him, even though my frantic mind is easily putting together what happened.
    I'm still in the purple lace dress I was wearing last night, and the couch isn't folded out. We must have fallen asleep while watching the movie, with me somehow ending up all the way in Colin's arms.
    It's morning now, with soft rays of light illuminating everything in the room. I can easily imagine what Colin saw when he woke up. My puckered scar in the full morning light with no makeup to mask its appearance. And now my scar is once again throbbing. Because of the nightmare, because of Colin's touch…
    “Why were you touching me?” I ask him, breathlessly.
    “I was curious about your scar, so I touched it,” he tells me, lowering his hands.
    “Why would you do that?” I ask, coming to my feet. “Seriously, what the hell?”
    “Sorry,” he mumbles. He comes to his feet, too, and for a moment his eyes cut away from mine… but then they come right back to my face. Right back to my scar.
    “How did you get it?” he asks, the old confidence creeping back into his voice.
    “That's none of your business,” I tell him. “You bought my time this weekend. You didn't buy my back story.”
    His eyes narrow and the silence stretches out real thick between us.
    But then he reaches into his back pocket, and takes out a thin leather wallet.
    “Beggin' your pardon, Red,” he says with a lazy Alabama drawl. “I didn't realize I hadn't paid you enough. How much do you want for your back story?”
    I stare at him for a long, hot angry moment. Then I say, “I don't know. How much do you think it will cost me in legal fees when you sue me for punching you right the hell out for asking me that? Cuz that's how much it's going to cost.” I pretend to ponder this idea some more. “Course then you'd have to wait until I take the stand to hear the whole story, so maybe it's not worth it for you to find out.”
    Colin puts his wallet away with a grin. “You're a funny one, Red. Let me tell you, I'm looking forward to hearing what you come up with for this demo.”
    The mention of the demo takes near all the pride right out of me. Makes me remember Colin holds my future in my hands.
    Now I'm the one cutting my eyes away. Looking out the window, where the sun is sitting pretty high in the sky. Josie will be here soon. Sweet, charitable, flawless Josie, who wears a pair of cat eyeglasses on her face as opposed to a beer bottle scar.
    “You're right,” I say, fully deflated. “I better start getting ready. Ginny will be here with my dress any minute now.”
    Then I rush away to the half bathroom where I left my toiletry bag before Colin can answer.

8
     
    I’m right about Ginny getting there soon. I’m barely out of the shower, and putting concealer over the scar, when I hear her sharp knock on the door.
    “Hi again,” she says after she squeezes into the bathroom with me, a cup of coffee in one hand and a dress bag in the other.
    She sets the coffee down, hangs the bag on the door, reaches into her purse, and the