Free Wild Card: Boys of Fall by Mari Carr Page B

talking. But it had to be her call.
    “I don’t want to say good night.” Lorelie looked around the parking lot. “How did you get here?”
    “Walked. My truck is still DOA and the B&B is only a few blocks away.”
    “Feel like taking a drive? I can drop you off later.”
    He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, placing a quick kiss on top of her head. “There’s nothing I’d like to do more.”
    She graced him with the sweetest smile that had ever been sent his direction, and then led him to her car. They hopped in and pulled out of the parking lot.
    “Where we headed to?” he asked.
    “It’s a surprise.”
    He liked the sound of that.
    Lorelie pointed to the dashboard. “Radio?”
    He fiddled with the dial until he found an old Keith Whitley song. He quietly sang along as Lorelie drove. Neither one of them felt it necessary to fill the ride with chatter, letting the soft country melody add to the peacefulness of the night.
    Glen recognized her driveway and he was slightly surprised that she would bring him to the ranch. Then she bypassed the house and the barn, taking a dirt road he hadn’t seen before. Within moments, she was pulling next to the same creek where they’d chatted last October.
    It was chillier now than it had been in the fall, so neither of them left the car. Instead, Lorelie turned off the engine, but kept the battery engaged so the radio continued to play.
    Then she unhooked her seat belt and twisted in her seat to look at him.
    He followed suit. “I like it here.”
    She nodded. “It’s my favorite place on the ranch. Do some of my best thinking by this creek.”
    “What do you think about?”
    Lorelie sighed. “Everything. And sometimes nothing.”
    Glen glanced out the windshield. The night was clear and bright, the sky filled with a million stars. “Sometimes I forget how many stars there are. Rarely see them in the cities where we play.”
    “So you really like life on the road?”
    He started to nod, and then stopped, unwilling to lie to her. “I used to.”
    “But not anymore?”
    He shrugged. “It’s getting harder.”
    “Because of Trent?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Why are you in Quinn?”
    Damn woman was too astute, too clever. “I punched Trent after the last concert.”
    Her eyes widened, first with shock, then he thought with amusement. “Wish I’d been there to see that.”
    He chuckled, but said, “Not my finest moment, I can assure you.”
    “Why did you hit him?”
    “He was trying to take advantage of a young fan. Gave her drugs, shit like that.”
    Lorelie gave him a confused look. “Sounds like that was your finest moment.”
    Glen sighed. “I think I’m getting too old for a lot of crap that’s going on around me lately.”
    “How old are you?”
    “Thirty-eight.”
    She snorted. “That’s hardly old.”
    “I got a decade on you. And believe me, I’m feeling every minute of it these days.”
    “I’m going to circle back to my original question. Why are you here? Did you get fired?”
    He shook his head. “According to my manager, I’m laying low until the dust settles.”
    Lorelie frowned. “You would actually go back to working for that asshole?”
    Glen didn’t respond. Mainly because the answer was yes, and he was ashamed of that. Ashamed to tell her that he would. But what choice did he have? His life was spent on the road.
    When he considered what that entailed—basically just playing his guitar and his crummy, sparsely furnished apartment in Nashville that he rarely saw—he realized it wasn’t much of a life.
    When the silence lingered too long, she figured out the answer without him speaking. “There must be other bands you could join. I can’t believe you have to keep playing for someone you clearly don’t respect.”
    “There are other bands.”
    She lifted her hand as if the answer was simple. And maybe to her it did seem that way. To him, it meant starting over again—and for the first time since he stepped foot in Nashville