Page 19 of Between the Stars

“The invitation,” she snaps. “You control him. He set it on fire and then drank a fifth of whiskey.”

He set it on fire? I can’t say I blame him on that one. But am I at fault for all this? I begged him. Fucking begged him to choose me. “How can you really blame me for this? He’s the one who said I’d never get far away from him.”

Josie’s eyes slide to mine. “You two are toxic for each other.”

“I know.” We are. She’s right, and though I want to argue, I can’t. I make him irrational, and he makes me reckless.

Josie’s lips flatten into a frown. She looks like Jace, but while she has a softness to her, her twin brother is nothing like that. “Listen, I don’t care what you guys do, or don’t do, but if you’re coming back here only to fuck with his head before you get married, I’ll kick your ass.”

“I told you, I’m here for family.” Am I lying? You know I am, but don’t tell her. Josie’s the last person I want to piss off. I once made her mad while we were on a family camping trip, and she cut the bottom out of my sleeping bag while we were sleeping outside. I’ve never in my life had so many bug bites on my butt cheeks.

“Is he seeing anyone?” I dare to ask, my heart pounding hard in my chest.

Josie looks over at me and then back to the icy roads and bats her impossibly long eyelashes at me. She has eyelash extensions if you haven’t guessed, but they look amazing on her. Every time I’ve tried to get them, I pick them off and I’m left with no eyelashes. “Not that I know of,” she finally answers. “I know he still fucks around with Rory sometimes.”

Fuck. Why does that sting so bad? My stomach rolls. “Really?” Rory and Jace had an on-again, off-again relationship all through high school. And it was always I who ended it. Remember when I said we were toxic? We were. We couldn’t have one another, but we were damn sure nobody else could either.

“I haven’t seen her around in about a year, but I’ve only been home a few months.”

After we graduated in May, Josie went to New York to hang out with a drummer she met in Nashville. That crashed and burned, so now here she is, back in Amarillo and living with her parents. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I wouldn’t mind being back here in Amarillo either. Though I couldn’t wait to leave growing up, something about it calls to me.

Josie fills me in on what’s been going on back in Amarillo since being home. Apparently, Morgan and Lillian are sleeping together, and Morgan’s wife is pregnant, but it’s not his baby.

Barron is now seeing a girl who wrecked her car into the side of the shop. “Is she living with him?”

“Not really, I guess just staying with him? I don’t know for sure.”

“And Rhett is seeing some girl from Dallas he met on Instagram.” It’s funny to me that Josie mentions Rhett. She lost her virginity to him and though things did not work out between those two, they’re friends. After I found out she slept with my brother, I called her a brother-fucker for an entire year. I stopped when I lost my virginity to her brother. I know, it’s such a web of messy and complicated, but I guarantee you all small towns are.

“Rhett didn’t tell me that. When did he meet her?” Rhett is my older brother and though I haven’t talked to him much lately, you’d think he would have told me if he was dating someone. I guess maybe since the engagement I’ve been a little self-involved.

“I don’t know. Thanksgiving?”

Explains why he didn’t come to Nashville for Thanksgiving.

It takes us less than twenty minutes before we’re at my parents’ house in Amarillo. Two miles from Josie and Jace’s house. Jose pulls down the long drive lined with oak trees that are bare and covered in thick ice. “I’m just gonna drop you off. I didn’t tell Jace I was taking his Jeep and he’s going to kill me if he finds out.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time he tried,” I tease, climbing out and falling right on my ass in the ice.

Josie bursts out laughing. “Watch your step.”

“Thanks,” I grumble, picking myself up off the ground.

I watch her back out of the driveway and then turn and stare at my childhood home. The massive white farmhouse built in the early 1900s blends in with the frosty ground with snow piled up along the edges of the stone driveway. My parents own Locket Plumbing, a business handed down from my grandfather, and his father, and while it’s given them a comfortable balance of work and life, financially, my dad sucks at investments. I don’t know much about it, but over the years I’ve heard there’s a steady decline he won’t admit to. Still, they’ve kept the same home I was born in. Every childhood memory I have of this place is… boring in a sense. Uneventful. It’s the ones I created on the outskirts of this town with a boy who was always up to trouble that hold meaning.

With my suitcase in hand, I step onto the wraparound covered porch and eye the swing to my right. It’s draped in a red and white flannel blanket, a mountain of firewood next to it. I think about slow kisses on that swing when my parents weren’t looking and the time Josie got eight stitches in her finger after trying to see how high it could go before we fell off.

My eyes drift to the solid wood front door with the Christmas wreath hugging the cast iron door knocker. I don’t knock. Instead, I carefully open the door and peek my head in. “Mama?”

“Abbi?” she calls out, a shriek following. I set my suitcase beside the door as she comes around the corner, her Christmas apron on. “You’re home? Oh my, bless your heart, honey.” She looks past me, and then her eyes sway my way once more. “Where’s Griff?”

I smile at her. “He’s on call. You look good, Mama.”

She cups my cheeks. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

I pull her in for another hug. She smells like sugar cookies. “What are you baking?”

“Everything.” She laughs, her softness comforting. Everything from her demeanor to her voice is gentle. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Annabelle Lockett raise her voice to anyone but my daddy and Rhett.

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