Neon Dreams: Loving Dallas Part 4

"You're serious about this?"

She nods as I place the hat on my head and adjust the bill. "I am. This isn't a game, Dallas. You want to stay on this tour? You don't get in his way, don't steal his thunder, and do not encroach on his territory."

Right. I'll have no problem keeping my distance from his "territory."

As long as understands Robyn isn't a part of it.

"How the h.e.l.l are you, Denver?"

The amphitheater isn't packed yet, but it's filling up quickly. I adjust my in ears and I wave an arm as Ty lets loose a riff on his guitar. Lex pounds the drums hard enough that I have to shout into the mic. We've found a rhythm for the most part, touring together for the past couple of months. But Lexington Wilks doesn't have half the skill that Gavin Garrison does and yet he wants twice the attention.

"I'm Dallas Walker and we're gonna play some music for y'all tonight. We hope you like it."

I'm Dallas Lark and I have no idea who the f.u.c.k I'm trying to kid.

My family surname mocks me from my inner right forearm when I let the first few chords of "Better to Burn" rip.

Fake, it says. Traitor. Liar.

The label thought the name Dallas Walker had a nicer ring to it so after the unsigned artists tour, they dropped my last name as if were an unwanted appendage that could be hacked off.

I belt out a song my sister wrote and try to engage the audience. I don't think about how much I wish I could glance over and see her playing her fiddle next to me. And I don't nod to the drummer who I know always has my back. My sister and that drummer aren't here.

Trying my best not to pay attention to the fact that I haven't written a complete song in nearly three years, I make eye contact with a few women in the front row. One gives me a huge smile and holds up her phone so I wink.

With every song, the seats continue to fill and all I can think is Holy s.h.i.+t. This is my life.

It's surreal, the way the lights glow against the jagged outcrops. The crowd is rising up in front of me and it's as if the amphitheater itself just appeared in the middle of the rocks.

It feels . . . bigger than me.

Singing my sister's lyrics in this setting brings my past into my present. I can almost feel her here onstage with me, just as I can sometimes feel my parents and my grandparents even though they're gone. They live on in me-this gift they gave me allowing me to live my dream keeps them alive as long as I'm playing.

No matter how confident I seem on the outside, on the inside there was always this fear-this voice of self-doubt that said I'd never make it and that I should've just settled down in Amarillo and gotten a regular job like the rest of the world. But when I hear a few girls in the front singing along with some of my songs, and the stubborn spirit of the men who raised me fills my soul, the music takes over. The energy from the audience and the amphitheater is alive, fueling the show I put on. By the time I finish my set to a stadium full of applause, I can't hear that voice of self-doubt anymore.

8 Robyn.

THERE SHOULD BE A RULE ABOUT EX-BOYFRIENDS. THEY SHOULD have to get fat. Or bald. Or just . . . boring. Something.

They should not be allowed to become s.e.xy country music singers who put their perfect bodies on display while singing seductive ballads on stage night after night.

Seriously.

His voice booms through the amphitheater like a seductive lightning show. Crew members chat around me, equipment is moved from one place to another, vendors bring in more booze, but all I hear is him. The man who used to sing just for me. The one who let me belt out my favorite songs in the car as loud as my heart desired.

The hypnotic sound of his voice lures me toward the stage, where I stand captivated through the first half of his set.

After Dallas's first few songs, I do my best to shake off the dreamlike reverie his singing caused and return to the Midnight Bay display to make sure fans are still getting pictures with the Jase Wade cutout and the lit-up bottles. They made one for Dallas, too; it's to the right of the display and while there aren't as many people stopping to take a photo with it, the ones who do are female. And gorgeous. And making entirely audible comments about his a.s.s in those jeans and how s.e.xy and intense his eyes are.

After roughly the fifteenth comment about Dallas, I can't take much more.

"What do you say we just pack it up?" I smile at Katie and Drew. "I think we're good for tonight."

Katie gives me a knowing half smile. I'd never said much about my personal life, but one drunken night in my office a few days ago I poured most of my heart right out. All over the place.

"How about Drew and I handle the tear-down? See you back at the room?"

I glance up at the stage, where Jase is performing his last number. I should stay. I should stay and schmooze because it's my job. But I just . . . can't.

I haven't told Katie about Dallas's enticing pancake offer and I'm not going to. Because I'm not meeting up with him tonight.

"Are you sure?"

Katie nods and shoos me with her hand. "Get out of here. Drew and I have everything under control."

"You're positive?"

"We are." She nods at me again. "Pinky swear. We're going to check out what Denver nightlife has to offer anyways. Don't wait up."

"Don't forget we have an early flight tomorrow. I'll take a cab and y'all can have the rental car to haul the display in."

"Got it," Katie says. "Now, go, before Wade struts out here and tries to lure you onto his bus of dirty debauchery."

I giggle as I leave, but the sad truth is, I can't even remember what dirty debauchery looks like. My mom got sick while I was in college and taking care of her plus landing the interns.h.i.+p at Midnight Bay took up a lot of my time. Even once my mom was healthy, I was hired full-time at the distillery so I threw myself into my job-attending every event, catering to the needs of every potential celebrity endorser, and sitting in on strategy meetings that ran well past the hour the company was named for. I haven't had a lot of time for dating, much less debauchery.

It will all be worth it one day. At least that's what I keep telling myself. Sacrificing my social life for my career will pay off eventually. Once I'm settled into my plush corner office, I will find time to get a life if it kills me.

As I ride back to my hotel in a cab, I hear my mom's voice in my head.

"Robyn, have you eaten? Are you getting enough rest? Have you lost weight?"

I take decent care of myself. I jog three miles every morning. I make healthy food choices. I get as much sleep as my job allows, which, okay, isn't a ton. Surely I'll live long enough to see the fruits of my labor. Despite my mother's constant concerns.

But then there's another voice in my head.

My dad's.

Before an accident on the oil rig where he worked took him from us my senior year of high school, he had these little sayings. He loved Yogi Berra, used to quote him all the time. I didn't know much about Yogi except that he played for the Yankees. But after my dad died, I online-searched him. Like my dad, he had this charmingly innocuous way of giving advice.

"You have to be careful if you don't know where you're going, Pete. You might wind up someplace else."

My dad also called me Pistol Pete because I was kind of a wild child when I was little. I blame the red hair. As I got older he dropped the Pistol and just called me Pete. I can't even count the number of times I had to explain that when I had a friend over.

With my dad, well, Yogi's advice constantly in mind, I set my goals for myself extremely high. In high school, I was the valedictorian on my way to college. In college I was president of Pi Beta Phi and made d.a.m.n sure we won the award for the most community service. I worked my a.s.s off to get the marketing interns.h.i.+p with Midnight Bay and once they hired me full-time I set my sights on a promotion.

That's my thing. I know where I'm going.

"There's Robyn Breeland," people say when I walk down the street. "That girl knows where she's going."

Okay, so maybe they don't say it out loud, necessarily. It's enough that I know.

Or at least, I usually do.

When the cabdriver pulls up to the Hyatt Regency, I don't get out right away. I weigh my options.

Pancakes with Dallas or lying in bed staring at the ceiling all night wondering how long he sat at that diner alone.

Neither option is particularly appealing. But at least with one of them I might actually get some sleep tonight.

"Um, did we happen to pa.s.s a diner on our way here?"

"A diner?" The driver turns in his seat to face me. He's attractive, younger than I first realized. His head is shaved and there are tattoos on his arms that look like military insignia but it's too dark to be able to tell for sure.

"Um, yeah. A friend of mine said there was a diner near the amphitheater where you picked me up and I was thinking of meeting him there instead of calling it a night. Would that be okay?"

He shrugs. "It's your dime, lady. But there are two diners between here and the amphitheater."

c.r.a.p.

"Is one of them open all night by chance?"

"That'd be Rosa's. You want me to take you?"

Do I? Should I?

My head says sure. My heart is too p.i.s.sed at me to even weigh in right now. I pray for a sign. Usually I look for them in songs on the radio or street names. But tonight the radio is off, and I haven't paid any attention to the street names. So I go with my gut instincts.

"Sure. That'd be great."

I should've changed clothes.

It's the only thought I can hold on to as the cabdriver drops me in front of Rosa's Diner, a small fifties-themed place tucked between a run-down hardware store and an all-night pharmacy.

For G.o.d's sakes, I still have my Kickin' Up Crazy tour sponsor pa.s.s dangling from the Midnight Bay lanyard around my neck.

Nice, Robyn. Very s.e.xy.

I yank it off and shove it in my purse knowing that I should not care about being s.e.xy. This is just pancakes with an old friend. An old friend who might not even show.

Just as I whip out my compact to check my makeup, I see him out of the corner of my eye. Dallas beat me here, probably because I took a twenty-five-minute detour of indecisiveness. Snapping the compact shut, I pace for a few minutes.

"It's not a big deal, Robyn. Stop acting like a teenager having lunch with the varsity quarterback. It's just Dallas," I whisper-yell at myself. "You're being ridiculous. Cut it out."

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I don't know why, but it feels like this particular decision is much grander than its outcome warrants.

It's pancakes. He's a friend. No big.

But as I open the diner door and a bell chimes overhead, his eyes meet mine and the moment feels monumental. I check the steel cage I erected around my heart the moment I learned he was going to be on this tour. Seems fairly sound, no major breaches so far. That I can feel anyway.

I give Dallas Lark the best I-am-so-over-you, this-is-totally-casual-and-it's-all-good-in-the-neighborhood smile that I can.

His answering smirk tells me that one thing definitely hasn't changed-even after all this time.

I'm still a c.r.a.ppy liar.

9 Dallas.

THE WAY I SEE IT, I HAVE TWO OPTIONS.

Freeze Robyn out the way I've tried to do since she dumped my a.s.s three years ago, or man up and accept the fact that I'm glad to see her on this tour.

Sitting alone in a diner wondering if she'll show, I decide to quit being a p.u.s.s.y and let go of the anger and confusion I've held on to for so long. She ended things for one reason or another, reasons I may never know, and I have to shove my macho bulls.h.i.+t aside and deal with that like an adult.

I drum my fingers on the table impatiently while I wait.

"Patience, Dallas," my granddad used to say when he was first teaching me to play the guitar. I'd get so d.a.m.n frustrated when my fingers wouldn't cooperate. "The music isn't going anywhere," he'd remind me. "Be patient with it, with yourself."

I've just made up my mind to relax and let her know that I've put our past behind me when she breezes into the diner. A bell chimes at the door and all the progress I've made vanishes like a figment of my imagination.

Robyn Breeland is the kind of woman who steals your breath away just by entering a room and gifting you with a smile.

I shouldn't be surprised-she's pretty much always had this heart-stopping effect on me. But I thought the high from tonight's show might curtail my reaction to her a bit.

It didn't.

"Hey," I say, standing to greet her. "You made it."

"You know me," she says with a shrug. "Can't resist pancakes."

I fake a wounded look. "And here I was telling myself you might've come for the company."

I add "come" to my mental list of words not to say around Robyn, for my d.i.c.k's sake. He has some cherished memories of her that are fairly easy to evoke.

Robyn blushes as if she might be thinking something along the same lines.

"It's good to see you, Dallas." She says it like she means it and I grin like a lovesick jacka.s.s when she barely lets me give her a one-armed hug before we slide into the booth. "And I caught part of your show tonight. The crowd seemed really into 'Better to Burn.' I read that it's been getting some radio play, which is great, right?"

I nod at an approaching waitress and avoid Robyn's eyes. If I look directly at her, she'll see the truth burning in them. She always could see right through me.

"Yeah, Dixie wrote that one. It's doing well."