Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 70444 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70444 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Shit.
I swiped to open it and placed it to my ear.
“Hello?” I answered hesitantly.
“Oh, thank God. Is my son there?” a woman’s voice sounded shakily.
“Um, yes.” I paused and then scrambled from the bed, knowing this was going to take some explanation. I didn’t want to wake him after the night he’d had. “But he’s sleeping. Can I help?”
“He’s sleeping?” she asked, worry starting to take over. “We saw the news. Is he okay?”
I winced.
Apparently, he hadn’t called them to tell them that he was okay. I felt my body droop.
I didn’t know how to deal with parents. Hell, I didn’t even know how to deal with my grandfather, who loved me like no other.
Speaking of…I hadn’t called him, either. Shit!
“He’s fine.” I licked my dry lips. “He sustained a doozy of a concussion, and he’s been randomly throwing up throughout the night, but he’s asleep soundly now. He has another forty minutes before I have to wake him up again.”
She made a noise in her throat, then I heard her start to cry.
“Give me the phone, woman.”
I found my lips twitching as I thought, There is no way in hell this man isn’t Johnny’s father. He sounds just like him.
I waited for the phone to be passed on, and then a male’s voice replaced the female’s. Johnny’s dad.
“Who is this?”
“June Carter Common,” I offered up quickly.
Why had I given him my full name?
There was silence on the line. “Your name is June?”
He sounded…happy?
“Uh, yes.” I paused. “I was named after…”
“June Carter Cash?” Johnny’s dad guessed.
I found myself smiling. “Yeah. My grandfather, Tennessee Common, named me. My parents neglected to name me for a full month, and Grandpa wasn’t happy about not having a name to call me. So, he named me.”
Why had I just told him all of that?
“That’s good.” He sounded much calmer than his wife. “My wife watched the news and saw that cell phone video of all of those thugs surrounding him. Were you there?”
Was I there? I almost laughed.
“Uh, yeah.” I hesitated. “I was the one driving the truck.”
There was no more explanation needed than that. I mean, if they watched the news, then they had to have known what happened—that I hit those men with my godforsaken truck.
He started to laugh. “I like you, girl. When my son wakes up and is coherent enough to express cognitive thoughts, please tell him to give his mom a call. She’s worried about him.”
“You’re not?” I blurted, my heart warming at him saying he liked me.
I mean, surely he was worried about him, too.
“Yeah.” He paused. “I’m worried as fuck. I just don’t want you to think that I’m a pussy.”
I started to giggle, covering my hand over my mouth when it was a little too loud in the quiet room. “I don’t think it makes you a pussy to worry about your son.”
He grunted. “Maybe. Maybe not. But Johnny hates being worried over. ‘Night, girl.”
Then he was gone, and I was left staring at nothing with a phone pressed to my ear.
Johnny’s father had just been nicer to me in one conversation than my own father had ever been, and he hadn’t even met me yet.
I swallowed a sudden moan of sadness and went back into the room where Johnny was now staring at me with bleary eyes.
“My pop?” he questioned, sounding worn out and groggy.
“Yeah.”
“You tell him I was okay?”
I nodded my head.
“You confirm that you hit those punks with your truck?” he continued.
I nodded my head again.
“He say anything to that?”
I bit my lip. “He said that he liked me.”
He grunted. “Like father like son.”
Then he was out like a light, leaving me to wonder what that cryptic statement meant.
See, I sure wanted for it to be what I thought it meant, but with my luck, it probably wasn’t anything like that.
***
The next time I woke up, it was to an arm thrown over my waist, a scalding heat along my shoulders, back and thighs, and my feet tucked between two legs that were definitely much hairier than the blanket that I was used to waking up beneath.
My heart felt content, and I wondered if this was how it felt to trust someone implicitly.
I hadn’t freaked out over Johnny’s touch since that time at the bar. I was making progress. He was careful—always so careful—about how he touched me. He made me aware that he was about to do it, and he held contact with my eyes as he did it. Slowly and surely, he was making me accept him without undoing the progress he’d made by moving too fast.
And with that progress, came the thinking that if I could do this, maybe I could do that.
Unfortunately, that would have to wait, because when my eyes lit on my alarm clock, my heart started to pound.