Songbird Series Book 2: Mockingbird

“Dad, you need to breathe.”

Breathe?

Easy for him to say. He’d never proposed to the girl of his dreams before. Then again, he was fourteen, so…thank God for that.

We lived in the South, sure, but we weren’t that deep South.

“I’m fine,” I mumbled, more trying to convince myself than anything else.

My son, Beau, laughed. “Yeah, sure you are, pal.”

I just shook my head and fiddled with the ring box in my jacket pocket for the five hundredth time that hour.

“She’s gonna say yes. We all know it already. Why are you even nervous?” Beau continued, looking at me with twinkling dark eyes that were now level with my own.

Puberty had hit my kid hard. He was damn near as tall as my six-foot-two frame, and skinny as a rail. Last week, he’d decided he needed to start shaving, because the faint porno mustache he was starting to grow apparently wasn’t working for him.

Fuck, we looked more like brothers than father and son; he just had his mom’s lighter hair.

“You keep telling me that,” I sighed in return.

“Dad, it’s been a year since we moved to the farm, almost two since y’all started dating. I already call her Mom, so this is basically just a formality.”

“We’ve never really talked about marriage…”

“Because you’re basically already married!” Beau cried with a laugh. “Come on, dude. Relax. At this point, the only thing that changes is her last name.”

I chuckled and arched an eyebrow. “If she changes it. She may not want to.”

Beau rolled his eyes. “Whatever. She’s already a Hayes. Always has been.”

I smiled to myself. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t agree.

Lennie Tyler had been a part of my life since I was a kindergartener: puppy love and holding hands on the playground and all of that. Fairly certain I’d been in love with her since before I knew what the word meant.

But life got in the way—got in the way in more ways than I could count. The first time was when we entered high school, the second when she took off for Nashville after graduation.

I moved to Atlanta with my band and Beau’s mother and thought that I had the rest of my life planned out, even though Lennie’s absence had always left a gaping hole in my heart. Rachel, Beau’s mother, got pregnant when we were barely more than kids, and at twenty-one, we had Beau.

And then everything took a nosedive.

Rachel wasn’t happy—not stuck in the small Georgia town of Snyder, and not with me, who was on the road or recording more than he was home. She took off one night while I was on tour, leaving Beau with my mother.

She and her friend were drunk, and neither one made it out of the wreck that night.

That moment was where I pretty much stopped living. I quit the band.

I moved back to Snyder, and I did my best to raise my kid on my own, despite the fact that I had no idea what I was doing. My heart, my head, my emotions—all of it was on lockdown.

I didn’t want to deal with any of it, so I shut it up and threw away the key.

That is, until Lennie Tyler walked her pretty ass back into my bar and set my dark, small world off its axis. I was done for the second I realized who she was, though it took me a few months to admit it, even to myself.

After a whirlwind summer spent losing ourselves in each other, I very nearly lost her for good, pushing her away under the guise of freeing her, or protecting myself, or some other cliché excuse.

The fact of the matter was, I was terrified of setting myself up for another loss, another disappointment, another heartbreak. But it didn’t last long.

Lennie being nothing more than a character in passing in the story of my life forced me to come to terms with a lot of things, but mostly with the battles going on in my own head. I got therapy.

I cleaned my shit up, and I won her back.

Now, here we were, damn near eighteen months since our second reunion, and it was time to lock her down, once and for all. That was, if I could get my nerves together so I could actually fucking speak without stammering.

“What’re you gonna say?” Beau asked with a bright grin.

This goddamn kid was more excited than I was, which, in turn, excited me more. He loved Lennie as if she’d given birth to him.

Hell, he probably loved her more than he loved me. She was definitely the easier parent to deal with.

She was the sunny beauty to my growly beast, and who wouldn’t rather deal with the sun?

“What do you mean, what am I gonna say? I wrote a goddamn song!”

“You’re just gonna ask her in the song?”

“I mean…that was the thought, yeah…”

“You sure she’s gonna get it?” Beau asked.

I narrowed my eyes. “You liked the song idea…”

“Yeah, but I thought you’d say something too…”

“Well, if I have to, I will!”

“Don’t you wanna plan it out? Talking from the heart ain’t exactly your strong suit.”

I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “Would you cut it out? You’re making me more nervous, and I don’t really need help there.”

“I’m just trying to help…”

“Beau.”

“All right, all right. My lips are sealed,” Beau said, throwing his hands in the air in surrender. “I just don’t want you to fuck it up.”

I glared at him from under the ridge of my brows. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, kid.”

“You know what I mean, Dad,” Beau responded dryly. “You’ve been in love with this girl your whole damn life, and you still get tongue-tied around her.”

My brows furrowed and I pouted a bit. “I ain’t good with words.”

“Yeah, we are all well aware.”

Just as I opened my mouth to tell off my much-too-wise-for-his-age kid, my best friend Carter appeared beside me, a shit-eating grin on his face.

“What?” I asked. “I don’t like that look.”

“She’s here,” he answered, bouncing where he stood.

Of course she was here.

Lennie wouldn’t miss a show if her life depended on it, yet somehow knowing she was present made my stomach lurch like I’d just hit the plummet on the world’s tallest roller coaster.

This wasn’t just some street dance our cover band was playing. This was probably the biggest night of my life.

“I can’t breathe,” I said. My voice sounded more than a little choked.

Beau and Carter both just laughed at me.

“You’re gonna be fine, Dad,” Beau insisted, giving me a hard slap on the shoulder.

“It’s a sure thing. Just put the ring on her and everything is gravy.”

“You sure about that?” I retorted with a disbelieving chuckle. “What if I totally blow it and she bails? What if I become the laughingstock of northern Georgia?”

“Well, then I’m going with her,” Beau said.

“Me too,” Carter smirked.

“Who needs enemies with the two of you?” I sighed, rolling my eyes again. “Fuck, where’s Leon when I need him?”

“Probably talking to Lennie, trying real hard not to blow the whole surprise,” Carter snickered.

My eyes widened in horror. “He fucking better not!”

“You know Leon can’t keep a damn secret!”

“Jesus Christ,” I groaned, scrubbing my hands over my face. “Should’ve just done this at home. Alone. Left all you idiots out of it.”

“Shoulda, woulda, coulda!” Carter smirked. “It’s showtime, buddy boy.”

“I fucking hate you.”

“Like hell. Beau, go make sure Lennie gets a real good spot.”

“On it.” Beau grinned, giving an excited salute before he ran off.

“You need a shot?” Carter asked.

“I need a whole fucking bottle.”

“Relax. That woman loves you. Don’t know why. She could’ve had me, but I’m over it.”

I rolled my eyes, but I laughed. “You’re never gonna stop, are you?”

“No. You obviously stole her from me, and I have a right to be upset about it,” Carter said with a wink.

His large hand wrapped around the top of my shoulder and squeezed. “But she belongs with you, man. Everyone knows it.”

I smirked a bit. “Thanks, man.”

“You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” I said with a chuckle.

I was practically vibrating with nerves, but that wasn’t going to change until I asked her. That much I knew.

“You got the ring?”

I brushed my hand against the pocket of my jeans. I knew it was there. I’d fiddled with it how many times now? But Carter’s questioning it made me question it.

“Yup.”

“You sure? You sure it’s in the box?”

My eyes widened and I stared at him, horrified. I tugged the box out of my pocket and cracked open the black velvet.

Thankfully, resting in the center was the ring: a slender gold band with a setting that made the diamonds look more like a flower than a single stone. It had been my mother’s ring, and my grandmother’s before her.

Not long after I pulled my head out of my ass and landed Lennie for good, my mom had taken the ring right off her finger and handed it to me. My father had died when I was around seven, but she wore that ring every single day until she put it in my hand, making me promise that one day she’d see it on Lennie’s finger.

She reminded me of it every day since, but Carter, Beau, and the rest of the boys were the only people who knew it was happening tonight.

“That’s a fucking stunner,” Carter said.

I smirked. “Matches the girl, then.”

“That it does,” Carter agreed with a nod.

I looked up to see our bassist—and my sister’s boyfriend—Travis, waving us toward the stage.

Carter grinned. “Looks like it’s showtime.”

I took a deep breath, puffing my cheeks out with air before I nodded. “Here goes nothing.”