The faint hum of neon lights flickered overhead, casting a warm, buzzing glow across the worn wooden floors of Dawson’s. The smell of cheap beer, old leather, and the sharp, earthy scent of a rainstorm that had rolled through earlier still clung to the air. From the far corner, the jukebox crackled out a lonesome country song, full of twang and heartbreak — the kind of song that clings to your ribs if you let it.

But none of it mattered much to me tonight.

Tonight, it was just her and me.

I told her my name — Wes Carter — like she didn’t already know. Hell, everybody in Larkspur, Texas, knew everybody else. You couldn’t buy a tank of gas without hearin’ three different versions of the latest town gossip. But her… she’d always been different. Special, somehow.

I’d been watchin’ her for years, though I don’t think she ever rightly noticed. Saw her slingin’ coffee at the diner, barefoot and laughing under the bleachers after Friday night football, twirlin’ around at town fairs with that easy, unbothered smile that just about knocked the wind clean outta me every damn time.

God help me, but I’d been pining for that girl like a fool.

Never could quite work up the nerve to say a word that mattered — not ‘til tonight.

Her hand was small and sure in mine, her touch soft, delicate in a way that made me feel like I oughta protect it with everything I had. We were swaying real slow, right there in the middle of that beat-up old bar, like the world outside the swinging doors had just plain gone and ceased to exist.

I caught myself tracing slow, lazy circles on the back of her hand with my thumb, heart hammerin’ hard enough I was sure she could feel it. She smelled like vanilla and sweet tea — sweet and familiar — and I knew right then and there, I wasn’t ever gonna forget it. Not in this lifetime, maybe not even the next.

She was lookin’ up at me with those bright eyes of hers, and damn if it didn’t just about undo me.

So I leaned down, kept my voice low, and said the only thing that felt true in that moment:

“If it’s all the same to you, sugar… I’m thinkin’ I’d like to dance with you ‘til they shut off the lights. Maybe even longer.”