by R. M. Lynn
I sigh, and decide I’ve had enough of the conversation and mutter, “I should get going. It’s not the time to hash any of that out with you.”
“When will it be then?” Kyler wants to know as he grabs my wrist gently to stop me as I begin to turn away from him. “Because we should, you know? Hash it out. We’re working together.”
“Kyler, I can’t,” I cry and yank my hand from him. “I just can’t do it, okay? I don’t mind working together, because I need this. But I can’t do that. Not yet, and I don’t know if or when I’ll ever be ready to do it.”
“Alivia, I-”
I interrupt him with a shake of my head and, “I should get going. I’ll see you soon.”
He nods weakly and lets me walk away from him.
◆◆◆
A week later, I’m driving in my car headed toward the gated community that Kyler owns a house in. I haven’t been invited, but I was able to convince Girardi to give me Kyler’s address and code for the gate. At some point in the afternoon, inspiration struck, and I needed to meet with Kyler to discuss how to proceed with it. Hopefully, he was home and willing to talk work with me.
Once I’m through the gate, I marvel at the mansions adorning the winding street. It’s only a little after eight at night, so if he is going out, it shouldn’t be for at least another hour or two. I park my car in his driveway and slowly make my way up the dimly lit walkway. I take a breath and shift my bag on my shoulder before ringing the doorbell. His house is massive looking from the outside, so I assume that’s why it takes him over a minute to get to the door.
He opens the door, initially looking shocked to see me. Shock turns into pleasant surprise, and then he eyes me, confused.
“Hey,” he greets softly. “What’re you doing here?”
“I’m sorry if I’m interrupting anything, but I needed to see you,” I tell him in a rush. “I have an idea, for the album, and I wanted to run it by you. It just seemed easiest to see you in person. If you have some equipment, I’d like to play you something.”
“How did you get in here?”
“Girardi gave me the address, and I was able to convince him to give me the gate code as well.”
He rolls his eyes and snaps lowly, “Fucking dumbass, that guy.” He moves aside to let me slip past him through his front door. “Come in. Kitchen is straight ahead. We can talk in there.”
I try not to ogle at everything as I walk through the pristine house. Kyler leads me into the kitchen, and I set my things onto the large island as he moves to the fridge.
“Want anything to drink? Beer, water, um… My mom has tea,” he tells me with a smile.
“No, I’m fine. So, I was downtown, and for whatever reason this couple just reminded me of…” They reminded me of us when we were together and happy, but I decide against sharing that. “They just looked so happy and in love, and I got this idea for a song. I started to write, but I completely blanked out when some lady asked me for directions.”
He smirks and murmurs, “Tourists, huh? What do you have so far then?”
I dig my notebook out of my bag and slide it across the countertop. He flips it to the page that’s barely filled halfway. When he finishes reading, he smiles a small smile at me.
“This is a lot different than your angry-fuck-you lyrics,” he says with a chuckle. “Glad to know you have love in your heart.”
I roll my eyes and mutter, “I thought maybe with this album, it can tell a story of a breakup. The first few songs can be a love story, and then a breakup happens later in the album. The final few songs can be about the aftermath.”
“I’ve done a lot of love and breakup songs before,” he murmurs. “What makes this album any different?”
I bite my lip as I consider his question. He waits patiently for me to answer. Finally, I sigh.
“Your fans know you for your heartbreaking songs of love and lost. Switching it up too much could risk the fan base,” I explain. “With this, the album will be different because I’m working on it. We can use female backup vocals to pull the story together and get an accurate representation of what a relationship looks like. Your fans will get both sides of the story.”
He nods slowly as I speak, taking it all in. He looks back down to the lyrics and asks me for a pen. I dig into my bag until I retrieve one and quickly hand it to him. I watch him scribble a few lyrics next to mine, cross a word or two out, and watch him compose a measure of notes at the top of the page to create a beat. After drawing each note, he drops the pen and passes the notebook back to me.
“Let me get my guitar,” he murmurs. “I want to hear how this sounds.”
“Okay,” I reply beginning to feel excitement in my chest.
“Living room is right there. I’ll meet you in there.”
He heads down the hall to the staircase, and I grab my things to move into the living room. I take a seat on the leather couch and look over my newly forming song. A moment later, Kyler returns with the same wooden guitar he had in college, and I feel a slight nostalgic ache rise in my chest. He sits next to me, tunes the guitar quickly, and has me turn the paper slightly so he can look at his measure as he begins to strum the notes accordingly.
“Sing this first line for me,” he murmurs. “Just the one.”
I hesitate only a moment before singing along to his melody. He smiles at me when the line ends, and he takes the pad of paper and pen from me once more.
“These two lines, I think, need to be switched,” he mutters as he draws arrows from line to line. “But if we just add one more line, I think it’d be a killer chorus.”
“I felt like it was a better opener,” I dispute.
He lifts a brow at me and replies, “Have any of your songs gone platinum?”
There’s no arguing with that reasoning, so I relent. He smirks at me before handing the notebook back to me. I write the word ‘chorus’ above the lyrics and glare back up at him pointedly.
“Still so sassy,” he murmurs with a small smile and shake of his head.
“Whatever,” I mumble and try to duck my head so he can’t see me grin.
He lifts his guitar again and begins to strum his melody all over again, giving me a nod to sing the lyrics we have so far. We stop once again to try to work out lyrics to open up the song, since apparently mine were better as the chorus.
“What about this?” he utters and starts to scribble down a few lines on the paper.
As I lean in to read his writing, I hear some pitter patter coming into the kitchen. At first, I think it’s a dog. However, when I look over my shoulder, my breath is sucked out of my lungs instantly. A little girl with dark brown hair and hazel eyes stands quietly in the threshold of the living room and kitchen.
“Daddy?” she whispers.
Kyler looks up immediately and murmurs, “Yeah, baby? Everything okay?”
I watch her shake her head; a few tears slip down her cheeks in the process. I feel like I could cry, too. Kyler stands from the couch, and I can’t keep my eyes off of him as he walks over to the little girl and crouches down in front of her. His hand raises to brush her bedhead out of her face, and her arms wrap around his neck, her face hiding in his neck.
“I’ll be right back,” Kyler mumbles to me as he lifts her up. “It shouldn’t take more than five minutes to get her back down.”
I can’t get any words to come out, so I just nod shortly. My brain is absolutely scrambled once I’m alone with my thoughts. He has a daughter. She called him daddy. He has an actual daughter. She looks just like him, and she’s beautiful. I don’t know how I didn’t know, she’s had to have been in the news somewhere. Then again, whenever I see Kyler on anything, I try to skip over it. I wonder who her mother is and where she is. Are they together? Does she live here with them? My thoughts race faster and faster, and eventually, I decide to pack up my things and get out of there.
Just as I stand up from the couch with my things, Kyler reappears and stands in my path to an exit.
“I didn’t know,” I whisper and run a shaking hand through my hair.
He bites his bottom lip before mumbling, “Yeah, I try to keep her out of the public eye. My mom watches her a lot, so I’m able to go into the studio without her. She’s the whole reason I’m in a gated community.”
I swallow and shake my head, still completely shocked at seeing her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I whisper finally.
“When would you have liked me to tell you, Alivia?” he asks, and I know he’s getting angry because he uses my full name. “Was I supposed to tell you years ago, when you refused to answer any of my calls or texts or my fucking emails? How am I supposed to tell you when I can barely get you to look me in the eyes while we’re at the studio?”
I don’t reply because I don’t have a good answer for him. Because he’s right.
“What’s her name?” I ask so softly, I’m not sure he even hears me.
I know he does when he whispers, “Lucy. My mom named her.”
“What about her mother?”
He walks to the kitchen, still in my sight and calls, “I’m going to need a drink if we’re going to do this tonight. You want something now?”
I tell him I do, and I watch him fill two glass tumblers with an expensive whiskey he pulls from the small cabinet above the fridge. He asks me to sit back down, and I do reluctantly as he brings me a glass. He sits down next to me, takes a sip from his glass, and runs a hand through his hair.
“What do you want to know about her? Her mother, I mean,” he mutters lowly as he looks at his glass.
“Whatever you want to share,” I whisper.
He looks at me then, and replies, “Really? You really want to know? Because I promise you’re not going to like it.” When I nod at him, he continues. “The girl that I… The girl I slept with that night, the night I did what I did to you…” He shakes his head and clears his throat. “I cheated on you, and to make matters worse, I got a baby out of it. I didn’t know the girl before that night. To be honest, I didn’t even know her name until she sent me a letter some weeks, maybe months later. She told me she was pregnant, and I sent her money to get rid of it.”
I bite my lower lip after taking a long sip from my glass, and I mutter, “She obviously didn’t.”
He shakes his head with a shrug and says, “I forgot all about her. She literally didn’t exist for me. Violet Lane was just starting out in the big leagues, and everything was going great. I buried myself into my music, mostly just so I’d stop thinking about you.” I look at my lap when he says this, but he continues without adding to that specific thought. “I got back from our first tour with The Lost Boys, and I wasn’t even in my place for a week before I got a knock on the door. CPS tells me I have a baby, and that the mother put me on the birth certificate. They told me the baby was a month or two old and was sitting alone in a hospital in Wisconsin. They said it took them awhile to find out where I was.”
“A month or two old… Why was she still in the hospital?” I ask quietly and meet his eyes when he looks up at me.
“My baby was born premature and addicted to crack,” he tells me matter-of-factly. “She was left there alone, with no name, no mother, and only my name on the birth certificate. They told me if I didn’t claim her, the baby would end up in the system.”
I feel the tears hit the back of my eyes, feel the sting of them, but I will them away as he runs a hand through his hair.
“So, I called my mom, and I told her. CPS said I could have her go and visit her until I figured out what to do,” he explains quietly. “So, her crack whore of a mother fucked up her brain and left me to pick up all the pieces. I spent nearly everything I made on the tour to get Lucy to the best doctors I could find. When I passed every stupid fucking thing CPS needed me to do, I was able to fly out and get her. When my mom handed her to me…”
“I’m sorry, Kyler,” I whisper and put my hand on his forearm. “She’s beautiful.”
He gives me a stiff smile. “She’s so sweet. She really is great. She just… She has a hard time concentrating, and constantly gets bored doing one activity for too long. I’m pretty sure she has dyslexia. But it could be worse. The doctors are hopeful, so I have to be, too, for her.” He runs his hand down his face and finishes his whiskey. “I just try really hard to fix the damage done, to fix what I helped cause. The money I sent? She used it to buy drugs that helped my kid get addicted. I did that. To my daughter.”
“Kyler, you didn’t,” I assure him and shift up onto my knees so I’m facing him fully. “You’ve given her every chance to live a normal life. Well, normal with money.”
He smirks weakly.
“She looks just like you,” I whisper as he looks up at me.
“So, they say,” he mumbles. “Hopefully, next time you meet her, she’ll be in a better state. She’s a bit emotional, but I’m hoping it’s just because she’s four, and I’m the idiot dad who just doesn’t get it.”
“It’ll only get worse,” I tell him with a chuckle.
He smiles knowingly but turns serious as he takes in how close we are now, and whispers, “I missed you.”
I swallow and shift back onto the couch as I grumble, “Kyler, don’t.”
“But it’s true,” he insists quietly and reaches for my foot, his hand wrapping around my ankle, as my back hits the other end of the couch. “Don’t move away from me when I try to get deep with you. You did this shit when we were together. I can’t make you that uncomfortable.”
“I did not do this when we were together,” I argue. “When we were together, things were different.”
“How so? Because to me? It’s like we picked up where we left off,” he says with a small grin. “You know you missed me. I was fucking devastated without you.”
I roll my eyes and kick my leg so he lets go of my ankle and snap, “How do you think I felt, huh? Because I was fucking devastated, Kyler.”
“I know, Livy,” he whispers, his hand going back around his ankle. “I know. I’m sorry. I’ll never forgive myself for what I did. My daughter is a constant reminder of what I did. Do you think I like that, too?”
I shake my head and reply, “I don’t want her to be a negative reminder for you, Kyler. She’s your daughter, and I respect that. I adore her already because she’s yours. That’s all that matters.”
“See, when you say things like that, I just…”
“I know, but it’s different now. With or without your daughter.”
“There’s nothing different about how I feel,” he whispers. “I made a mistake. A huge, disgusting, awful mistake, and I can’t tell you I’m sorry enough.”
“Kyler, I… You know you have a place in my heart. You always will,” I tell him. “And I forgive you. I really do, but that doesn’t mean I’m over it.”
He nods slowly, his thumb stroking over my skin before murmuring, “I’ll take what I can get.”
I finish the whiskey, having momentarily forgot about it, and begin to stand from the couch.
“I better get going,” I mutter. “I’m a bit exhausted after that therapy session.”
“I look forward to the next one,” he teases and stands to lead me to the front door. “We can meet again tomorrow if you’re available to work on that song. The guys are at the studio for comps.” When he sees my blank expression, he explains, “Comps are like pieces of songs the producer puts together to complete a song. Noah just needs the guys to put some things together, and I have to stay home to watch Lucy because my mom is busy with something.”
“So, you want me to come back here?” I ask. “To your house, with your daughter, in the day time?”
“If that’s okay,” he responds with a smirk. “You can come when she goes to bed, if you’re more comfortable.”
“I’ll think about it and let you know,” I murmur and open the front door.
“Looking for
ward to it,” he says in response.
He watches me walk down the walkway, and I look over my shoulder at him. I give him a small smile, and I see him wink in response. I feel my stomach flutter in response as I climb into my car that’s out of place in a neighborhood like this. It’s as if Kyler and I are starting over again, and for once, I allow myself to think it could be a possibility.
◆◆◆
Chapter Seventeen
Kyler
“Hi, what’s your name?” I hear my daughter ask as I dig around in the fridge for a snack for her.
“Lucy, who are you talking to?” I call to her and look up to not see her in the kitchen or in the living room.
“The lady, Daddy!”
I head toward the hallway and see Lucy with the door wide open, and Alivia standing in the entryway with a sheepish grin on her face.
“Lucy, what did I say about answering the door without me?” I scold her as I reach them.
My daughter ducks her head and mumbles, “Not to do it.”
“So, next time there’s a knock at the door or if the doorbell rings, what are you going to do?”
“Tell you first,” she grumbles and crosses her arms over her chest.
“Very good,” I murmur and look to Alivia. “Hey, glad you made it.”
“I said I would,” she says with a smile and looks down at Lucy as I close the front door. “Hi, Lucy, my name is Alivia. But you can call me Livy.”
“Hi, Livy,” my girl replies with shy smile. “Do you like to color?”
“I love to color,” Alivia tells her.
I take in my daughter’s smile and interject with, “Why don’t we get you that snack, baby, and then you can show Livy your room. Sound good?”
Lucy nods and skips off to the kitchen. Alivia and I follow her, and I pull out a clementine for Lucy before grabbing a kid friendly cup to fill up with water for her.
“Livy, will you help?” Lucy asks softly and pushes the fruit toward Alivia at the kitchen table.
“Sure,” Alivia says even though she sounds very unsure of herself.