Meant to Be

by Maggie McGinnis

  “Which is?”

  He pointed to his head, then her phone. “With our noggins. Let’s find the arena, then fan out from there. Her hotel’s gotta be close to the show, and I’m betting she’d find a park close to the hotel so she doesn’t risk getting lost.”

  “Million hotels. Just saying.” Phoebe scrolled madly on her phone. “And you’re going to have to go it alone after the next one. I need to go get ready for the concert.”

  “We’ll find her.” Cooper nodded fiercely. “We have to.”

  —

  An hour later, Shelby looked around the small crowd for the thousandth time, but…no Cooper. She’d started playing forty minutes ago—just a bunch of country covers by her favorite artists—and it hadn’t taken long for people to start pausing their walks so they could listen. Ten minutes later, she’d counted twenty people gathered around, and that number had doubled since then.

  The impromptu audience was friendly and polite, clapping sweetly at the end of each piece, and someone had even thrown a request her way a few minutes ago, which had prompted three more from other people.

  She loved this—loved sitting on a park bench with her guitar in her lap, playing to people who were only ten feet away. She loved how her voice floated in the air, unfiltered and unenhanced by electronics. She loved watching faces and seeing people mouth the words to the songs she sang. She loved pointing at them to join in the choruses, and hearing their voices float back to her.

  She loved it, but this afternoon, it wasn’t filling her like it always had when she’d done it with Daddy. She was throwing out wispy spider-threads toward her audience, but she didn’t feel like together, they were weaving a tapestry.

  She looked down at her fingers as she played the last notes of the current song, mostly so she could stop looking at the crowd, praying to see Cooper’s face.

  He wasn’t here.

  And she was out of time.

  “Would you guys like to hear something I wrote?” she said, before she could reason with herself not to put her own music out there so soon. What would she do if they hated it? Or if they clapped politely with tight jaws, then requested another Carrie Underwood?

  But the hoots and claps fueled her confidence, so she took a deep breath and strummed the opening chord of her second-favorite song on what she hoped would be a country album someday. Maybe Carrie would let her open for her, somewhere a long way down the road.

  Her fingers took over, and once she started singing, the crowd faded away, and she closed her eyes, transporting herself straight to Whisper Creek. She didn’t know when—or if—she’d ever get to go there again, but this song took her back to blue skies, gentle breezes, and the warmth of a family that had taken in a ragtag bunch of broken people and had made them whole again.

  Including her.

  Whole might be a stretch, still, but she was getting there, and they’d given her a place to find her footing again. They’d given her friendship and love. They’d given her…Cooper.

  As her fingers fell from the strings on the final note, she opened her eyes.

  He’d be here now. She could feel it.

  But as she scanned the audience once more, her face fell. He wasn’t. And now she definitely was out of time.

  She took a deep breath, looking up at the sky. She had one song she’d hoped to play for him—one that said all the words she wished she could say, all the ones she wished she had said—and she’d be damned if she’d leave the park before she sang it.

  So he wouldn’t hear it. She’d done her best, in her own way, to connect with him. It was a big city, and the chances of him finding her were minute, even if he was looking.

  She’d go back to the hotel, she’d sit quietly while her team made her into Tara Gibson, she’d go out on that stage tonight and be Tara Gibson, and then she’d dutifully get on her bus at midnight and roll out to Philly.

  She just wished the entire thing didn’t make her so damn depressed.

  “Okay.” She pasted a bright smile on her face, but couldn’t hold it. “I’ve got one more, and then I have to go. This one—it’s about bending and breaking and falling down…and finding the person who helps you get back up. It’s about being lost…and finding someone with a perfect map.”

  She took a shaky breath. “It’s about being so lonely you’re sure you’ll never feel whole again…and then finding someone who fills up all of those dark, empty spaces in your soul…and makes you want to live again.”

  She played it then, from start to finish, just the way it had flowed out of her on that carpet in her hotel room. She felt every note hit her heart, heard every word peel back layers she hadn’t even known she was hiding under, saw the song make its way into the hearts of the people gathered around her bench, and she smiled sadly.

  Someday Cooper would hear it.

  Someday she’d figure out a way to send it to him.

  And he’d know it was for him.

  He would.

  Once the clapping died down and people started back along the pathways to wherever they’d been headed before they stopped, Shelby leaned over to set her guitar in its case, and squeezed her eyes shut when a tear dropped onto the polished wood.

  “Y’know, Liam’ll kill you if he finds out you got his guitar wet.”

  Chapter 31

  Shelby’s eyes popped open, but she didn’t dare move, in case she was dreaming his voice, just like she had been for weeks already.

  “C-Cooper?”

  “You know someone else who knows your Montana guitar supplier?”

  She looked up then, and there he stood, and oh Lord, he was gorgeous. More gorgeous than her all-too-vivid fantasies and memories. He was city cop and Montana cowboy, piercing eyes and quirky smile, and…he looked like he’d just run a marathon. His cheeks were pink, and under his Red Sox cap, his hair looked adorably messy.

  “I—wow. I can’t believe you’re actually—”

  “Here?” He smiled.

  “Yes. I mean—I was hoping, and honestly, I was praying pretty hard, but you didn’t come. And then…you did.” She shook her head. “Never mind. I’m sorry. I’m speaking gibberish.”

  “You’re kinda cute when you speak gibberish. Just saying.” He reached out his hands toward hers. “You’re also shaking.”

  “I know.” She let her fingers touch his—smiled as he squeezed them gently. “I’m just surprised. Happily surprised! I didn’t think you’d find me.”

  “Were you playing that song for someone else?”

  “No!” She felt her smile match his. “No! It was for you. Of course it was for you.” Then she paused, swallowing hard. “You really heard it?”

  He nodded, pointing at a tree a few yards behind the bench. “Listened from there.”

  “So…what did you think?”

  Her throat felt suddenly way too small as she looked up at him, waiting for his answer. She’d put her entire heart and soul—fragile as they both were—into those lyrics. She was dying to know what he thought, but was more scared than she’d ever been.

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head slowly, and her stomach plummeted as she looked down. “Sounds like you’ve got it bad, though.”

  She tipped her head, looking back up at him. “What?”

  “Well, I mean, wow.” He raised his eyebrows. “You are seriously a goner for this guy. I just hope for your sake that he returns the feelings, because ouch. Kind of a lot to put out there to the universe, not knowing.”

  “You think?” Shelby narrowed her eyes, setting her jaw, but inside, a warm ember took hold. He wouldn’t be talking like this unless…right?

  He squeezed her fingers again, pulling her minutely closer. “You really wrote that song for me?”

  “Do you know any other cowboys I could have fallen in love with this summer?”

  His face grew serious. “Love?”

  “I know.” She closed her eyes, wincing. “It’s crazy. Eight weeks ago, we hadn’t even met. It’s definitely craz
y. And I know I’m kind of new at this whole choosing-my-own-destiny thing, but…I cannot see my world without you in it, Cooper Davis. I just—can’t. And I know your life is crazy and chaotic, and I know you have so much hell going on, and so much in front of you still, but I just—I don’t care. I want to help. I want to be with you. I honestly don’t care what anyone in the world thinks. Nuts or not, that’s my reality. I can’t help it. I’ve tried to help it, but I just—can’t.”

  He paused, and she could practically see her words bouncing around in his head, but she didn’t have any idea what effect they were having, because he wasn’t responding, dammit.

  Of course, the fact that she was talking eighty miles a minute probably wasn’t helping.

  But the ember she’d felt starting to glow got nervous and fizzled a bit. What was he thinking?

  Finally, he took a deep breath. “Wow.”

  She waited a long, painful moment, but when he didn’t say anything more, she pulled her hands back from his, crossing her arms.

  “It might be a good time to come up with something other than wow. Maybe. I mean, I pretty much just laid my heart out here in this pretty damn public park, and I know that’s not your fault or anything, but if you compare all I just said to wow…” She let her voice trail off.

  He still didn’t speak—just let his eyes scan her forehead, her jaw, her lips…finally landing on her eyes. She couldn’t read his expression, and it was killing her. If he rejected her right here, right now, she had no idea how she was going to pick up her guitar and walk back to the hotel without breaking down in sobs. She had no idea how she’d get up onstage tonight and pretend to be a happy-go-lucky pop princess without a care in the world.

  She had no idea how she’d get on that bus later tonight and roll out to the next five months of her life. Without him.

  “You are completely nuts,” he finally said, sticking his hands in his pockets.

  Her eyes locked onto those hands, mostly because he was no longer reaching for her—no longer wanting to touch her. And God, it hurt.

  “Yeah. I guess I am.” Her voice was shaky, and she hated that, but what could she expect, really?

  “I kind of love that about you.”

  He said it without emotion, like he might comment that he loved green shirts, and she felt her eyes narrow again as she looked at him.

  He sighed and sat down on the bench. “I also kind of love that thing you do when you’re nervous—with your fingernails. And I love how you laugh when something surprises you. And how you smile when you’re really, truly happy. I even love how you cry, which is just weird. I’m so not good with the crying thing.”

  “Actually, you’re pretty amazing at it.” She shook her head slowly, trying to bite her cheek so she wouldn’t smile.

  He rolled his eyes in dismissal of her compliment. “Mostly, I love that you somehow snuck past your own security team, found this stupid park bench, and sat here playing until I found you.”

  She let out a long, relieved breath. Maybe—maybe it was going to be okay.

  “Took you long enough. Just saying.”

  “There are a lot of frigging parks in greater Boston. Just saying.”

  She smiled for real. “I love that you knew to look.”

  “I knew.” He reached out a hand, brushing her hair back from her cheek. “I knew.”

  She leaned into his fingers. “I missed you like crazy.”

  “Ditto.” He sighed. “This past month’s kind of been hell.”

  “Agreed.”

  “So I have some news.” He took a deep breath. “About my case.”

  “Okay?” She braced herself for the worst, knowing she’d just poured out her heart to the one guy who could actually shatter it to pieces with whatever his news was.

  “Looks like I won’t need to sign up for those prison self-defense classes anytime soon.”

  “Wha—” She tried to make herself stop fussing with her fingernails. “What does that mean?”

  “Means I’m not headed to prison, Shelby. Means the case has been dropped. Means…that I am the master of my own destiny, a free man, all those clichés.”

  “Really?” Her heart sped up. No prison? No case? Free man? “Seriously, Coop? You’re—it’s over?”

  “It’s over.”

  “Oh, my God!” She launched into his arms, and he laughed as he gathered her close. “Thank God! I have been dying for weeks to know how it was going, but I couldn’t—I mean, I didn’t know—I mean—”

  “I know.” He smiled, tenderly brushing her hair out of her eyes.

  “So what happened? How did things finally get turned right side out?”

  “It’s a long, long story.”

  “But it has a happy ending? For real?” She took a shaky breath, hardly daring to believe it. “Can you maybe pinch me, just in case?”

  He laughed. “Not going to pinch you. It’s real. It’s over.”

  “When did you find out?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?”

  “It’s still a little fresh, yeah. Haven’t quite processed what it’s all gonna mean.”

  She pulled back, her stomach still trying to bash its way out from under her ribs. Could they maybe, possibly, actually have a chance here at some sort of future? Together?

  “What…might it mean?”

  “Well, my badge is apparently waiting for me.”

  “Oh.” She nodded, but felt her arms crossing over her stomach. But what would she expect? Of course he’d want his life back. “So you’re—going back to the job?”

  “I don’t know, actually. Depends on…a lot of things.”

  “Like?”

  He took a deep breath, staring out over the water, and she waited, trying not to twitch in agony.

  Finally, he looked at her. “Actually, I’m lying.”

  “About which part?” Her voice was small.

  “About the lot of things part.” He made a fist with one hand and tapped it uneasily against the other. “There’s really only one thing.”

  “Okay?”

  “For the past month, I’ve been living out of take-out boxes, sitting in a depressing motel room, doing everything I could to figure out how to get out from under this case, and do you know what I realized about two weeks after I got here?”

  She shook her head slowly, scared.

  “I realized, Shelby, that the biggest reason I was fighting so hard to get free of this elephant was that I couldn’t wait to leave that damn motel room and come straight to you…but come to you as an honest, upright, cleared man.”

  “Really?” Her breath was shaky still, but she felt a smile take hold.

  “I can’t explain it, because I’ve never felt it before, but I can’t imagine a life without you in it, either. It makes no logical sense. We barely know each other. You’ve said it, I’ve said it, neither of us believes in the whole love-at-first-sight crap…and yet, here we are. You’re sitting on a park bench in a city you don’t know, waiting for me to find you, and I’ve been running around for hours to every park in the damn city trying.” He took off his baseball cap and ran one hand through his hair. “It’s insane, right?”

  “Totally.”

  “See? You agree. And I live here, but you’ve got five more months on a bus, and then I don’t even know where you’re thinking you might land, so of all times to try to start a relationship, this is a pretty lousy one, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I have a family here, a job, a…life, such as it is right now. All I’ve wanted for the past year was to get all of those things back, and it finally happened.” He nodded, his eyes on the river again. “But if you, right now, asked me to get on that bus with you tonight after the show and spend the next five months bringing you coffee, I actually think I might say yes. It’s complete, utter insanity. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked sidelong at her. “You could totally disagree with any of these things. Just sayin
g.”

  “Can’t.” She grinned. “They’re all true.”

  “You know, I always considered myself a fairly mature, measured person. I’m logical, I’m analytical, and I’m—usually—fairly intelligent. But I am using none of those skills right now, and I gotta tell ya, it’s a little disconcerting.”

  “I think it’s awesome, if that matters.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I just offered to be your coffee guy for the next five months. Of course you’d think that was awesome.”

  “Well?” She shrugged. “I mean, it’s quite an offer.” Then she grew serious. “But you’d go nuts, even if your offer was remotely serious, which I know it’s not.”

  “I know.” He sighed. “And we haven’t even talked about the issue of my reputation, and its possible effect on yours. That’s huge—huge—and as much as I’d love to ignore it, we can’t. I won’t be responsible for destroying all the hard work you’ve done here to build your brand back up into something you’re proud of.”

  “Not so proud, just saying. Still singing bubble-gum pop every night.”

  “But obviously you’re singing the good stuff, too.” He pointed at her guitar. “And there’s no way Nashville isn’t going to snap you up once you’re out from under LolliPop.”

  “Well, no guarantees there, obviously.” Shelby nodded. “But my fingers are crossed. Just taking it one day at a time right now.”

  “Sounds like a good strategy.”

  “Coop? Where would you go, if you had no reputation following you? If you had no lonely pop singer lusting after you, wishing you could come on tour with her? Where would you go?”

  “Back to Whisper Creek.”

  He said it without even thinking, and her eyes widened as the words came out. “Really?”

  “Life is real there.” He nodded. “I know who I am there. I found out who you are there. So really? Yeah, that would probably be my little slice of Heaven, to go back there and settle down.”

  “Wow.” She nodded, picturing the scrapbook she’d started in the bus—the one with paint chips, and furniture sketches, and pictures cut out from home improvement magazines.