“You don’t have to say anything, sport. Your friend told me you’re doing well.”
My friend? Who—?
“That you’re still planning to go to college, and you’ve been in touch with accommodations. I’m so proud of you,” he said again. “So proud.”
“Who told you?” I asked.
“I thought you knew.” He cleared his throat. “Your friend, Mr. Hill, came to see me yesterday.”
My heart. Oh my gosh, my heart sank deep in my stomach. I put a hand to my gaping mouth.
“I hadn’t planned to accept any visitors, of course, but the warden insisted it was urgent. You can imagine my surprise. Of all people, he was the last one I expected to see waiting at the table.”
“Lawson.” I swallowed. “Lawson came to see you?” Savana gasped, her hands popping over her mouth. “Why?”
“To remind me what I fool I was for refusing to speak to my own daughter.”
Hot tears filled my eyes and I leaned back against the nearest wall for support.
“To remind me that no man’s pride is worth holding over the love of his family. And you’re my family, Harper. You’re all I’ve got in this world. And knowing you’re still moving forward with your plans for an education? That makes me so happy.” He chuckled softly. “I gotta say, I’m more than a little amazed by the support you have in that boy. He’s damned proud of you, too, and apparently a pretty big deal. Few of the other inmates were telling me he’s won awards and tours all over the world.”
If might’ve laughed, if I could’ve mustered one, which I couldn’t.
Lawson had flown to Ohio to talk to my dad. He’d done that. For me.
“Time’s up,” he said, and I blinked rapidly. Straightened. There was still so much to talk about, so much I wanted to say, to ask. “I’ll reach out again, okay? At least let you know where I end up, so you can come see me. You know. If you want.”
“Okay,” I whispered. “I’d like that.”
“Okay. You take care, sport. I love you.”
Fresh tears pricked my eyes. “I love you, too, Dad.”
The line went dead, and I pressed my phone to my chest. Shut my eyes, leaned my head back against the wall. My heart was beating so fast, my mind racing.
Chris and Savana were at my side in milliseconds, rubbing my arms, smoothing my hair.
“Are you okay?” asked Savana. “Do you need me to get you anything?”
“Water?” Chris chimed in. “Juice? Vodka?”
“She can’t drink vodka, goober.” Savana’s sweet southern drawl curled around my emotions, calming me by degrees. “She’s havin’ a baby.”
“Oh, right.” Chris’s eyebrows stitched together with concern. “Seriously, though. Are you okay?”
“Honestly?” I lifted a shoulder. “I’m not sure.”
The doorbell rang and the three of us exchanged bewildered glances.
“Did you order food, Chris?” asked Savana. Then, addressing me, she said, “Chris always orders takeout during life’s crises. Usually Chinese.”
“Szechuan chicken works miracles!” Chris blew on her freshly painted green nails. “Proven fact. It’s already paid for, could someone get it? I don’t wanna mess up my manicure.”
Since I was the only one not doing her nails, I volunteered, padded to the front door. Braced myself for the waft of food that may or may not bring on a bout of nausea. I could never tell. Some scents were fine. Spearmint, grass, syrup—all good. But others. Bacon, onions, anything fried. Made me sicker than the one time in my life I had a stomach virus.
I didn’t check the peephole.
I flipped the lock, opened the door.
And there he was.
Looking cleanly handsome in jeans and a pale beige Henley. His eyes were darker somehow, a stark contrast to his styled blond hair. My heart responded immediately. A rhythm no one commanded but him.
“Hey.” His gaze searched mine. “Can I come in?”
chapter twenty-eight
Once the shock wore off, I stepped aside. Held the door open for Lawson. He smiled wistfully at me as he walked in.
Here we were again. In each other’s space. Breathing the same air. I wasn’t prepared. Sure, there were a million things I wanted to say, another million I wanted to ask. But I hadn’t aligned a single thought. It’d been a week since I left, and I still couldn’t make sense of anything.
Silence whirled around the space between us. I hadn’t noticed how empty the house looked. No furniture, no photos or paintings. No smells floating in from the kitchen. Lawson shifted on his feet, gazing around, and his movements echoed off the bare walls.
“Can I get you anything?” I asked. “Water?”
He shook his head. “Saw Chris’s car outside. She here?”
“She and Savana—”
“—were just leaving.” Savana and Chris came bounding down the stairs. Chris was still blowing on her nails. How long had they been watching? “Hey, Law.” Savana moved to kiss him on the cheek, and he inclined his head, letting her.
Chris patted his arm. “See you next week, okay?”
Lawson nodded but didn’t answer. His eyes were on me. Careful, steady. As if he might look at me wrong and shatter me into a million pieces.
Savana gripped my shoulder, kissed my cheek. “Text me.”
“K.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
The moment the door shut, and Lawson and I were alone, he said, “I had an entire monologue worked out in my…” He whirled a finger close to his head. “But naturally I’m at a loss for words.”
“Yet here you are.”
He bit his bottom lip. “Yeah.”
“Should we sit?”
Amusement played a gorgeous tune on his features as he looked around. “On what space of floor?”
Nervous, I moved for the stairs, sat on the second-to-last step. Tucked my hands between my knees.
He did the same, added space between us, although there wasn’t much. I could still reach out and touch him. Could easily call to memory his warmth, the responsive sounds he made. The sense of safety when I was wrapped in his arms.
“Maybe I should start,” I offered.
His brows arched.
“You went to see my dad.”
He rubbed his palms down his thighs. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
His brows snapped back down again. “Why?”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
Sunlight sifting in from a window glinted off his hair. He smiled, not happily but as if he was forcing down a bottomless glass of fortitude. “You still don’t get it, do you?”
A mere handful of words spoken between us in days and already I was agitated with him. “Get what?”
His gaze could’ve cut through steel. “Why do you think I went to see your dad?”
Now we were playing twenty questions? I sighed, frustrated. “To get him to talk to me?”
He shook his head. “To wake him up.”
I blinked at him, confused.
“We have a finite amount of time on this earth, Harper. Finite. Tomorrow? Doesn’t exist. We make plans, decisions, but in reality, there’s no guarantee we’ll draw our next breath. So, why in the hell would we spend even a second wasted in fear, hate, self-loathing or, I don’t know…” His shoulders lifted and fell. “Not showing the people we love how much they mean to us?”
Warmth wove through me, a soft, glowing ember I’d managed to keep suppressed. Being this close to him, it pulsed and crackled, eager to burst into a full-blown, raging fire.
“So, ask me again,” he said. “Why did I go see your dad?”
I tilted my head in question. Why?
“Because I love you, Harper. Because telling you will never be enough.” His throat muscles contracted. “Not for me.”
Our eyes held, his full of kindness and patience. My high school English/Lit teacher, the same one who spent an entire semester on Shakespeare
, told us once that there were old souls walking the earth. Moving past the rest of us in our infancy, observing what they’d already seen but through a new pair of eyes.
I’d thought it before, that Lawson was an old soul. No other explanation made sense for the wisdom he conveyed in every glance, every gesture. Every word that came out of his mouth.
He said, “And what I feel here?” He set a hand to his chest. “An involuntary urge to never stop showing you how much. So, yeah, I visited your dad.” Pausing, he asked, “He called you?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. I’m glad he did.”
“What about you?” I asked. “The reporters, the venues you had scheduled. Has anyone come around?” Wasn’t until after I’d asked the question, I realized I was afraid to know the answer.
He shrugged, look at his hands. “Not yet.”
Seconds passed in silence.
“Does Jenna know?” I asked.
Confusion contorted his features. “What?”
“Does Jenna know you’re here?”
He blinked rapidly. “Harper.”
“Does she?”
“I don’t think so, but you need to understand—”
“I need to understand?” My face heated. My fingers dug into my knees. “I need to understand?”
“Yes.” He was so calm. “You need to understand that what you think you saw was in reality nothing at all. Nothing.”
My lips trembled. “I saw you.” Outside. By his truck. Wrapped up in each other. The look on Jenna’s face, as if she’d suddenly gotten all she’d ever wanted. “You were holding her.”
“Was I?”
“If memory serves—and it does—we were all there, Lawson.”
“Is that what you really saw?” He sounded choked, as if, like me, he was on the brink of tears.
I opened my mouth to speak, to scream, Yes! Yes! That’s exactly what I saw! But as if by Lawson’s command, my mind rewound the film reel, plunking me back to the exact time and place when I saw them from the kitchen doorway.
Lawson leaning back against his tailgate.
Jenna with her arms thrown around him.
Lawson with his arms…
Lawson with his…
Jenna’s body was smashed against his, no space between them.
Lawson was…
I pulled in a shaky breath.
“Harper.”
Tears drew a misty veil over my eyes.
“There is no me and Jenna,” he said. “That guy you met at the awards show, the one who sat next to you when I got up to take the stage? He’s the reason why—well, part of the reason.”
I felt my brow crinkle. “How?”
“He played backup guitar for the band Jenna was singing lead for at the time, when we were…” He drew in a breath, exhaled. Rubbed his hands together, slowly. “We never really talked, him and me. In passing, sure, and mostly about guitar, until the day he called me, out of the blue, to tell me that Jenna had been seeing someone else.”
His eyes found mine. Pain coursed through my chest, sudden, raw. Protective. I was protective over him. Maybe I hadn’t realized until then—I was fairly certain I at least hadn’t realized the magnitude of it—but there it was. A deep-seated discomfort, a stewing anger toward anyone who would dare hurt him.
“Who was he?” I asked.
He broke my gaze, shook his head. Flicked a piece of lint from his jean-covered knee. “Can’t remember his name. Just that he was bigger than me.”
“Bigger.”
“You know.” His hands indicated the space of air on either side of his shoulders. “Taller. Beefier. Gym rat.”
“So, what you’re saying is she left you for a muscle-head.” It was almost comical. Almost.
“Hey, if the roles were reversed, I might’ve left me for a guy with big guns. Lot less complicated than—” he tapped a finger to his temple “—whatever’s usually goin’ on up here.”
“Less complicated, more arrogant,” I said, and he shrugged.
“Regardless, the filler-guy you sat next to in Vegas was just a catalyst. An important one, sure, but it would’ve only been a matter of time for me and her. Looking back,” he said, “on the aftermath that brought about uncertainty and self-doubt, both of which finally, finally turned into one eye-opening realization…” He slowly shook his head. “That wasn’t love, Harper.”
“What realization?” I was breathless, incapable of breaking his stare.
“That I’d spent too many years trying to be someone else. Some version of a guy who bent and molded himself to please another person. I used to think that was an attribute, you know?” His laugh was soft, his smile faint. That smile did far more to me than a smile should’ve. “I remember telling a reporter once that if you didn’t like me, it was on you, not me, because I had a knack for accommodating people.”
I huffed a laugh and a tear escaped. “You do that.”
“But in the space between letting go, being alone and then…you,” he said, shaking his head, “I discovered something pretty amazing.”
“What?”
“That I like myself.”
Lawson had always been open with me. In fact, never once in the short time we were together had I felt he wasn’t being completely honest. I hadn’t stopped to think maybe he wasn’t always so unguarded. That he’d once hidden who he was to make someone else happy. Sure, Savana had mentioned it. Katie, too. But hearing him say it, here and now? A welcome slice of truth.
“I can’t imagine anyone not liking you for who you are,” I said. “You’re the most wonderful person I’ve ever met.”
“Harper.” I couldn’t remember if I’d ever seen him blush. He was so used to the attention, the compliments on his looks, his values, the gentleness he exuded in everything he did. But he was. He was blushing.
“Which is why I still have to leave, Lawson.” My heart thudded in my ears. “I have to.”
His gaze snapped to mine. “No,” he said. “No, you don’t.”
“I can’t be the one who takes you away from your dreams,” I said and kept going even as he looked away, shaking his head. “I can’t be the one who damages the career you’ve worked so hard for. You’ve earned everything you have, Lawson, and you deserve the world.” My eyes pooled with fresh tears. “And if your success means I have to watch from a distance, then that’s what I’m going to do. Because I care for you. Because I want you to have everything in life that you’ve ever dreamed of—”
“I want you,” he interrupted. He took my hands in his, grasped tightly. “Don’t you understand? None of that even matters if you’re not here to share it with me.”
I eased my hands free, folded them in my lap. “They’ll never let go of what my dad did. Not anytime soon, at least. And the crazy thing is? I get it. They want what’s best for you.”
“Shouldn’t I at least get a say in that?”
“In a perfect world?” Yeah, he should’ve. But our world wasn’t perfect. And his was on another stratosphere, one most of us only caught glimpses of every now and again. Never too close to touch.
“You don’t have to make decisions for me,” he said.
“No.” I inhaled a shaky breath. “But I have to make decisions for me.” Rising, I whispered, “You should go.”
He stood, too. Followed me as I made for the front door. “You’re having my baby, Harper.”
The hint of anger in his tone stilled me. I turned, looked at him. “I won’t keep you from your child, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
His head shook slowly from side to side. His eyes never left my own. “That’s not at all what I’m worried about. You’ll be a good mother. I have no doubt. And, yes, of course I want to be a part of our child’s life. But that’s the thing. I want to be a part of your life, too, and I want you in mine.”
“That is the thing, Lawson. Me being in your life means you lose yours. Did you think I wasn’t listening when Katie and everyone else told you your new mu
sic was the best they’d heard from you—ever? That the industry is still buzzing after your last performance? How could you think I’d be okay with that? How would that make me any better than Jenna?”
“You honestly believe I care more about the music than I do about my family?”
“I believe your future is too bright for you not to shine.”
I kept telling myself that one day he would thank me. My dad had years left in prison. While it stood to reason the news would die down soon enough, that reasoning wouldn’t apply if I stayed with Lawson. They would keep dredging it up. Slapping it in everyone’s faces—a reminder that of all the women in the world Lawson Hill could choose to be with, he’d picked the daughter of a criminal. His firmly established, wholesome image would forever be tarnished.
No.
I couldn’t do that to him.
I wouldn’t.
“Please, Lawson,” I said, teeth chattering uncontrollably. “You have to go.”
And he did.
With one last look at me, the same sad smile he’d worn when I’d opened the door to him imbedded in my memory, he walked away.
chapter twenty-nine
I didn’t know why I’d agreed to go. The heat was unforgiving. One of the hottest projected for the summer, the radio deejay had said on the drive over to the festival grounds. I wore the jean miniskirt I’d picked up on my first shopping trip with Savana, a tank with Rock Royalty splayed across my boobs, and my faithful, tatty pair of Chucks. Hair up in a ponytail and minimal makeup, I blended in with thousands of other festivalgoers.
Or so I thought.
Recognition raised a few glances. Couples leaned into each other. Looks ensued. Curiosity, disgust, back to curiosity. For weeks, my face had been plastered alongside Lawson’s all over the internet. However, most didn’t spare me a second glance. Too busy drinking, dancing, laughing, I was one in a sea who’d come to see live performances by some of the best artists in the business. I wasn’t special. Savana and Chris stayed close to my side, the three of us holding hands as we maneuvered through the crush toward the stage.
We’d arrived at exactly the right time. People were already chanting his name. Law-son! Law-son! Law-son!
An MC in jeans, boots and a backwards cap took the microphone and said, dramatic as an announcer in a boxing ring, “We’re here, people!” He thrust his hand in the air, which was gripping a red Solo cup. The crowd cheered, whooped and hollered. “We’re here and it’s time for our main event! It’s time for our headliner. He is a multi-time Grammy, Billboard, CMA and ACM winner. With fourteen number one singles, albums that have sold more than sixty-million copies. Ladies and gentlemen, coming to the stage is a recording artist I am honored to call my friend. Please give a warm, Nashville welcome to Lawson Hill!”
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