He’d seen her play guitar but never like this. Nothing like this. And the way she sang, the way she moved—it made his body tighten and his mouth go dry.
She belonged there. He’d never seen a human being belong anywhere as much as Jenna did on that stage, bringing a crowd of people to their feet.
The band was encored three times and the audience still didn’t want to let them go. Finally they took their last bows and the house lights went up, and all around him Michael heard people raving over the performance as they reluctantly left the theater.
He couldn’t seem to move. He stayed where he was, staring down at the empty stage, until Claire poked him in the ribs. “Dad! Are you ready to go backstage?”
“She should do this,” he said softly, his eyes on the place where she had been.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“This. She should do this. I can’t believe she ever stopped.”
“Well, bands break up all the time. Sometimes they get back together, and then break up again, and—”
Claire’s chatter faded into the background. He couldn’t believe he’d been so selfish as to think Jenna should stay with him, buried in Iowa, when she could do something like that.
He took a deep breath. “Let’s go find her.”
It was a zoo, of course. They had backstage passes, but even so, Michael was on the point of suggesting they leave when Jenna caught sight of them. She called out a greeting and made her way towards them, pushing through the crowd. Her face was glowing.
“I’m so glad you came. What did you think?” she cried out when she reached them. She gave Claire a huge hug and then turned to give him one, too. It was the first time they’d touched since that last morning, and in spite of his new resolve, he had to force himself to let her go.
“It was unbelievable,” Claire said excitedly. “You guys were tight.”
“We really were—if I do say so myself,” she added with a grin. She turned to him. “What about you, Michael? What did you think?”
“I—” he couldn’t think of the words to tell her how good she’d been.
“Not your cup of tea?” she asked after a moment, the bright light in her eyes fading a little.
“My God, no. Jenna, you were incredible. The whole band was incredible. In fact...” He hesitated. “I know you’ve got a hundred people waiting to talk to you, but if you have a minute—there’s something I have to tell you.”
Jenna glanced over her shoulder. “Molly! I’m taking five, okay?”
Molly gave her a thumbs up from several yards away.
Michael looked at his daughter. “Claire, do you mind waiting for me for a few minutes?”
Claire was looking at him with big eyes. “No, of course not.”
He was acutely aware of the ring box tucked in his right front pocket as Jenna led the way to a deserted dressing room.
“Is this okay?” she asked, leaning back against the Formica counter that lined the room.
He nodded. “Yeah, this is great.”
He hesitated a moment, gathering his thoughts, but Jenna spoke before he did. “I have something to say, too. I want to apologize for avoiding you this past week. That last morning was pretty intense, and I...I guess I needed a little space.”
“Of course,” he said. “I understand.” He hesitated again. “I need to apologize, too.”
“For what?”
“For being a selfish jerk.”
She stared at him. “Michael, you’re not a jerk. If I said something to make you think—”
“Jenna. I really need to get this out, okay?”
Her eyes searched his before she nodded. “Okay.”
He took a deep breath. “When I asked you to stay with me...I didn’t understand.”
“Didn’t understand what?”
“I didn’t understand this part of you. I thought I did, but...deep down, I don’t think I really took your music seriously. Not the way I should have.”
She tilted her head to the side as she looked up at him. “I haven’t always taken myself seriously.”
He nodded. “I know. And instead of helping you get over that, I treated your music like a hobby. Like something you could give up to be with me.” He took another breath. “But tonight I found out that it’s not your hobby. It’s your calling. I saw you on that stage, and...” he shook his head slowly, words failing him again. “My God, you were incredible. You were incandescent.”
She smiled at him. “Incandescent? I like that.”
“It doesn’t do you justice. Watching you tonight, I realized how selfish I was to suggest you give this up for me. You shouldn’t ever give this up, Jenna. Not for me, not for anyone.”
She stared at him in silence for a moment. “You mean that?”
“Yeah, I mean it. And I hope you can forgive me for asking you to be less than you are, just so I could keep you with me.” He smiled a little. “My only excuse is that I’ve never felt this way about anyone before, and it made me greedy.”
She was looking down now, and he couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
He knew he should tell her the rest. Even though they couldn’t be together—even though she’d never belong to him—he wanted her to know how he felt. Especially because he didn’t expect to feel this way again. Once in a lifetime was probably all you got for this kind of thing.
So it would be a damn shame if he never got to say it out loud.
“I’m madly in love with you, Jenna.”
She looked up then, her eyes wide and her cheeks flushing. “Michael—”
“Don’t,” he said quickly. He wasn’t sure which would be worse—finding out she felt the same, or finding out she didn’t. “Whatever you were going to say, you don’t have to. I just wanted you to know because—well, I thought you should. But it’s not going to keep us from being friends,” he added. “Nothing’s going to keep us from being friends. If only so I can get free tickets to Red Mollies concerts.”
That made her smile, although her eyes were suspiciously bright.
“We should probably get back now,” he said after a moment.
She nodded. “We probably should. But...before we go...” She hesitated. “Would you kiss me goodbye?”
He couldn’t have said no to save his life.
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her softly, slowly. He savored the taste of her, the scent of her, knowing it was the last time. He pulled her closer, until he could feel her heart pounding against his.
And then he let her go.
Chapter Thirteen
A month and a half later, the Mollies’ reunion tour officially ended. They’d played Kansas City and Omaha, Madison and Minneapolis, and finished up with two shows in Chicago.
They’d been a raging success.
So much so that Derek’s old manager from his Irontown days wanted to take them on. That, of course, would mean an exhausting tour schedule and recording sessions—and an official launch into the big time.
Jenna should have been ecstatic.
Instead she was lying awake in a Chicago hotel room, thinking about Michael.
She’d been sure that touring would be the perfect distraction, that it would fill every corner of her mind so there wouldn’t be room to miss him.
She’d been wrong.
She missed him every day, every hour, every minute. It didn’t affect her playing—if anything, she was better than ever, because every time she went on stage she remembered that he’d called her incandescent, and she was determined to live up to that.
But she missed him all the time.
The worst was at night, alone in her hotel room. She missed him so much then it was like the phantom ache amputees talk about—an ache in the missing limb.
A part of her was gone, and on some level she couldn’t accept it.
She and Claire emailed back and forth all the time, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to email Michael.
She’d finally figured out why.
If they started using email as a means of communication, she wouldn’t have a reason to call him.
Which meant she’d never have a chance to hear his voice.
She turned her head to look at the clock. She’d gone to bed relatively early tonight and it was only eleven. Michael often stayed up that late, reading or working on the computer.
She sat up in bed and grabbed her cell phone from the nightstand. She wouldn’t call, but she could text him. Instead of a persistent ring that would wake him up if he’d gone to bed early, a text would send just a single beep.
Are you awake?
She lay back down, curling up on her side with the phone in her hand.
It rang in less than a minute.
“Yeah, I’m awake. How about you?”
He sounded amused, and the rich, deep timbre of his voice sent a familiar thrill coursing through her. “I’m awake, obviously. Did you think I was texting in my sleep?”
“Well, I know your schedule’s been pretty hectic. Are you on the bus, or in a hotel room?”
“Hotel room. We’re here another couple of nights, while we figure out our next steps. We...we don’t have any obligations for the next couple of weeks, although Mitch wants us in New York by November.” Mitch was Derek’s old manager. They hadn’t signed with him yet, but they were talking about it.
There was a silence, and she wondered if he’d suggest she come for a visit.
“Yeah, I think Claire mentioned you were heading east. She showed me your interview in Rolling Stone, by the way. Even I know that’s a big deal.”
She took a deep breath and tried not to feel disappointed. “Yeah, we were all pretty excited. But I don’t want to talk about any of that. I want to hear about you and Claire.”
She heard him chuckle. “Don’t tell me Claire doesn’t keep you fully informed. She emails you all the time.”
“Sure, but I want to hear it from you. How is she doing in school, now that she’s had a couple of months to settle in?”
“She’s doing great. She won a writing contest last week, did she tell you?”
“No! She didn’t tell me. I got a three page email detailing her fear that no one will ask her to the winter formal, and not one word about this. Tell me all about it.”
They talked for an hour, about anything and everything. Jenna felt the tension easing from her muscles as they spoke, until the unbearable ache was almost gone.
But when they finally hung up, it came flooding back.
The tears came, too.
It was weak and ridiculous to cry like this, over a man who’d given her exactly what she wanted.
Her freedom.
There was a soft knock on the door. “Jenna? Are you awake?”
Apparently she wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep. She grabbed a handful of tissues from the box beside the bed and swiped at her eyes. “Sure, Molly, come on in.”
She could see immediately that her friend had been crying, too.
“Molly! What is it? What’s wrong?”
The redhead sat on the bed beside her and took a deep breath.
“I’m pregnant.”
For a second Jenna just stared at her. Then she threw her arms around Molly and hugged her tight. “Oh, wow. Does James know?”
James was her boyfriend of more than a year. He was a grad student at the Art Institute of Chicago, and head over heels in love with her
Molly nodded. “Yes, he knows. He’s ecstatic.”
Jenna sat back so she could study her friend more closely. “And what about you? Are you ecstatic?”
Molly ducked her head. “I am,” she whispered. “I want this more than anything.”
Jenna frowned. “If this is your ecstatic face, I’d hate to see you looking dismal. What’s going on?”
“How can you ask me that? With the band taking off like it has...everyone so excited...all the plans we’ve been making...oh, Jenna. I don’t want to give up on the Mollies now, after all we’ve gone through to be together again.”
Jenna gave her another hug. “Okay, then, we won’t give up on the Mollies. Why can’t you have both? The band, and a family?”
Molly stared at her. “Are you serious? But the way Mitch was talking...”
“Yeah, well, we’re going to have to turn Mitch down. But who says we have to fast track?”
She frowned as she thought about it. Suddenly, the path forward for the Mollies was so clear she could almost see it unfolding in front of her. “We can record whenever we’re ready to, and whenever we’re all free. We can tour once a year, maybe, for a couple of months. During the summer, so James can travel with us if he wants.”
Molly was looking at her like she was the answer to a prayer. “Do you mean it? You’d be willing to settle for that, when the band could be so much bigger? If we do what you’re talking about, we’ll never be huge.”
Jenna grinned at her. “Since when have we cared about being huge? I thought the idea was to be good.”
Molly grabbed her hands and squeezed. “Oh, Jenna. I think everyone would go for this. We all have other lives. Thao has her solo career, and Honey does all that Habitat for Humanity work. And I know Barb’s back with us now, but she loves to travel—on her own, not with the band. But what you’re talking about...this could work, Jenna. This could really work.”
“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s get everyone together and find out.”
***
They got a resounding yes from every member of the band. Everyone loved the idea of staying together, but on a smaller scale. It was such a perfect solution that Jenna wondered why no one had thought of it before now.
Maybe, like Jenna and Molly, they’d been so happy to be together again that no one had wanted to rock the boat. But they weren’t eighteen any more—and, as Molly said, they all had full lives. Rich lives, full of wonderful things they shouldn’t have to give up.
They agreed to go their separate ways for a couple of weeks, as they’d planned originally, but instead of meeting in New York they’d get together in Chicago to figure out exactly what they wanted to do next.
An hour after they said their goodbyes, Jenna was on I-88 heading west.
In five hours, she’d be back in Iowa.
But she had no idea what she was going to do when she got there.
She wanted to go to Michael. She wanted to throw herself into his arms and beg him to take her back again. But every time she imagined herself doing that, her old panic returned.
And suddenly she realized that as much as she wanted Michael, there was something else she wanted, too. Something else she needed.
Her family. She needed her family.
The first light of dawn broke in the eastern sky, shining in her rear view mirror. Her heart filled with a sudden fierce love for Iowa—for the state she’d always been so eager to escape. The clouds glowed with sudden flame, and all around her she could see the hills and farms and houses that had just been formless shadows in the predawn darkness.
She’d never seen anything so beautiful.
Her hands tightened on the steering wheel as she drove straight for her parents’ farm.
“Mom!” she called out even before she made it inside the house. “Mom, are you here?” The kitchen was empty, and she worried that maybe they’d gone out for the day. “Mom! Mom!”
Her mother appeared at the head of the stairs, a laundry basket on her hip. “My goodness, Jenna! You scared the life out of me. What are you doing home? We weren’t expecting you. I’m thrilled to see you, of course, but—”
And suddenly Jenna was crying. Her mother dropped the laundry basket and hurried down the stairs, hugging her close and murmuring into her hair the way Jenna had murmured into Claire’s, that day they’d been painting her dining room.
“It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“Oh, Mom...”
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. Just tell me what’s wrong.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m in love.
”
Once the words were out, some of the terrible tightness left her chest. She took another breath. “I’m in love, and I don’t know what to do.”
A little while later they were sitting at the kitchen table, and Jenna was warming her hands on a mug of her mother’s coffee.
“He’s told you how he feels, hasn’t he? Now you just need to do the same.”
Jenna stared down into her coffee. “Just like that, huh?”
“Well, why not? What’s standing in your way?”
She was quiet for a long time. Her mother watched her closely, but didn’t say anything.
Finally she spoke. “When Megan got sick, I didn’t come home. Remember? I stayed on tour with the Mollies.”
Irene Landry stared at her daughter. “Honey, you did come home. You came home every chance you had, between shows.”
Jenna shook her head. “I didn’t come home every chance I had. I could have been here a lot more.”
Her mother was frowning, trying to follow her train of thought. “Even if that’s true, what does that have to do with you being in love with Michael?”
“What if he gets sick? What if Claire gets sick? What if something scary and horrible happens, and I run away?”
Irene shook her head. “You won’t.”
“You don’t know that. I ran away from here, didn’t I? Even before Megan got sick. I ran away without even finishing high school.”
“You were running towards something, Jenna. Towards your music.”
Jenna shook her head. “I ran away from that, too. When I found out about Derek and Molly. I didn’t stay, to see if we could work things out. And, okay, maybe Derek wasn’t worth it—but Molly was. And I just walked away from our friendship, and from the band.”
She took a breath. “Allison would never have done that. She sticks with things. Jake, too. Allison wants to help everyone in the world. And Jake...he puts his life on the line every day to protect other people. There’s no way I can live up to that.”
“Jenna—”
Jenna wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. “Don’t you see? That’s the kind of person Michael and Claire deserve. Someone who’ll stick, someone who’ll put them first. Someone who—”
“My goodness, Jenna. I had no idea you put your brother and sister on such a pedestal.”
Cross My Heart: A Contemporary Romance Novel Page 18