Hearts on Fire

by Alison Packard

  “So Barry advised you to talk like that?”

  “Yes.” Trista lifted a hand to her hair. “And he made me get these extensions.” A grimace twisted her mouth. “They’re so Taylor Swift; the early years. Which was fine for Taylor, but I’m not her. I’m me. Don’t tell anyone…” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “But I’ve made an appointment at the hotel’s hair salon. I’m having them take out the extensions. Barry won’t know until I hit the stage tonight.” She clapped her hands in delight. “I can’t wait to see his face. He’s going to have a royal freak-out.”

  Jessie chuckled at Trista’s girlish glee. “I’m sure he will. But I’m glad you’re asserting yourself. Don’t let Barry make you into someone you’re not. You’re super talented. He’s lucky to be managing you, not the other way around.”

  Trista’s eyes widened. “You think I’m super talented?” At her nod, Trista squealed and threw her arms around her.

  Jessie staggered back, surprised at the girl’s reaction.

  “Thank you so much.” She pulled back and flashed a shy smile. “I’m sorry. I got a little carried away. You really are my idol, you know. I wasn’t making that up just to suck up to you. I care about what you think.”

  “Well, I think you’ve made the right decision about those extensions. You’re too petite for all that hair.” Jessie looked past Trista and saw John staring at her. He pointed to his watch and gave her a stern look. “I’ve gotta go. Time for rehearsal.” She smiled at Trista. “I’ll see you later. I can’t wait to see your hair.”

  “Me too,” Trista said, then turned and took off down the hall, her flat rubber soled shoes squeaking on the linoleum as she ran.

  Jessie watched her until she disappeared around a corner, then, with a shake of her head, she caught up with John and continued down the corridor.

  The first thing she saw when she stepped onto the stage was Drew and Wally standing together on the other side. Whatever they were discussing was serious. At least that’s how it looked anyway. Drew wore a scowl on his face, and Wally was gesturing wildly with both hands. That was never good—she knew that from personal experience.

  While their tech guru helped her with in in-ear monitors, she tried to ignore Drew and Wally by adjusting the ear pieces, but she couldn’t help but sneak glances their way. What were they talking about? Had Drew informed Wally he wasn’t doing the duet? Wally wouldn’t be happy about that. For some reason, he was like a dog with a bone when it came to that song.

  “You’re good to go,” Dane said, as he handed her the receiver pack. At the show tonight, he’d tape it to her back, but for rehearsals she usually slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans.

  “Thanks, Dane,” she said, just as Drew stepped around Wally and moved toward the riser, where his two guitars had been set up for use during rehearsal. He picked up his Fender Strat, glanced in her direction, and then turned his back on her. Pain knifed through her heart. If this was how he was going to act for the rest of the tour, she wasn’t sure she could take it.

  “We need to talk.” Wally strode toward her and he wasn’t happy.

  “What’s going on?” she asked as he put his hand on her elbow and guided her upstage and away from the band. “I saw you and Drew talking. Did he tell you he’s not doing the duet?”

  “No, it’s worse than that.” Wally rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “He told me he’s not finishing out the tour with us.”

  Jessie’s jaw dropped. “He’s bailing on us?”

  “He’s going back to Nashville after the show. I tried to talk him out of it. I even offered him more money.” Wally let loose a breath that was half frustration, half weariness. “He said no.”

  “He hates me that much?”

  “No. He cares about you that much. Damn it, girl. You claim to care about him too, but how can you if you don’t trust him? Love is about taking a risk. You’ve been playing it safe on that front for years.” He paused, his face so red she feared he might have a stroke. “You’re twenty-five years old with a whole lifetime ahead of you. Do you want to spend it alone? Because if you do, then keep on doing what you’re doing. You’ll be alone the rest of your natural born life.”

  Stunned into speechlessness, Jessie could only watch Wally stomp off stage in a huff. In all her years with him she’d never seen him get so worked up over anything.

  For several moments she stood there. Alone. Drew was only yards away, but he’d never been farther. Because of her. Because of her fear. Wally’s words reverberated in her head, and for the first time, she actually listened.

  An hour after rehearsal ended, Jessie stood in the main room her suite and held up two dresses by their hangers. “Which one should I wear?” she asked Nikki, who was sitting on the sofa, looking back and forth between the two garments.

  “The black is sophisticated, but it looks like something you’d wear to a funeral.” Nikki shifted on the sofa. “I’d go with the wrap dress. You look great in that darker shade of purple. Plus the hemline is a little longer so when you sit you don’t have to worry about showing too much thigh.”

  “The wrap dress it is.” Jessie draped both dresses over one of the chairs at the table, then moved to the sofa, plopped down next to Nikki, and tucked a leg underneath her hips to get comfortable. “Thanks for helping me get ready for the interview. My hands are so shaky. I’m sure if I’d tried to put the eyeliner on myself I’d end up looking like a damn raccoon.”

  Nikki laughed. “You’re welcome. I’m happy to help,” she said, absently rubbing her baby bump. “How did rehearsal go?”

  “Not bad. Luckily, Drew has played with the band before so it wasn’t like they were getting used to someone new. Plus he knows the songs.” It wasn’t quite a lie. The rehearsal had gone well except for the tension between her and Drew. She could practically feel his eyes boring holes into her back as she stood on stage in front him and the band.

  “I noticed things were a bit chilly between you two in the meeting this morning. Is everything okay?”

  “No. It’s not okay,” Jessie said, surprising herself with the admission. But after this morning, she felt closer to Nikki than she ever had before. Maybe what she needed was the female perspective. “He hates me.”

  “Hate’s a pretty strong word. And judging by the way he’s always acted around you, I’d say his feelings are on the opposite end of the spectrum. Why do you believe he hates you?”

  “He thinks I don’t trust him.”

  “Is he right?”

  “No. Yes.” Jessie looked at the ceiling and groaned. “Oh, it’s so damn complicated. Drew’s the first guy I’ve ever let myself truly care about. But it’s so hard to talk about my life before I got famous. I did some things I’m not proud of and I don’t want him to look at me differently.”

  “Let me tell you something, I’ve been married to David for seven years, and during those seven years we’ve had a lot of ups and down. There were days I didn’t like him much and vice versa. But even when we wanted to strangle each other, we never stopped loving each other. Has he disappointed me? Yes. Have I disappointed him? Many times.” She leaned forward and put her hand on Jessie’s forearm. “But all of that has made us stronger. Trusting each other has made our bond even deeper.”

  “But David loves you. Drew doesn’t feel that way about me.”

  “Are you sure? For him to be this upset tells me he has deep feelings for you. Most of us don’t get angry with people we don’t care about.” An impish smile tilted the corners of her mouth. “Unless they cut us off in traffic.”

  Jessie chuckled, then sobered. “Last night he told me something about himself he hasn’t shared with anyone.”

  “Did you feel differently about him afterward?”

  “No. But it’s not the same thing.”

  “Sweetie, it doesn’t matter what the thing is. It’s the fact he shared something personal with you. He made himself vulnerable to you, and for most guys, that’
s huge. They don’t open up easily.”

  “I want to tell him.” A lump formed in her throat. “But I’m scared.”

  Nikki gently squeezed Jessie’s forearm. “It’s okay to be scared. But if you love Drew, then you need to risk it. You may lose him for sure if you don’t.”

  Forty-five minutes after Nikki had left her suite, Jessie followed John out of the elevator on the floor below hers, and quickly located the directional room sign on the wall. She stopped and stared at it. In a few short minutes, she was about to do the unthinkable. Be completely forthcoming about her life. Her entire life.

  “John,” she said, and put a hand on her chest in hopes of calming its pounding beat. John pivoted his big body and regarded her with a puzzled expression. “I can handle it from here. Will you wait for me at the elevators, please?”

  “Wally said you’re not to be left alone,” John said in his usual no-nonsense tone. “It’s for your safety.”

  “I understand. But the room isn’t far and there’s no danger.” She gave him a reassuring smile. “I—I just need to do this on my own.”

  Doubt flickered in his eyes. “I like this job. I don’t want to lose it. Wally wasn’t happy that I fell for the candy bar routine yesterday morning.”

  Jessie tried not to smile. “I’m sorry about that. It won’t happen again. There’s only one bank of elevators and…” She pointed to the stairwell sign. “And the stairs are right there. I couldn’t get past you if I tried.” She smoothed her hands over the silky knit fabric of her dress. “And as you can see, I’m not dressed to make an escape. Not in this dress and these heels.”

  “All right,” he said, grudgingly. “I’ll stay here.”

  “Thank you.” She touched his arm briefly, then brushed past him and moved quickly down the carpeted hallway until she found the room she was looking for. Before she could change her mind, she took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

  Several seconds passed, and in those seconds, her already frazzled nerves grew taut with a mixture of fear and dread. For the briefest of moments she considered turning tail and running. But she didn’t, the stakes were too high.

  The sound of the lock turning caused her heart to plummet to her stomach. Her knees shook and she took another deep breath, hoping to calm her racing pulse. No such luck.

  When the door opened, Jessie looked into the eyes of the person she would tell her story to. If he would listen. “Hey,” she said, in a shaky voice. “Can I talk to you?”

  Drew stared at her for what seemed like an eternity, then gave her a silent nod and pulled the door wider before retreating into his room. On trembling legs, she crossed the threshold and closed the door behind her.

  Chapter Nine

  The nerves dancing in Jessie’s stomach were a dozen times more powerful than the night she’d met Miranda Lambert and Kenny Chesney. That meeting occurred in the green room at the CMA awards five years ago, and when she’d finally gathered the courage to approach two of her favorite singers, it was all she could do to keep from shaking. Just as she was trembling now as she stared at Drew’s rigid back. He’d moved to the large window and seemed to be unusually interested in the reproduction of the Statue of Liberty across the boulevard at the New York, New York hotel. Or maybe he couldn’t stand the sight of her.

  “Why are you here?” He turned from the window, his expression anything but hospitable. And the half packed duffle bag on the bed made it clear that Drew meant what he said. He was leaving. Wally’s voice played in her head. He’s angry because he cares about you. She prayed Wally was right. “Don’t you have an interview to do?”

  “Yes, but talking to you is more important.”

  “Is this about the duet?”

  “No.”

  Impatience flared in his eyes. “Then I can’t imagine why you’re here. It’s not like we have anything to say to each other.”

  “Could you please just listen to me?” She made a pleading gesture with her hands, pressing them together. Her palms felt hot and clammy. But at least her knees had stopped knocking.

  “Fine.” He scowled at her and shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “I’m listening.”

  She took a breath to control her racing pulse and began. “I grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, not Jackson like I’ve always claimed. As far back as I can remember, it was just me and my grandmother. I never knew my mother or father. When I was a baby, my father robbed a convenience store, and he shot and killed the store clerk in the process. He was sent to prison, and was murdered inside when I was about seven. I heard my grandmother talking about it with one of the neighbors. My mother took off right after my father went to prison. She never came back. After I met Wally, I asked him if he would hire a private investigator to find her; she’d died in Tallahassee, Florida around the time I left Hattiesburg.

  “Until I was thirteen, I had a pretty decent life. My grandmother loved me, and I loved her. We didn’t have a lot of money. She supported us on the social security check and food stamps she got each month.”

  “What happened when you were thirteen?” Drew asked.

  “My grandmother got sick. Actually, it had been coming on for a while, but I didn’t know what it was. I thought she was just getting forgetful. It got worse. She started putting things in weird places and sometimes she’d look at me like she didn’t know who I was. Then she started calling me Starla. Starla was her sister who’d died when she was fourteen and my grandmother was fifteen. I guess I looked like her, and Grammy was confused.

  “One day she left the stove on and almost burned up the kitchen. The neighbors stepped in and called social services. The day the social worker came to the house, Grammy was having one of her spells. She was confused and couldn’t remember her name or what town we lived in. She got upset and yelled at them.” She shuddered. “It was horrible. That’s when they took me away from her and stuck me in my first foster home.”

  “Your first?” Drew’s brows lifted in surprise. “How many did you have?”

  “Two.”

  “What happened to your grandmother?”

  “They put her in a state-run nursing home. Turns out she has Alzheimer’s.”

  “Has?” He cocked his head. “She’s still alive?”

  Jessie nodded. “She’s in a real nice place about twenty miles outside of Nashville. As soon as I had enough money, I anonymously arranged to get her out of the state home and moved her closer to me.”

  “Why did you have two different foster homes?”

  “It’s not unusual. A lot of foster kids get shuffled around. The first family was pretty nice, but after ten months Mr. Stiles found a better job in Atlanta. When they moved, I was sent to another family; The Palmers’.” She clenched her fists. “They weren’t as nice. The Stiles’ at least tried to make me feel like I was a part of their family, but the Palmers’ treated me like I was their maid. And if something wasn’t cleaned the way Mrs. Palmer thought it should be cleaned, I had to do it all over again. If I didn’t tuck in the sheet corners just right, she’d tear them and the blankets off and make me do it over and over until I got it exactly right. And the whole time she’d be telling me how lazy and stupid I was.”

  “She sounds crazy. Is that why you ran away?”

  “No,” she said, then hesitated. What she’d just told him wasn’t the worst of it. What came after was what she was most ashamed of. “I ran away after their son Bobby convinced me to have sex with him.”

  Drew’s mouth tightened into a grim line.

  “I slept with him willingly. I thought he loved me. He told me he did, and because I felt so lost and alone, and wanted someone to love me so badly, I believed him. The week after I was with him, the whole school knew about it and one of the kids told me that he’d made a bet with his friends that he’d be able to get me to have sex with him. After school, I tracked him down and asked him for an explanation. I told him I loved him, and that I didn’t believe he’d do something like that to me.” Mo
isture gathered in her eyes. “He laughed in my face and told me I was nothing but a sorry piece of white trash. Then he said he made extra money because it only took him four months to screw me instead of six. I guess I was an easy mark.”

  “You were naïve. You trusted him,” Drew said, quietly.

  “He was the last person I trusted until I met Wally. And then you.”

  “Did you tell the Palmers’ what he did to you?”

  “No. I knew they wouldn’t believe me over their own son. They thought he walked on water. About a week after I…it…happened, I ran away. I packed what little clothes I had in a backpack, grabbed the guitar my grandmother bought for me at the thrift shop, and got the hell out. I found an abandoned house across town and stayed there for a while. I shoplifted food and other necessities from the market. But then I almost got caught and it scared me so much that I took to waiting until restaurants closed for the night, and then I’d dig through their dumpsters looking for something to eat.” A grimace twisted her mouth. “It was disgusting, but I couldn’t afford to be picky.

  “A little over a month after I ran away I started having horrible cramps, and not long after, I started bleeding. There was a lot of blood, and I was so panicked that I rode my bike to the women’s health clinic and asked them to help me. They examined me, then told me I’d had a miscarriage.” She spread her hands in a helpless gesture. “I didn’t even know I was pregnant. I didn’t think it could happen from one time. Anyway, I heard them talking about calling social services, so I snuck out through a window and hightailed it back to the house. I got my stuff and rode out of town until the tires on my bike went flat.”

  “Did you have any idea where you were heading?”

  “Nashville. Since I loved singing and I was good at it, I figured if I could make it there, I could get a record deal. After I ditched the bike, I hitch-hiked and made it all the way to Memphis. To make some more money for the rest of the trip, I started busking at the farmer’s market. I did that for a couple of months until Wally showed up one day and heard me singing.”