by LJ Evans
♫ ♫ ♫
The next couple days went by in a blur. Derek and I texted and talked when we could, but we were back to leading our regular lives, and our regular lives were far apart in more than just distance. On Friday, Derek texted me after the funeral to tell me that it was over, and it had been shit, but he was glad he’d gone. He said he had a few things to take care of and that it might be hard to get hold of him for the next couple days, but that he hoped to see me soon.
I just didn’t know how to respond to any of that.
♫ ♫ ♫
Almost two days later, he’d been right. I’d only gotten a few one-line texts from him. Even though he’d told me that was going to happen, I had to wonder if this was the beginning of the end. I loved him. He loved me. But as we all know, love is just not enough sometimes.
So, I concentrated on reading my textbooks and working at the dealership, and just continuing the life that I’d led before it all. When I’d known I was a mess.
I didn’t feel like as much of a mess anymore because Derek, and my adventure with Derek, had helped heal the wounds inside me some. They were now just that scar that I’d been hoping for, instead of the scab that was ready to break open.
But loving Derek and not having Derek… That was going to leave a new wound. Cam had once told me that living without Jake was like living without a limb. Like suddenly, your right arm was gone. I think I finally understood. She was still living a life without a body part. I was going to be missing two from now on: the one I gave to my brother and the one Derek took.
The sun was barely filtering in my windows Sunday morning when I opened my eyes. I felt like something had woken me, but I didn’t know what. I looked at my phone, thinking maybe it had been that, but there was no text and no missed calls.
I took my grumpy, morning-hating body down to the kitchen and made coffee. Then, I decided I needed to bake. I hadn’t baked in so long that it felt like a skill that had gone rusty.
I turned on my Ed playlist on the phone, letting his love songs and life lessons wash over me as I went to work on the apple spice muffins that were a family favorite.
Mama came down, ready for our lazy Sunday, in jeans and a plaid shirt. She looked so country, and so like home, and so like Mama that it squeezed my heart with homesickness even though I was already home. She hugged me gently.
“Can I help?” she asked as she eyed me struggling with my one good hand and a barely-there one.
I shook my head. I needed to keep busy. She kissed my forehead, grabbed her own coffee, and headed to the granite bar to sit. I loved that bar. So many stories of our lives started there. The most important one being how Jake had rescued Cam from falling from the treehouse when he was seven and she was four, even though there was no way for him to see the treehouse from where he’d been sitting. That had been the first of many ways that Jake and Cam had saved each other miraculously.
Over the last couple days, the thought of Jake and Cam hadn’t overwhelmed me with guilt. Instead, I was beginning to feel happy that they’d had those moments together. I was also happy that Cam now had her little baby and the joyful guy who loved her with all her broken parts. Like I thought that there was a guy who now loved all my broken parts.
The last set of muffins was in the oven, and I was cleaning when the doorbell rang. Mama looked up at me. It was still early. Daddy, no more of a morning person than I was, was still sleeping.
Mama put down the iPad that she’d been reading on and went to the door. I kept cleaning. Salespeople were pretty much the only ones who rang the doorbell, and they were about to get an earful from my mama about Sunday mornings and respect.
So I was surprised when Mama’s voice rang out with laughter, “Baby girl, I think it’s for you.”
I threw down the dish towel and headed toward the door. Then I stopped dead in the hallway.
There was Derek. My sexy BB was smiling at me in that cleft-stretching way that made me turn to melted goo. In his arms was Jane the Kitten, and out the door behind him, I could see the Camaro.
My heart leaped into my throat as if it might become its own entity, and yet I was also frozen, like I hadn’t been by the sight of him in so long. I was shocked and confused and happy.
Then, my body took over, and I flew to his arms. Little Bird coming home. I was hugging him, and he was hugging me, and Jane was protesting with a loud mew. And he was kissing me, even with Mama standing behind us, and Jane clawing to get down.
I’d been missing my heart all week, and here it was again. In this man. For the first time since I came back to Tennessee, I felt truly and honestly home. No longer homesick. I was in the place I loved, with the man I loved, with the people I loved.
He pulled back and smiled again. “Miss Mia, did you miss me?”
“God, yes!” I said and pulled his fingers into mine as I went to shut the door, but then Lonnie appeared on the steps, smiling in his happy lumberjack way.
“Phillips!” he said and reached in to hug me.
“How are you both here?” I asked incredulously.
“Drove straight from L.A. after the funeral,” Lonnie said.
I looked at Derek in surprise.
“Wh-what?”
“Shit, I just spent thirty hours in a car with this smelly beast, and the girl I love asks me why I did it?” Derek laughed.
“Moron!”
The timer on the oven went off, and Mama said she’d grab it as I led the boys into the kitchen. We put Jane down, and she immediately followed Mama to where the food smells were coming from.
Mama took the muffins out and then bent to pick up the little furball. “Poor tailless kitty! What did these meanies decide to name you?”
“That is Jane,” Derek said with all his charm. “Jane Austen, but your daughter refuses to call her that. She’s just Jane the Kitten to her.”
“Jane Austen, hmm? I kind of like that,” Mama said, and I rolled my eyes, which earned me a quick peck from Derek.
I debated rolling them repeatedly to ensure several more kisses, but with Lonnie and Mama present, I wasn’t sure—even with Good Girl Mia gone—I could be that outrageously open about my love for this man whose hand I still held tightly in my own.
“And who’s your friend?” Mama asked, referring to our tall lumberjack.
It was funny that Mama didn’t know him. I felt like I’d spent a year of my life with the band. “This is Lonnie. Lonnie, this is my mama, Marina.”
“Mama!” Lonnie said and squished her in a hug that made her yelp.
“Unhand my woman, you maniac,” Daddy’s teasing voice said from behind us all.
I jumped and turned as Daddy entered the kitchen.
Daddy stuck his hand out for Derek’s. “Good to see you again.”
Derek shook his hand. “I’m surprised your wife let me in the house after seeing Mia the way she is.”
“She’s okay. I’m sure that has a lot to do with how you took care of her after it all,” Daddy said. I was surprised that he and Mama weren’t shooting daggers at him.
“Lonnie, why don’t you help me take these muffins and coffee out to the patio? It’s a beautiful morning for August,” Mama said, and they soon were all headed out to the backyard.
Derek sat on the barstool and drew me so that I was half on his lap in between his legs. “I missed you,” he said and kissed me properly. It hit me all the way to the depths of my toes and back like it had each and every time and probably always would.
“I missed you too,” I said, pulling back and smiling. “But seriously, George must be going berserk.”
“Have I forgotten to mention? I fired George.”
“What?”
Derek shrugged. “He doesn’t want what I want. Wants the band to be more commercial, less authentic.”
“Wow.”
“And Rob quit.”
I stared, mouth open.
“He said he couldn’t sta
nd being away from Trista anymore. I can’t blame him; I kind of understand where he’s coming from,” Derek said, and this time, his smile was full of unspoken promises.
“What are you going to do?” I asked, still snug and happy tucked up against him.
“Well, did you notice that house around the corner that’s for sale?”
He was talking about Jake’s old girlfriend, Brittney’s house. Or at least her parents’ house. They had retired to Florida, and the house had been left empty and on the market most of the summer.
“Yes…” I said hesitantly.
“I’ve already placed a call to the realtor.”
“How did you do that?”
“From the driveway when we pulled up. It’s a sign from God, you know?”
“You’re a moron.”
“You keep saying that, but soon I’ll be a house-owning moron. And I’m going to need someone to help me keep house. Jane the Kitten demands a mother.”
“I’m not moving in with you. And you’re not seriously buying that house. You have to go back to L.A., fix your band, make more music, and put out your bonus album. You know, be the sexy musician you are.”
“Sexy musician, huh?”
I eye-rolled him and got a quick kiss.
“I’m hiring an agent in Nashville. Blake is already working on getting us into a studio there to finish the album. I’m sure he’ll have a drummer connection for me too. Mitch and Owen have already agreed that we can record here. Lonnie’s decided he’s moving with me, so we might have company for a couple weeks till he gets his own place.”
I was stunned at his words again. Unsure how to respond as was so often the case with him. Finally, I breathed out, “Are you really saying that you’re going to come live here?”
“Little Bird, you’re here.”
“Yes.”
“So, wherever you are, that’s where I’ll be.”
“But you have a life and family in L.A.”
“I have a brother and a niece in L.A. That’s it.”
“You love them.”
“Yes, but they aren’t my whole world. You…you’re my whole world.”
Words. Words that embedded into my soul, but I still shook my head.
“Derek, I can’t…”
“You can.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say,” I fussed.
“You were going to say that you couldn’t let me give up everything to come live in some backwater with a girl who wears pantsuits and runs a car dealership.”
I flushed.
“I guess I don’t wear pantsuits anymore,” I said with a grimace.
“Thank God!” He smirked. “Although it would have been fun to rid you of them every time you tried to wear them.”
Eye-roll. Kiss.
“Derek, be serious.”
“I am very, very serious. I love everything about Tennessee, remember? Sweet tea, porch swings, and especially one beautiful woman.”
I started to protest again, but he put his fingers on my lips to silence me. “Besides, as of this morning, I don’t even have a place to live in L.A.”
“Why’s that?” I asked, breathless.
“Dad’s moving into the guesthouse, and even though he and I had a heart-to-heart, I sure as hell am not living with him.”
“You and your dad talked?”
“Sort of. It was a start at least. Someone showed me that shoving a door closed and trying to forget it was there every time you walked past it wasn’t quite the same as not giving it energy or time or space.”
My heart filled to overflowing. That he thought that I could have shown him anything after everything he’d shown me. I smiled at him, and he smiled back. His eyes were summer storm clouds as he watched me process everything he was telling me.
“You’ve had a really big week,” I told him.
He nodded.
Even being this revised Mia that I was, there was a thought that flirted at the back of my head near the closet where Good Girl Mia was hiding. But instead of keeping it inside like I would have in my past, I just said it. “What if you regret it?”
“Your man, philosopher Ed, is quite right. When all the fans are gone, and no one remembers my name, and you’re seventy, and I’ve lost all my hair, the only thing that will matter is that I can fall in love with you all over again every day. That’s the only thing I’d regret. Not being able to do that.”
“You realize how insane you sound after knowing me for only three weeks,” I said, trying for sassy Mia even though my heart was beating like it was its own percussion section.
“Mysterious ways, right? I kind of like that Ed song. He wrote it about us.”
“He doesn’t even know us.”
“Every word. Us.”
“Moron—” He cut me off with a kiss. A kiss that told me to shut up. A kiss that told me just to hang on to this moment with this gorgeous BB who had somehow found a way to love me in the same way that I loved him. This man who was trying to make our stars align in a way that would become a new reality for both of us.
“Little Bird, Miss Mia, will you come stay and play house with me forever?”
My heart stopped. Painful air trying to get back in my lungs like I’d taken my drop in the cave all over again. Even though he was serious, and I wanted to scream, “YES!” I didn’t.
“I’ll think about it,” I teased back instead.
“Sassy. Miss Mia being full of sass.” He grinned. “I’m going to have to force your hand by telling your parents you’ve agreed to marry me.”
“I didn’t agree to marry you. You didn’t even ask me that.”
“You’re right. I didn’t. But I will. Soon.”
“No one will believe you're serious if you do.”
“I think they will,” he said, and he looked out the windows to where my mama was looking at us through the sliding glass doors as she sat talking to Lonnie and Daddy. She looked happy. And God, it had been a long time since I’d seen Mama really happy.
“Believe me, someday in the not too distant future, you are going to be Mrs. Mia Waters,” he said, twining his fingers through mine and pulling me with him toward the slider.
“Who says I’m gonna be Mia Waters?”
“No cleft-chinned babies, and now you won’t take my name? You really are going to be the death of me.”
“But it’ll be a good death.”
We paused at the door. He kissed me again, regardless of the fact that my parents and his goofy friend were probably watching us. It made my entire body melt into the typical gooey puddle that his every touch and kiss did.
“I love you, Little Bird.”
“I love you too, moron.”
And then we went out the door to face my parents, his best friend, and our possible future.
♫ ♫ ♫
Do you feel sad to leave these characters behind? I soooo miss them that occasionally I do random things to give me a few more minutes with them. For example, you can see how Mia and Derek are doing in the future when you download the FREE, EPIC BONUS EPILOGUE for the entire My Life as An Album series when you sign up for my newsletter:
https://BookHip.com/WZVAFM
Or just continue reading My Life as a Rock Album to see some more hints of Cam, Blake, and Mia.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Playlist
Dedication
Chapter One: Always
Chapter Two: Blind Love
Chapter Three: Bed of Roses
Chapter Four: Learn to Love
Chapter Five: In These Arms
Chapter Six: (You Want to) Make a Memory
Chapter Seven: Born to Be My Baby
Chapter Eight: Lay Your Hands on Me
Chapter Nine: Seat Next to You
Chapter Ten: Till We Ain’t Strangers
Chapter Eleven: I’ll Be There For You
Chapter Twelve: Bad Medicine
Chapter Thirteen: All About Lovin’ You
Chapter Fourteen: Livin’ in Sin
Chapter Fifteen: Misunderstood
Chapter Sixteen: One Step Closer
Chapter Seventeen: Scars on This Guitar
Chapter Eighteen: Everybody’s Broken
Chapter Nineteen: I’d Die For You
Chapter Twenty: We All Fall Down
Chapter Twenty-one: This Ain’t a Love Song
Chapter Twenty-two: Real Life
Chapter Twenty-three: Thank You for Loving Me
Playlist available at http://bit.ly/MLAARAspoti
To my mom who wanted a book about bad boy Seth.
To Jon Bon Jovi for inspiring my story with his words.
To my hubby who loves all my worst parts as well as the best.
To my readers for inciting this journey in a way I never planned.
This is for ALL of YOU.
Letter One
ALWAYS
“When you say your prayers,
Try to understand,
I’ve made mistakes,
I’m just a man.”
-Bon Jovi, Ingram, & Stanfill
Dear Bella,
I watched you walk away today. You went through security without looking back. I wanted to bust something. I wanted a drink. I wanted you.
You went away because I’m an asshole. I know you say that isn’t it. But if that wasn’t at least partially true, you’d still be here, or I’d be there with you…we wouldn’t be a country apart. Reality is, I can’t keep anything good in my life for long.
I almost bought a ticket and followed you through security. When I got to the ticket counter, your beautiful face flashed through my mind. It wasn’t your adoring face that I saw. It was your pissed one. Because I knew that if I followed you now, it would only look like I was trying to possess you again. As if I didn’t trust you to love me and go. As if I didn’t trust you to eventually come home.