Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Whit
I f someone had looked inside my mind six months ago and made a list of the things that lit up my brain and made me hungry , made me come alive, those things would have been:
Performing my own music
Writing music
Eating grilled cheese sandwiches
If someone made a similar list today, that list would be
Performing my own music
Kissing Ben Holder
Talking with and being near Ben Holder
That’s right. Kissing and talking to and being near Ben Holder had handily supplanted both writing music and grilled cheese.
I know .
This was big, making me not entirely sure what to do with myself. I was pretty sure he wanted to be with me as much as I did him, but he’d tried not to come on too strong. And I appreciated that. My life was one long series of people coming on too strong—for autographs, for connections, for what I could do for them.
Funny enough, I wanted to do whatever I could for Ben, but he didn’t seem to want anything from me. We’d gotten word I wouldn’t be doing the football half-time show—they’d had a Country act two out of the last three years and wanted to go pop. Ben had been sorry for me, but when I’d made it clear I wasn’t upset, neither was he. He hadn’t pouted at the loss of something I’d dangled in front of him as an incentive like I thought he might have.
He wasn’t concerned. He just wanted to celebrate me when I succeeded, or let me feel however I felt when I didn’t. It was the strangest thing.
My parents had never celebrated anything. Birthdays had been a nice dinner with dessert, usually a flourless dark chocolate cake too decadent for a child to enjoy. Even when I met their expectations and got into Juilliard, I received little more than a well done .
When I won the contract at the end of SouthernStar , I was fairly certain there’d been wailing and gnashing of teeth, the neighbors (if the people living miles down the stately country road could be called neighbors) calling in the professionals to deal with the great Grantham disappointment. The show was vulgar and beneath me, and certainly beneath them. We simply didn’t speak of it.
And that was one of many reasons why I had auditioned under a fake name and had kept it since. Not entirely fake, but different enough that my parents didn’t have to acknowledge me, nor did I them.
So Ben turning to me and saying “I’m so proud of you,” or demanding to toast me after the Grammy nominations—those things were catnip for me. It was pathetic, on one hand, that his applause and congratulations meant so much to me when I was constantly surrounded by people who lauded my ability, awarding and celebrating and marking the milestones of my career. On the other hand, he didn’t do it because he’d been hired to.
False , said my inner voice of reason. And it was false, on one hand.
Technically, he’d agreed to be Team Whit for a few months. And he was getting travel and hotel rooms and concerts and access .
But anytime I was with him, I could tell those were simply not why he was there. He was there for me , for some reason, and that both excited me and unnerved me. It proved confusing, his insistence on choosing to support me and show up when so few people did that without holding out a hand and asking what was in it for them.
Maybe I was trying to make something into nothing.
I probably am.
But I couldn’t ignore the fact that being with him, even just talking, lit me up. And funny enough, it made me want to write—it’d had me writing—like I hadn’t since he’d told me his story and hadn’t even known it was me.
Oh, about that .
Yeah. I knew I needed to tell him. I couldn’t quite pin down what was stopping me.
Well, actually, I did know.
I was worried. Ben was so decent, so sweet, with just one thing that he really struggled with. The same thing I’d ultimately shared with the world in the form of a song. The same song that, when I was nominated for a Grammy, he’d toasted me for.
Would he hate me? Would he feel betrayed? Would he even care?
I hoped he wouldn’t. But the longer I went without telling him, the higher the likelihood he’d feel betrayed by me—by a woman he didn’t know, but to whom he’d spilled his rawest feelings after the most traumatic time in his life.
Yeah. I should worry.
That wouldn’t have mattered so much to me a month or so ago. But this tour had forced us together in the most irretrievable way imaginable. I could no longer pretend that my heart didn’t beat faster at the sight of him. I could no longer pretend that when I closed my eyes, he wasn’t the fantasy that populated my mind. I could no longer pretend that all I wanted him for was fulfilling a sham contract to be my fake boyfriend.
I wanted him to be mine, really mine, and I wanted to forget about everything else.
How to get to that place, I had no clue. It’d been three days since I’d kissed him in the car, no audience, and he must have gotten the message that I wanted him for him . Right?
But he’d been friendly, sweet. He’d done everything a dear friend would, but he’d made no move to be close to me or alone with me.
To be fair, it hadn’t been all that possible. That night, Nikki’d left a message for me with a long list of to-dos once I got back from the cocktail party, and Ben had excused himself to lie down. He’d passed out on his bed, and I’d kissed his forehead before I turned in without him ever knowing.
The next day, we’d loaded tour busses, and the madness had resumed. I’d performed that night, then we’d been back on a bus to the next city, this being the window where the shows were closest together.
The day after that, we’d hardly seen each other while I did a photo shoot and packed in a million other marketing events.
But tonight was Christmas Eve, and we didn’t have anything until late tomorrow when we’d hop back on the bus and travel south to Pennsylvania. Tonight we were in New York City, one of my favorite cities, and I didn’t want to do anything but sit and look at Ben and ask him if he liked me.
Maybe I could send him one of the notes like kids supposedly did in grade school. Pull a George Strait and ask him to “Check Yes or No.” He was a George fan—he’d get it if I just played the song, right?
I dragged my hands over my face and wondered what to do. Ben was, most likely, planning to spend the evening with me. Wasn’t he? And then, I realized… what if he was missing home? What if he was missing his family and wishing he was with them in Alabama instead of with me, contractual girlfriend and occasional kissing partner?
I smoothed back the edges of my hair, making sure it was still secured back in the stylish ponytail Damon had done earlier for my visits to the morning shows and then a handful of label events. I was exhausted, but I hadn’t seen Ben all day, or really in what felt like days
I knocked on the door to his bedroom.
“You decent?” I hollered, partly hoping he’d say yes but end up topless at the very least .
No answer, so I knocked again.
“Come in,” his deep voice came through the door.
I slowly opened the door, eager to see him. He sat on his bed, back against the headboard and a pile of pillows cushioning him. He had headphones dangling from one ear, the other side apparently removed—probably why he hadn’t heard my first knock. He wore jeans and a short-sleeved shirt that hugged his shoulders and chest, but still looked comfortable. His hair was messy, and he had what looked to be a three-day beard, which meant he was as scruffy as I’d ever seen him.
In a word: delicious.
His eyes had tracked me moving into the room, a confusing mix of hungry and remote. My stomach had twisted into knots by the time I sat on the edge of his bed next to his feet.
“Hey, Ben,” I said, trying to act all kinds of casual and no-big-deal about how fluttery seeing him relaxing in his natural state made me.
One side of his mouth quirked up into a smile. “Hey, Whit.”
Just hearing him say my name made me smile, but I tried my best to keep it under wraps. “What’re you listening to?”
His gaze flickered to his phone, and he pulled out the headphones so I could hear. The last verse of Waylon Jennings’ “Just to Satisfy You” came on, and I laughed. “You do love Waylon, don’t you?”
“I do, but why do you say that?”
Then I realized he’d told me he loved Waylon last year, not in our current relationship. And it was the perfect opening. I imagined myself in that moment, a fleeting vision, taking his hand and pressing it to my lips and saying, “ You told me once… ”
But I didn’t do that. No, I cowered, the trill of fear that lined my rib cage stopping me from taking the chance.
“You seemed to love ‘Nashville Bum,’ and I’ve gathered you prefer old Country, so it makes sense.” I smiled mildly, hoping that sounded legitimate, hoping he couldn’t tell how uncomfortable I was lying to his face.
“You’re right. I do prefer the old guys. And women, for that matter. It was just different a few decades ago, you know?” He sounded genuinely troubled.
He tapped his phone to turn down the volume so the next song, a George Jones track called “Walk Through This World with Me” accompanied the conversation without interrupting it.
“Yeah. I loved Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn. That’s what got me started wanting to perform.”
“Really? Did your family listen to Country?” he asked, wrapping the cord of his headphones up and slipping them into a little baggy.
It didn’t surprise me he didn’t have wireless ones—nothing about Ben was flashy or demanding to have the newest and best stuff.
“Uh, no.” A light chuckle covered the discomfort.
He tilted his head to one side like it would help me see him better. “You never told me about your family.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“What’s the story there? Obviously, it’s not your favorite subject, but at this point, I hope you know you can trust me,” he said, ducking to catch my eye.
I rolled my lips between my teeth and let out a forced breath. “My parents had me trained in classical music— piano. I went to Juilliard, but dropped out after a little over a year to go compete on SouthernStar .”
His mouth dropped open a little, then snapped shut. “Juilliard?”
“Yeah. I was good.” An understatement, which he could tell if the grin on his face meant anything.
“I’m sure you were. So what’d they say when you dropped out of school?” He leaned back and rested his hands behind his head.
“Um… not much. We haven’t really spoken.” I studied the clean white stitching on the comforter beneath me.
“That was…”
“Four years ago, about.”
He swore under his breath, then wrapped his hand around my arm.
“Come here,” he said in that low, sweet voice.
He pulled me over to him and tucked me into his side, my head on his shoulder, arm between my body and his, my body and legs stretched out next to his. He pulled my other arm over his belly and then set his hand on my wrist. “Tell me.”
I tilted my head up to see his face, and he stared back at me. He nodded, urging me on wordlessly.
“My legal name is Eleanor Whitley Ford Grantham.”