CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Haden
It was sometime after three when I walked Cassie back to the big house so she would be there in the morning when the girls woke up.
And yes, I picked up every goddamn piece of popcorn along the way that hadn’t been eaten by an animal yet.
When it comes to this woman, it’s apparent I’m gonna do just about anything she asks me.
By six-thirty I’m up and dog-tired because my body doesn’t manage to sleep past dawn no matter how little rest I get. I’m sitting on my porch drinking a big mug of coffee when a black Audi skids by my cabin and pulls up to Cassie’s.
I’m instantly on high alert, setting my mug down defensively. A man gets out of the car and I chuckle at the sight; he looks like a dick with ears in a pair of skinny black jeans, a black turtleneck sweater and alligator boots.
“We have a five-mile-per-hour rule here. Did you not see the sign?” I call over to him, spreading my hands out wide on my porch rail. He jumps and turns to face me, narrowing his eyes as he does.
“There’s people riding on these trails. Which means we go slow,” I spell it out.
He ignores my comment and looks around. “Is this Starlight cabin?” he calls.
I pick my mug back up and take a sip. This guy is a typical city type: doesn’t apologize, doesn’t say hello, just lets me know what he needs from me.
“Stardust,” I correct him, pointing to the wooden sign out front. “What can I do for you?”
He turns and walks up the steps to Stardust. I think I hear him say something like “you’re not Cassie, so nothing.” Hearing Cassie’s name makes my ears prick up. But I’ve already pegged this guy for her manager. He’s exactly how she described him: shiny and highly strung.
“You’re wasting your time. She’s not here,” I call over to him.
He turns. “Well, since you seem to be her keeper, maybe you know where she is?”
This fucking guy.
“She’s with friends this morning—”
“I’m right here,” Cassie’s voice calls as she emerges from the path to the big house. “Jesus, Dax. It’s seven in the morning. What are you doing here?”
Her eyes flit to mine and I stand back. For now. Cassie is a tough cookie. So as long as this fucker doesn’t get rude with her, I’ll hang back on my own porch, though there’s not a chance I’m moving from here.
Cassie is dressed in a pair of yoga pants and a hooded sweatshirt with a puffy vest overtop to keep herself warm on the walk here. It’s almost April but the air is still chilly in the mornings most days.
Dax comes back down the porch steps to greet her on the front lawn.
“I’ve been texting every day but rarely receive an answer.
Did you decide to give up on the music industry and not tell me?
We have just over a week to get the rest of this album recorded in the studio and I have show requests coming in from all over the country with festival season coming up. They want you to play Wagon Wheel.”
Even I know that’s a big deal. Wagon Wheel is in Palm Springs and is the biggest country music festival of the year. All the big hitters play there.
“I was planning on calling you tomorrow.” Her eyes flit to mine then back to him. “I know I have to use my studio time. I have two songs left to record. But I was seeing out the month. I’m not due back until next Friday.”
As I listen to her talk, it hits me. Wake the fuck up, Haden. That glimmer of whatever I’ve been holding onto – which I now realise is hope – is instantly extinguished. Of course she’s still leaving.
“Nope. It isn’t Cassie Spencer and The Spin when there’s no Cassie Spencer. You have to record and be done by Thursday. If you had called me back, I could have explained all of this.”
“I’m not quite ready to—”
“Oh yes you are!” Dax raises his voice to her and I see fucking red. “I didn’t come out here to Buttfuck-nowhere, Kentucky …”
I can’t see Cassie’s face because her back is to me, but my coffee is set down on the railing and I’m down my steps and in his face in less than ten seconds flat. I grip him by his turtleneck as he spews the tail end of “you’re coming with me.”
“Haden!” Cassie calls as Dax does his best to escape my grasp. I have so much adrenaline coursing through my veins right now I could pick him right up off the ground one-handed. But I miraculously manage to keep my voice calm and even.
“I don’t give a fuck where you’re from. We don’t raise our voices to women here. Ever. That’s a real quick way to get your head knocked into next fucking week.” I grip him tighter. “Now, apologize and speak to Cassie like a man with some fucking manners.”
This piece of shit starts laughing and stops struggling. “You’re the cowboy. I recognize you from the video.” Video? I look back at Cassie.
“Someone filmed us at the Horse and Barrel when I got here,” she tells me quietly.
“So this is what’s really going on?” Dax turns to Cassie. I’m still holding him up. “Got yourself a piece of country ass and everything I’ve worked for over the last two years for you, everything I’ve given you, is out the window? You ungrateful little sl—”
I don’t even hesitate. I draw back and punch him square in the mouth. He drops with a thud to the damp grass below.
Cassie screams, “Haden!”
I turn to face her. “I’ll never let a man talk to you like that. Not a fucking chance. I’ll knock his ass out every single time without hesitation.”
She runs over to where I’m standing, and reaches up to place her palm to my face. I can’t read the look she’s wearing.
“What the hell is going on?” I look up to see Wade and Ivy, who is holding Billi on her hip, in the middle of the gravel trail between their cabin and Cassie’s. We must have been loud enough for them to hear our conversation. Dax has gotten up now and is wiping the blood from his mouth.
Wade instantly comes to my side to address Dax. “We got a problem?”
“I’m here to get my artist to stop looking through the rose-colored glasses of your ranch. But apparently she has a bodyguard I was unaware of.”
I flex my fist out then meet Wade’s eyes. I shake my head. I’m probably fucked for this.
“Well, I know Haden here well enough to know that in the eight years he’s been on my ranch, he’s never once lost his temper, so you must have given him a reason.”
Everything in me tenses with the way Wade immediately defends me. I’m not used to having people stick up for me so easily.
“You’re completely out of line, Dax,” Cassie says in a tone I haven’t heard her use before. “How dare you come to my family’s home and be so disrespectful?”
“Well, I’m leaving now anyway. I wouldn’t stick around here if you paid me.
Cassie, I’ll be at the Motor Court. It’s the only goddamn hotel in this town.
If you want to keep your career from going down the drain, you need to take the plunge and get back onstage.
He isn’t gonna look after you.” Dax points to me and my fists clench with those words.
They sting. It’s something my father would say.
I watch as Dax gets into his shiny car and slams the door. Cassie turns to face me as he skids down the driveway. She shakes her head, her eyes full of turmoil as she heads into the cabin. Ivy follows after, still holding Billi.
“What the hell am I waking up to?” Wade asks me.
I run a hand through my hair. “He was about to call her a slut.”
Wade sets his jaw and looks back to the cabin. “I would’ve hit him too. But that in there …” He points toward Stardust. “That’s for you to fix. No matter how she feels, she has to leave. You got yourself into a real shitshow here and I told you not to get involved. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking … I think I love her,” I admit, looking back at her cabin. For a moment, neither of us says anything.
“She lives on the road, Haden. How do you think this could ever work?”
I blow out a breath. “I don’t know, man; I just know I wish she didn’t have to leave.”
I glance at her cabin again.
“Not right now,” Wade says, reading my mind. “Give her a little time to cool off. And you need to calm down too. Look, Haden. In my experience, if these things are meant to be, they have a way of working themselves out. Now I’m gonna go in there, help Ivy and then get back to eating breakfast.”
He starts walking toward Cassie’s front door, but Ivy comes out before he can climb one step.
She looks directly at me.
“She wants to be alone right now. Just give her an hour. She needs to sort some things out.”
“What’s there to sort out? That guy was a prick.” And she wasn’t going to tell me she was leaving, again.
“I hear you. But this is her career, Haden. Her life. She’ll never let it go.”
I nod. Finally—finally—it hits me. This is real. Cassie is leaving.
“Sorry to have caused this drama so early in the morning,” I say to Wade.
And then I turn and head to my cabin, not even glancing back at hers as the truth settles somewhere deep within me.
Whatever I thought Cassie and I had, whatever her dreams are about giving up performing onstage and writing music full-time, this simple life will never be enough to compete with the greatness she’s destined for.
And I’m the fool who didn’t see that right from the start.