Chapter 32 #2
She takes the fourth stool, hooks one boot around the rung and adjusts the microphone with the ease of someone who has spent half her life sitting beneath lights like these.
“I wrote this next one with my oldest friend when we were twenty-five, broke, and convinced men with guitars had emotional depth.”
The room erupts into laughter, but I can’t even manage a smile; my stomach bottoms out.
Nora glances toward the back, finds me immediately, and smiles. “She got rich. I stopped fucking men who thought knowing three chords counted as emotional availability.”
More laughter rolls through the room as her fingers settle over the strings.
The first chord of Paper Saints rings out, and I forget how to breathe.
I wrote half of Paper Saints on the hood of Grant’s first truck while he and Nora argued over a rhyme she insisted was clever and he insisted was lazy.
We recorded the demo in a rental house where the upstairs toilet leaked through the kitchen ceiling and had to stop twice because Grant kept swearing loud enough to bleed into the vocal.
It never became a single for me. Delaney Hart cut it two years later, and it went gold quietly, the kind of success that put a plaque on somebody’s wall without rearranging anyone’s life.
I haven’t heard it live in years.
Nora sings the first verse alone.
We were holy in the dashboard light,
cheap wine, bare feet, Saturday nights,
wearing halos we could never keep,
making promises too young to mean.
By the chorus, voices start joining her from around the room—not the whole room, but more than I expect.
The man at the next table mouths the line I wrote three nights after Grant proposed.
A woman near the stage closes her eyes during the bridge.
Someone farther back sings the harmony wrong and commits to it with such confidence I almost laugh; instead, something in my chest gives.
The song kept going.
I stopped singing it, stopped opening old sessions, stopped looking too closely at the catalogue because every title felt like evidence from another life.
Paper Saints still went out into the world without me.
People fell in love to it. Got divorced to it.
Drove home at two in the morning with it playing through shitty speakers.
Some woman in Nebraska may have cried to a line I wrote on the hood of Grant’s truck as I sat here in Nashville convincing myself music had closed the door after I left.
My vision blurs. I wipe under one eye and look anywhere except the stage, just to find Beckett Vale standing against the far wall.
What the hell is he doing here?
Nashville has been reduced to seven buildings, and Beckett occupies every one I enter at peak emotional instability.
At least he hasn’t noticed me. Jonah Reed stands at his side, deep in conversation beside a young artist I recognize from one of Vale House’s development deals.
Beckett listens to Nora, arms folded loosely across his chest. The artist leans closer to say something near his ear; he dips his head to hear her, laughs, and murmurs something back that makes her smile.
A little irritation sparks in my stomach.
Oh, God.
It isn’t jealousy. Jealousy implies a level of entitlement I’ve neither earned nor been offered. It’s worse because it has no respectable name. I’m simply discovering that I dislike being reminded Beckett exists when I’m not around.
He has an entire life that has nothing to do with me. Women work beside him, flirt with him, date him, and more than a few have almost certainly slept in his bed, stolen his shirts the next morning, learned his side of the mattress and what his hair looks like fucked up from a pillow.
My brain attempts to continue down that road by reminding me exactly how hard his dick was under me yesterday, how fucking tempting his mouth had been, and the humiliating fact that I went home and used my vibrator to finish what almost happened between us.
I punish it with water.
Nora finishes to applause and returns to the booth a few minutes later, flushed from the lights and pleased with herself. She reaches for a nacho, follows my line of sight once, and pauses with it halfway to her mouth.
“Is that Beckett Vale?”
“Don’t go there.”
Her eyebrows climb. “I said a name.”
“You said it like a woman preparing to become unbearable.”
Nora looks back at him with absolutely no shame. “He’s hot.”
“Eat your nacho.”
“I’m married to songwriting, Laurel. My eyes still work.”
“You’re single.”
“Exactly. I honor my vows by having none.”
Beckett looks over right then. His eyes find mine across the room, and every filthy thought I just tried to drown with water comes charging straight back.
He doesn’t come over, excuse himself from Jonah, or use the moment as an invitation.
He gives me one small nod, holds my eyes for a beat, and returns to the conversation.
Nora turns her head to me very slowly. “Interesting.”
“You’re one word away from walking home.”
“What word?”
“Any.”
“I just said two,” she mocks, sticking her tongue out at me before darting off to the bar.
Beckett comes over just then, and I know the timing is deliberate. I’ve gotten far too good at reading his restraint. Even now, he stops beside the empty chair instead of assuming he can take it.
“How’s the throat?”
“You ask women that often?”
“Only the ones whose laryngologist would probably sue me for encouraging conversation.”
“Jenna says pain above a two means stop.”
His eyes sharpen. “Pain?”
“One.”
“Then I have six minutes.”
“You’re so generous.”
His attention shifts toward the stage Nora just left. “Nora Keene?”
“My oldest friend.”
“You wrote Paper Saints together.”
“You knowing everything is getting weird.”
“It charted.”
“Seven years ago.”
“I’ve staff who prepare files.”
I narrow my eyes. “Was I in a file?”
His mouth twitches. “Eventually.”
My skin warms. “Sounds ominous.”
Only after I gesture to the chair does Beckett pull it out and sit, another tiny courtesy I shouldn’t be noticing and unfortunately do.
He tells me Mara mentioned Sloane’s temporary no-contact order is being heard Monday; I tell him Evelyn filed after the car showed up here and at Vale.
His next question is the obvious one—if I’m okay—and I’m tired enough of that question to answer honestly.
“Ask me something else.”
Beckett studies me for a second. “Did you enjoy tonight?”
“Yes.” I glance at the bar, where Nora appears to be arguing with a bartender over the moral necessity of lime wedges. “I forgot I missed this.”
“Rooms like this?”
“Being around people who don’t need anything from me except a rhyme.”
Beckett gaze moves to the stage, where another writer is tuning a guitar between songs. “That’s why I still come.”
“Your company has an entire showcase venue.”
“Too clean.”
I laugh, and my throat hurts halfway through. Beckett notices at once and simply stops talking.
I blink at him. “Jesus.”
“What?”
“You literally stop talking when I need you to.”
“It seemed efficient.”
“It’s hot.” The words are out before my brain has even finished approving them.
A beat of dead silence follows, and I immediately want the floor to open and take me with it.
Fuck me.
I look down at the table. “I’m going to blame medication even though I’m currently taking none.”
Beckett makes no effort to rescue me. Worse, I can hear the smile in his voice. “Medically irresponsible.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
The words are quiet, stripped of the joke, and my pulse changes before I can pretend otherwise. I lift my head and find him watching me. Everything funny leaves the table.
“No,” I admit. “I don’t.”
His eyes drop to my mouth. It’s the first unmistakable thing he has done all night.
Small, brief, something another person might miss entirely, but I don’t.
Heat moves low through my stomach, fast enough to steal the next breath, and when his gaze returns to mine, he does nothing with what just passed between us.
“I should leave.”
“Why?”
“Because your friend came here with you, your voice is getting tired, and I’m currently making at least two of your problems less manageable.”
My heartbeat becomes unreasonable. “You think very highly of yourself.”
“At the moment, I’m thinking with unusual accuracy.”
“Beckett.”
“Yeah?”
I look at him for a second, all the easy answers gone. “I’m not sure I’m ready, and I don’t know when I will be.”
“I’m not asking you to decide now, Laurel,” he says.
“I’m not asking you to heal on my schedule, and I’m not putting mine on hold so you owe me something later.
” His voice stays low and matter-of-fact, making the next part hit harder.
“But I’m also not going to insult both of us by pretending I don’t want you. ”
Every nerve in my body wakes up.
He wants me. Oh.
I can’t contain the smile pulling at my mouth, and God help me, I want him to keep talking.
I want details. Filthy ones. I want to know how often he thinks about fucking me, if yesterday has been replaying in his head the way it has in mine, if he’s imagined my legs around his waist or my mouth on his dick or exactly what he’d do if I finally told him yes.
I want to hear him say he wants me naked.
Bent over. Under him. On top of him. I want every indecent thought he has been keeping behind all that goddamn restraint served to me one by one until I’m too turned on to pretend I asked out of curiosity.
And I want his stories too. The stupid ones. The ugly ones. The ones behind the furniture casualties and the niece who can turn him into a human craft project, the reason a man who owns entire venues still chooses rooms like this.
But until my divorce is final, wanting more from Beckett feels like standing too close to a door I’m not ready to open.
“You know what scares me?” I ask. “I spent years disappearing into Grant’s life.” My fingers tighten around the sweating glass in front of me. “I don’t ever want to disappear into another man.”