Chapter 30
August, Now
“For the love of all that is pure and good in this world,” Paul says the second the line connects, “which certainly excludes the music industry, but anyway. Tell me you signed a split sheet.”
“Hello to you, too,” I reply.
A beleaguered sigh comes through my phone speaker. “Hello, Paige. How are you?”
“Doing well. How about you?”
“The answer to that question mostly depends on whether you signed a split sheet.”
I smile down at the mattress, where my phone rests and my worn notebook lies open. The latest pages, freshly inked over the last twenty-four hours, are filled with notes from phone calls with other publishers. But no one else asked me that very important question in the first five minutes.
“Yes, I signed a split sheet for every single song.” Another exhale from Paul. “Penelope Parker keeps a basic version of the contract on hand for when she collaborates on the fly. We all signed them. Me, the twins, Penelope, and one of her band’s cowriters.”
A split sheet is a contract that determines who gets what percentage ownership of any given song—which becomes very important for the payout.
On the other end of the line, I hear Paul sink into a chair. “Well, then, tell me the story.”
I fill him in on what I’ve been up to over the past two months, explain why I felt comfortable cowriting with these people when I hadn’t been amenable to it in his office. He hums occasionally, listening otherwise.
“The point is,” I conclude, twirling my pen around my thumb. “Both of the bands want to record my songs after tour. So, I need to sign with a music publisher.”
“And you’ve spent the last day fielding offers, with me being your final call.”
“Can you blame me?”
“Course not. This is your career, after all.”
I nod to myself.
“How much money to stay competitive?” he asks.
I tell Paul the answer, my finger tracing over the advance offers I’ve received from a few of the bigger names in music publishing.
“I can probably match that,” he says. “I can’t beat it, but I can match it.”
“The other publishers wanted to know my plans for ‘I prefer shadows,’” I say.
“You went from not even letting me hear it to playing it live for thousands of people,” he comments, amused.
I listen to the rustle of Liam getting ready at the bathroom sink. “You had good instincts, telling me to examine that song,” I say.
“Gut feeling,” Paul allows.
“Makes me feel like I can trust you. Not just with the business stuff, but with the creative side of it, too. I appreciate that you gave me months of freedom to figure out how to make the songs better. And I appreciate that you paid attention to me before I was offered a helping hand.” I clear my throat.
“What I’m saying is, I want to work with you.
I’d like to sign a contract with Stillwater. ”
A beat of silence on the other end of the line.
“I’m happy to hear that, Paige. And I’ll do everything in my power to protect your interests.
I can send you over some paperwork to sign electronically.
And I need you”—his voice drops ominously—“to send me proof of those split sheets as soon as possible.”
“I will.”
He grunts. “What is the plan for ‘I prefer shadows’? Do you want to record it?”
“I think it could become a duet. I’m still mulling it over.”
“Any other songs you’ve written on tour?”
I hesitate a while before saying, “Three, that I’d want to record myself. An indie label would be great. And we wouldn’t need to promote them. They’re just—personal.”
Paul pauses, but eventually says, “Okay.”
We discuss a few more details, then hang up the phone. I close my notebook as a sense of calm envelops me.
I can’t believe I actually did it.
For the first time in my life, I have financial security. I can help Folly with her baby. Do something nice for Candice’s wedding. Visit my family more often, stop working doubles. I can focus on Liam, on being there for him as he finishes leading his first national tour.
I catch sight of him as he walks out of the bathroom. My spine stiffens at his crushingly wary expression.
“What is it?” I ask.
Liam waits a beat before asking, “Why didn’t you tell Paul about the other new songs?”
I blink slowly. “I did. I’m going to record them myself. The three songs you wanted.”
He nods. “Thank you. That means a lot to me, Paige. But you wrote so many beautiful songs this summer. Why didn’t you mention them?”
His tone is confused, disoriented. He walks slowly to the edge of the bed, and my hands go to his shoulders, his to my hips.
“It doesn’t feel right to sell them to some other artist,” I admit to him. “To sell the songs I wrote while I fell in love with you. Then or now.”
His nod is slow, eyes chasmic. “Because you feel like those songs are ours.”
“And that’s how they’re going to stay,” I agree. “I can write more songs in the future that I don’t feel so protective of. I already have ideas.”
His eyes rake across my face, like the solution is obvious, staring at me hard. “Paige. Why don’t you record more than three?”
My defense is immediate. “Anything more than three is too close to an EP. And all of them could very well be a whole album.”
“But they’re beautiful.” He grips my waist tighter. “They’re—Paige, those songs are our love story. Yours and mine. You gave our story a medium that could live on forever.”
“Yes,” I say breathlessly, agreeing.
Some line of reasoning is working itself out behind Liam’s eyes. One of his hands travels up my waist to my cheek. “Record all of them,” he whispers.
I drop my hands from his body and settle onto my heels, gazing up. I’m shaking. “I thought you understood me when I said I didn’t want to be a performer.”
“I did,” he promises. “But lots of songs are never played for an audience. Lots of singers never cross a stage. I know you know that, even better than I do.”
“Well,” I say, wringing my hands, “maybe so, but commodifying those songs would cheapen what this summer meant.”
“Stop,” he says, voice soft. “Don’t say that.
” Liam rubs at his chest like something inside of it is too tight.
“Don’t act like I don’t know exactly what’s been going on between us all summer.
I’ve been here, Paige. I know what’s between us is real.
Those songs existing isn’t going to cheapen anything.
” He swallows. “I actually feel the opposite about it.”
My head cocks, and I ask, “Are you saying you think producing the songs would make our relationship more real?”
“In the sense that it would prove I don’t have some weird hold or ownership over your music, yeah,” Liam says. “I want you to stop making yourself smaller on my behalf.”
Liam steps backward. “Your talent is extraordinary, Paige. Your impact could be huge. Yes, those songs are ours now, and yes, I want them to exist in your voice, because I’m only mortal, and selfishly, I want a piece of them to stay ours forever.
But they’re also beautiful fucking love songs that are going to make people feel things.
Feel everything. How can you sit on that?
How can you entertain not sharing what your heart looks like with more people than just me? ”
“Because you matter more!” I say.
He shakes his head. “My impact is always going to be small. But yours could be—” He exhales. “Everywhere. Your impact could be everywhere.”
“Now who’s cutting himself off at the knees?”
“It’s just the truth!” Liam says, voice raising.
“It’s just the honest fucking truth! I’m a washed-up has-been with a job that can only take me so far.
I will love you for my entire life if you let me, but I can’t let you stoop to my level when you have so much to give.
” He smiles at me sadly. “It would be far too selfish to allow.”
Tears well in my eyes, spilling down my cheeks immediately.
“Stoop to your level? Are you serious, Liam? You—you designed me. You invented me. I swear, it feels like you fucking wrote me into existence, which means anything I’ve ever written belongs to you anyway.
If I have any kind of impact at all it’s because of you.
How can you think so little of yourself? ”
“Most of my own family doesn’t even like me, Paige,” he says, tone deadened, eyes glistening. “How could I think otherwise?”
I feel the edge in my words before they leave me.
“Maybe you put all your worth into your ability to throw a baseball, and when you stopped, they stopped knowing how to talk to you. Did you ever consider that you presented yourself like you only had one redeeming quality and when it was taken from you, there was nothing redeemable left? Do you think they bought it, Liam?”
He’s silent, breathing heavy.
“Because that’s what it feels like you’re doing to me,” I whisper.
His face seems to crack. “I would love you even if you never picked up an instrument again.”
“Would you?” I ask, hand over my heart as it rockets. “Would you genuinely love the person I became if music wasn’t a part of me anymore?”
“Of course,” he says, voice like gravel.
“Would you think of me as smaller? Less worthy of you? On a level you’d need to stoop to?”
A shake of his head, a fallen tear.
“Then why are you talking about yourself like that?” I ask.
“Because it’s different,” he says.
“It’s not. It’s not.” I climb off the bed and hug him tight, shaking as his hands wrap around my back. “I love you, and it’s influenced by our past, but unconditional to it at the same time.”
“You can’t say that, and also claim that I wrote you,” he whispers against my neck.
Maybe he’s right.
I want to believe I love Liam in the present independently of our past, but the truth is they’re intrinsically tied. And my understanding of him now is impacted by what happened between us four summers ago.
We’ve written each other since the day we met. Even if we didn’t always mean to. Even if we didn’t always notice.
I pull back and hold Liam’s eyes, my heart breaking at the realization. “Did I make you feel less important to me because you weren’t going to be drafted?” I ask in a whisper.
He sighs. “Not intentionally.”
But I’d done it by accident. Which makes me feel ill. A heaviness boxes me in, shrinking closer on all sides.
“It’s just that I could tell you pitied me,” he explains. “And I knew, I knew you’d been counting on my career to work out.”
I had been counting on it to work out. Because I had nothing else to count on.
“I’m so—sorry,” I manage. “It wasn’t—I never meant for that—It wasn’t even a factor in how I felt. I only wanted you, and so I wanted the things that would make you happy.”
He nods and sighs, asking, “Did I make you feel like you would’ve been less important to me if you hadn’t gone to college?”
I shrug. “Not intentionally.”
“Fuck,” he says, laughing raggedly.
I smile but it fades quickly. It’s actually not funny at all.
I step away from him, rubbing my hands over my face, and try to get back to the dilemma we’re facing now.
“You want the love songs recorded,” I say. “By me.”
He nods, then goes to a wall and leans a palm against it, looking at the ground. “Yeah, I really fucking do, Paige.”
“Because it’ll be me seeing something all the way through in a way you were never able to.”
His head ticks in denial. Or maybe confirmation. Another of his tears falls to the ground. He squeezes his eyes shut and whispers, “Because I’m not capable of letting you settle.”
It’s the competitiveness in him. The captain, the leader. He can’t not push me if he gets the sense I’m stopping short.
“You asked me in Nashville why I never called,” I say. “Remember?”
Liam nods, eyes flicking to me.
“Why didn’t you ever call?”
He looks at me sadly. “Because you were on track. And I was a mess.” His swallow is audible. “I still sort of am.”
The quiet has an echo. All our words, ringing back at me.
“You have to stop measuring yourself up against what you aren’t,” I whisper. Knowing it’s so much harder than I make it sound.
“And you,” Liam says softly, while probably thinking the exact same thing, “need to admit to yourself what you are.”