Chapter Twenty-Four
The night was filled with such energy, as the band and Charlie jammed around the fire.
As Jack’s kids and Daisy played tag and ran amok in the twilight air amid the blinking fireflies among the trees, up and down the old playset.
Charlie couldn’t remember such carefree happiness since … Uncle Johnny’s.
This was what she’d always been missing. Always craving. And her heart knotted to see her daughter getting to experience the simple happiness of it, wishing she could be always, in this nucleus, with friends and loved ones.
She looked around the faces in the darkness.
The firepit, burning low, flickered upon the contented visages of children settling down with someone’s tablet to play games, bellies full of BBQ and corn on the cob, huddled on a bench beneath an old blanket like cousins, Daisy’s attention rapt on their music, on her, as if her daughter had just seen her for the first time.
And T.R.’s amazing cabin, soaring window, cool nighttime breezes taming the heat from the day as it ruffled her hair and pinkened her cheeks.
Thaddeus’s boot sat hooked around her foot, a quiet claim on her.
It felt so safe, an impenetrable bubble where Jason’s threats couldn’t reach her.
Engulfed in T.R.’s flannel to keep her warm, she picked and strummed the banjo while T.R.
sang, strumming guitar while Bo thudded out a rhythm on a drum pad—
“Naw, we need a syncopated quarter rest right here,” Thaddeus said, taking his pencil from behind his ear and marking something on the music staff being held down by a beer can.
He strummed and sang the verse again with the added rest, testing it while Bo, soft-spoken, nodded. “What d’you think, Jack?”
Jack, plucking on his unplugged bass, shook his head. “Dunno. Sounds clunky to me, unless Bo can lead in with a one-two on the bass drum.”
“I can do that,” Bo nodded. “What d’you think, Charlie?”
Her eyes went wide at Bo, then at the rest of their patient, expectant faces. They wanted her opinion?
They didn’t think she was stealing the limelight by interjecting her enthusiasm like she’d once done and been punished for later? “Oh, I don’t know. Don’t you want to wait until Hunter can join back up? I mean, I’m just a stand-in.”
They fell quiet. Shared a look.
Then T.R. took her hand in his, setting his guitar across his lap.
“We were kinda hoping you’d take his place.
” Daisy’s eyes widened on her, and her daughter nodded hopefully from across the firepit.
“We ain’t hitting the Grand Ole Opry anytime soon like you once dreamed, but, I mean, could be fun, you know?
Like the start of something? Hunt ain’t comin’ back.
He called me today. He’s got a drinkin’ problem, and he’s getting help for it. ”
They wanted her? Charlie’s heart squeezed.
They looked hopeful, when the realities of the life he was asking her to lead sank in.
It was only amateur. They all had lives and commitments, and so did she.
It wasn’t like they would be touring the world and filling stadiums. And behind the scenes, this man was …
sweet. But on stage, McClintock and the Disclaimers were all showmanship and flirting.
Would he—she bit her lip—still pull a lucky lady up from the audience?
Would it eventually lead from flirting to more? Men were hardwired to want that, he’d teased her. Thad wasn’t Jason. But was this all too much? Too fast?
“I think we’re about to crack her.” Daisy giggled, reiterating Thad’s joke.
Charlie was nodding yes and laughing at it against her better judgment, the band’s boyish enthusiasm too excited for her to deflate, but her heart was now racing. Her mind was reeling.
She looked at Daisy, eyes wide and excited. Would she ever be able to bring her daughter to shows as she got older, only to see the women flash their chests or the guys wolf-whistle her?
“Alright now, see that?” Jack held up his phone.
A photo of her and T.R., banjo and guitar, firelight ambient and dancing shadows on their faces, in mid laugh, shared to their … social media page? She scrambled for her phone as the guys and kids high-fived over the fire.
“Gonna advance to the top with Charlie in our back pocket…”
“Gotta enter the awards, T.R. Cutoff is coming up fast…”
But she tapped over to her app and opened up their official fan page, to see that photo, posted by Jack Daniels, page admin, with the caption—McClintock finally found us a secret weapon. Meet Flower Girl. Exciting news about the Homegrown Awards to come.
And already, the likes and loves were accumulating in real time. Five … twenty-nine … fifty-two … eighty-five…
And the comments!
“Whoa!” Thaddeus and Jack cheered together, Jack reading them. “‘I remember her…’ ‘Incredible talent…’ ‘So hot, McClintock’s a lucky bast … guy.’” He winked and censored himself for the kids’ sake, nudging her with a grin. “That he is.”
Thad set aside his guitar and scooped her off her chair, jostling her onto his lap and nuzzling his face into the crux of her neck and collarbone.
“Baby,” he whispered, planting a kiss to her pulse point and tightening his arms around her. “I can’t believe this. Thank you. Winner of the awards gets a record deal with Country Roads in Nashville.”
She fell quiet, uncertainty roiling in the face of their enthusiasm, not so subtly suggesting to their … 12k social media fan base, she glanced at her app, that she was in the band.
And then, he pulled out her version of Hunter’s banjo solo from his back pocket, holding it up. He’d stolen it from her yesterday?
“You wanna run through this, darlin’, so we can coordinate backup harmonies?” he continued.
Her throat felt suddenly too thick to talk. Her eyes were misting, and thankfully, as the smoke from the fire blew across their faces, she blinked at the sting and laughed, coughing, blaming it for the twist of emotion.
“I, uh, don’t know what to say.” She forced another laugh, noting Daisy and one of Jack’s boys now drifting asleep in their huddle while the other capitalized on having the tablet to himself.
“I’ll go start cleaning up. I think my fingers need a break.
It’s been a while, and they’re gonna be chapped since I forgot my finger picks. ”
She set aside the banjo and pushed to her Birks, padding up the stairs to where the food, condiments, and drinks lay strewn across the picnic table.
She swept up a bucket of—now water, what had started as ice for the kids’ sodas—and one of the trays of BBQ, when Thad arrived beside her and crooked his fingers at her, a crease of concern cooling his edge of excitement.
“Hand ’em here.”
“My arms aren’t broken, Trouble,” she said.
“Never said they were, Flower girl. Gimmie. You ain’t here to work.”
She bypassed him instead, but he reached around her and plucked them out of her grip, opening his back door with his elbow while kicking out his foot to hold the screen door open, all while balancing the bucket and tray like a circus act so she could go first. Such a Southern boy, contorting himself into a pretzel to hold the door rather than let her just open it herself.
She picked up the two other trays and wedged the packet of napkins under her arm instead, going inside.
The simplistic grandeur of the cabin’s rustic charm overwhelmed, tall, soaring stone fireplace touching the vaulted ceiling.
“Like a postcard,” she breathed.
Like the cutout collages she’d once made as a girl, and her heart squeezed like it had been doing ever since she’d lain eyes on it today.
“A Christmas wreath would look so pretty there…” She cleared her throat, but the pain lodged there wouldn’t be swallowed away.
Her heart might feel so full, but her nerves were on edge, about future exploits, about current entrapments, and being …
so stuck, and yet, this yearning tugging on her every nerve was leaving an ache pitted in her belly.
Because reality was waiting for her at the restraining order hearing, or with the next broken-down thing at her old house that would need her plumber’s wrench or a box of screws.
A trap she could never crawl out from beneath.
To belong to a place like this … to trust a man like Thaddeus.
She bypassed the leather couch, begging to be cuddled into, with two throws woven with horse silhouettes on either armrest, balancing the trays on one arm like a waitress and swiping up a bottle that had been left on the coffee table hewn of knotty pine.
Rounding past the bathroom beneath the stairs leading to his loft, where a sink made of copper perched atop a weathered barrel bearing a vintage whiskey stamp, she entered the kitchen and set everything down on his island.
She set to work, feeling his silent presence, but scraped remnants into the trash and stacked the platters and spatulas in the sink, running the hot water and pouring in a squeeze of dish soap—
Hands came around her from behind and settled on hers in the suds. “Talk to me, Charlie,” Thad said.
“I’m fine,” Charlie said, scrubbing a platter. “Do you have something to save the extra burgers and beans in? Like a Tupperware or something—”
“Hey.”
The platter was extricated from her grip and dropped in the sink with a splash. The faucet flipped off.
His hands, wet, turned her around and tipped her chin up. “You just ran away spooked. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Bull,” he said, pressing her an inch. “We ask you to join our group and learn your song, and you bolt like a princess from the ball.”
She shook her head. “No, like a beauty queen who knows how it feels to fall and scrape her knees.”
He studied her, quiet. She didn’t know how to explain the twist in her heart.