Chapter Three #2
Heck, I was grinning from ear to ear by the time Brooks finished his set, and I’d only been singing along from the sidelines. He had to be so amped up.
“I can’t believe I almost missed out on this!
” Esra stood next to me and leaned against the banister, watching the people downstairs as they filtered out of the building.
Her amber skin was back to its warm glow and the dark crescent shadows under her brown eyes had brightened up.
I’d checked in on her a few times while she’d been stuck in bed, but Noah had done a great job nursing her back to health. “That was so good.”
“Yeah, Brooks knows what he’s doing.”
“I can’t believe you went on tour with him. Now I need to see you play, too.”
“You’re not missing much. I’m not as good as him,” I deflected. I hadn’t touched my guitar in a long time. The buzz of the crowd may have been addictive, but I had gone cold turkey.
“He’s like twice your age, and he’s got tons of experience. You’ll catch up.”
“He’s not that old.” I was twenty-four years old, barely older than Esra, and Brooks was forty-one. Older, yes, but not twice our age.
“Well, you know him better than I do. I bet you know him really, really well for him to come and play a show for you, huh?” She grinned and wiggled her brows at me. “Intimately? Biblically?”
“Nope. Not like that.” I chuckled and playfully rolled my eyes at her. She was just another one in a long line of people jumping to that conclusion. “I’ll go see if I can catch him backstage.”
“Okay. I think we’ll stay for a bit.” She pointed a thumb over her shoulder at Noah.
He was looking right at her. Not letting her out of his sight.
They had a few bumpy weeks behind them, and between that emotional turmoil and Esra’s health taking a toll, I couldn’t fault him for wanting to keep his eyes on her.
If he hadn’t, I probably would have gone into Mom-Friend-mode myself to take care of Esra.
That was never really up for debate though.
Noah had been head over heels even before they had officially been together, even if neither of them had seen it.
In a weird way, they worked perfectly together.
She was the life of the party and he was the salt of the earth—like a perfect tequila shot.
I was glad it had eventually worked out for them.
See? I wasn’t jaded. I really wanted them to be happy together.
“Go make out with your boyfriend,” I said.
“Exactly what I was planning to do,” she laughed and winked before twirling on her heels and heading for her spot in his lap.
With the crowd pushing the other direction, and the Rattlesnake not built as a concert venue, it felt like an hour before I made it backstage. Judging by the instruments still being packed up and the barely touched bottle of beer in Brooks’s hands, it couldn’t have been that long.
He stood with his back to me, nodding along to something his bassist was saying.
Had he always been this tall?
I’d convinced myself that he just seemed taller in my memories because he was larger than life to me when I’d first met him. He was actually tall though. He was tall and he was here. In my hometown. In my place of work. In the same room as me.
“Hi,” I said after a moment of standing and staring awkwardly at his wide shoulders.
Brooks turned, an easy smile immediately etching deep dimples into his cheeks. “Hey! Oh. Shit.” He winced. “Fuck.”
“Nice to see you, too,” I laughed.
“Sorry, no, that came out wrong.” Even though he’d sounded great on stage, his voice scratched up his throat now. He was out of practice, and he’d still played two encores. “You just look so different.”
I rolled my eyes at him. Even though it might have sounded like one, I had to actively remind myself that it wasn’t an insult.
Brooks wasn’t the kind of guy who used words like different, interesting, or fascinating as subtle digs.
He really just meant different. And he wasn’t wrong.
Last time we’d seen each other, I’d been twenty-one, my dark blond curls had reached just past my shoulders, and I’d been following a strict diet plan to fit into all the stage outfits our label had put together for our tour.
Three years weren’t much, but enough to lose the baby cheeks, for my hair to grow down to my waist, and for the rest of my body to fill out in ways that made me love its curvy softness—but made shopping for jeans a nightmare. “Yeah…I guess I am different.”
“I mean, different, yes, but you look good. Sorry.” He set the bottle down and opened his arms for me.
I hesitated. My tolerance for physical contact had lowered a lot since we’d last seen each other.
But for now, I let myself be that old version of myself again.
I sank into the hug and the last three years dissipated.
He smelled exactly the same, warm and woodsy, and my arms still fit perfectly around his waist. For just a moment, we were in the green room of a tour venue, and he’d just come offstage and needed his twenty seconds to ground himself.
“Hi, Addie.”
“Hi, Brooksy.”
He groaned, chest rumbling against my cheek. “Seriously? Still calling me that?”
“I’ll never let it die.” I’d once witnessed a very persistent podcaster calling him that for hours.
Or maybe it had been a talk-show host. It didn’t really matter.
I’d teased him with the nickname long enough for it to become all mine.
Genuinely smiling, I pulled out of the hug.
“Thanks for coming out tonight. You didn’t suck. ”
“High praise,” he chuckled, hazel eyes crinkling at the corners. “I needed this. It was fun.”
“You’ve played stadiums, and you call this place fun?”
“Finally, a woman who admits that size matters.”
“What?” I startled at the innuendo. Brooks had always been friendly, not flirty with me. No matter what rumors had followed our relationship, we’d never gone to those places a friendship couldn’t recover from.
“Shit, sorry. I’m still…stage mode…” He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed a hand over them. “Yeah, this was great. I played tons of places like this when I started out.”
“Wild West theme park saloons where the staff wear historical costumes? Really?”
“Places where you can see every face, people are dancing, and your friends hang out at the bar.” He snapped the clasps on his guitar case shut. “I’m sorry, but I actually have to get back to the hotel and make sure the snack bar hasn’t been raided.”
“Oh.” I glanced around, unsure of who might overhear—or who in the band knew about Brooks’s daughter. There had been a few murmurs about him settling down and starting a family when he’d retired, but Brooks had managed to keep Skye completely out of the limelight. “You brought her?”
“Yeah, but she didn’t want to come tonight.”
“She’s probably glad to get a night off. She must be tired of hearing you sing.”
“Do you want to come?”
“Where?”
“To the hotel, to catch up?”
“Uhm…” I crossed my arms in front of my chest and contemplated all the people who would see me march through the hotel. Not just guests, but my colleagues.
“Is that a ‘no’?”
“Nothing personal. People here don’t have the best opinion of me, and I just got back into their good graces with this show. I meant it when I said I needed the brownie points. I don’t want to get branded the town groupie.”
“Addie, you’re like half my age.”
Again. Did no one in this place know how to do basic math?
“Yeah, because who’s ever heard of a big shot musician fucking a girl seventeen years younger than him?
” I rolled my eyes at him. When we first met, I’d been twenty years and eleven months old and Brooks had been thirty-seven years and eleven months old—and when he’d found out that my birthday was the day after his, he’d promptly turned his thirty-eighth birthday party into a shared one, and had poured me my first official drink at midnight on my twenty-first. With a glass of champagne and one birthday speech, he’d introduced me to everyone worth knowing in the Nashville music scene.
Almost four years later, and all the gossip of us hooking up back then was still just gossip. Brooks had shut down everyone who’d suggested as much.
“What are you doing for breakfast?” I asked.
“We get to go into the park extra early for a private tour. Skye is really excited, otherwise I’d…”
“No, of course, who’s gonna say no to a private roller-coaster ride?”
“You should come.”
“Nah, that’s definitely a family thing,” I said, swallowing a lot of complicated feelings about the park. “Have fun though.”
“Adriana.”
“Yeah?”
“I just wanted to—” Brooks opened and closed his mouth as he tried to find the right words. He sighed and shook his head. “If you’re ever in Nashville…”
He’d clearly been about to say something else, but even if the hug felt the same, neither of us was the same person we’d been three years ago, so I didn’t press him on it. “If you’re ever in Bravetown…”
“More likely than you think. Skye loves anything vaguely historical.”
I twirled my finger through the air demonstratively. “You know where to find me.”
I doubted I’d see him again anytime soon.