Chapter Six #2
“No, I won’t give you my kidney.”
“Not what I came here for.”
“Bone marrow?”
“I doubt we’d be a match.”
“All right, you can have part of my liver, but I get your 1955 Martin.”
“You can have every single one of my guitars, Addie. You just have to ask.”
“Even the 1992 Taylor?”
“Sure, but I don’t need your liver.” I chuckled.
Addie’s attention was snapped by someone else coming up the balcony stairs and she sighed and nodded. “Fine. I’ll be done here in about an hour, but I’ll need something to eat.”
“I’ll order us pizza. Quattro formaggi?”
“I can’t believe you remember that.” She sighed. “Sure. Fine. We can talk.”
“I’m in the Night Hawk Suite.” I pushed myself off the bar just as the new customer, a middle-aged woman, approached and stared at me slack-jawed. I could see Addie grinning from the corner of my eye, but I greeted the woman with a perfectly polite smile and nod before heading off.
That had gone so much better than yesterday’s encounter.
Once outside, I slipped my sunglasses back on and kept my head low.
For what it was worth, over the past twenty-four hours, it had been insanely easy to keep a low profile outside the saloon.
The theme park kept people distracted. Nashville was a magnet for music lovers who knew my face, my name, and my discography.
Bravetown mainly attracted families who came for the characters and the attractions.
One mother had looked up from her toddler’s sugar-fueled tantrum long enough to glance my way, had narrowed her eyes slightly as if to place me, and then got sucked back into her family trip.
I even used the main entrance to the hotel.
I couldn’t remember a time when I’d done that without getting accosted—at least in the States.
Part of me was tempted to try my luck, head to reception and put in a pizza order there. Then again, leave it to some nosey bystander to turn that into a headline. It would either be about letting myself go and ordering two pizzas, or about having dinner with a mystery woman in my hotel room.
Back in the suite, I called room service to arrange perfect food delivery timing, then settled in and FaceTimed Skye.
She caught me up on her weekend with her grandparents, building a fort in their backyard with long sticks and bedsheets, and how her grandpa had helped her make a campfire.
As much as the Greens’ custody case irked me, Skye had been close to her grandparents before her mom’s death, and I wasn’t going to prohibit that relationship.
To a certain extent, I understood that they had been grieving their daughter and hadn’t been able to care for Skye then, but they had specifically told me that Skye’s autism was too much for them.
In my eyes, they’d lost their rights to raise her in any capacity with that one line.
I knew what it was like to be the kid that was too much and not enough all at once, and I never wanted my daughter to feel that way.
So they could have a relationship with their granddaughter. They could visit her or go on day trips with her. Skye had even stayed a few weekends with them this year. But they had another thing coming if they thought I’d let them take her.
“I can ask our new friends in Bravetown to see if they have any good intel,” I said after listening to a twenty-minute rant about the lack of good search results on cowboy campsites—as in, historically, how did people in the Wild West set up their camps, not modern camping holidays with cowboy themes.
“I’ll report back when I see you tonight, kiddo. ”
“Thanks, Dad. Bye, Dad, love you.”
“Love you, too.”
I didn’t want to get Skye’s hopes up until the paperwork was finalized, but referring to the people here as friends wasn’t entirely wrong.
I still had some wrongs to right in my relationship with Adriana though.
She didn’t belong behind a bar, and I knew that I was responsible for her ending up there.
I dug through my bag, which was stuffed with papers from yesterday’s meeting.
Wild Fields wasn’t big on digitalization.
The park was twenty-five years old and so were some of their documents.
I’d be dumping the whole stack on my lawyers’ doorstep tomorrow.
At the bottom of the bag, I found the envelope I was looking for.
The one I’d brought from home for Adriana.
My apology. Or at least the part that went beyond the little speech I’d rehearsed in my head.
As if he was spying on me and my mess of contracts and profit analytics, my phone buzzed, flashing with my lawyer’s name. A dozen worst-case scenarios immediately flooded my thoughts. There were only so many reasons Mason would call on a Sunday.
“What happened?” I asked without preamble.
“We have a problem.”
“What did they find now? Did I make a sex tape that I don’t remember?”
“No.” He sighed. “It’s more complicated than that. Do you have a minute to talk?”
“Just about,” I said, only for a knock on the suite’s door to prove me wrong. “Hang on a second.”
I expected to open to room service. Instead, Addie leaned on the handle of the service cart with two dome-covered plates.
“Saved you from having to tip anyone.” She grinned and wheeled past me.
“Are you with a woman?” Mason’s voice droned loud enough from the phone for Addie to catch at least some of it. She grimaced and made a show of locking her lips.
“It’s not what you think,” I told Mason, then turned to Adriana. “Sorry, it’s my lawyer.”
“I can come back later.”
“No, stay. Please.” I wasn’t going to lose another chance to talk to her. Really talk. “Help yourself to the minibar. Eat. I’ll make this quick.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.” Addie beelined straight for the minifridge.
I briefly considered finishing the phone call in the bedroom, but I wasn’t about to start keeping secrets from Adriana.
“All right, give me the bad news,” I said.
Addie didn’t even pretend not to listen. She looked up with raised brows.
“They switched judges on us. We’ve been studying Hutchins’s cases to make you look good to him, right? Well, he’s no longer assigned to this case.”
“What? How? Today?”
“We’ll get the official notice tomorrow that he’s on sick leave and our case will be reassigned to Shelton. Unofficially, Hutchins had a few too many last night and wrapped his car around a tree.”
“Jesus, is he all right? Did anyone else get hurt?” I picked up a napkin, just to have something to do with my free hand.
“I don’t give a shit about Hutchins. Shelton’s our problem.
Very traditional. She has a thing for nuclear families.
Theme-park shareholder is a step up from burnt-out musician, but I suggest a house and a golden goddamn retriever.
If you have a girlfriend—which you should have told me about by the way—put a ring on her finger. ”
My eyes flew to Adriana, who was arranging an array of soda cans around her plate.
“I don’t,” I said.
“Do you want one?”
“What?”
“Man, we work with so many celebrities, you wouldn’t be the first one we’d arranged a contracted relationship for.
I’ll find you a wife in a week or two. Do you want more kids?
Loads of women willing to get hitched because they don’t want to date, just a nice house, a little bit of glamour, and kids, and for them to have all the opportunities in the world.
Maybe a local politician? No, wait, there’s this children’s book author… ”
“That’s insane. I can’t just—no.”
“Free advice: Sleep on it.”
Before I could respond, Mason hung up on me, leaving my mind reeling with the suddenly very real possibility that all the cards were stacked against me. No matter what solution I came up with, I couldn’t give Skye the kind of family this new judge wanted.
“What’s wrong?” Addie asked, her brow furrowed.
“Nothing,” I said automatically because I’d been keeping the custody battle quiet for so long.
“Uh-huh, and I’m Dolly Parton.” She tilted her head and raised her brows.
I wasn’t bullshitting my way out of this.
And for once, I didn’t feel like I had to.
Addie hadn’t uttered a word about Skye to anyone in three years, so I trusted her to keep this to herself, too.
By the time I was finished recapping the whole ordeal, my pizza had gone cold, and Addie’s had been polished off.
“I’m so sorry, Brooks. That sucks.”
“Yeah, it does. It’s been a lot.”
“And I’m sorry for yesterday. I was so in my head about you being here, and clearly you really didn’t need the additional drama in your life.”
“Don’t compare yourself to that wrecking ball. I happen to like your personal brand of drama. It’s expressive.”
She laughed lightly and shook her head, only to refocus the conversation. “Did anything cause the Greens to go haywire?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Like, did you accidentally drunk dial them, so they thought you were an unfit father?”
“No. I think they just see a lot of Candace in Skye. I mean, the kid looks exactly like her mom in old family pictures I’ve seen. Somewhere along the way, they must have decided that they want another shot.”
“We’re not going to let that happen.” Addie balled her hands into fists, her eyes gleaming with determination.
“We?”
“Well, you bought like half my hometown, so yeah.”
“I’m buying half of the park,” I corrected.
“Around here, Bravetown and Wild Fields are basically synonymous.” She shrugged. “So, you’ve got a stable career path ahead of you. Done. What’s next?”
“A house. I asked Renee but all the staff housing is taken at the moment. She offered to let me keep the suite until I find something, but if you know someone who’s selling, let me know.”
“I’d offer you my place, but it’s smaller than the suite.”
I shouldn’t have even entertained the idea but even a small house would look better on paper than a hotel suite. “How many bedrooms?”
“Just one.”