Chapter Twelve #3
Instead of pulling my hand back though, I turned it around under his, meeting him palm to palm.
His fingertips hovered over the inside of my hand for a moment, then he started tracing the thin crackled lines on my palm.
He followed the big line curving around my thumb first, then the jagged one across the width of my hand.
His gentle fingertip sent a shiver down my spine.
Again, Skye let out a small sound of disapproval at her position being compromised.
I swallowed and looked back at Brooks, but Brooks was looking at my hand. His fingertip slid over the ball of my palm to my pulse point and the small tattoo inked over a long thin scar, both of which were usually covered by around a dozen bracelets.
“When was that?” he asked.
I sighed. The semicolon tattoo had faded a little, but the scar hadn’t. “Almost two years ago.”
“You’re better?”
“Yeah. It took a while, but I’m better.”
His hand closed over mine until only his thumb circled over the ink. “Good. If you ever…you call me.”
I rolled my eyes at him because if I ever got that low again, I wouldn’t feel like I had anyone to call, but I squeezed his hand in silent appreciation. He squeezed mine back twice.
Not a lot of people knew or had asked about the scar and tattoo, but Brooks’s reaction was nice.
Comforting. He didn’t throw advice at me, and he didn’t ask a million questions.
I always thought it was odd when people I wasn’t close with asked why or how or wanted a detailed account of how I’d survived, if I’d gotten cold feet, if I’d seen the light, if someone had found me…
We stayed like that for a while longer, all huddled together, Brooks drawing lazy patterns across my skin, my phone playing episode after episode of a sitcom I barely paid attention to.
One loud snoring grunt broke the silence.
I had to bite my lip to stop myself from laughing.
Skye was completely passed out with her mouth hanging open and her breaths coming in odd snorts and huffs.
“I’ve got this.” Brooks shifted himself up carefully before he lifted Skye from the tub and put her down on her own feet gently. “Bedtime, kiddo.”
He walked behind her, hands braced on her shoulders.
It took me a few moments to stretch and bend some feeling back into my legs myself.
When I finally followed them, Brooks was already halfway to his own bedroom.
Yeah, my plan had only gone as far as making sure Skye was momentarily taken care of.
I hadn’t taken the whole sleeping situation into consideration.
I quickly grabbed all the stuff from the bathroom and started fixing Skye’s bed back up—and then paused and just took all the covers off the bedding instead, dumping everything in a pile outside in the hotel hallway.
Not that I didn’t trust the cleaning staff…but I wouldn’t want to sleep on a sheet that had been dragged across the bathroom floor, no matter how often said bathroom was wiped and disinfected.
Brooks would just have to make do on the sofa.
“That looks good on you,” he chuckled when he rejoined me in the living room and dropped onto the sofa next to me.
“Oh yeah, fluffy potato sack realness, never been sexier.”
“I didn’t say sexy. Good. Comfortable. I like seeing you like this. Especially in my space and around my daughter. It looks natural.”
“I’m not gonna lie, I was not a natural when the fireworks set her off. I panicked for a minute.”
“I’m sorry.” His fingers circled around my ankle and gently tugged, and I let him pull my feet into his lap. “I didn’t know there were going to be fireworks, or I wouldn’t have asked you to look after her.”
“Are you okay?”
“Me? Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”
He was lying, judging by the way both of his hands were tracing the faint veins on my feet and ankles. I wasn’t sure if he was just lying to me or to himself though.
“You can stay with me until the festival is over. My sofa is a pullout. I don’t have room service, but I know that you can neither hear nor see the fireworks from my place.”
“You’re offering us your home?”
“Yeah. If you’re not comfortable with the fact that there’s only two beds, I can probably stay with my mom. Although she might show us the cold shoulder for blowing off brunch today. But, I guess, I could stay here.”
“Addie?” Brooks’s hands stilled over my ankles.
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for being so selfish.”
“I decided to skip brunch and I’m offering my place to you. It’s not selfish to accept that.”
“No, I’m sorry for cancelling the tour and leaving you in the lurch.
I should have made it clearer that the cancellation had nothing to do with you.
I should have found the time to help you navigate that strange make-it-or-break-it time after the first album.
” His face contorted as he stared at my ankles and his fingers stiffened around them.
He couldn’t really believe that the reason my career went up in flames was that he left to take care of his daughter. That may have been the spark to light the fuse, but it wasn’t the powder keg at the end of it.
“Brooks, what exactly do you think happened after you decided to retire for Skye’s sake?”
“I don’t know. Dwindling sales, bad publicity advice, writer’s block? All of the above? When your first album does well, there’s insane pressure on the second one, and you shouldn’t have had to navigate it alone.”
I blinked.
He sounded like he actually believed the music industry was largely a meritocracy. I couldn’t even fault him for that. In a perfect world, it would be. I felt kind of bad for having to shatter that perception.
“I refused to sleep with Peter Doyle,” I said.
“Doyle? Head of Marble Audio?”
“That’s the one. I refused to be alone in a room with him, turned down many after-hours meetings to discuss my sophomore album because I’d heard the stories.
I mean, I met him when I was nineteen, barely legal, two years older than his granddaughter, and he spent more time looking down my shirt than into my eyes.
And when I started wearing turtlenecks whenever I knew I’d see him, I got chastised for messing with my boho image.
He tried to corner me in the elevator once, and I ‘accidentally’ spilled my coffee on him.
Anyway…” I shook my head before I could spiral down a hole of uncomfortable memories.
“After we met and you showed interest in me, as long as people thought you and I secretly had something going on, they left me alone. I didn’t need your mentorship or guidance to make a second album.
Just your name attached to mine to scare off the pervs, because they respected country legend Brooks Monroe’s claim to my body more than my autonomy. Which is a sad and shitty truth.”
“Fuck.” His nostrils flared but other than that, he had gone completely still. “I didn’t know.”
“I think the more I dodged Doyle, the more he wanted to get to me. It’s a power play.
He’d try to get me alone, orchestrate situations that would make it hard for me to avoid him.
He personally called me one night to try to get me to come to his office, and I was tired and cranky and hungry, and I flat out told him that I wouldn’t suck his geriatric limp dick.
After that, Marble Audio dropped me mid–album recording and basically blacklisted me.
” I had to take a short breather. This was the first time I’d told someone the story in its entirety.
Brooks didn’t interrupt with questions or placating words.
He waited for me to continue. “I’d saved up enough money to keep myself afloat for a while, but thanks to my newly minted ‘difficult’ reputation, nobody in town wanted to work with me anymore.
So I knew I had to get a banger out there.
One killer song to show the world that I was worth investing in.
I bided my time. I let the chatter die down.
And then LJ Scott—he’s worked with all these great up-and-coming artists—agreed to produce the song for me if I could book the studio.
And I did. I funneled the rest of my money into recording my Hail Mary. ”
Brooks’s brows jumped up, but again, he remained quiet. He gave me the time I needed to put the last few years into words.