Chapter Twenty-Five
· Brooks ·
“She’s not in a great mood,” I warned as I opened the passenger door for a sulking twelve-year-old girl. If the last few days had been the first signs of puberty, I couldn’t wait for it to be over.
“I’ll be fine when I no longer have to look at your stupid face.” Skye shouldered past me, swinging her backpack into my side.
“Hey now, that’s no way to talk to your dad,” her grandmother admonished and grabbed the backpack off Skye, “and we don’t bump into people on purpose.”
Skye whirled around and glared at both of us. “He deserves it.”
“Nobody deserves any kind of physical violence,” Theresa said.
I would have spoken up, would have defended Skye against any criticism she got from her grandparents, but for once, I agreed. I just knew that if I said that out loud, Skye would work herself into more of a huff.
Theresa opened the door to their house and waved both of us forward.
Regardless, I contemplated getting back in the car.
We were only here because Skye hadn’t taken well to the news of Addie breaking things off with me.
Two days in a row, she had snuck off to the staff section of the saloon to find Adriana, but she hadn’t been there, had called in sick instead.
And when I’d told Skye off for cutting school and disappearing on me, she had worked herself into anger spirals that I couldn’t snap her out of.
Every word from my mouth just seemed to agitate her more.
As much as Wild Fields was growing on me, this gossip mill could really cool it. Skye shouldn’t have heard from random people in the hotel about how Adriana and I had gotten into a big fight in the middle of the saloon.
So here we were. Because if me not being on her radar was the only way to get Skye to calm down and actually attend her classes, I’d even leave her with the Greens.
Maybe Adriana had been right.
Maybe I should lose custody.
Clearly, I’d been doing something wrong with Skye if she was ready to shut me out like this over whoever I did or did not date.
But even if my self-doubts sided with Adriana, I couldn’t get over her encounter with that paparazzo.
She must have realized how that could blow up in our faces, right? It hadn’t. But it could have.
We hadn’t talked since that fight in the saloon.
I knew that I’d have to explain the contract situation, but for once in my life, I wasn’t sure I could keep calm if Addie’s claws came out.
Not with the paparazzo situation and the custody battle on my mind.
And, at the very least, Addie deserved a grounded and respectful conversation about her music career from me.
“Are you coming?” Theresa asked.
I nodded, punched my hands into my jeans pockets, and followed her and Skye into the house. Skye flung her jacket onto a small bench and ran upstairs yelling something about the bathroom, obviously feeling perfectly at home here.
I had never actually stepped foot inside.
Skye’s grandparents usually met us at my car and had never tried to invite me in.
The place was almost as big as my own home here in the city.
Same tall ceilings, same open-concept floor plan, but it was way more cluttered.
I would have expected perfectly clean minimalism from the Greens.
Instead, I was greeted by trinkets on every surface and framed photographs filling every wall.
Skye was in many of the pictures, usually accompanied by a tall blond woman that I only vaguely recognized.
Two weeks, thirteen years ago, hadn’t exactly been seared into my memory.
Theresa watched me as I traced Skye’s life through these pictures. I picked a picture off a shelf, in which Skye was toothlessly cheesing at the camera, her face all round and squishy.
“Candace never said a bad word about you, you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“She said the time she spent with you was the best and worst of her life. You were the best. Everything that came with you? The fame, the fans, the photographers, the people finding her online, that was why she decided to keep Skye to herself.”
“That doesn’t…I’m sorry, but that’s bullshit. We weren’t even together long enough for—”
“I’m gonna stop you right there, young man. I have the magazines upstairs, the ones with the photographs of you two going out to bars or parties. And I have a perfect memory of the phone call from the morning she came home to find a beheaded rat on her doorstep.”
“She never told me about that.”
“Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Family life and limelight don’t go hand in hand.”
“I’ve retired,” I reminded her.
Theresa smiled curtly, nodded, and pointed at the picture in my hands. “Keep it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I agree with keeping Skye away from the whole fame machine, but I don’t think she should be kept from her father for the rest of her life.”
“Whatever happens, you can’t send her to a boarding school in Switzerland. She’d be miserable.”
“Brooks, I don’t think—”
“The next few days, just show interest in her. Let her tell you how her online classes work. Let her gush about the documentaries she watches. Spending time with her is a privilege”—I tapped the picture frame against my palm—“and if you can’t see that, then you really don’t deserve custody.”
Theresa blinked at me from across the room.
I wished Adriana’s words hadn’t gotten to me, but she had been right about my honesty.
As much as I loved my daughter, I’d been trying to lie my way into keeping her.
Maybe I wasn’t fit to be a father. At least the Greens had been honest about their life and their plans for Skye.
In the end, the best solution for Skye might be to make sure her grandparents would change their ways.
I wasn’t done fighting for her, but I desperately needed to clear my head.
I left the Greens’ house, but instead of heading straight back to Wild Fields, I drove home. My old home. It felt lifeless as I walked through the door and nothing but gaping, open emptiness greeted me.
The key cover on the piano was still flipped up.
“Für Elise” echoed through my memories.
History had a cruel humor for repeating itself like that.
Even if I told myself that the last weeks with Adriana were a business arrangement first, I couldn’t escape the memory of her writhing beneath me or her sounds when my touch turned rough on her soft body.
I wandered through my house with a drink in hand, and I tried to convince myself that we had just mixed some sex into our mutually beneficial business relationship.
Nothing more. But that didn’t erase the memories of her cradling my daughter in their bathtub nest, showing me exactly how much love she carried in her heart, or the unique flavor of anger and panic when we’d run into Peter Doyle and her whole body had started to tremble.
I leaned on the doorframe to my music room.
The stage equipment from my One Night Only gig in the Rattlesnake Saloon still sat in one pile in the center of it.
I hadn’t gotten the chance to sort through it.
I’d only grabbed my guitar before taking off to Wild Fields.
Now it hardly mattered. All of it would get boxed up and moved into the new backyard studio.
Whatever happened with the custody case without Adriana by my side, I couldn’t leave her hometown.
Even if I only ended up getting to see Skye once in a blue moon, I wanted her to have Bravetown.
The last drops of bourbon burned down my throat as I finally made my way to my bedroom. It was way too early to hit the sack, but I still kicked my shoes off and fell into bed. It smelled like her. Like vanilla and sex.
Love you, too.
How could she say that?
How could she dangle that four-letter word in front of me? And then not let me explain?
As much as I would have liked to play dumb and rid myself of guilt, I knew that I could get too caught up in my head.
I’d meant to tell her about the contract when I’d returned to Wild Fields.
It was meant to be part of my apology to her, but it hadn’t been a pressing issue, so it had moved to the back of my mind.
It didn’t matter that I never intended to keep it a secret though.
From the moment Adriana had opened up to me about her past, I should have known that the deal I’d made with Doyle had been a bad idea.
I pressed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets until the insides of my lids turned to kaleidoscopes.
Love you, too.
If she really did, she would have stuck around. She would have helped me fight for Skye.
My chest constricted and I tried to rub circles into it to relax those muscles, but it didn’t work. I didn’t do well with gray zones. This whole situation was too confusing, and I didn’t know how to fix it.
· Adriana ·
Rage. Cage. Cake.
Selfish. Death Wish. Shellfish.
I banged my head against the tabletop, hard, and winced. Alas, neither sheer impact nor sharp pain shooting through my skull turned my gibberish into sensible lyrics. Brooks was hardly selfish because he was eating all the shellfish, but this song would sure give people a death wish.
Pushing off the smooth wooden surface, I groaned and pressed my pen against the page again.
Words. Rhymes. Rhythm. I just needed something to show off to Kiki Nguyen.
Preferably, something so good that she wouldn’t think twice about paying for a lawyer and buying the rights to my potential second album back from Brooks.
Betrayal. Fatal. Kale.
Okay, between cake, shellfish, and kale, maybe I just needed food. Not that exact food though. That mix sounded like my usually fluctuating period cravings.