17. Luke
luke
. . .
Ihadn't seen Bailey since the day I was served our divorce papers, since her birthday, our seventh wedding anniversary.
I'd seen plenty of her, it seemed like Bailey was everywhere.
But when I closed my eyes I saw her standing in front of me with Jackson fucking Reed standing between us, protecting my wife... from me.
The rest of July felt like my own private kind of hell, all heat and noise and aftermath.
I had thought that maybe August would soften her. Eventually she would calm down and we could talk.
Was she really willing to throw us away?
No! I couldn't believe that this was it. That we would never be together again. But August is demanding and hungry. August is when people started acting like I’m something they’ve been waiting for.
The calls change tone first. We are no longer chasing, people are coming to us asking what I want to do next.
Dave’s excitement makes my skin itch. Talking faster. Smiling wider. Saying my name like he's already cashed it in.
“You’re getting traction,” he tells me for the hundredth time, pacing my hotel room. “Real traction. The timing’s not ideal, but the momentum? Unmatched.”
The timing is my marriage imploding. But he doesn’t say that part out loud.
I don’t answer him. I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, bottle in my hand, scrolling through my phone. Bailey’s face is everywhere, her smile, her laugh... Just… there.
On stage, with someone else.
Working on a massive collaboration with him.
All the things she wanted from me. All the things people had begged her for, but she always turned down every offer because of me. It makes my chest hurt in a way I don’t have language for.
“She looks happy,” Dave says carefully, like he’s testing the words.
I look up slowly. “Don’t.”
He lifts his hands. “I’m just saying, the narrative’s shifting. You need to decide how you want to be seen in this.”
“There is no narrative to decide on. I’m still married,” I snapped.
Dave hesitates. That’s new.
“For now,” he says.
I throw the bottle across the room. It shatters against the wall, glass skittering across the carpet.
“For now?” I roar. “She’s my wife.”
Dave doesn’t argue. He just exhales and checks his phone.
The papers sit untouched in my bag. Wrinkled and Ignored. I haven’t signed them.
I won’t.
If I don’t sign, it’s not real.
If I don’t sign, she hasn’t really left.
If I don’t sign, this is just another fight we’ll survive.
That logic makes sense to me when I’m sober. It makes even more sense when I’m not.
The pills come easy.
Something to wake me up before meetings, to take the edge off before shows, to help me sleep when my brain won’t shut up and then to help with the side effects of the pills and booze.
Because someone always has something and everything that hurts me has a pill to make it better.
I don’t ask questions anymore.
I swallow whatever’s handed to me and wash it down with whatever’s open, because feeling nothing is better than feeling this.
The label meeting happens in a glass-walled office that smells like money and ambition. Everyone smiles too much when they call me “authentic.” Says my pain reads as grit.
They slide a contract across the table. One album, with optioned tour support and performance-based extensions.
It’s not what I wanted.
I wanted three albums.
I wanted control.
I wanted proof that Bailey didn’t outgrow me.
“This is a test run,” one of them says smoothly. “Given the circumstances.”
The circumstances being my wife serving me divorce papers and the internet watching me unravel. But this is what I sacrificed for, what I needed to prove to her it was all worth it. So I signed the deal, because I have so much to prove.
I tell myself it’s temporary, that I’ll prove them wrong. Bailey for trying to leave me and this label for thinking I’m only good enough for a single album.
I want to write the album, they tell me that it's not an option unless Bailey is co-writing with me. They haven't liked the stuff I have written on my own, so they bring in writers.
People who don’t know me.
People who don’t care.
They talk about a bad-boy angle. About leaning into the chaos and giving the audience something to latch onto.
“The fans are already creating a narrative,” one of them says. “You just need to lean into it."
I nod like I agree, but inside, everything feels hollow.
The songs are garbage, so I try and write my own, to prove to them that I can. That Bailey wasn't the only talent when we wrote together.
I stare at the pages for hours and nothing comes. Or something comes and it’s wrong. Forced. Cheap. Like I’m pretending to be someone I don’t recognize.
I pop a pill Dave gave me to relax and close my eyes.
Memories haunt me, show me everything I have been walking away from in slow motion.
Bailey used to pull the truth out of me without trying.
She’d sit on the floor with her back against the couch, guitar in her lap, and say, Stop thinking. Just feel. Just play.
Now I can’t write without hearing her voice, so I've stopped trying.
I take more pills.
Drink more.
Sleep less.
Kacey shows up uninvited one night, smelling like tequila.
She doesn’t knock. Just slips inside my room like she belongs there.
I am sitting in a chair looking out the window of some hotel room in a city I don't remember.
She moves across the room and directly to me.
Her hand lands on my shoulder and she tries to climb into my lap.
I shove her back.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
She laughs like I’m being dramatic. “Relax. Everyone knows you’re single now.”
I see red.
“I’m not single,” I snap, jumping up. “She’s still my wife.”
Kacey’s smile sharpens. “Is that why she’s everywhere with anyone who isn’t you?”
I step toward her, fury shaking my hands. “Get out.”
She rolls her eyes. “God, everyone acts like Bailey’s so fucking perfect. She’s not. She just...”
“Get out,” I roar.
She freezes, then scoffs. “You never acted married before. Why bother now?”
Something in me snaps, I am physically vibrating.
“I have never touched you, never cheated on my wife.”
She rolls her eyes and tosses her hair over her shoulder, “Whatever, maybe not.. But everyone thinks it… even her. You spent all your time with me, chose me over her time and time again. What did you think it was leading to?”
I feel like I can’t breathe, I stumble until I get to the door and open it grinding out. “Leave, and don’t come near me again.”
She hesitates, then smirks. “Good luck chasing someone who’s already moved on.”
The door slams behind her.
I tell Dave to keep her away from me, and for once he doesn’t argue.
When we are back in Nashville I finally go to the house and I notice immediately that her things are gone.
The kitchen feels wrong without her filling the space with her voice.
Bailey used to sing some of her favourite songs when she would cook for us.
I move through the house that now feels like a glaring reminder of all my mistakes.
I find her ring on the dresser. Just sitting there, like it doesn’t mean anything.
I fucking lose it.
I smash a chair into the wall. Sweep everything off the counters. Kick over stools. Rip open drawers like she might be hiding in one of them. I scream until my throat is raw. Then I sit on the floor with the ring in my palm and cry like something inside me died.
I don’t remember leaving, but I wake up in a hotel room I don’t remember getting, with a hangover and another headline.
Bailey this.
Jackson that.
Smiling. Singing. Thriving.
I track her schedule obsessively. Know what city she’s in before she makes the news. Watch clips on mute. Read comments until my vision blurs.
She looks free and I am drowning.
I leave voicemails I don’t remember recording.
Some are angry.
Some pleading.
Some slurred apologies.
She blocks my number, so I switch phones and call again.
The pills don’t work like they used to.
Nothing does.
So I take more.
I tell myself I’m in control, that she’ll come back once this phase burns out. But deep down, in the quiet moments I can’t drown...
I know the truth.
I didn’t lose her all at once.
I lost her every time I chose myself and called it us.
And now August is bleeding into September, and everything I thought I was chasing is finally right in front of me. I just don't know what to do with the fact that it's nothing as I had pictured it, and I may have lost the only thing that should have mattered.