Chapter 16
CHAPTER 16
JACKSON
“Beautiful Bella…” I croon. My fingers trip over the guitar strings. I’ve been working on this song in secret for the past month, but in the past week it’s gotten particularly painful.
Since I learned Bella would be moving halfway around the world in just a few weeks’ time.
I strum the bridge forcefully—she has no idea I’ve been writing this song for her, or that I plan to reveal it at the Strawberry Jam. I’m not sure it will be well-received anymore. Ever since she broke the news of the promotion, she’s been only half-present. But I’m not one to shit on anyone’s good news. Bella doesn’t need me to remind her that Australia is a seventeen-hour plane ride away from LA.
I’d make the trip weekly to see her if she wanted me to. If I could afford it. If she seemed like she even wanted something like that.
I try to put it out of my mind. There’s too much to think about. The Strawberry Jam is in three days—this weekend!—and I don’t need to bring myself down thinking about how hard I’ve fallen for Bella Keegan.
But how will you survive what comes next without her?
That’s the other thing I’m trying not to focus on—the shitshow awaiting me out in LA as soon as I go back to record my formerly-last but now sixth-from-last album. I haven’t spoken to Artie since he broke the news, because an independent legal review confirmed my worst fears: what Artie did with the automatic renewal was within the parameters of the contract, and I am stuck in this festering sinkhole of rock star imprisonment for another five years.
That’s its own bag of dicks. How the fuck am I supposed to maintain a long-distance relationship on top of all that, when I can barely afford the plane ticket?
I try to shove the questions from my mind. I want this festival weekend to be perfect. We’ve all worked so hard on this, and I’m determined to make sure it goes off without a hitch. My bandmates arrive on Thursday night, and we spend most of Friday rehearsing on the stage, testing sound, arranging the final details for our show. The songs sound tight, and I’m confident we’ll pull them off. Fork Lick is already a hotbed of activity as festival-goers begin flooding the area. Bella had the foresight to install privacy fences along the length of the farm, so gawkers can’t drive by and get a sneak peek before we’re ready.
The rest of the family comes by in waves, dropping off multiple deliveries of the products they’ll be selling. I’ve never seen so much strawberry milk in one place in my life, but the coolers that Alex installed in the barn are packed full of it. Bacon arrives Friday afternoon to set up his steam pans and presentation area, since he’s presenting on farm-to-table menu ideas—with samples, of course. Gran is in the far corner of the barn, setting up her grow lights for her own presentation about basement vegetable farming. Molly’s got the composting toilet display set up just beyond the barn doors, and Sam and Diane are laughing together as they set up their information about seed saving and heirloom plants.
Friday night, after dinner with Gran and all sorts of last-minute tasks, Bella and I find ourselves alone on the stage in the darkness. Everyone has gone back to their homes; Gran is in her bedroom inside; Baabara has been locked in the palace with extra reinforcement. The moon is almost full overhead, and we’re both splayed back on the wood platform, looking up at the stars.
“I can’t believe it’s finally here,” she says.
“It’s gonna be awesome tomorrow.” She sits up, looking around, and I rub her back. “None of this would have been possible without you.”
She looks down at me, moonlight glinting off her smile. In my head, I’m singing her song. I’ve never written a song for a woman like this, never mind hard launching it at a show where she’s in attendance. It feels like the only way to really show her how hard I’ve fallen. Music is the only way for me to show anyone anything.
“You all pulled your own weight,” she says, looking out at the farm. “I just had to provide the road map.”
“You’re good at that. No wonder they promoted you.”
Her smile falls slightly. “Yeah.”
“You’ll let me come visit you when you go out there, right?” My heart is suddenly pounding. This festival will be over Sunday, and I have no idea what her plans are. All I know is that I need to be in LA by next week, so sooner or later, this reverie is coming to an end.
“Of course,” she says without looking at me.
“Will you be coming back to visit LA?”
“I doubt it,” she says quietly.
“We can video chat.”
She looks at me, something sad in her gaze. Then she leans forward, covering my mouth with hers. She kisses me so urgently I almost fall backward. Bella grips the sides of my face, climbing onto my lap.
“Whoa, girl,” I say with a laugh, once the first round of kisses have stopped. “You keep kissing me like that and we’re gonna defile this stage.”
“I say we defile it.” The gleam in her eye is naughty as her hands travel down my body and to the front of my jeans. She unzips my pants, fishing inside. My cock is already half-hard, and she hums appreciatively when she finds it.
“Always ready to go, aren’t you?” she murmurs. We’ve had sex twice a day for the past month, and it still doesn’t feel like enough with her. But instead of lifting her sundress, she fishes my cock out of my jeans and slides off the edge of the stage. Standing between my legs, she’s at just the right height to suck me off.
“I think this is the perfect way to bless tomorrow’s performance,” she says before dragging her tongue along the seam of my cock.
I thread my fingers through her silky hair as she takes the length of me between her lips. I groan softly in the humid night air. “I see no issue with this.”
Bella devours me, laving her tongue back and forth across my cockhead before diving back in to take me from tip to balls.
“Gotta get the rock star ready for his big show,” she murmurs before taking another swallow.
“Ohh, Bella.” I tilt my head to watch her suck me off. It’s a beautiful sight; my only complaint is I wish I could see more. “God, you feel so good.”
She gurgles something incoherent in response. I swipe her hair to the side. Between the feel of her mouth around me and the night air vaulting above us, there’s no question I’m in love with this woman. I know we’ll figure something out long distance. We have to.
She fists the base of my cock as she sucks me, and it doesn’t take long before my abs are tightening and I’m pumping my release into her mouth. She lets out a low, satisfied hum, dabbing at her mouth. She climbs into my lap and straddles me, clinging to me in a desperate hug.
I can feel the emotion pouring out of her. I just hold her, burying my face in her hair.
“I don’t want this to end,” she says suddenly, curling up into my arms.
“It doesn’t have to,” I tell her.
But she stays quiet.
“You’re going to a different country, not a different planet,” I go on. “We have all the technology in the world at our fingertips.”
“It’s not the same,” she says.
I squeeze my arms around her tighter, like it might get rid of her objections. “We’ll figure something out. I know we will.”
This time, when the vast farm silence settles over us, Bella doesn’t add anything more. Not to disagree or agree.
There’s just us, alone on the stage under the vast Fork Lick sky.
Waiting for what comes next.
The morning of the festival is busy. No, it’s a blur. The weather is perfect—sunny, barely a cloud in the sky, all the fields looking extra green and rolling. The family works in perfect sync getting the final details set up. My band and I are busy getting tuned and sound checked while the hired help for the day fill the bars, stock drinks, and load up coolers. As the hours churn on, the line to get in gets longer and longer. People are waiting along the side of the country road for what looks like miles. We’ve repurposed an empty part of the property a quarter-mile down the road to serve as the parking lot, and it’s turned into a sea of vehicles. My brothers can’t believe it, but Colleen and Gran watch me with a sparkle in their eyes.
Doors open at one p.m., and Bedd Fellows Farm is instantly flooded with people. The sight is dizzying—there have never been this many humans on the property at once. The music isn’t slated to begin until the evening, so I mill around the educational barn, meeting fans and watching the presentations. Alex’s strawberry milk sells out by three, and my phone is constantly pinging from all the social media references and tagging.
At five, the opening acts begin, regional bands that I hand selected to perform. They play about four songs each to wild applause. Damn near all the attendees are gathered in front of the stage or near the bars, and the energy is electric. Bella catches my eye from backstage, and I snag her waist as she walks by.
“Thanks,” I tell her, stealing a quick kiss.
“For what?” she asks.
“Being you.”
Her cheek flush, and she continues on, sending me a sweet smile over her shoulder. “Break a leg out there. I’ll be watching from the front row when I get back.”
“Where are you going?”
“Just to handle a little incident at the front gates. Your adoring fans who couldn’t get tickets have decided to camp out on the road, and the police were called. Don’t worry though—I’ve got it.” She blows me a kiss.
My bandmates and I mill around backstage. I sing warm-ups and scales, readying my voice and my body for the show. Dustin, the drummer, is tapping out rhythms on a railing, his dark hair pulled back in a thin ponytail and topped with a bolero hat. Billy the bassist stares out at the crowd through a slit in the curtain, his short blond hair in a 50s side swipe. “You definitely draw a bigger crowd than I’m used to,” he says wryly.
I squeeze his shoulders. “Let’s just be glad it’s more people than when we first started the club circuit in the city.”
Dustin laughs. “Ain’t that the truth.”
The last opening act wraps up. The stagehands get to work switching out the equipment and testing mics while the crowd outside begins to chant: Jack-son. Jack-son. Jack-son.
I poach the energy, letting it fill me, fuel me. This is what I love about live performances. Each crowd has its own feel, its own pulse. I look at Dustin and Billy. They give me a thumbs up, and then I give the signal to one of the stagehands.
It’s showtime.
We enter the main stage and the roar of the crowd washes over me. The grin nearly splits my face as I take it all in. In the cordoned-off front row, I find all my loved ones joining in the cheers. Bella holds her hands over her heart as she grins up at me. Gran is watching me with tears in her eyes. With the expansive crowd stretching behind her, the farmhouse in the distance, this is a type of full-circle that chokes me up. I never imagined I’d be here, where it all started, performing a show like this for so many fans and my entire family.
But the performer side of me takes over. It’s practically a reflex by this point.
I am rocker. Hear me sing.
“Hello, Fork Lick,” I boom through the microphone, reaching for my waiting guitar. A new wave of cheers cycle through. From this vantage point, I can see the police cars lined up along the road, still struggling to get the onlookers to move on. I doubt they’ll have much luck. Near the house, Baabara is watching me with beady eyes from inside her pen. My number one fan. I blow a kiss her way.
“Welcome to Bedd Fellows Farm. Thank you all for joining me and my family here today for the Strawberry Jam. I’m here with Dustin and Billy, my incredible bandmates for tonight. Are you ready to rock?” My voice hangs in the air as I intend, and the screams swell once more. Hands are in the air, fists pumping, chanting mounting once more. I look back at my band. With a nod, I launch into the powerful chords of my first song, “Time Will Tell.”
Nobody has heard this music before, but it doesn’t matter. Everyone is jumping up and down with the powerful drumbeat, just as animated and loud as if I’d been playing my chart-topping hits.
Songs melt away in a hot but fun playlist. My brothers walk along the front of the crowd, bouncing to the music as they spray water on people’s faces with an irrigation hose. At one point, Alex is wearing pink sunglasses and moving his hips in a way I’ve never seen before. Ethan has beads around his neck. Sam has his arm hooked around Diane, rocking to the beat. Colleen and Bacon swap out their front row position, taking turns to jam while the other hangs with the twins in the house. A beach ball is launched into the audience; when it gets lobbed onto the stage, I punt it back into the audience mid-song.
Bella’s song comes up third from last. Before I start, I grab the mic and search her out in the crowd. I point at her.
“This next song is a surprise that I wrote for someone very special to me,” I say. I wink at her and she tilts her head, her brows drawing together. “She has no idea that I wrote it or that I planned to sing it to her today. This next one is called Bella .”
As the cheers swell in the air, Bella stands stock still, eyes wide. Gran slings an arm around her, and Collen is shouting with her hands cupped around her mouth.
“You were there all along / A North Star in the sky / I just didn’t know how sweet our love could be until we tried…”
I check in on Bella as many times as I can during the song. She’s not moving, just watching me with her hands clamped over her mouth, eyes watery.
“ Matching wounds bleed the same pain / Two different souls all the same…”
I can’t tell if she loves it or hates it, but the crowd is loving it, at least.
When the song is over, the last chord fading pleasantly into the bloated sunset, I look down at her.
“What did you think, Bella?”
She covers her face with her hands and Gran pulls her into a hug. I can’t hear what they say, but I can tell she’s overwhelmed. Good enough for me. With a laugh, my band and I launch into the last couple of songs.
And as the concert wraps and I’m staring down the sea of sweaty faces and blissed out smiles, I realize something.
Autonomy. Fun. Inspiration. This is what I’ve been missing in my musical career. This is what it’s fucking about. I need to get this feeling back at the forefront of what I do each day. Need to. Somehow. Away from my label.
I leave the stage and let the roar of the crowd lure me back out. We give them an encore. The family greets me backstage as I peel the guitar off myself and reach for the nearest bottle of water to chug. My brothers look dumbstruck. Colleen is wiping away tears. And Gran is basically floating. She kisses my cheeks no fewer than twenty times.
“You were absolutely incredible,” Gran gushes.
“Best concert I’ve ever been to,” Alex admits.
“I’d have shit my pants if I had to get up there and do what you did,” Ethan says.
“I did poop my pants, but that’s nothing new,” Lia cracks.
“That’s my little brother,” Colleen adds with a big grin.
“I’m so proud of you,” Sam says, pulling me into a hug.
It’s just us… family . Huddled together on the stage the Bedds built, on the land that started as Grandad’s dream. It’s become so much more, in so many unexpected ways.
Pride shines in Ethan’s eyes, reminding me that I’m not as much of a black sheep as I used to feel. I belong here. With them, on this land, in my own way.
But none of this would have been possible without my brothers, my late parents, and the foundation of what my grandparents built.
My family has never felt stronger…and I like to think Grandad is smiling down at us.