Chapter 4
Chapter Four
CADE
The guitar on the conference table has my name on the headstock.
Cade Tyler, inlaid in pearl beside the Lonesome Strings logo, clean and expensive under the warm lights of Duke’s office.
The finish is black cherry, dark enough to read serious and red enough to catch fire when somebody turns it toward a camera.
My signature is burned into the label inside the sound hole.
My initials are worked into the fret markers.
A whole instrument built to make a stranger feel like they’re holding a piece of me. I should hate that. Instead, I can’t stop looking at it.
“First run would be twenty-five thousand units,” says Nathan, the Lonesome Strings president, sliding a folder toward me like he’s not setting a new future in front of my hands.
“Domestic and international. We’re talking flagship placement.
Retail walls. Collector editions. A lower-cost road model by year two, if demand hits projections. ”
Duke leans back in his chair, calm as Sunday morning. That’s how I know the numbers are filthy. Duke only relaxes when everyone else in the room should be sweating.
“And the tour integration?” he asks.
Nathan smiles. “We don’t see this as a guitar deal. We see it as a Cade Tyler decade.”
A decade.
At thirty-eight, that word lands differently than it used to. When I was twenty-five, a decade sounded like a prison sentence. At thirty-eight, with three albums behind me that people bought out of loyalty more than hunger, it sounds like oxygen.
I rest my hand on the guitar case latch. “What’s the ask?”
Nathan glances at Duke. That’s the first warning. I see it. I choose to wait.
Duke steeples his fingers. “The Wildfire tour becomes the launch platform.”
I go still. “It’s not called the Wildfire tour.”
“It is now in every room that matters,” Duke says.
Across the table, the Lonesome Strings marketing woman, Alison, gives me an apologetic smile that isn’t sorry.
“The Cade-and-Melody conversation is a once-in-a-career heat source. It's Conway and Loretta. Kenny and Dolly. Blake and Miranda. We don’t need to make it cheap. We just need to stop pretending the audience isn’t already there. ”
I don't bother mentioning that Blake and Miranda were married and are now divorced. The way I cut my eyes toward Duke is enough. He doesn't even look sorry.
“The audience is there for a song.”
Nathan taps the folder. “They’re there for a story.”
Cy sits beside me, quiet enough to be mistaken for agreeable by people who don’t know him. His hat shades his eyes. His boot taps once against the carpet. Duke hears it. I hear it. Nobody else does.
Alison turns a page. “The signature line rolls out with a documentary series, premium content, live session drops, writing-room clips. You and Melody, obviously, are the center of that first year.”
“First year,” I repeat.
Duke’s gaze flicks to mine. “We maintain the momentum.”
I laugh once, without humor. “You mean we feed it.”
“I mean we don’t starve it out of embarrassment.”
There are five people in the room who all know I have a wife. Nobody says her name.
The guitar gleams between us. A Cade Tyler line.
Generational money. A decade of touring built around my hands, my sound, my face on walls in guitar shops from Nashville to Tokyo.
Every boy who ever sat on the edge of a bed and taught himself a G chord because my records made him feel less alone might save up for one of these.
Every critic who has started using words like dependable and heritage act might have to shut up for at least a year.
I think of Emmy in the study this morning with that blue folder under her palm. Our little house, she said. And then my phone buzzed, and I let the moment close.
Shame moves through me, quick and mean. I press my thumb against the edge of the folder Nathan gave me.
“What does leaning in mean?” I ask.
Duke answers before anyone else can. “Interviews together. Appearances. A few surprise duet stops. Social content. Keep it playful. Keep it hot enough that they talk and clean enough that nobody can prove a damn thing.”
Cy’s boot stops tapping. The room gets very still in the way rooms do when the honest thing has been said by accident.
Duke smiles. “It’s show business, Cade.”
I look at the guitar. My signature. My future. My proof that I'm not finished.
“Fine,” I say.
Cy turns his head toward me. I don’t look at him.
Duke’s smile sharpens. Nathan reaches across the table to shake my hand. The others follow. Congratulations moves around the room. People talk about launch windows, custom straps, ad campaigns, and a limited run with my road-worn specs.
I nod in the right places. I say yes. I keep saying yes until the word stops feeling like a choice.
By ten-thirty that night, Melody Hunter is telling a journalist she is “trying very hard not to steal anybody’s husband.”
The room laughs.
We’re in Studio B, but it doesn’t feel like a studio anymore.
It feels like a set. Two lamps instead of overheads.
My black cherry Lonesome Strings prototype propped in the corner, visible but not obvious.
A photographer from CMT near the console.
A Silver Creek publicist holding a clipboard.
Duke by the door, listening to every word like it’s a mix he plans to master.
Melody sits cross-legged on the couch, barefoot, blond hair falling over one shoulder. She looks sweet when she wants to. That’s part of the problem. She knows exactly how to make trouble look like innocence.
The journalist laughs into her little recorder. “Is that hard?”
Melody glances at me. Not long. Just long enough.
I should cut in. I should say, My wife is Emmy. Leave her out of whatever bit this is. I should put my voice in the room before the room decides my silence means agreement. Instead, I smile like a man who knows how to take a joke.
Melody puts a hand over her heart. “Cade is a gentleman. Painfully unavailable. Tragically married. We suffer for art.”
More laughter. Duke looks pleased.
I feel my wedding ring against the guitar neck. The edge bites when I shift my grip.
The publicist says, “That’s great. We can pull that.”
Cy, from behind the steel, says, “Maybe don’t.”
Everyone looks at him. He adjusts one tuning peg without expression. “Just a thought.”
The journalist’s smile goes uncertain. Melody’s doesn’t.
“Oh, Cy hates fun,” she says, bright and easy. “He thinks we should all communicate in minor chords and tax forms.”
Duke chuckles. The publicist chuckles. The room moves on.
Cy’s eyes find mine. There are warnings a man hears and ignores because he doesn’t understand them. Then there are warnings he understands perfectly and steps over anyway.
My phone lights up on the stool beside me. Emmy.
For a second, all the studio noise pulls back.
I can see her name. Just her name. No message yet, only the incoming call and the small photo I chose years ago: Emmy laughing on the porch at June’s old place, hair blowing across her mouth, one hand up like she’s trying to hide from the camera while still wanting me to see her.
The phone vibrates once. Twice.
Duke’s voice cuts through. “Cade, give them the bridge story.”
I look down at Emmy’s face. Then I turn the phone over.
The call ends against the wood. I tell the bridge story. It gets a good laugh.
That's the worst part. How easy it is for the room to reward me the second I abandon her.
After midnight, the useful people leave.
The journalist goes first, then the publicist, then the photographer.
Duke stays long enough to remind me the Lonesome Strings dinner rolls into the after-party tomorrow, the after-party rolls into press on Friday, and Friday rolls into a year I already sold before thinking hard enough about what it costs.
“Keep the energy loose,” he says from the doorway.
“Loose,” Cy repeats.
Duke ignores him. “Melody’s good at it. Let her be good at it.”
“She’s getting comfortable,” Cy says.
Duke smiles at me, not Cy. “Comfortable sells.”
The door shuts behind him. The studio finally settles into itself. No cameras except the ones we bring in our pockets. No people pretending not to watch. Just the low hum of the board, the stale coffee smell, and the soft click of Cy packing up cables with more force than necessary.
Melody's at the piano, plunking out the same three notes like she can bother a melody into confession. Her phone rests on the music stand, angled toward the room. A red dot glows at the top of the screen. Recording.
I see it. I register it. I don’t care enough.
That’s a lie. I’m too tired to care in the way that would require me to stand up and do something.
“You going home?” Cy asks.
I glance at my phone. Three missed calls from Emmy now. One text.
Can you call me when you get a second? I don’t want to fight. I just want to hear your voice.
The words sit in my hand. They should break me open. Instead, my first feeling is exhaustion. Not because of her. Because answering her means walking into the damage with both eyes open, and I’ve been training myself all year to squint.
“In a minute,” I say.
Cy’s mouth flattens. “That minute’s getting expensive.”
Melody stops playing. “He’s allowed to work.”
Cy looks at her. “Didn’t ask you.”
A small silence falls.
Melody turns on the piano bench, smiling, but there’s steel under it now. “You act like I’m dragging him here at gunpoint.”
“No,” Cy says. “You’re smarter than that.”
“Cy,” I warn.
He looks at me. “What?”
I don’t have an answer that doesn’t make me sound guilty.
Melody stands. “You know what’s funny? Everybody acts like I invented this. Like I broke into Cade Tyler’s happy little house and stole his attention.” She lifts both hands. “I’m just standing where he keeps showing up.”
“Melody,” I say.
“No, tell me.” She walks closer, not touching me. She knows better when Cy is in the room. “Do you ever ask yourself why this works?”
“The song works because it’s good.”
“The song works because people believe us.”
“They believe a story.”