Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
EMMY
Cade nods like the movement costs him.
For one second, the Whippoorwill keeps pretending not to watch us.
Glasses clink, a chair scrapes, and someone near the door laughs too loudly at nothing, giving the rest of the room permission to breathe again.
Cade doesn’t look at them. He looks at me like if he blinks too hard, I might turn into one more empty place he has to sing toward.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice rough from the set. “Anywhere.”
I tighten my hand around the strap of my purse and make myself glance around.
Hal is behind the bar with his towel bunched in one fist. Cy has his shoulder against the back wall, still as a fence post. Pop sits near the end of the bar, his eyes on the floor because apparently everyone in Harmony Ridge decided tonight was the night to develop manners.
It should help. It doesn’t.
Tomorrow, somebody will tell somebody. They’ll swear they won’t, but they will.
Maybe it’ll stay local, or maybe it won’t.
Maybe some girl in the corner who didn’t lift her phone tonight will remember she has a cousin with a gossip account by breakfast. I’ve spent enough time being watched while my marriage bled.
“Not here,” I say quietly. “It’s nice, Cade. What you’ve done for this place. I mean that. But I can’t do this with half the county trying to act like they’re not listening.”
His throat moves. “Okay.”
“And I’m not interested in becoming a blind item by morning.”
A flicker crosses his face. Not surprise, but recognition. Shame, maybe.
“There’s the house,” he says. “It’s not finished. But there’s a roof, walls, and electricity in enough places. No one will be there.”
The house. My house. The words hit somewhere I’ve been trying not to touch.
I nod before I can let myself think too long. “Okay.”
He reaches like he might put a hand at my back, then stops with his fingers half-curled in the air. That small restraint does more to my chest than the reach would have. He remembers he doesn’t get to move me through a room anymore. He waits until I step first.
We leave through the side door, away from the main windows. Cold night air settles over my face, sharp enough to make my eyes water. Cade walks beside me but not too close, his guitar case in one hand, his other hanging empty between us.
The drive over is quiet. Not cold and not comfortable, just quiet, with the dark road unspooling ahead of his truck and my hands folded over my purse in my lap. When he turns onto the gravel lane, my breath catches before I can stop it.
The house rises out of the dark in pieces. Porch posts. Fresh railings. Windows without curtains. A roofline I drew at nineteen with a dull pencil on the back of a shift schedule. The old dogwood stands at the side of the yard, bare-limbed and stubborn, its branches reaching over the roof.
Cade parks, but he doesn’t get out right away. His hands stay on the steering wheel, his knuckles rough. There’s a half-healed cut across one thumb and a strip of medical tape around the base of his palm.
“I can take you back,” he says.
I look over at him. He’s still Cade. The slope of his nose, the tired mouth, and the dark hair falling over his forehead because he never remembers to push it back until he’s already annoyed by it.
The man I left in Nashville and the man who’s been building porch rails under a Tennessee sun live in the same body.
“No. This is good," I say, not really sure if it is or not.
His eyes close for half a second. Then he gets out, comes around, and opens my door. He stands back so far I almost laugh, except nothing in me feels laughable. I climb down carefully, one hand braced against the seat, my sweater falling loose around me.
Cade notices the care. He hasn't figured it out. I know because if he had, he would have already come apart.
I step past him toward the porch. The boards are new enough to smell like cut lumber.
A temporary bulb glows near the front door, throwing pale light over sawdust, stacked trim, and the kind of clutter that means people have been here all day making something real.
The porch wraps around the side exactly the way I drew it.
Wide enough for two rocking chairs and a little table.
Wide enough for coffee at dawn. Wide enough for a woman to sit with bare feet tucked under her and listen to rain.
I stop at the threshold, and Cade stops behind me.
“I kept your measurements,” he says, then shakes his head once.
“That sounds ridiculous. I mean, I kept the drawings. All of them. The one with the porch. The one with the reading nook. The kitchen layout you changed three times because you said someday you’d want enough counter space to make biscuits without elbowing somebody in the ribs. ”
My fingers touch the unfinished door frame.
The house is colder inside, but dry. The walls are up, some painted, some still waiting.
Plastic sheeting covers part of the floor.
There’s a ladder near the hall and a stack of tiles in the corner.
The air smells like dust, pine, drywall mud, and the clean metal scent of new wiring.
It should feel strange, but it doesn’t. That scares me more than if it did.
Cade sets his guitar case down near the entry and takes off his hat, turning it once in his hands. The porch light cuts across his face from behind, leaving the front of him in shadow.
“I had a speech,” he says.
My pulse stumbles.
He looks down at the hat. “A whole one. It was bad.”
Despite myself, my mouth trembles. “Was it?”
“Terrible.” His thumb rubs over the brim. “Cy told me if I used the phrase ‘from the ashes’ anywhere near you, he’d knock me unconscious and tell you I tripped.”
A breath leaves me. Not quite a laugh, but close enough to hurt.
Cade hears it. His face changes, hunger and grief moving through him so fast he has to look away. Then the room gets quiet again. He sets the hat on top of his guitar case, and when he lifts his eyes, there’s nothing rehearsed in them.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “And I know that’s not enough. I know it’s the cheapest thing I can say after making you pay for my choices.”
My hand tightens on the strap of my purse.
“I neglected you,” he says. “Not by accident. Not because touring is hard, the industry is loud, or because Duke pushed and Melody wanted and cameras were everywhere. I neglected you because being needed by strangers made me feel younger, more important.
“I chose the feeling of being relevant over you,” he says.
“Over dinners you made and didn’t eat. Over texts I saw and answered later until later became never.
Over sitting beside you at awards shows.
Over making sure you had a pass with your name on it instead of being handled like an accessory.
Over shutting down a story I knew was hurting you because I liked what that story was doing for my career. ”
My throat tightens. He takes one step back, not forward, like he can feel the words crowding me and wants to give them room to exist without trapping me.
"I let too much happen. Duke saw numbers, Melody saw a part to play, and the cameras saw pain they could cut to.
And I stood there with an award in my hand and thanked you like you weren't the most important person in my life when you're the air I breathe.
I guess it's easy to take oxygen for granted when you've never had to think about what life would be like without it. "
I press my fingertips harder into the door frame.
Cade’s eyes go wet, but the tears don’t fall.
“I’ve thought about that damned awards show.
Not because the internet dragged me for it, and not because people finally realized what it looked like.
Because I watched it back, Emmy. I made myself watch it.
Your face. Your hands. The way you smiled because everybody had taught you that my life went smoother when you looked fine. ”
My breath catches on the way in.
“And then the recording,” he says.
My grip slips from the frame.
"I know, Cade," I say, my words coming out so raw and wrecked, I don't recognize my own voice. "Melody…she came by. Played the whole thing."
I watch the realization settle over his features. He closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them, staring back at me with such an intensity that I almost gasp.
"I wanted you to know so badly what I said that night. But…" He stops, swallowing. "I may not have said the thing you thought I said. But I still made you feel unchosen for two years. That’s the thing I actually did. It isn’t smaller because I didn’t want her.”
The floor seems to tilt under me. I’ve imagined explanations, begging, and him grabbing onto the technicality like a drowning man clings to anything floating. I haven’t imagined him setting it down in front of me like this.
“You lost your name in my life. Emmy Sutton, who could hold a whole town awake at midnight with nothing but her voice, became Mrs. Tyler in a seat somebody else picked. You became the person people managed around me. And I let that happen after I knew better than anybody what your voice was worth.”
I look toward the back of the house because looking at him is too much.
The kitchen is half-done: cabinets without doors and a sink still in its box.
Beyond it sits a small rise where the reading nook sits over the room, framed by windows that face the dogwood.
My reading nook. Not approximate and not inspired by. Mine.
Cade follows my gaze. “I didn’t build this to win,” he says. “I need you to know that.”
A bitter little sound leaves me before I can stop it. “Cade.”
“I know how it looks.” His hands open, empty.
“The house. The songs. The Whip. Walking from Lonesome Strings. Leaving Silver Creek twisting in the wind when they wanted another year of ‘Wildfire’ money. It looks like a man stacking up grand gestures and hoping the pile gets tall enough for you to climb over what he did.”
I say nothing.