Chapter 46
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
At the hospital, the electrocardiogram machine’s persistent beep was Jamie’s confidant.
Emma Lou had hit her head after overshooting her serve on the tennis court.
It had been touch-and-go, but the surgery was successful.
Doctors expected her to recover, though it would be slow, given her age and risk factors. For now, she hadn’t woken up.
Jamie had sent everyone else home hours ago, but he wasn’t leaving her side. He’d been through enough trauma in the last twenty-four hours. He couldn’t bear losing her too. There wasn’t enough whiskey in the world to make him forget how it felt to have found serenity and to squander it.
The fallout from the Landmark teaser article had been swift. Tex relayed that the record label had canceled his current record deal, album release, and next month’s tour. Which meant, in the eyes of the town, his career was dead.
Jamie wasn’t exactly surprised. He made his choice when he agreed to hire Melvin, make two albums with him, and keep up the facade in front of an intrepid journalist, with whom he unwittingly fell in love.
Rightfully, Brinton hated him. He needed her to hate him so that she, at least, could be happy. Even still, the loneliness hacked at him.
When Jamie turned on his phone, it was flooded with missed calls and texts about the article, but he ignored them all. He leaned forward in the metal folding chair, which squeaked against the linoleum floor, and held his head in his hands.
The door creaked open, followed by familiar heavy footsteps.
“You should eat something.”
Jamie looked up to see his father, his figure shadowy in the low light. He held out a Styrofoam cup filled with black coffee and a pack of Zebra Cakes. They were his favorite when he was a kid.
“You remembered?” Jamie asked. He took the cellophane package and the coffee.
“Mm-hmm. I remember your mama pitched a fit anytime I brought them home. ‘Too much sugar,’” Jamie Sr. said, chuckling and shaking his head at the distant memory.
Perhaps it overwhelmed them both, because the next thing Jamie knew, thick tears had spilled down his cheeks.
“Sammi told me about Ms. Shaw,” his father continued.
“I cared about her daddy,” Jamie choked out, through ragged sobs. “But I had to let her go. You were right.”
His father gripped his shaking shoulders, which soothed Jamie enough to catch his breath. He dragged his eyes across his T-shirt sleeve.
Jamie Sr. slid a metal folding chair beside his son’s.
“I think you and I are a little more alike than I’d hoped.
I thought if I worked hard enough, stayed disciplined, I could give your mama this sterling life, and that would fix her problems,” he continued.
“That she’d be happy. All the money, resources, and doctors didn’t give her what she needed.
She needed me to show up for her in a way I couldn’t.
She needed me to stop trying to control every outcome and listen.
But I didn’t know how. I didn’t come up in one of those ‘feelings’ households like on TV.
So I was blinded by what I thought was best. Then, I lost her. ”
“We both did,” Jamie said. His throat was raw from the exertion of speaking.
Jamie Sr.’s eyes darted to Emma Lou, whose chest faintly rose and fell in time with each damning beep. He sniffed and sighed deeply, then drug his palm against his own face.
Was he crying too?
Jamie had never seen it before, wasn’t sure what else to do but sit in discomfort with his father, for once, quietly absorbing every wave of emotion. Together. His body ached with stress but somehow, the pang dulled with his father now beside him.
“Jesus, seeing her like this brings me back to that God-awful night,” Jamie Sr. started. “First your mama, then I found you slumped over the steering wheel. They brought you into a room just like this. I swear, I thought I had lost you too.”
He shook his head. “To think I put ambition over your happiness, what you wanted for your own life, for so long, I…”
As his father’s voice broke off, Jamie felt like he was truly seeing him for the first time. Not as a man who ruled with an iron fist and a long memory. But as a man who’d made mistakes—maybe just as big as his own.
“I was so stupid and selfish the night I crashed your truck,” Jamie cut in. “I was too overwhelmed to say it then, but I know it’s why you had to be so hard on me. To shape me into a man who didn’t let his emotions control him.”
Jamie Sr. turned to his son. “No, son. You were just a boy. It wasn’t your job to bury what hurt. It was my job to show you that it’s all right to feel it, that you can survive it. I failed you.”
“I wouldn’t be in this mess if I’d listened,” Jamie sputtered, gripping his knees.
“I pushed you to work with Melvin because I thought if I steered you right, I could protect you from the heartbreak that feeds this business. I pushed you away from Ms. Shaw because of how torn up you were after your mama…”
Jamie Sr. let his words drift into the ether.
“I was afraid that if something went wrong with Ms. Shaw, it’d destroy you all over again. I can see now how wrong I was, shoveling my insecurities onto you. Something’s gotta change, and it’s me. I wanna try, at least, if you’ll offer me some patience. Old dog, new tricks and all.”
“Okay,” Jamie croaked. He meant it. “But what about Brinton? It’s all my fault.”
The wound was still so fresh, it almost didn’t feel real. But, he knew, it absolutely was.
His father squeezed his shoulder. “You and me, we’ll get through this too, you hear?”
Jamie nodded and let his father pull him close.
There was a distinct shuffling near Emma Lou’s bed. She glanced back at them with a faint but sage grin. “I’ve waited nearly twenty years for y’all to say all that. Next time, don’t make me wait until I’m strapped to a gurney.”
She laughed. And so did Jamie and his father.
It was after two a.m. when Jamie left the hospital. A nurse—a friend of Emma Lou’s—threatened to have him carried out by security if he didn’t get some sleep in a bed and not stretched out across two metal folding chairs.
Thanks to the few extra cups of black coffee, Jamie was wide awake. After his father had left the hospital, Jamie jotted down ideas on his phone for the kind of album he’d make. Not a song here and there, as he had been, but a cohesive body of work that showed who he was as an artist.
Now, he had no obligation to anyone but himself.
In that hospital room, he realized that his whole life, he acted like he had to ask permission to be who he wanted to be. And he finally reconciled how much he’d masked his insecurities with meaningless sex and lies.
Of course, that didn’t include Brinton. She was the best thing he’d ever called his. Rather than run from the heartbreak of losing her and the safety of his old life, he wanted to understand it.
Jamie flipped on his office lights, then sat in that wingback armchair. It smelled herbal-sweet, exactly like her. But he could use that.
He flipped on the monitors and desktop computer, then picked up an acoustic guitar.