Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Zander
I lean back in my chair, the glow from the monitors making the room feel like a cave.
It’s dark and suffocating, and I’ve never missed Romy more.
Saying goodbye was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I have to do my job in order to give her and our child everything they need.
I never want her to think about or worry about money.
There’s no fucking way the two people who mean the most to me are ever going to feel how I did growing up.
I rub the stubble on my jaw, my eyes bloodshot from staring at the same damn timeline for hours—weeks, really.
I thought I could knock this out much faster than apparently is possible.
I mean, I’ve never actually edited a video before, but I didn’t think it would be this hard to capture the perfect visual rendition to match the words.
It’s been a constant argument with Jack. All the footage is there. The lake, the ranch, the picnic, the horse riding. Zara did an amazing job at my side. But something is off.
Something doesn’t fit when I place the track over the video. It just seems… jarring. It feels wrong.
“Fuck,” I mutter, and I slam down my mouse. The sound echoes through the cramped room.
“You’re gonna break the equipment,” Beau says. He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, giving me that look—to calm the fuck down before I have a stroke.
I spin in my chair. “Everything’s off. The lighting, the timing. It’s just not right.”
“It looks fine. Hell, it looks more than fine. You’re driving yourself nuts over nothing.”
“It’s not fine. Something’s wrong, and I can’t figure out what it is.”
But that’s a lie. I know what it is, and my chest tightens because it’s more than that—
How can I do this when it’s the first song I’ve ever written for a woman? It’s the first thing that’s ours—mine and Romy’s. It’s proof that she wasn’t a secret, that she meant more to me back then, before I pushed her away.
We built this together. And it feels wrong that she’s not the one in this video with me. It won’t be perfect otherwise.
Beau pushes off the wall and drops into a chair. He studies the screen, frozen on the lake scene with Zara in my arms. “You’ve been at this for weeks. You need air. You need food. Sleep. Hell, a shower would be nice.”
I don’t even chuckle at his attempt at humor. “I just want to be done. If I’m done, I can go be with Romy. I can go back to the ranch.”
“It doesn’t need to be perfect. Hell, nothing ever is.”
There’s truth in what he’s telling me.
“I don’t know. I just feel like it needs to be… I need to do the song justice.” I run my hand through my hair.
“Please don’t tell me you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking.” He gives me that look he always does when he knows I’m about to cause him stress and cost myself a shit-ton of money.
“What do you think I’m telling you?”
“That the wrong girl is in that video.” Beau nods at the screen.
“She hasn’t heard the song yet,” I admit. I’ve been keeping it from her because I wanted to present it to her in a perfect package, at the perfect time.
“I figured you’d already serenaded her in some broken-down barn on their property one night.” I look at Beau, and he smirks. “Come on, not my best line, but you’re clearly head over heels in love and willing to do that kind of sappy shit for her.”
I shrug because I can’t really argue. I would do that for her.
“Once she hears the song, she’ll know. It’s pretty damn clear.” He leans back in his chair, crossing his ankle on the opposite knee.
“You knew the song was about her this whole time?”
He gives me a you’re an idiot look. “Fuck, man. I’m your best friend. Of course I knew. Why do you think I haven’t given you any shit for this long-ass process?”
“Goddamn it. I knew you knew.” I guess to a certain extent, I thought I was hiding it. And that’s why I look him square in the eye. “Either I cut Zara out entirely, or I refilm it.”
Beau’s face sours as if he ate bad fish. “I figured we were on our way to the latter option. You do realize this pushes everything back, right?”
I hadn’t really thought about that. To film the video over with Romy, I would first have to get her to agree to it, and I’m not sure she would want to do it pregnant. So we’d have to wait for the baby to come, then film the entire thing over.
“I don’t know. It just looks so commercialized. There’s nothing authentic about it. Nothing real. Nothing natural.”
“Because it’s the wrong girl,” Beau says matter-of-factly.
“Yeah. And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about that.”
“Listen. Take the weekend. Clear your head. Shit, go back to Willowbrook. Spend the weekend with your girl and come back refreshed and see what you think.”
As much as I want to see her, I don’t want to go for a weekend and leave again. It will only make this harder. “No, I’m not doing that. I just want to finish this so I can get back to her for more than a weekend.”
“So you’re gonna try to force something to happen with this when you don’t even feel like it’s the right thing?” He quirks an eyebrow and lowers his leg, resting his forearms on his thighs, staring at me like he does when he thinks my ideas are stupid.
“Like you said, it’s a waste of money—”
“It is, but if you can’t live with it, let’s just do it.”
I stare at the screen and figure maybe I can make this work. Just so I can get back to her and not spend another couple million.
“All right.” He stands. “Well, I’m leaving for the night. I suggest you do the same. I’ll see you back at the house.”
“Yeah. All right.”
He leaves with a clap on my shoulder. I don’t suspect he’ll be home when I get to the house we rented because he’s been gone every night we’ve been here. I haven’t asked where he’s been going. If he wanted me to know, he’d tell me.
I stare at the clip I’m supposed to edit. I think I can do this. We have some solos of me in the barn. I can’t cut Zara out completely, but I can probably do enough to make it work.
But as soon as I think it, I spot Romy in the background on a shot that’s not meant for the video, and she’s laughing at something Beau said. My insides feel as if they’ve split in two.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I grab my phone. It’s late, but she picks up on the second ring. It’s dark, but I can make out that she’s lying in bed.
“Hey.” Her voice is soft, a little scratchy.
“Did I wake you?”
“No,” she says. But she’s not nearly as convincing as she hopes.
I shut my eyes, imagining her alone in her big bed. “I think it might be a little longer. I need more time with the video.”
There’s a pause and a quiet, “Oh.”
The weight of that one word layers on the guilt.
“You don’t sound thrilled.” I try for a light tone that I know neither of us feels.
“No. It’s fine. I understand. You know I understand. It’s just… the ranch feels so empty.”
“Without me?”
“Beau… and the crew.” She chuckles.
I grip my phone tighter, my knuckles aching. I want to crawl through the line and slip into bed with her and press my face into her hair, smell her, and remind myself that she’s who I’m doing this for.
“I’m just kidding. It’s you. It’s lonely here without you.”
“It’s lonely here without you.” I try to push away all the emotion clogging my throat. I change the subject from longing because that’s not going to change. “Show me.”
She laughs softly. “Show you what?”
“You know.”
She makes a sound. There’s a shuffle, then suddenly the camera flips, and I see her curled on her bed. She flips on a lamp, and I catch her tired eyes. She adjusts the phone, angling it toward her tummy, and the air gets sucked out of my lungs.
She’s showing the gentle curve of her stomach that I haven’t touched in weeks. My entire body aches with regret for missing her stomach growing inch by inch.
“God, you’re beautiful.”
She makes a face, embarrassed. “I feel like a balloon.”
“You look—god, you’re gorgeous. No movements yet, right?” I panic, feeling as if I’ve been gone for six months.
“No. No movement. I did feel a flutter the other day, but I’m not sure if it was the baby or something I ate.”
The silence that follows is thick between us, and my chest feels as if it’s cracking open because I’m not there to lay my hand over her warm skin.
“I wish I could touch you,” I say.
“I hate this distance.”
“Me too.”
“Hey,” she says.
In her tone, I hear it. I knew this could be coming. I had hoped it wouldn’t, and I probably should’ve dealt with it head on, but I didn’t want to upset her if it wasn’t on her radar.
“I saw something online,” she says.
“You’re not supposed to be online, baby.”
“I know. It just popped up. I wasn’t trying to find it. We went out to dinner. Some woman in Nashville—”
My blood spikes. “Please don’t believe what you read. Ever. We talked about this.” I sigh.
The edge of my voice is sharp and protective and filled with anger. Not at her, but them. At anyone who would make up shit and upset her.
Her eyes search mine through the screen. “Was it true?”
I rake a hand through my hair. “No. It was Jack’s wife. She tripped, and I was the one who caught her. He was there too. It was a late dinner after editing.”
Beau brought me the picture the next day and said he thought he’d gotten it squashed. Said I should tell Romy just in case. And I didn’t want to bring it up, so it’s my fault she’s questioning me now.
The longer her silence lasts, the harder the knot in my gut twists and tightens.
“Romy, you are the only one. You know that, right?”
She nods, but her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “I just… I don’t like being so far away. It makes it easier to believe things I shouldn’t.”
Her honesty stabs me clean through like the blade of a sword. Panic flares through my bloodstream, afraid that I’m going to lose her because of who I am.
“Please don’t let doubt creep in. Not about me and not about us.” There’s a pleading note to my voice.
Her eyes glisten, and I can tell she’s fighting back the tears.
“Just hurry back,” she says.
“I’m trying.”
We talk for a while. I tell her about Beau riding my ass, trying to act like a parent, on me about my diet. She tells me about how pistachio cookies don’t taste the same without me there.
When the lull in the conversation comes—when I know the conversation’s going to have to end soon so she can get some sleep—I blurt out, “Come with me.”
“What?”
“When I start the interview circuit, the promo stuff for the single. Come with me.”
Her lips part, surprise etched across her face. “You’re serious?”
“Deadly. I don’t want to be away from you. Can you get time away from The Knotted Barn?”
For a moment, I let myself imagine having her by my side, her waiting just off stage for me to be done.
She studies me for a beat. “I think I can pull it off. I—we’re going into the slow season, and I’m sure my mom would handle things for me for a little while. But I mean… I’ll be showing.”
Right. So far we’ve kept the pregnancy quiet, and with the colder weather, Romy wears a lot of sweaters, so thankfully, no one in Willowbrook has caught on. But on the press tour, it will be harder to hide the bump.
I’m not sure if she can hear my thoughts.
“I’d have to hide out probably, but—I think I’d like us to try,” she says.
“Really?”
“I mean, this whole you being gone thing isn’t working. At least for me. Not that I won’t do it. Don’t think that, but I miss you so much. Maybe we see what it’s like if I go with you for a little while.”
“I’d love for you to be with me.”
She smiles. A little soft. A little hesitant.
I’ll have to find a way to protect her from all the noise, the rumors, the spotlight that is my life.
“Okay, I’m gonna go get some sleep. You know, I am growing your baby.”
“They’re never gonna want to come out,” I say.
“Oh, I think… we’re gonna make them come out.” She laughs again.
“God, I can’t wait to be with you.”
“Hey,” she says before we’re about to hang up.
“Yeah?”
“What about that single? I haven’t even heard any of it yet.”
“You will. I promise.”
“Okay. Good night, Zander.”
“Night, baby.”
I hold onto the phone, the silence stretching between us. I don’t want to hang up. I don’t want to stop hearing her breathe. I don’t want to stop closing my eyes and imagining that she’s right next to me.
“Okay, you gotta hang up,” she says.
“So do you.”
She giggles. “Good night, Zan.”
She hangs up, and I stare at the screen, thinking of her laughing. Yeah, time to figure this out and get home to my girl.