Book 21 Trouble After Dark #6
Sitting at the piano, Julia plays Lady Gaga’s “Always Remember Us This Way,” and the crowd goes wild for her.
Owen has tears in his eyes when he asks for more.
She plays Kelly Clarkson’s “Because of You.” Julia vividly remembers sitting in her car with tears rolling down her face the first time she heard that song, understanding that it is about someone like her, who’d been abused and would carry those scars with her forever.
Deacon offers her a hand off the stage. Her performance is the most incredible thing he’s ever heard. She’s about to lose her composure, so he escorts her to the porch, where she breaks down in a torrent of tears.
“Sweet Julia,” Deacon whispers. “There’s so much more to you than I ever could’ve imagined.”
He holds her while she gets it all out in a flood of memories and emotion and yearning for more of the thing that once sustained her.
“Excuse me,” Evan says from behind them. “I’m so sorry to interrupt.”
Julia raises her head from Deacon’s chest and wipes her eyes, embarrassed to have been caught having an emotional meltdown by a singer of Evan’s caliber.
“I just want to say…” Evan shakes his head, seeming flabbergasted. “Your voice is magical.”
“Thank you so much. That means a lot coming from you.”
“Julia… I’m rarely at a loss for words, but why in the hell are you not a professional singer?”
“I found myself on a different path,” she says, simplifying one of the more complicated parts in a complicated life.
“I’d love to talk to you about it if you have a few minutes.” He hands her a business card. “I own Island Breeze Records, and I’ll be there every day until mid-July. Feel free to stop by any time.”
Julia takes the card from him, the whole thing too surreal for words. “Thank you.”
“You have a rare and special talent. I really hope you’ll come by.” He nods to Deacon. “You guys have a great night.”
Evan walks away, leaving Julia stunned and unnerved by what he’d said and offered.
While lying together after a night of passion, Deacon asks Julia about the music.
Growing up, they were required to have an activity.
She played soccer, not well, and took piano lessons.
“I really loved playing the piano, and my teacher in Virginia told my mother I was a prodigy. My grandparents bought me a gorgeous little baby grand piano that I played for hours every day. I played until my fingers ached and my back hurt, and then I played more. I could hear something once and play it without sheet music. By the time I was eleven, I was playing in church and performing the music for dance studio recitals.”
When she was sixteen, she was invited to play with a band at a local festival.
She loved it, but her father was furious.
“When we moved that summer, he told me we couldn’t fit the piano in the move, so he’d sold it.
I was hysterical for days. I begged him to reconsider.
My mom begged him. But he wasn’t having it.
The people who bought the piano came to get it and took it away.
I hadn’t played again until tonight, when Owen basically forced me to. ”
He asks why she didn’t return to music once she was free of her father.
She equated music to pain, so she avoided it.
“I want you to have the music again, this time without the pain. I want that for you so badly. I want it for me, too, and everyone else who’ll have the pleasure of hearing you sing and play. ”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You can. You just did. Your dad is never going to be able to hurt you again. I’ve known you three days, and I’ve never met anyone I admire more than I do you.”
“I’m not sure I deserve that.”
“You absolutely do. You deserve everything, and you should have anything you want. The sky’s the limit.” He’d move Heaven and Earth if that’s what it takes to make sure she gets whatever she wants.
“Right now, I’m thrilled to have a new job to go to in the morning, an adorable puppy to love, my money back in the bank where it belongs and a sexy new guy in my bed. Life is good.”
He kisses her neck and makes her shiver. “I’m very glad to have made the list of things that are making your life good.”
Julia has an eventful first day at work. She meets Luke Harris to start the day and finds out about Mac’s health crisis. He’s available by phone if she needs him. Riley McCarthy, Mac’s cousin, stops by at the end of the day with a set of keys for her and tells her to call him if she needs anything.
She and Cindy tour the new house. It’s a perfect two-bedroom house and even has a fenced-in backyard for Puppy Pupwell. After talking with Cindy, who is thrilled to spend the summer on Gansett, she goes to Dr. McCarthy’s house for her five o’clock appointment.
He answers the door with his newborn daughter asleep on his shoulder.
They talk about her illness and her most recent setback.
Kevin suggests self-care, meditation and yoga to help quiet her mind and heal herself, so when the next crisis comes along, she’ll be better prepared.
He suggests taking care of herself as she will the puppy.
She likes that and is willing to try it.
She wants to be healthy. She also questions her new relationship with Deacon, and how she’s worried she’s rushing into things and setting herself up for disappointment.
“Loving people, letting them into your life, trusting them not to hurt you… It’s always a risk, even for those of us who didn’t grow up the way you did.
Your upbringing makes it harder for you to trust people, especially men.
The most important man in your life disappointed you so profoundly. ”
“Yes, he did.” She thinks about the piano and the day he sold it without telling her, and then quickly pushes that memory into the past where it belongs.
“I don’t know Deacon, but I know his brother. He’s a good man. Does that mean Deacon is, too? Certainly not.”
“Deacon is a good man. I’ve seen that with my own eyes.”
“Even good men aren’t perfect, Julia. He’ll let you down and disappoint you, because he’s human. Not because he’s bad.”
“You’re very wise.”
Kevin laughs. “I don’t know about that.”
“What you said about him being human is a good reminder that no one is perfect. That helps.”
They agree to continue to do the work so Julia can stay on the path to maintaining her health. She makes another appointment for the following week.
On her way back to the hotel, she stops at the Bistro and asks Stephanie if she would mind if Julia plays the piano for a bit.
“Would I mind?” Stephanie laughs. “No, Julia, I wouldn’t mind if you dazzle my customers with your amazing talent.”
Take it back, take it back, take it back. Owen’s words are a chant, guiding her to where she’s longed to be for as long as she’s lived without it. She can admit that to herself now that she has the freedom to take it back. No one will ever take it from her again.
She will make sure of that.
Seated on the bench, with Puppy curled up in her lap, Julia places her hands on the keys and plays the opening notes of Adele’s “Someone Like You.” Over the years, there have been so many songs released that she’s loved and wished she could perform, and now she can.
It’s as if the floodgates have been thrown open with no limits or restrictions, and she loses herself in the music, the lyrics, the exhilaration of playing for an appreciative audience and the sheer joy of doing something she loves.
Kevin advised self-care. This… For Julia, playing the piano and singing is the very definition of self-care.
Deacon is on the way to Julia’s house when he runs into Blaine and his nieces.
He takes Addie from her dad, and Blaine asks about the fight he was in.
Deacon stuck up for his friend, Sherri, when her ex came into the bar to harass her.
After working in the Domestic Violence Unit when he was a cop in Boston, he’d learned to recognize the signs and knew he meant to harm her.
Blaine begrudgingly apologizes a second time in one week to Deacon and invites him and Julia to dinner the next night. When he walks into the hotel, he hears Julia playing and follows the music to her. He realizes as he watches her that he loves her, and if her music takes her away, he will follow.
Over the next few weeks, Julia settles into her new home, her new job and her new romance.
She and Deacon fall into a routine of spending every night together, usually at his place, where they can be completely alone.
They have dinner with Deacon’s parents, with Blaine, Tiffany and their girls, with her family and by themselves more often than not.
They attend a party that Adam McCarthy and his wife, Abby, have to celebrate their son Liam’s adoption being final. They babysit for Ashleigh and Addie so Blaine and Tiffany can go out to celebrate their anniversary. Another night, they babysit for Laura and Owen, so she can watch him play.
If they aren’t working, they’re together, and with every day that passes, Julia falls more in love with her sweet, sexy harbor master.
Deacon loves his job and sports a dark “farmer’s tan” from the long hours on the water that makes Julia laugh every time he removes his shirt to reveal a dark V on his chest and tanned forearms. They laugh at everything, especially the antics of Puppy Pupwell, who officially becomes theirs when they register him in both their names with the town after no one claims him.
On a Saturday in late June, they’re invited to a wedding at the Southeast Light.
Slim Jackson, an old friend of the Taylor family, is marrying Erin Barton at the place where their romance began while she was the lighthouse keeper.
The entire town is invited because Slim knows everyone, and somehow, he’s gotten the town to approve of them having their wedding there when they’d said no others out of fear of drunken guests falling off cliffs.