7. Lo
— ? —
Lo
The kitchen feels smaller with him in it.
He comes through the back door and stops when he sees me sitting at the table. The overhead light catches his face wrong, shadows under his eyes, tension in his jaw. He’s been avoiding this room. Avoiding me. I’ve watched him circle the house for three days like a man mapping escape routes.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“I thought you’d be in bed.” He hovers by the door like he might bolt.
“I’m not.”
“I can see that.”
“Sit down, Jesse.” I keep my hands flat on the table.
“Can we just-”
“Sit. Down.”
He sits. His hands rest on the table between us, and I find myself staring at his left hand. The bare finger where a ring should be. Where a ring lived for five years until it didn’t.
“We need to talk,” I say.
“I know.”
“Do you? Because I’ve been trying to talk to you for three days and you keep disappearing into phone calls and barn offices and whatever Sloane needs you for.”
“I’m not disappearing. I’ve been working.”
“You’ve been avoiding.”
His jaw tightens. “Lo-”
“Your ring. Let’s start there.”
“I told you, it’s in my bag.”
“I know where it is. What I still don’t know is why a wedding ring is a problem for a man who sings love songs for a living.”
“It’s not a problem. The label-”
“The label told you to take off your wedding ring.”
He exhales through his nose, the sound sharp in the quiet kitchen. “They said it tested better. For the image.”
“What image? The image of a man who isn’t married?”
“An artist people feel like they could know. Someone within reach. It’s not about denying you exist, it’s about-”
“About what? Explain it to me.”
“It’s about marketing.” He runs his hand through his hair, a gesture I know means he’s searching for words that won’t make things worse. “It’s about building a fanbase. It’s about giving people something to connect to.”
“And they can’t connect to a married man?”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“It’s really not.” I lean back in my chair, putting distance between us. “The whole country thinks you’re single, Jesse. That’s not complicated. That’s a choice.”
“What the public thinks doesn’t change what’s true.”
“It changes how I feel. It changes what I have to carry when I go into town and people look at me sideways because they can’t figure out why I’m wearing a ring for a man who doesn’t wear one for me.”
“Nobody’s looking at you sideways.”
“Martha asked me today if we’d separated.”
He goes still. “What?”
“Martha. Who’s known us since the wedding. Who brought us a brisket when your mother broke her hip. She saw the interview and she asked me, to my face, if my husband had left me.”
“What did you tell her?”
“What could I tell her? That you’re still married to me but pretending not to be for marketing purposes? That I’m real but inconvenient?” My voice catches, and I hate it. Hate that he can still do this to me. “That you love me but not enough to admit it out loud?”
“Lo, I do love you-”
“Then why did I hear you tell Sloane to keep me hidden?”
The blood drains from his face. I watch it happen, the color leaving his cheeks, his hands going still on the table.
“What?”
“In the barn office. On the phone. ‘Keep Lo out of it. Nobody finds out about her.’” I keep my voice steady, though my heart is hammering against my ribs. “Those were your words.”
“You heard that.”
“I heard that.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. The refrigerator hums. A truck passes on the distant highway. I count my breaths and wait.
“It’s not what you think,” he finally says.
“Then tell me what it is.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t.” He leans forward, elbows on the table, and his eyes are pleading in a way that makes something twist in my chest. “There are things happening that I’m not able to explain yet. Things that-”
“Things that require hiding your wife from the entire world?”
“Things that require keeping you out of certain situations.”
“What situations?”
“Dangerous ones.”
The word lands between us like a stone dropped in still water. I feel the ripples of it, the implications spreading outward.
“Dangerous,” I repeat. “You’re hiding me because of something dangerous.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Jesse.” I press my palms flat against the table, anchoring myself. “I’m your wife. If something dangerous is happening, I have a right to know.”
“You have a right to be safe. Sometimes those two things are in conflict.”
“So you get to decide? You get to make choices about my life without telling me what I’m being protected from?”
“It’s not that simple-”
“It is that simple. Either you trust me enough to tell me the truth, or you don’t.”
He opens his mouth, closes it. Opens it again. “I trust you.”
“Then trust me with whatever this is.”
“I can’t, not yet. Not until-”
“Until what? Until when?” I’m on my feet now, though I don’t remember standing. “Until after the tour? Until things settle down? Until you’ve built a whole life I’m not part of?”
“You’re part of everything-”
“I’m not part of anything! I’m here, Jesse.
In this kitchen. In this house. Running this ranch while you’re out there telling radio hosts you’re single as they come.
” The words are sharp in my mouth, bitter.
“Do you have any idea what that felt like? Sitting in those stands, watching everyone’s faces when that interview played? ”
“I didn’t know they were going to play it.”
“That’s not the point!”
“Then what is the point?”
“The point is you said it. You looked at a camera and said you were single. On purpose. With full knowledge that your wife would hear it eventually.”
“It was context-”
“What context makes ‘single as they come’ mean married for five years?”
He doesn’t answer. He can’t answer, because there is no answer. There’s no version of those words that doesn’t erase me.
I sink back into my chair. The fight drains out of me all at once, leaving something heavier behind. Exhaustion, maybe. Or grief. The particular grief of loving someone who keeps choosing to hurt you.
“I heard the rest of it too,” I say quietly. “After you stopped speaking. Someone else was in that office with her.”
His brow furrows. “Who?”
“I don’t know. One of the crew, maybe. But I heard what she said. About the wife situation resolving itself. About you figuring out what you can have out there.” I meet his eyes. “About her being there when you do.”
“Lo-”
“She’s planning something. I told you the night you got home that she looks at you like she already has you, and you laughed it off, called me tired, told me I was seeing things.
But I’m not seeing things. She treated my house like a set and me like the help, and when I told you so, you said she didn’t mean it. ”
“I didn’t see it-”
“Because you weren’t here. Because you’re never here. Because even when you’re standing in this room, you’re somewhere else - on the phone, in the schedule, in whatever version of your life doesn’t include me.”
The silence stretches. I watch something war behind his eyes, the urge to defend himself fighting against the knowledge that I’m right. I know this man. I’ve known him for nine years. I can see when he’s searching for words that won’t exist and when he’s simply choosing not to speak.
“Are you embarrassed of me?” I ask.
“What?”
“It’s a simple question. Are you embarrassed to be married to me?”
“No. God, no. Lo, I have never been embarrassed-”
“Then why? Why would you hide our marriage unless some part of you is ashamed of it?”
“I’m not ashamed.” His voice cracks. “I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of things I’m not ready to explain. Of consequences I’m trying to prevent. Of-” He breaks off, shaking his head. “I know how this sounds. I know you want answers and I’m not giving them. But I need you to trust that I’m doing this for a reason.”
“I’ve been trusting you for a year. I’ve been trusting you through missed calls and canceled visits and a birthday where you hung up after seven minutes because soundcheck was starting.
” My voice is steady now, the anger cooled into something harder.
“I’ve been trusting you through an anniversary you forgot entirely.
Through Christmas alone in this house while you played a casino in Vegas.
Through every interview where you didn’t mention me and every photo where your ring was missing. ”
“I know-”
“You keep saying you know. But knowing isn’t the same as changing.”
“I will change. When this is over-”
“When what is over? You won’t even tell me what ‘this’ is.”
He’s silent.
I look at him across the table, this man I married, this man I built a life with, this man who sang me a terrible song on a tailgate and promised he’d never be anywhere but here. He looks smaller now. Diminished somehow, trapped between whatever he’s hiding and the damage that hiding has caused.
Part of me wants to reach for him. Part of me remembers what it felt like when he held me, when his hands knew exactly where to go, when I could trust that he was telling me the truth. That part of me is tired. That part of me wants to pretend none of this is happening.
But I can’t pretend anymore.
“I love you,” I say. “I’ve loved you for nine years. I married you because I wanted to spend my life with you - not with country music’s newest star, not with whoever the label is trying to make you into. With you. Jesse. The man who used to sing in the barn while we worked cattle.”
“I’m still that man.”
“Are you? Because that man was proud of me. That man introduced me to everyone he met. That man couldn’t wait to tell the world he was off the market.”
“I’m still proud of you.”
“Then act like it.”
“Jess?”
Sloane’s voice cuts through the kitchen, cool and precise. I didn’t hear her come down the hallway, or maybe I did and I’ve just learned to tune out the particular click of her heels on my floors.
“Jess, the car’s here for the acoustic session.”
Jesse’s eyes close briefly. When they open, he looks at me with something like desperation. “I need a minute.”
“The studio’s booked for nine. We’re already cutting it close.”
“I said I need a minute.”
“The label sent the car special. We can’t keep them waiting.”
His jaw tightens. He looks at me. Looks toward the hallway where Sloane is waiting. Back at me.
I see the moment he makes his choice.
“We’ll finish this tonight,” he says.
“You’ve been saying that since you left.”
“I mean it this time.”
“You meant it all those times too.”
“Lo-”
“Go.” I don’t let my voice break. I don’t let him see what this costs me. “They’re waiting. They always are.”
He stands. Crosses to me. His hands cup my face, and for a moment I close my eyes and let myself feel it, the warmth of his palms, the calluses on his fingers, the familiar weight of his touch.
He kisses my forehead.
“I love you,” he says.
“I know.”
“Do you believe me?”
I open my eyes. Look up at him. This man I married. This man I don’t know anymore.
“I believe you think you do.”
Something breaks in his expression. But Sloane calls his name again from the hallway, and he steps back, and then he’s gone, footsteps retreating, voices murmuring, the front door opening and closing. An engine starts. Fades.
Silence.
I sit at the table for a long time after he leaves. The clock on the wall ticks. The refrigerator hums. The house settles around me, empty except for whatever’s growing in my belly and the weight of everything unsaid.
Two days. He leaves in two days.
Upstairs, the test is still where I hid it. The two pink lines I was going to tell him about at the bonfire, before everything went wrong. The baby I’ve been carrying alone, waiting for a moment that keeps not coming.
I could tell him now. I could call him back, demand he stay, put his hand on my stomach and say we’re going to be parents. Maybe that would change things. Maybe that would make him choose me over whatever he’s hiding.
But I don’t want to be chosen because of a baby. I don’t want to be a reason he stays when everything else is telling him to go.
I want to be enough on my own.
So I set my line. Privately. A deadline he doesn’t know exists.
If he gets on that bus without telling me the truth, without trusting me with whatever this is, I’m done.
He thinks he has time.
He doesn’t.