12. Jesse
— ? —
Jesse
The bus smells like stale coffee and regret.
I’ve been sitting in the back lounge for three hours. The crew is asleep. Sloane’s in the front lounge. The sun isn’t up yet.
We’re approaching Abilene, headed for Phoenix.
I got on this bus at three in the morning because that’s what the schedule said to do.
Because even after everything that happened in the barn, even after watching my wife walk out after leaving a pregnancy test on the table and my whole life falling apart around me, some part of me just followed the routine.
Get on the bus. Go to the next city. Do the show.
Three hours of sitting here in the dark, and I’m only now realizing how wrong that was.
I call Dwight Harlan at 6 a.m.
“Jesse. It’s six in the morning.”
“I’m canceling the tour.” I keep my voice low so the crew doesn’t wake.
“What?”
“The rest of the dates. All of them. I’m done.”
“You can’t just - there are contracts, Jesse. Venues. Promoters. We’re talking millions of dollars.”
“I don’t care.” The words come out flat and final.
“You don’t care about millions of dollars?”
“I don’t care about anything except getting home and fixing what I broke.” Outside the window, dark fields blur past.
“Okay, let’s talk about this. What happened last night-”
“You saw the video.”
“Everyone saw the video. It’s got eight million views and climbing.” I press the heel of my hand against my eyes.
“Good. Then everyone knows why I’m canceling.”
“That’s not how this works. You don’t just walk away from a tour because your personal life is messy.”
“My personal life isn’t messy. My personal life is destroyed.” Saying it out loud makes it real.
“We have crisis management for this. We have PR strategies-”
“I don’t want PR strategies. I want my wife back.”
“Jesse-” He sighs like he’s talking a man off a ledge.
“I’m canceling the tour, Dwight. That’s not a discussion. That’s a statement of fact.”
“You need to think about this.”
“I’ve been thinking about it for three hours. I’m done thinking.” Three hours of the same dark ceiling.
“Fine. I’ll make the calls. But you need to know this is going to cost you. Financially, professionally-”
“I know.”
“Your next album-” I can hear him already doing the math.
“I don’t care about the next album.”
“You will. When the dust settles.”
“Maybe. But right now I care about one thing, and it’s not streaming numbers.”
I hang up and walk to the front lounge.
Sloane’s awake. Sitting on the leather couch, scrolling through her phone. She looks up when I come in.
“Jesse. I was just about to-”
“You’re fired.” I don’t sit down.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. You’re done.”
“You can’t fire me.”
“I just did.” She sets her phone face-down, slow.
“We have a contract. Five years. Signed and notarized.”
“I don’t care about the contract.”
“The label cares. Their lawyers care.” Her voice stays smooth, unbothered.
“Then let them care. I’m done.”
“You can’t just walk away from a legally binding agreement because you’re upset about a little misunderstanding.” She says misunderstanding like it tastes good.
“A little misunderstanding? You announced you were pregnant with my baby in front of my wife.”
“Because I am pregnant. With your baby.”
“That’s a lie.” I keep my eyes on her face.
“Is it?”
“I never touched you, Sloane. Never once.”
“You were drunk that night in Nashville.” She leans back, testing it.
“Not that drunk. I remember everything about that night. I went back to my room alone. I called my wife. I went to sleep.”
“You can deny it all you like-”
“I’m not denying anything. I’m stating a fact. I have never slept with you.” My hands are steady. That surprises me.
“Then take a paternity test.”
“I will. Right now, today. Let’s go find a doctor.”
“I’ll do one when the baby’s born. Not before.” There it is, the tell.
“Why not?”
“Paternity tests during pregnancy carry risks.”
“No, they don’t. Not the modern ones. Blood draw from the mother. Zero risk.” I looked it up at four this morning.
“I’m not doing it.”
“Because there is no baby. Or because the baby isn’t mine.”
“The baby is yours.” She doesn’t blink when she lies. I’ll give her that.
“Prove it.”
“I don’t have to prove anything to you.”
“You announced to the entire world that I’m the father of your child. You absolutely have to prove it.” My voice finally climbs.
“I’ll prove it when the baby comes.”
“That’s months from now.”
“Then I guess you’ll have to wait.” She smiles like she’s holding cards I can’t see.
“I’m not waiting. I’m not doing anything with you ever again.”
“That’s your choice. But you should know - if you try to break the contract, if you try to cut me out, I’ll go to every outlet that will listen.” And there’s the threat, finally out in the open.
“And tell them what? That you lied about being pregnant with my baby?”
“I’ll tell them everything. The affair. The pregnancy. The poor wife who had no idea.”
“There was no affair.” I don’t raise my voice this time.
“Try proving that to the internet.”
“I will prove it. Because there’s nothing to prove. Nothing happened.”
“You’re a smart man, Jesse. You know how this works. The story is already out there.” She stands, unhurried, gathering herself.
“The story is a lie.”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s true. It matters if people believe it.”
“Get off my bus.” I hold the door with my eyes.
“Jesse-”
“Now.” I don’t give her more than that.
“You’re making a mistake.”
“The only mistake I made was hiring you in the first place.”
She grabs her bag. Shoots me a look that promises this isn’t over. But she moves to the front to wait for the driver to stop.
I tell the driver to stop at the next gas station.
The bus pulls into an Abilene travel plaza just after seven. Next stop Phoenix, twelve hours from now.
I’m not going to Phoenix.
“Boss?” Benny, my sound guy, watches me grab my bag from the bunk. “Where you going?”
“Home.”
“We’re in Abilene. Show’s tomorrow night.”
“There’s no show. I just canceled the tour.”
He stares at me. I don’t have time to explain.
Sloane’s already called a cab for herself; I can see her through the window, phone pressed to her ear, not looking back. Good. Let her figure out her own way forward. I’m done being her ride.
The rental counter at the plaza opens at eight. I put down a credit card deposit like a normal person, sign the paperwork, and get the keys to a Ford that smells like industrial cleaner.
Four hours to Ridley. Four hours to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do next.
Two hours into the drive, my phone rings.
Mom.
“Jesse Dean Cooper.”
“Mom.” I grip the wheel of the rented Ford.
“Don’t you ‘Mom’ me. I saw the video.”
“I know.”
“I saw all of it. Including the part where some news channel put up a caption that said ‘Which One’s the Wife?’” I have. It’s burned into me.
“I saw that too.”
“Do you have any idea how that felt? Watching my son’s marriage fall apart on national television?”
“I can imagine.” I can’t, actually. But I don’t say that.
“No, you can’t. You can’t imagine what it’s like to see the girl I love like a daughter walk out of that barn while you stood there like a fence post.”
“I didn’t know what to do.”
“You could have gone after her.” Every word she says is one I’ve already said to myself.
“I know.”
“You could have said something.”
“I know.” The road blurs. I blink it clear.
“You could have been a husband instead of a coward.”
“I know, Mom.”
“She’s safe.” Everything in me stops at that word.
“What? You talked to her?”
“She called me this morning. Early.”
“Where is she?” I’m already easing off the gas.
“She asked me not to tell you. And I’m not going to.”
“Mom, please-”
“No.” Her voice is iron. I know that voice. “She needs space. She needs time. And she needs you to respect that instead of showing up wherever she is and making it about what you need.”
“She’s my wife.”
“Is she? Because for the last year you’ve been telling everyone you’re single.” That lands exactly where she aimed it.
“That was - it’s complicated-”
“It’s not complicated. It’s simple. You hid your marriage. You lied about being married. And now your wife is gone and you want me to help you find her.”
“I just want to know she’s safe.”
“She’s safe. She’s with someone she trusts. That’s all you get to know right now.”
“That’s not enough.”
“That’s what you’ve earned, Jesse. If you want more, you earn it. You prove you’ve changed. And when she’s ready - if she’s ever ready - she’ll reach out through me. Not you finding her. Her choosing to let you back in.”
“Mom-”
“You can’t cry your way back to that girl. You broke something. You broke it over and over for a year. Crying about it isn’t going to put it back together.” She’s never talked to me like this. Not once in thirty-three years.
“Then what do I do?”
“You do the work. You get help. You figure out why you made the choices you made.” A pause. “And the threats, Jesse. The letters. You need to tell the police everything, and you need to make sure Lo knows too. Through proper channels, not through you deciding what she can handle.”
“The detective said to keep operational details-”
“I don’t care what the detective said. She deserves to be part of her own safety planning. You kept her in the dark for months and called it protection. That ends now.”
“I know. I know it does.”
“I love you. You’re my son. But you screwed this up in ways I can’t begin to count.”
“I’m trying to fix it.”
“Then fix it right. If you want to reach her, you go through me. You ask permission. You wait for her answer. No showing up uninvited. No hiring people to find her. You respect her choice even if her choice is no.”
“And if her choice is no?”
“Then you live with it. That’s the consequence of breaking trust this badly.”
She hangs up.
***
The house is too quiet when I get home.
Her truck is gone. Her boots are by the door, the old ones. Her side of the closet is half empty. Her toothbrush is gone.
I sit on the bed.