Chapter 6
JUDE
The blue light from my smartphone illuminated the gloomy corners of my room.
Despite my bone-deep weariness, I struggled to sleep.
My mind was churning from the madness of the day, the adrenaline crash from the show, the flight, and my unexpected encounter at the airport.
I doom-scrolled for a little while until a text message popped up on my screen.
With a sigh, I blinked at yet another rapid-fire succession of messages, all from Abby.
I leaned my head against the headrest of my bed, my thumbs scrolling through the texts.
Abby: Jude, you were incredible on Good Morning America yesterday! The band sounds so tight, your vocals were beyond amazing, and your interview blew me away.
A second later, another one turned up.
Abby: Mom and Dad caught your feature in Rolling Stone, and they’re so proud of the artist you’ve become. They keep asking when you’re coming over for Sunday dinner.
Then a third.
Abby: Let’s do lunch at the Bistro sometime soon when you’re next in Nashville?
I stared at the glowing screen, a hard, skeptical knot tightening in my gut.
I’d spent enough miserable years hoping for this exact scenario.
Begging the heavens for a second chance with this woman, the one who’d dominated my fantasies for years.
The same girlfriend who’d walked away from me without a single backward glance when life went pear-shaped for me.
Abby and I met in high school over twenty years ago.
I’d just arrived from Sydney with my mum after she married Kian, a deputy sheriff in Nashville back then.
I was the new kid from the other side of the world, brooding, edgy, always in black.
I paid the girls at school no attention until she marched on stage as the undisputed star of the show.
She was Miss Perfect: leader of the debate team, the president of the choral club, and the principal of the drama society.
She moved with an effortless light and grace that lit up the gloomy corners of my cynical heart.
After a song audition, I got cast in the high school spring musical as the lead actor, and she was my dazzling singing-and-dancing love interest.
Our worlds should have repelled each other. Her energy was pure, unadulterated sunshine; my headspace was chaotic and sullen.
Still, the first time we harmonized in the wings during rehearsal, the air between us turned electric, our physical attraction wild.
With typical raw, brash Aussie arrogance, I prowled up to her after practice, stared her dead in the eye, and told her she was going out with me.
We were inseparable from that moment on.
I adored her with a desperate intensity that terrified us both.
However, due to the stress of the military, plus not dealing with abandonment issues from my bio father, my life spiraled into alcohol, drugs, and gambling.
Following a coke bust, I got thrown in jail.
Abby’s parents turned on me; her father wouldn’t even let her visit, and she broke off our relationship, which devastated me at the time.
After I left jail, I was, for a short time, an unashamed player.
I slept with a slew of lovers, chasing high after high.
I stopped that nonsense as Six Sinners’ stratospheric success grew, and my sense of purpose firmed up.
As my confidence and bank balance surged, the tables flipped.
Women, from influencers to top-shelf models, threw themselves all over me.
It became an ego boost for a season; however, I kept them all at arm’s length, unconvincing, heart-weary, the ultimate soul cynic.
What I craved was infinite love, with a woman I couldn’t quite see in my head.
Now Abby was back, beating down my door.
Yet hesitation kept me from responding.
The question remained: Was I worthy of her now that my face was plastered on billboards across Times Square?
Did her parents now think fondly of me because Six Sinners were racking up millions of digital streams and selling out arenas?
The sudden rush of attention from them felt transactional.
Now that the press was calling us a cultural phenomenon, I was, in Abby’s eyes, prime dating material.
My right hand lifted to my chest, my calloused fingers wrapping around the silver Aquila del Bonelli eagle pendant hanging from a leather cord on my neck.
I rubbed the silver orb as I wrestled with the direction of my life.
Was Abby part of that future?
‘You’re overthinking this again, Judah,’ I muttered to myself.
Was I really, though?
I didn’t want a trophy or a gold-digger leech who craved the spotlight.
I needed a real woman.
Someone solid enough to stand with me through my storms, someone who wanted me stripped bare, not the c-notes in my bank account.
With a grunt, I locked my phone screen and tossed the device onto the side table.
Pursing my lips, I picked up Grace, choosing the honest song of her strings over the pings of my ex’s texts.