Chapter Four
“There you are!” Maggie shouted as she reached for my arm and aggressively tugged me back into the barn. “You’re about to miss the big surprise!”
“Surprise?”
“Yeah! Booker told me he had a surprise that everyone was going to”—she held up air quotations—“lose their shit over.”
“I can only imagine what he has planned because if the party is anything to go by, it has to be something over the top.”
“Everything that man does is over the top.” Maggie giggled.
I couldn’t help but mimic her laugh. “At least let me grab another drink before the big reveal. Do you want one?”
“Yeah, grab me one, please. I’ll go get us a spot.”
The bar was empty and the bartender remembered my drink order, so I was back in no time.
“Vodka tonic,” I said, handing over the drink.
“Thank you. Cheers!”
“Cheers,” I said, taking a swig of my drink. My eyes wandered to the stage just as Booker made his way to the microphone. I did my best to focus on him, but my mind was doing a better job at wandering to the encounter I’d just had outside.
“All right, everyone, I told you I had a surprise for you and I’m here to deliver. Are you ready?”
Everyone cheered, and I even gave out a little “Woo!”
“I’m excited to have Stetson Walker—”
The crowd erupted. Whoops and hollers filled the space around us, echoing throughout the barn.
“Are you serious?” I yelled over to Maggie, who was grinning ear to ear.
Stetson Walker was all country music could talk about. He was the industry’s bad boy, or at least he appeared to be, based on all the articles I’d ever seen. Yet despite his lack of character, he’d continued to produce music that everyone loved.
“How in the hell did Booker land Stetson Walker to come play his private party in tiny Quincey Falls?” I asked.
“How in the hell does Booker do half the shit he does?” Maggie responded, shrugging. “He literally knows everyone and their grandma and has connections in places that we only wish we had.”
“That’s fair.” I laughed. “Well, I guess it’s safe to say I’m glad you forced me out of the house tonight.” I bopped my right hip into her left one and sipped from my straw, a dash of excitement pinballing inside of me.
“Like I said,” Booker started, chuckling as he tried to settle the crowd, “I’m here to deliver, so here’s Stetson Walker, playing a couple of his songs for us. Let’s give him a warm, Quincey Falls welcome!”
The whoops continued, only louder this time.
From behind the stage, Stetson Walker appeared.
Our eyes locked almost immediately, and I was shook by the icy blue color of his.
I immediately looked away, my heart rattling around my chest.
“Holy. Shit.” I gasped, nervously searching for the straw swirling around in my drink.
“I know. Damn,” Maggie replied. “He’s even better looking in real life.”
The trucker hat, the gold chain dangling from around his neck…
“Thank you, everyone!” he said as he took a seat on a wooden stool perched in the center of the stage. “I’m Stetson Walker, and I’m real excited to be here tonight.” The low rumble of his voice on the microphone confirmed it.
“No fucking way,” I mumbled. “It can’t be.”
“Quincey Falls, you have yourself some beautiful women down in these parts. Forgot how much I loved Tennessee. It’s good to be back,” he said. His oceanlike eyes swam to mine at the same time his mouth slid into a cocky smirk.
Heat infiltrated my cheeks, and again, I shifted my eyes, this time to where his bass player sat to his left.
I’d known what Stetson looked like; you’d have to be living under a rock not to.
And although I might have been living under something that roughly resembled a rock for the last six months, I was still very familiar with who he was and what he looked like.
But never in a million years would I have guessed that someone like him would be at a party in the middle of small-town Tennessee, let alone conversing in the dark with strangers about life and all its chaos.
I mean, sure, he dealt in chaos, but I was pretty sure it was the kind most people wished they had.
Maggie was oblivious to it all, leaning her mouth to my ear and whispering, “He sounds incredible live.”
“Yeah.” I paused. “He does.”
And he did. But it was way too hard to focus on his singing when I was still trying to process that the person I’d shared a somewhat under-the-surface conversation with was the same famous man standing on the stage in front of me.
“Maggie, you’re going to die,” I rushed out.
“Huh? The music is so loud, what did you say?”
I waved my hand in her direction. “Never mind. I’ll tell you later!”
My eyes kept drifting in his direction, which wasn’t hard to do when he was center stage, and I guess now was the perfect time to get my fill, especially because everyone else was starting too.
In this light, I saw all the things I’d missed when we were outside, and it was proving difficult to look away.
With one foot propped up on the stool and the other resting on the floor, his cognac-colored, ostrich-leather cowboy boots were the first thing I noticed.
I wasn’t a boot expert by any means, but I could spot a nice pair from a mile away.
His worn, light-washed jeans hugged his legs, so much so that you could see the outline of his pockets on his upper thighs. His denim button-up was rolled, exposing his forearms and a gold watch that rested on his left wrist.
The black hat I’d noticed outside was stitched with a brown and tan logo I didn’t recognize, and the gold chain I’d spotted in the moonlight rested immaculately on his chest.
Thick, coffee-colored hair pushed out in all directions from underneath his hat and laid in perfect waves as though his hat was a permanent part of him.
Two deep-set brows danced over his baby blues, making them practically shine.
His upper lip was lined with a mustache and his jawline was littered with day-old scuff.
Enough, Scarlett.
I had to stop. I must’ve been staring at him for the majority of this song and that was already too much. Without a second thought, I grabbed Maggie’s arm and pulled her to the back of the crowd. “Bathroom break?”
“Now?” she asked. “You want to go to the bathroom in the middle of him singing?”
“You’re gonna wanna come with me for this one, I promise.”
The blonde curls on either side of her face bounced as she titled her head. “Does this have to do with whatever you were trying to tell me earlier?”
I nodded and smiled sarcastically as I pulled her to the bathroom. “Mhm.” Thankfully, everyone else must’ve had the same idea as Maggie about missing the current performance because the bathroom was a ghost town.
“Maggie, you’re going to shit.”
“What? Tell me!”
“Okay, get this. When you were dancing with Booker, I went outside to catch my breath…”
“Uh huh…” She rolled her hands in a forward motion. “And?”
“And when I was out there, this random guy started talking to me. I couldn’t see him because it was too dark and he was behind me, tucked under a big tree.”
Her forehead scrunched. “I mean, I know it’s been a while since you’ve had to converse with the opposite sex who wasn’t your significant other, but it’s not completely abnormal for a man to come up to a woman at a party.”
“Yes, I know that, smart-ass,” I joked. “I’m not finished. We were talking, but it wasn’t a typical conversation you’d have with someone you randomly met at a party.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the conversation literally started with me talking to myself out loud because I thought I was alone, and then proceeded with us bonding over our need for space and silence when the world gets too loud.”
“I’m confused,” she admitted.
“Yeah.” I opened my eyes big. “Same.”
“So, did you figure out who it was? Like were you able to spot him when you came back into the barn?”
I pulled the straw to my lips and grinned. “Yes.”
“Oh my god. And? Spill it. I’m not trying to miss this entire set.”
“It was Stetson fucking Walker. That’s who I was talking to outside. And I’m so confused because there is no way that the conversation I had outside was with the man who is sitting on stage right now.”
Her jaw dropped and she looked at me like I was crazy. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not. I’ve been replaying the interaction over and over in my head ever since he stepped foot on stage, and I’m one thousand percent sure he was the guy I was talking to.
But I just can’t wrap my head around how that could possibly be the case.
” I let out a deep breath. “I mean, we’ve all seen the news. ”
“Hey, maybe he’s not the guy the media has portrayed him to be in the past,” she said, her shoulders shrugging to her ears.
“Ha. Come on, Mags. No one’s forcing the man’s tongue down the throats of all the Nashville tourists. He’s exactly the guy the media makes him out to be.”
“Touché.” She sipped her drink, a black straw placed between her pink lips.
“Either way, you owe me. You thought you were just going to another barn party, and instead I take you to a party where you’re having heart to hearts with Stetson Walker,” she said.
“And”—she smirked at herself in the mirror before locking eyes with my reflection—“with a smile on your face, I might add.”
“You’re never going to let that one go, are you?”
“Never,” she responded. “Now let’s go. Someone might be waiting for you out there.”
“You’re insane and I love you.”
“Don’t forget it,” she said, bopping out of the bathroom and back to the dance floor.