Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Coy
I jam my clothes into my suitcase.
“Fuck this,” I mutter as I slam the lid shut.
Zip!—the sound shoots through the air as I race the track around the perimeter of the luggage shut.
My head is so loud. Snippets of my conversation with Bellamy mixes with her laughter from yesterday and the sound of us kissing in the moments before things were ruined.
I sit on the bed and hold my head in my hands.
“I don’t want to leave,” I say out loud.
My voice is murky from the angst that fills every inch of my body. It’s dread and an anguish so deep that I’m not sure I’ll ever claw my way out of it.
The worst part of it all—besides seeing Bellamy in so much pain—is the rejection. Because at the end of the day, that’s what it is.
She rejected me.
Her points were valid. I understand what she was saying. But if she really loved me—if she wanted this to work as badly as I do—she’d want to try.
And she doesn’t.
She just wanted me gone.
Knock, knock!
I look up to see my mom standing in the doorway. Concern paints her face, and that doesn’t make me feel any better.
“Hey, kiddo. Are you okay?” Mom asks.
“Does it look like it?”
She frowns as she enters my room. “What’s happening? I heard all this racket coming from in here and wondered if you were packing up your things or if Boone was up to no good.”
Her joke makes me smile—sort of.
Mom sits beside me on the edge of the bed and puts her arm around my shoulders. “Talk to me.”
I cover my face with my hands and press my fingers into my skin. The pressure of my fingertips on my forehead strangely helps me calm down.
A little bit.
Enough to talk to my mother without screaming.
“I’m heading back to Nashville,” I tell her.
The thought of being there now feels incredibly wrong.
The house I love so much—the one I had designed to reflect this one, the one I grew up in—doesn’t seem sufficient.
Sure, it’s filled with my music trophies and pictures of me with various important people in the music industry.
There are memories everywhere I turn that remind me of the crazy, wild life that I live.
Every piece of furniture, every stone in the fireplace, was hand-selected.
The bed is the comfiest in the history of beds.
It has everything a man could ever want and everything I’ve ever dreamed of. It is, by all accounts, the pinnacle of my career.
Still, it lacks something that I just now realize.
It lacks a smile when I get home from the studio. It lacks a warmth that only comes from being lived in and loved in. It lacks a sink full of dishes because you got sidetracked after dinner and fell asleep wrapped around the woman you love.
It lacks a heart and a soul.
It lacks Bellamy.
“You’re heading back now?” Mom asks.
I nod slowly. “I have to be there at nine in the morning. Meadow says there’s a very real chance that I’ll lose my contract if I don’t.”
“That must be really difficult for you to have to leave at a moment’s notice like that.”
“Yeah.”
“May I ask how Bellamy reacted?”
I sigh and then look at Mom. “I’ll give you one guess.”
Mom sighs too. “I’m sorry, Coy.”
“Me too.” I spring to my feet as emotions begin to stream through me once again. “What do I do, Mom? Do I just not go? I mean, isn’t that what I’m facing here?”
“Did she give you an ultimatum?”
I narrow my eyes at her and stop walking. “You know she didn’t do that.”
To my surprise, Mom smiles.
“I really don’t think this is anything to smile about,” I tell her, annoyance thick in my tone.
“Then you’re not looking at it the right way, sweetheart.”
“Are you kidding me? You expect me to smile right now? Do you think I’ll ever smile again?”
I watch as she stands like she has all the time in the world. There’s a contentment in her features that has me reeling.
“Why are you not upset for me?” I ask her. “Don’t you see how much this fucking sucks?”
“I do, Coy. I honestly do. And I’m sorry that it sucks for you, and I’m sorry, too, that it sucks even more for Bellamy.
Because she has to sit over there and wait for you to leave.
And then she has to go on with her day knowing that you’ll be signing contracts, singing songs, and returning to your luxurious life … not thinking about her. And her life.”
I balk. “You think that I won’t think about Bells every minute of my life? You don’t even know how I feel then.”
She places a hand on my shoulder. It just sits there, her palm against the blade as though she’s some kind of Jedi that can fix my problems with her touch.
I fucking wish.
My emotions rise again, threatening to swamp me with their intensity. I glance through the window at the Davenport house and wish that I could turn my phone off, throw it away, and run to Bellamy’s and forget this ever happened.
But I can’t. That’s not how life works. That’s not how my life works. The slander against me can literally ruin my career. And future. All my hard work for nothing. All my compromises, pointless. All my sacrifices, moot.
And not to mention the many people who rely on me.
The charities I support, the writers who pen lyrics for me.
The fans who use my music as a form of therapy or a way to express their love.
Droves of people across the world rely on me.
And walking away from my label—if it were something I could even consider—would be a travesty.
Even if it causes me to give up the one thing I want more than any of that.
I look at my mom.
“Do me a favor?” I ask her.
“Of course.”
“Help her. Treat her like she’s …” I force a swallow down my throat. “Treat her like she’s my wife, okay?”
Her eyes grow wide for a split second. “Coy …”
“I was going to ask her. I thought I needed a ring …”
I look out the window again.
Would things be different if I had asked her already?
My heart cracks again, and I wonder how much is left to break.
Mom pats my shoulder before turning toward the door.
“You do what you have to do, Coy. We’ll take care of Bellamy.” She stops at the door. A soft smile spreads across her cheeks. “If you need anything, call me. Understand?”
As I watch her smile grow more expansive, I think I know what she means. And I think that if I let myself dwell on that too long, I might do crazy things.
I’ve already been rejected once today. There’s really no sense in getting it again.
“I get it,” I tell Mom as I tug my suitcase off the bed. “Thanks. I’ll call you when I get home.”
“Be safe,” she says as I walk by her.
I don’t stop until I’m at the rental car. I don’t stop moving at all until I back out onto the road.
And I don’t look in my rearview mirror as I drive off toward the airport, either.
There’s no reason to.
The only thing behind me … is everything.
No big deal.
Because she has to sit over there and wait for you to leave.
Bellamy
I slam the dishwasher door closed.
He’s gone.
I would bet that I knew the moment he drove away a few hours ago. I lay in the bathroom trying to scrub all scents of Coy off me when a sudden yet slow chill raced over my body. It was as if an energy drained from me, and a part of my heart withered away.
I sat there and cried.
“No more tears,” I tell the empty kitchen. “I’m not crying anymore.”
I throw the last bag of dried-up grapes from the refrigerator into the trash.
“If nothing else, at least I stress cleaned. The outside will look like I have it all figured out.”
Which is the motto for my life.
I sit at the kitchen table. My entire body sags. I think about how that last thought is so unbearably true.
Pretending to be okay is something I do well. Putting on a show for others is a trick I mastered a long time ago.
I had to. It was a survival mechanism. Joking around and appearing to have it all together made it easier for everyone around me to deal with when Mom passed away.
It was much easier to get a smile out of them than it was having them cry and tell me it would be okay.
All that did was make me think that there was an option where it might not.
“This time, it will be harder. It’s more personal. But you can do it.”
I smile at myself for trying to keep going even though I know I’ll be in bed with a gallon of ice cream and a box of tissues before the night is over.
Knock, knock!
The sound ripples through my house. My heart only half jumps in my chest.
I know it’s not Coy.
Still, I stand and walk to the door, pushing out the ridiculousness of me opening it naked just earlier this morning.
I was so fun then. So full of hope.
So stupid.
I peer through the peephole and gasp.
Slowly, I open the door.
“Hi, Bellamy,” Siggy says. She gives me a soft smile. “How are you?”
“Meh.”
“I know. I’m meh too.”
I open the door even more. “Do you want to come in?” I ask.
She’s never been here before. Not once. So when she steps inside and her heels click against the hardwood, it feels like my world shifts.
“That son of mine is a hard-headed one,” she says, looking around the living room. “This place is adorable.”
“Thanks.” I wrap my arms over my middle. “It used to be a pool house slash game house. But then Dad redid it for a nanny when Mom died.”
“I remember that.”
Of course, she does.
I watch her check out a picture of me from when I was a baby. From the side, she reminds me so much of Coy. They both have full lips and the longest eyelashes. He has her cheekbones, too.
“You were so cute,” she says, placing the photograph back down. “You’re still beautiful, of course, but those cheeks.” She grins. “I forgot you had cheeks like that.”
“They wouldn’t be as cute on me now.”
She laughs. It makes me smile.
“I respect you, Bellamy,” she says.
The compliment catches me off guard. “What?”
“I do.” She moseys around my living room as if she feels totally comfortable in my space. “I’ve watched you grow up and endure some of the biggest heartbreaks a person should ever be expected to handle. Yet you did it at such a young age and with so much grace.”
I don’t know what to say to that. So I don’t say anything.
Siggy stops moving and faces me. “You remind me so much of your mother.”
That’s it. That’s all it takes.
My chest heaves as I hold back a sob.
“She was so smart and quick-witted. She could get more done in a day than I could in a week,” she tells me. “I remember seeing her outside in the flower beds first thing in the morning. I would be struggling to stay awake, and she’d be out there on her knees with half a day’s work behind her.”
Siggy laughs quietly to herself.
“Do you remember her cornbread? Or her fried okra?” She touches her stomach. “That woman could cook.”
“I remember the cornbread,” I say, pissed at myself for crying again.
She smiles at me. “I’ve watched you from across the fence and think about how proud she’d be of you. She would get a great joy out of watching you stand up for yourself and sticking to your guns.”
I know what she’s talking about. I get the thinly veiled reference to Coy.
“Sometimes we don’t have a choice,” I say softly, sniffling.
Siggy walks across the room and stands in front of me. She looks down at me sweetly.
“You and my son are two very special people,” she says. “You were destined for something greater than the mundane, for a love that’s bigger and brighter than the ordinary.”
I latch on to the genuine kindness in her eyes and hold on for dear life. She’s always been such a stronghold for me, someone I’ve looked up to and respected.
She’s loved me like my mom would have. Unconditionally.
“Sometimes we have to go through unforeseen challenges in order to get to where we need to be. It’s like the world knows we’d settle, so it pushes us to reach a little harder, to reach for a little more.” She grins. “Don’t give up on Coy. Don’t give up on love, sweetheart.”
I nod, unable to piece together a response.
She pats me on the shoulder before heading to the door.
“If you need anything at all, come on over. The kitchen door is always unlocked—mostly because Boone sneaks in to go grocery shopping in my pantry because he’s unable to find a store on his own.” She opens the door and fires me a look.
I laugh.
“Love you, Bells.”
I nod, my face pinching together as another round of tears disregard my orders and flow down my face.
She shuts the door behind her.
I sit on the edge of the couch and feel my world turn upside down again.
If only things could be different. If only …
Don’t give up on love, sweetheart.
“I’m sorry, Siggy. I think love gave up on me.”