Chapter Thirty-Eight
Where had she gone? She’d walked away seven songs ago and never returned. There was only one more song in the set before they closed it down on “Last Goodbye” with her picking solo. It was a duet.
Maybe she’d gone to the bathroom?
He kept playing, distracted, glancing at Jack, then Bo, both of whom gave subtle shrugs.
She was nowhere. Not in the wings on stage right or left.
No longer with those record execs. He switched on the showman smile he didn’t have to think about as he plied a crowd, but his eyes roved this way and that.
He didn’t like Charlie disappearing.
Even with Jason still in jail this time, it made T.R. uneasy.
He brought down the song. Played his heart out through the ending. Kept grinning as he slung his guitar around his back and bowed to the vociferous applause. Darted backstage to the greenroom and pulled out his phone.
Charlie was always quick responding to a text.
He saw four missed calls and a voicemail. He unlocked his phone and noted all the calls had come from three capital letters. CUZ. Tyler?
He tapped play. “Thaddeus. Tyler here. Wanted you to know that Jason was once more bailed out of jail. Unusual, yes. Make sure Charlie knows. I sent her a text but hasn’t been read.”
Aw hell. Not the news he wanted. With Jason out and likely pissed, he wasn’t putting it past the bastard to do something that couldn’t be undone.
“We want more! We want more!” The crowd was chanting for an encore as he shoved out the greenroom door. He waved at his bandmates, nodding, and throwing up one finger.
“Stall,” he exaggerated, gesturing, knowing they couldn’t hear him.
Jack took the hint and started joking through the mic.
As soon as he got eyes on Charlie, he’d be fine.
He tried to take a calming breath. Remembered Charity. Remembered the anger coursing through him when Charlie had called, broken glass and police walkies staticky in the background. Years had cooled the beast. Keep that cool, man.
He edged along the crowd, all chanting at the stage, when someone spotted him.
“It’s him! It’s T.R.!” Phones started snapping pics.
He waved stiltedly.
“Where’re you going?”
“You’re so amazing!”
“Play us another!”
The demands lobbed at him. He darted out into the corridor where the bathrooms were.
Banged on the ladies’ room door. “Charlie?”
No answer.
Shit. Had she left? Why? He was her ride here.
He returned to the bar, curiosity spreading through the fringes of the audience.
“Hey, T.R.,” the bartender said. “Killer show.” He nodded toward the men to whom Charlie had been talking.
They grinned and approached.
“Fantastic show,” a bearded man in a sportscoat said, throwing out his hand.
T.R. shook. More and more distracted, he didn’t want to blow these guys off. Charlie had been beaming when she’d given him that thumbs-up. Jesus, now of all times? When he couldn’t give them the deference they were due?
“Your girl speaks highly of you. Told us we should keep an eye on you at Homegrown tomorrow.”
He grinned. Shook again. Felt sweat beading his brow.
“I’d be much obliged. You gonna stick around for a bit? Just need to get eyes on my girl for a sec.”
“Yeah, we’ll be here. We want to talk to you.”
He nodded. It warmed him to hear. Too bad he was too distracted to appreciate it.
“About her. You didn’t happen to see where she went, did you?”
The other guy said, “Yeah. Some guy wanted to talk to her.”
“Probably another record label, man. You oughta be proud,” the guy in the jacket said.
T.R. nodded again. He couldn’t be rude to these guys, but his patience was waning and the crowd was now leering, swelling in on him.
“You see who it was?” he hedged.
They shook their heads. “Worried we got competition. But I wonder if there’s a meeting room here or something. We glanced out in the corridor but there was no one there.”
Shit. There wasn’t a meeting room in this old joint.
“Some guy in a T-shirt.” The bartender leaned in as he closed out someone’s tab and handed them their bill. “Blond, blue-eyed.”
Double shit.
T.R. bolted back out into the corridor. Slammed into the ladies’ room this time.
“Charlie!” Empty. Hurried out into the foyer as the Country Roads guys followed, as well as a trickling of fans.
“Charlie?” he called.
She didn’t respond.
“You all right?” one of the execs asked.
“Naw, man. She’s got this real mean ex who’s been harassing her. Used to put his hands on her. Broke her window last night. I jus-just got a bad feeling that he’s gonna do something worse.” He shoved out into the parking lot.
Looked around; began jogging into the rows of trucks, motorcycles, and other vehicles, blessedly losing the spectators.
“Charlie!” he called.
Nothing.
“Charlie!” he hollered and darted in and out of vehicles.
He pulled out his phone and woke it up. Heart pounding. Hit her number and slung the cell to his ear, peering like a prairie dog over the vehicles. Dammit!
It rang and rang. She wasn’t answering.
“Charlie!” Others were calling out, heading in different directions.
Bless his army of followers. They fanned out into the parking lot, the word spreading.
He called her cell again, maneuvering through the vehicles, when he heard her ringtone, faint … and heard arguing.
He rounded a jacked-up F-150, padding farther away from the venue and the others, around a tall hedge of wax myrtles, and onto the sidewalk running parallel to the road—
“Stop, Jason!” in the distance.
Charlie was trying to wrestle her arm free in the faint halo of a streetlight.
“Yer … You’re gonna tell them … I’m … yer gonna take back that restraining order!” Jason Thompson was pulling her down the mostly empty dirt road where his truck was parked in the shadows.
T.R. bolted forward.
“No!” Charlie fought, yanking on her arm and digging in her heels, terror radiating off of her every grunt.
Boots pounded pavement as T.R. ran.
“Yer gonna get rid of that … that lawyer … who’s fucking up everything!”
Jason’s palm opened.
Lifted.
A haze of red blurred T.R.’s thoughts.
Charlie pleading, now kicking at him.
A roar rose on T.R.’s lips as that palm came down and… “No!” he roared, as it cracked her cheek.
He sprang. Pounced.
His fist connected.
If Judge Mitchell had done his fucking job instead of letting this red flag walk around with impunity, she’d have been protected.
Fist cracked jaw again as he knotted Jason’s shirt at his throat, pinning him down.
Daisy would have been spared the heartache and feelings of abandonment if Mitchell would have put the law above his own selfish coverup.
But you also wouldn’t get a chance to do this—
Thud.
He thought of his sister, cowed and desperate. Thought of Daisy, and the way she’d blanched when this man had pounded on their door. That slap to Charlie’s face, replaying like a sick joke in his mind. He barely felt the retaliatory blow that knocked his nose.
Stale whiskey huffed from Jason as T.R. straddled him.
Thud.
Fist landed again. If Mitchell wasn’t going to do anything about it, he was—
“Thaddeus…”
His name, distorted beyond that red haze, slowed his fist raining justice, thirsty to vindicate—
“Thad, please…”
Her voice, melodic, that sang harmony to his heart, poked holes in his rage at Jason for taking his weaknesses out on her.
A hand touched his arm. “Don’t be like him, please.” A desperate plea. “Please don’t be like him.”
He whirled around, bouncing to his feet, as if snapped out of a nightmare. Wide jade eyes, pooling with tears, blinking down her face. A damning handprint he wished he could kiss away.
Jason groaned, and what he’d done came rushing back as he looked down.
He should have yanked the bastard off of her and called 911. He should have shielded his woman instead of going into attack.
“Let’s go back, Thad. Please, we have a song to play, right? We got the Homegrown Music Awards tomorrow, and Ortega is one of the judges. We have to go home and pack and get Daisy ready for Auntie Heart to watch her…”
And the way she was holding his hand now, pulling on him, placating him, churned sickness in his stomach to have let her down.
He let her reel him back. Clenched her hand hard as she tried to smooth her hair and dry her splotchy eyes, wiping at her smeared eyeliner and shimmying her hair around her face to hide the redness from the strike, as she hurried him back up the road.
Back to his crowd, who cheered at her return.
But they didn’t play the final song. He ushered her to his truck and shut her inside.
And the award competition? Shoot, how could he tell his band he hadn’t yet paid the fee?
He’d re-earned the entry fee but spent it on his clothes and flowers for Daisy’s dance.
Tension thrummed a silent undercurrent on their drive home to Nacogdoches, skipping post show tacos. Her silence was deafening. He carried Daisy, fast asleep, up to his loft after picking her up from Ty and Heart, laying her on the bed where he and Charlie had been sleeping.
Tonight, he’d take the couch.
He slipped downstairs. Out to his shed and flipped on the light hanging from the rafter in its safety orange cage.
Where he came to draw, to tinker and think, leaving Charlie in the cabin alone.
Her silence was too loud. He clattered his keys and phone on his drafting table next to the new architectural he’d begun working on the night before, picking up the pencil and engineering measures he’d been using to begin where he’d left off. His pencil skipped off step—
He shoved the paper aside.
Tossed the pencil to ricochet off the surface, clinking to the cement floor, and braced his hands on the edge of the drafting table, exhaling hard.
Might need to pump the breaks on this project until he knew where he stood with Charlie. And with the farm.
And yet, would he have reacted any differently tonight? If Charlie or Daisy were in peril … he’d throw down. Time and again. He didn’t know how to be different. The people who were important to him were so few and far between, they were worth protecting at all costs…
There were vehicles driving up the road.