Chapter 2
Two
NOAH
Scandals don’t always strike violently like lightning. Sometimes they creep in.
They rot you from the inside out like damp in an old wall.
By the time the gossip blogs caught wind, the whole structure was already compromised.
I should’ve known. Hell, maybe I did know.
The late-night calls Glen took in the next room, hushed voices and the way he carefully angled his laptop out of my sight.
The assistants who stopped meeting my eye when I asked about the books.
The accounts that didn’t balance no matter how many times I ran the numbers myself.
I’d told myself it was fine. That Glen was looking out for us, like always. That he’d been the one who pulled us from pubs into arenas, from sticky-floored clubs into stadiums. That I owed him my loyalty.
And now? Words like embezzlement, tax fraud, gambling debt shrouded my emails from the attorneys. The tabloids wouldn’t be far behind … like sharks scenting blood. None of this was attached to my name—yet—but it was close enough that I could feel their teeth.
So I ran.
Not to LA. Not to London. Not to the glass-walled apartments or rented villas where people like me usually disappeared to.
I ran here.
To Kingsbarns. To the one place I hadn’t set foot in for years. The only place that I had ever really felt like me.
And straight into Skye Kerrigan’s line of fire.
“Now, what’s all this then?”
Esther was a tiny woman with shock-white hair, a questionable taste in jumpers, and eyes that missed nothing.
The years fell away, and I warmed inside, remembering how she used to scold me for one thing or another and then feed me extra biscuits.
Esther and her cronies were a central part of my childhood, having kept a watchful eye over me and the group of kids that roamed the streets looking for trouble in a town that delivered none.
“Would you look at that?” Esther asked, voice high with delight. “Noah Byrne, skulking back into Kingsbarns after all these years. Into Skye’s inn, no less? Och, I’ll be damned.”
“Esther,” Skye warned, tone clipped.
Her voice still sent a shiver across the back of my neck. It always had. Her long ginger hair—a few silver threads now mingling with her curls—was clipped back with a bright pink hair clip. A colorful beaded necklace twined with a gold chain at her neck, and a few lines edged her bonnie blue eyes.
She’d never looked prettier.
Esther ignored her. “What are you doing back? Come to make amends? Or stir up trouble? Because I’ll tell you plain, boyo, if you break her heart again, you’ll answer to me. And the book club.”
Skye’s cheeks pinkened and she pressed a hand to her mouth.
Had I broken her heart? Or had she broken mine? The truth probably fell somewhere in the middle, but this was neither the time nor the place to peel those layers back.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Good to see you too, Esther. Can I say, you look as fresh as a meadow after a morning spring rain?” I gave her one of my renowned Noah Byrne grins and raised an eyebrow for good measure.
Esther’s eyes narrowed and then she cackled. “Och, cheeky as ever. But thinner. Too thin. And not in a healthy way.” She squinted. “Rumor says your manager’s in deep muck. Gambling, fraud, the works. That true, then?”
Skye started, rounding on me, her eyes wide. I winced.
Heat crawled up my neck. So the gossip blogs had started already. “Don’t believe everything you read.”
“Meaning it’s true.”
“Meaning it’s none of your business.”
Skye glanced to the front hallway, looking nervous. “That’s enough, Esther. The other guests will be coming down soon.”
Esther planted herself like a wartime bunker. “Don’t hush me, lass. Someone’s got to keep this boy honest. You think the whole village won’t know by morning? My phone’s already buzzing.”
“Esther.” Skye’s voice had a brittle edge. “Out.”
Esther sniffed, satisfied she’d planted her flag. “Fine, fine. But mark me, Noah Byrne, mess with our girl here, and you’ll have hell to pay. This is no encore tour. This is real life.”
And with that, she swept out, muttering something about emergency book club meetings and extra wine.
Silence collapsed over the room.
I sank onto the sofa, staring at the flames. “Friendly as ever.”
“You deserved worse,” Skye said, shutting the door firmly.
She wasn’t wrong.
Skye had always seen what I couldn’t.
“Glen’s a shark, Noah,” she said, pacing our tiny kitchen, hair wild around her face. “Och, he doesn’t care about the music. He doesn’t care about our music. He wants control. He’ll bleed us dry.”
“He believes in us.”
“Bollocks. Glen believes in himself. And when he’s finished, he’ll throw you away.”
I laughed. Hard. “We’ll prove you wrong.”
Her silence was worse than shouting. She looked at me—the desolate look in her eyes searing my heart—and said, “Then you’ve already chosen him over me. Over us.”
And she’d walked.
We were twenty-two, exhausted, raw from too many gigs and too little money.
We’d just been offered our first real contract. Not just a small-time record deal, not just a pub tour. The real thing. Big stages. Big money. A manager who had promised the world.
I’d thought it was everything. She’d thought the contract seemed dodgy and had hated how our manager had dismissed her questions.
It was the night we broke.
And I’d replayed her words over and over throughout the years.
I’d told myself I’d write her a song, and that it would fix everything. That she’d hear it and come back and realize what she was missing out on. But Skye wasn’t an apology song. It was a wound I poured salt into and sold for ninety-nine pence a download.
It hit number one. Stadiums sang her name back at me, my own personal torture.
And she hated me for it. And judging from her current expression, that was still the case.
“I’ve changed my mind. You can’t stay here,” she said, arms crossed, chin tilted in that way that had once unraveled me.
“Too late, I’m already unpacked.”
“You didn’t even bring a bag,” Skye protested.
I had, but she hadn’t been around when I’d slipped back down and retrieved it from where I’d left it outside, unsure if she’d actually let me in.
“You told me one week.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.” Skye shook her head.
“You can give me a week.”
“I don’t have to give you anything, Noah Byrne.” Skye glowered, clearly unhappy.
“No, lass, you don’t. But I’d be mighty grateful if you did.” I tried my best puppy dog eyes and was rewarded when she rolled her eyes in return.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” Skye said to herself, and hope bloomed. Stomping out of the room, she came back with a pen and paper, scribbling furiously. “House rules,” she said, shoving it at me.
“No music after ten. No smoking. No overnight guests. No songs about Skye. No touching.” At that, I raised an eyebrow at Skye and her face flushed.
“And no paparazzi,” Skye added.
My mouth twitched. “How exactly am I supposed to enforce that?”
“You figure it out.”
“Bit harsh.”
Her eyes glittered. “If you don’t like it, there are other inns.”
There weren’t. Not in Kingsbarns at Christmas, with St. Andrews overrun and every B&B booked out by families and tourists. She knew it. I knew it.
I leaned back, studying her. Older, sharper, steadier. Not the girl I’d left behind, but the woman she’d become.
“You’ve changed,” I said.
Her laugh was short, sharp, and sliced through me. “And you haven’t. That’s the problem.”
“I have, but you just don’t see it yet.” At least I hoped that was true.
I was worlds apart from the boy who hadn’t been strong enough to stand up for Skye and fight for a better contract for the both of us.
What would our lives have been like if she’d been out there? Singing by my side the world over?
Skye shifted, her eyes going to the fire. “Is it true? Did he screw you over?”
“Seems that way.” It felt like swallowing razor blades to admit it, but it was only fair that I gave Skye her due. She’d been right about the dodgy manager all along.
“I’m sorry for that.” Skye stood, glancing toward the front room as voices sounded on the stairs. “It doesn’t exactly make me happy to have been right about him.”
This wasn’t the time for a deeper conversation, and I wasn’t sure either of us was ready to have one. Instead, I pulled my hat low over my head and snagged some shortbread to take back to my room, breezing past the guests who had gathered in the foyer.
Later, upstairs in the small room with its slanted ceiling and creaking radiator, I stared at the paper in my hands.
House rules.
Clearly created solely for me. Really, Skye? It was as if she felt she could articulate fifteen years of anger into bullet points. Like she could build a fence high enough to keep me out. I know you hate me, lass.
I’d told myself I was only here because of the circulating scandal … because I needed a safe, quiet place to hide.
Lies. Utter rubbish, Byrne.
But the truth was, I’d missed Skye terribly.
Though time separated us, softening the sting of our pain, I’d never stopped thinking about her.
There were so many times I’d almost picked up the phone to call her but then remembered she didn’t want me to.
She’d moved on. Started her life over. And I’d had no place in it at all.
That part had burned the worst, I supposed.
I’d gone from being the most important person in Skye’s life to her most loathed.
Still, I’d come back here, to Kingsbarns, the moment I needed refuge.
Old habits do die hard, I guess.
Because even if she hated me, even if she never forgave me, Kingsbarns was the only place that had ever been my home. And Skye Kerrigan—the girl with a voice like wildfire—was the only person who had ever seen me for who I really was.
And, bloody hell, I still wanted her.