Chapter 13
PHOENIX
The bus engine drones beneath me, a constant rumble threading through the suffocating silence.
Tires hum against asphalt—steady, relentless, carrying me toward a future I never saw coming.
Outside the window, Indiana farmland stretches in frozen waves, snow-covered fields broken only by skeletal trees and weathered barns.
I have a daughter.
Four years of birthdays. First words. First steps. First everything—all of it happened while I played sold-out venues and convinced myself the emptiness inside was success.
Melody. Elle named our daughter after the one thing we shared before I torched everything between us. The irony sits like a stone in my chest, heavy and immovable.
My hands curl into fists against my thighs, knuckles whitening.
Memory slams into me uninvited—a childhood of empty seats at school events, broken promises dressed up as work obligations. Dad was always somewhere else, chasing the next client, the next deal, the next thing more important than showing up.
Even when I got older, when music became my life, he didn’t understand it. Didn’t support it. Looked at me like I was throwing my future away on a pipe dream.
I swore I’d be different. Swore I’d never become the man who valued everything except the people who needed him most.
Worse than him, even. At least Dad knew I existed.
But now—knowing I have a daughter, that she’s been out there for four years without me—that clarity sharpens into something fierce. I know exactly what kind of father I don’t want to be. Which means I know what kind I do.
Present. Supportive. There.
Not for Elle. Not to fix the past or ease my guilt.
For a four-year-old girl I’ve never met but who carries my DNA, my features, my blood.
This isn’t about hurt feelings or five years of regret anymore. This is about forging a future instead of dwelling in what’s already gone.
Across the narrow aisle, Elle stares at her laptop screen without typing. Her fingers hover motionless above the keyboard. The screen’s glow casts her face in sharp relief—tension in her jaw, shadows beneath her eyes deep enough to drown in. She hasn’t looked at me since we boarded.
Can’t blame her for that.
Casey sprawls in his bunk, phone screen washing his face in blue light. Theo occupies the couch across from me, earbuds in, pretending absorption in whatever’s on his tablet. Mike keeps his eyes locked on the highway.
Everyone knows. The weight of their awareness presses against my skin like stage lights cranked too high.
Elle’s fingers finally move. Keys click in rapid succession before she hits backspace. Delete. Delete. Delete. The pattern repeats—typing, deleting, the sound of avoidance. She’s not working on the article. She’s manufacturing distance between us.
The tour bus rumbles through frozen landscape—this glorified tin can designed for transit, not connection. Cold. Impersonal. A moving boardroom where I’ve spent the last four years of my daughter’s life.
Melody existed for four complete rotations around the sun without knowing my name.
The guitar case at my feet might as well contain a weapon for all the damage my choices inflicted.
Elle’s phone buzzes. She glances at the screen, and something in her expression shifts—softens around the edges in a way I haven’t seen since the B&B. Since before everything detonated. Her fingers fly across the touchscreen in response.
Maybe a message about Melody.
My daughter.
The thought crashes through me with enough force to make breathing difficult. I can’t sit here anymore, separated by this narrow aisle, pretending we don’t need to talk about the fact that I have a four-year-old child.
I stand. The movement draws everyone’s attention.
Casey glances up from his phone, eyebrows raised. Theo’s gaze shifts from his tablet to me, then to Elle, reading the situation with uncomfortable accuracy.
“Elle.” My voice comes out rougher than intended. “Can we talk?”
She doesn’t look up from her laptop. “We are talking.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t think there’s anything left to say.” Her fingers hover over the keyboard, not typing. Still avoiding.
“Elle—”
“Phoenix, I’m trying to work.”
Casey and Theo have gone completely still, both clearly listening despite their attempts to appear otherwise. Mike’s eyes flick to the rearview mirror.
“Privately,” I add, emphasis on the last word.
Elle’s gaze finally lifts, meeting mine. Something passes between us—acknowledgment that this conversation is inevitable, whether she wants it or not.
She glances around the cramped bus. The bunks offer zero privacy. The kitchenette is worse. The only space with an actual door is the small bedroom at the back.
Her jaw tightens. “Fine. Five minutes.”
She stands. I follow her through the narrow corridor toward the bedroom.
Casey clears his throat behind us. “Theo, think I left my charger at the B&B.”
“Tragic,” Theo deadpans.
“Means my phone’s gonna die soon. Real shame.”
“Truly devastating.”
“Let me borrow yours,” he pleads.
“Get off!” I hear him yell as the door clicks behind us.
Despite everything, the corner of Elle’s mouth twitches before the almost-smile vanishes.
The bedroom barely accommodates the double bed and shallow closet. Walls press close—intimate in a way that has nothing to do with romance and everything to do with forced proximity.
Elle crosses her arms over her chest. An understandable defensive posture.
Christmas music suddenly erupts from the main cabin—”Jingle Bell Rock” at unnecessary volume.
“Now I can’t hear anything!” Casey’s muffled complaint carries through the thin walls. “The music’s too loud!”
“That’s the point, you idiot.” Theo’s response comes sharper, followed by the volume dropping to a more reasonable level.
Elle’s mouth twitches again.
“I tried to tell you.” The words tumble out before I can speak, rushed and defensive. “Last night at the B&B, before we—” Color floods her cheeks. “I tried. You wanted to explain first, and then everything happened, and this morning with the photo—”
“I know.”
“Do you?” Her eyes flash. “Because three hours ago you accused me of robbing you. Of deliberately keeping her from you.”
The accuracy stings worse than any review I’ve ever gotten. “I was in shock.”
“You were angry.”
“Yeah.” No point denying it. “I was furious. Still am, if I’m being honest.”
She flinches. “At me.”
“At the situation.” I drag a hand through my hair, frustration building. “At myself for leaving. At the universe for shit timing. At the fact that I have a daughter and the only way I know she exists is a photo on your phone.”
“What did you expect me to do?” Her voice rises. “Hunt you down between tour stops? Show up at a venue with a baby and demand child support?”
“No. I—” The protest dies. She’s right. What could she have done that she didn’t already try?
Her shoulders drop slightly. The fight drains from her posture, replaced by exhaustion. “I’m not asking for anything. You don’t have to be involved if you don’t want to be. Melody and I have managed fine without you.”
The words ignite something primal in my chest. “You think I don’t want to know my daughter?”
“I think—” She stops. Starts again. “I think you have a career that demands constant touring, recording sessions, promotional cycles. Does fatherhood fit into all that?”
“Before I knew about Melody, before any of this—I wanted you back. That hasn’t changed.” I close the distance between us. “Finding out I have a daughter doesn’t replace that. It makes it more important.”
Her eyes widen slightly.
“I want both of you.” My voice drops. “I want to be Melody’s father. I want to know her, be there for her, show up for every school play and soccer game and random Tuesday. But I also want you. Us. The family we talked about making someday.”
“We were kids when we talked about that—”
“We’re not kids anymore.” I step closer. “And I’m not asking you to forget five years or pretend I didn’t screw everything up. I’m asking for the chance to prove I can be what you both need. What we all need.”
Elle’s breath catches. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“Then show me.” Desperation bleeds through. “Show me pictures of her. Tell me about her. Teach me how to be her father. Let me figure out how to be part of this family.”
Her hand moves toward her phone, hesitates. “If you do this—if you commit to this and then leave when it gets hard—”
“I won’t. I can’t promise I’ll be perfect. But I can promise I’ll show up. I can promise I’ll try.” I hold her gaze. “Please, Elle. Let me try.”
Elle reaches for her phone, fingers navigating with the ease of someone who’s pulled up these images a thousand times. She hands me the device.
The screen fills with my daughter’s face.
My legs give out. The mattress catches me as I sink onto the bed’s edge, unable to support my own weight under the magnitude of what I’m seeing.
Melody. Dozens of photos. Hundreds, maybe. A life I never witnessed, catalogued in pixels.
The first image steals my breath—a newborn with a shock of dark hair plastered against her skull, eyes squinted against hospital lights. So impossibly small. Elle looks exhausted in the frame’s edge, her smile tired but genuine as she cradles this tiny human we made.
“She had so much hair,” Elle says softly, a hint of wonder in her voice. “The nurses kept joking that she’d been cooking in there extra long just to grow it. I spent the first week just running my fingers through it while she slept.”
My thumb swipes.
Melody in a highchair, face smeared with orange mush. Her gummy grin is toothless and joyful, both hands fisted in the pureed mess.
“Sweet potatoes,” Elle supplies, and I hear the smile before I see it. “She loved them so much she tried to inhale them. Got some stuck up her nose and sneezed orange everywhere. I had to suction it out with one of those bulb things while she screamed like I was torturing her.”
Swipe.