Chapter 5
Five
RHEA
The notification sits on my phone. It waits to explode whatever peace I’ve managed to build in the north Georgia mountains. Two voicemails from an unknown number came through today, though I know exactly who they’re from. My heart recognized it was Gray before my brain caught up.
I’ve been staring at my phone for three hours now, alternating between wanting to delete the messages unheard and needing to know if he’s alive. The last time we spoke, if you can call his drunken rambling and my tearful goodbye speaking, he was so far gone I wasn’t sure he’d survive the week.
Setting the phone aside, I force myself off the cabin’s front porch and into the rental car. I need a change of scenery to avoid those voicemails, so I decide to search for decent coffee and a distraction, preferably with human interaction that isn’t tangled up in the wreckage of my heart.
The village in Dogwood Hollow is exactly what you’d expect from a small Georgia mountain town with antique shops and their hand-painted signs, a Mae’s Diner that probably hasn’t changed its menu since 1985, and locals who nod politely at the obvious outsider wandering their streets.
I park in front of a coffee shop called “Mountain Mornings” and try to remember how to be a person outside of Gray’s world.
The barista is a woman who can’t be older than thirty with purple streaks in her brown hair, who greets me with the kind of genuine smile that reminds me there’s still kindness in the world. “What can I get you, honey?”
“Large coffee, cream and sugar. And maybe some advice on anywhere a person might want to start over?” I wince when I realize I’ve spoken my thoughts out loud.
She laughs, and it sounds like wind chimes. “Philosophical morning, huh? Well, it depends on what you’re starting over from. Breakup? Job? Existential crisis? The mob?”
“All of the above, except the last one?” I laugh at the mob comment.
“Oof, the full package. Been there. The mob would’ve been a new one for me, though.” She starts preparing my coffee with practiced efficiency. “Are you thinking of staying around here?”
The question catches me off guard because I haven’t really considered it until this moment.
Georgia.
These gorgeous mountains.
It’s a place where nobody knows me as Gray’s girlfriend, Case in Point’s assistant, or the woman who spent three years enabling an addict because she loved him too much to let go. “Maybe, I’m from Tennessee originally, but I don’t think I can go back there.”
“Bad memories?” she guesses correctly.
There are more bad memories than she could possibly imagine.
Tennessee holds every painful moment of my childhood and the way I learned to tiptoe around volatility before I was old enough to understand what that meant.
It holds my teenage years, when I was too careful, too responsible, and too afraid to take risks, because I’d seen what happened when adults lost control.
And now it holds three years of loving Gray and watching him slip further away from the man I fell in love with. One day, I realized I was living with a stranger who looked like my soulmate but treated me like an obstacle to his self-destruction.
“You could say that.” I take the steaming cup from the barista, accepting it with a nod.
“Well, Georgia’s good for fresh starts. It’s a slower pace, has nice people and plenty of places to disappear, if that’s what you need.
” She leans against the counter, clearly in no hurry.
“I came here from Atlanta after my ex turned out to be a pathological liar with a gambling problem. There are some situations that require geographical distance to get emotional distance, you know?”
I know exactly what she means. The thought of returning to Nashville makes my chest tight with claustrophobia.
“What’s your name?” I ask in case I stick around.
“Emma. You?” She places a kitchen towel over her shoulder.
“Rhea.”
“Well, Rhea, if you decide to stick around, there’s a little apartment above the bookstore across the street. Mrs. Chen has been trying to rent it out for months, but she’s picky about tenants. She wants a renter who’ll appreciate the quiet life.”
The idea of a quiet life above a bookstore sounds like a plot from one of the romance novels I’ve been devouring.
Simple.
Peaceful.
The kind of existence where the biggest drama is whether the coffee shop runs out of blueberry muffins.
I spend the morning wandering the Dogwood Hollow village.
My phone remains silent in my pocket. The voicemails on it must weigh a ton.
I peek into the bookstore where I picked up a book earlier last week, and discover rows and rows of books again, a comfortable reading nook by the window, and the same gray-haired woman who smiles at me like I’m an old friend rather than a stranger running from her problems.
By lunch, I’ve had more genuine conversations with strangers than I’ve had in years.
The hardware store owner, Mr. Finnegan, tells me about the hiking trails.
The librarian recommends a local book club.
The woman at the farmers market insisted I take home a jar of her homemade jam because I “look like I need some sweetening up.”
For a few hours, I almost forgot about the voicemails waiting for me. For half a day, I almost forgot about the life I left behind and the man I’m still completely in love with. I was able to forget about the future that crumbled the night I finally found the courage to walk away.
As the sun starts to dip behind the mountains, I drive back to the cabin with bags of fresh produce and that jar of jam.
Reality comes crashing back as I near my short-term rental.
Those voicemails aren’t going anywhere. Gray’s voice is sitting in my phone, waiting to either destroy my fragile peace or provide some kind of closure I might still need.
Once I’m back at the cabin, I sit on the porch swing with my phone in my hands, watching the last light fade from behind the mountains, which are painted in shades of purple and gold, so beautiful that it makes my chest ache.
This is what I want. I want beauty without chaos and peace without the constant fear of another Gray crisis, waiting around the corner.
Taking a deep breath, I open my voicemail.
His voice surprises me, even though I was expecting it. “My sweet Rhea.”
Three words are all he has to utter, and I’m transported back to every morning he whispered them against my hair and every night he murmured them into my skin. But there’s something different about his voice now. There’s a clarity I haven’t heard in months, maybe even years.
“I miss you, baby. I’m sorry. I’ve loved you since the moment I laid eyes on you, and you deserved better than what I gave you. I’ll be eternally apologetic for that. I just need to hear your voice, baby. Please answer when I call tomorrow.”
The desperation in his voice is crushing. Underneath it, something makes my heart stop. He sounds sober. Not just sober from alcohol, but clear-minded and awake in a way he hasn’t been since those first few months we were together.
I remember the Gray I met in that bathroom at Requiem Records three years ago.
He was ninety-eight days sober, scared, hopeful, and so beautiful it took my breath away.
The way he looked at me like I might be his salvation, the gentleness in his touch when he stopped me from leaving, and the honesty that made me want to take a chance on someone completely outside my comfort zone.
Gray’s presence had always reached deeper than fame. When he listens, I feel seen. When he’s sober, he finds meaning in ordinary moments like brewing coffee, reading together, and simply feeling safe as we fall asleep beside each other.
The attraction between us had been immediate and overwhelming.
It wasn’t just physical, though God knows the chemistry was electric from that first conversation.
But it was his mind that captivated me, and the way he thought about music, life, and love.
His vulnerability revealed what he hid from everyone else.
He made me feel brave, beautiful, and necessary in ways I’d never experienced before.
I fell in love with his laugh, his terrible jokes, and the way he’d write songs about mundane things just to make me smile.
His hands were always moving and creating something beautiful, and it’s one more thing I love about him.
But I knew I’d fallen the first time he’d held me on the tour bus, when the nightmares came.
He climbed into my bunk and held me while I came down from the hellish dreams that plague me.
It was like he could keep all the darkness at bay through sheer force of will.
But addiction is a patient thief. It stole him from me slowly, so gradually that I kept making excuses and believing each relapse was the last one.
The man I fell in love with faded away one drink at a time until I was living with a ghost who wore his face but couldn’t remember why he once wrote me love songs.
The second voicemail plays automatically, and this time his voice is completely different. Stronger. More himself.
“Hey, baby. I know you’re probably not ready to hear from me, but I wanted to tell you about my day. I’m in a nice rehab in Georgia. I had my first group therapy session this morning, followed by individual therapy this afternoon. It’s good, Rhea. Hard as hell, but good.”
He pauses, and I can hear voices in the background, the sound of life happening around him.
“Andrew brought my guitar today. Funny how different it feels to write when you’re sober.
I started working on a new song. For once, it’s not about the pain, but about hope.
About wanting to be better than the worst things I’ve done. ”
Another pause, longer this time. “I keep thinking about that first day we met, in the bathroom at Requiem. Do you remember? You were so nervous about the tour, and I was so fucking scared about staying sober. But sitting there with you, I felt like I might be able to do it. Maybe I could be the man you saw when you looked at me.”
His voice breaks slightly, and I press my hand to my mouth to keep from sobbing out loud.
“I know I can’t undo the damage I’ve done. I know I hurt you in ways I’m probably not even aware of yet. But I’m going to do the work, Rhea. Real work this time. Not for you, not for the band, but because you made me believe I was worth saving, and I owe it to that belief to try.”
The message ends, and suddenly I’m crying so hard I can barely breathe. Grief and relief tumble together until I’m left trembling in their wake.
He’s alive. He’s safe. He’s getting help.
For three years, I feared every call would bring news that Gray was dead. Anxiety clawed at me whenever he stayed up drinking, arrived late, or didn’t answer his phone. Every time he passed out, it felt like it might be his last time.
The weight of that fear was crushing. Loving someone who was slowly killing himself colored every moment of joy, laughter, and each tender touch. How do you love someone completely while always preparing to lose them?
But tonight, for the first time in longer than I can remember, relief replaces that old, crushing weight.
I can finally breathe. Gray is in rehab.
He sounds like himself again. It’s like listening to the man I fell in love with in a bathroom three years ago, when we were both searching for a connection we didn’t know we needed.
It doesn’t change anything between us. I still can’t return to the cycle of hope and disappointment that loving an addict requires. But knowing he’s safe and fighting for himself, instead of making empty promises, is a gift that will help me rest a bit easier tonight.
Once I clear my face and my voice no longer betrays my emotions, I call Emma at Mountain Mornings to ask about the apartment above the bookstore.
Chapters end so you can write new ones, and maybe, just maybe, this is how both Gray and I finally learn to write our own stories instead of being characters in each other’s tragedies.
It dawns on me that maybe Gray isn’t the only one who needs professional help to heal from the pain of our relationship and my mom’s addiction. They left scars.
I recall a browser on my phone and search for Al-Anon groups and meetings in the local area. I’m not familiar with Dogwood Hollow or the surrounding towns and cities, so I research each listing on the national site to find the one closest to me.
There’s a meeting this upcoming Saturday over in Cedar Falls, which, according to Google, is just a twenty-minute drive away. Committing the details to memory and placing them on my phone’s calendar brings me more peace than I’ve felt in a long time.
Tonight, I’ll sleep better than I have in weeks. Not because my heart isn’t broken, but because the man I love is finally trying to put himself back together.