10. Carly
CARLY
The house was quiet.
I stood in the bedroom, listening to nothing. No footsteps. No voice calling my name from downstairs. No guitar strings humming through the walls. Just the hiss of the air conditioning and the tick of the clock on the nightstand.
Boone was gone. He'd left for the studio an hour ago, maybe two — I wasn't sure.
Time felt slippery, like I couldn't get a grip on it.
He'd walked out the door without saying goodbye, without kissing me, without even looking back.
I'd heard his truck start up in the driveway, heard the gravel crunch under his tires, and then he was gone.
I should have been used to it by now. God knows I'd spent enough mornings alone in this house while he worked. But today it felt different. Today the silence pressed against my skin like something alive, like it was waiting for me to do something.
I pulled my suitcase out from under the bed. It scraped against the hardwood floor, loud in the quiet, and I flinched. My hands were shaking. I set the suitcase on the bed and unzipped it, and the sound of the zipper seemed to echo through the whole room.
I started packing. I didn't think about what I was doing, just grabbed clothes from the dresser and shoved them into the suitcase.
T-shirts. Jeans. A sweater I'd bought last winter that still smelled faintly of lavender from the dryer sheets.
My hands moved on autopilot, pulling things from drawers, folding them badly, cramming them in.
I wasn't careful. I wasn't neat. I just needed to get it done before I lost my nerve.
The guitar pick was on the nightstand. Small.
Flat. Black with silver engraving. Our names were on it, Carly & Boone, carved in a looping script that had looked romantic when he'd given it to me ten years ago.
He'd handed it to me after our first real songwriting session together, grinning like he'd just won the lottery, and said, "We're partners now. "
I stared at it. My chest felt tight, like someone had wrapped a band around my ribs and pulled it too tight, and I couldn't get a full breath. My throat ached. I picked up the guitar pick and closed my fingers around it, feeling the edges dig into my palm.
I put it in my pocket.
I didn't know why. I just did. Maybe because it was mine as much as it was his. Maybe because I'd earned it. Maybe because I was an idiot who couldn't let go of something that didn't mean anything anymore.
My Juilliard degree was in a frame on the wall above the dresser.
Black frame. White matting. My name in formal script, Carly Anne Reed, with all the pomp and ceremony a piece of paper could hold.
I'd worked my ass off for that degree. Four years of twelve-hour days, of professors who told me I wasn't good enough, of practice rooms that smelled like stale coffee and desperation.
I'd graduated top of my class. I'd had offers. I could have sung anywhere.
Instead I'd come home to Nashville and married Boone.
I left the degree on the wall. I didn't even take it down. I just looked at it for a second, feeling something cold and bitter settle in my stomach, and then I turned away.
The notebook was on the shelf by the window.
Spiral-bound. Black cover. Pages crammed with lyrics and chord progressions and Boone's messy handwriting next to my neater script.
Every song we'd written together was in that notebook.
Ten years of work. Hundreds of hours sitting side by side at the kitchen table or in the studio, passing the notebook back and forth, crossing out lines, adding new ones, arguing over a single word until we got it right.
My notes were in the margins. My rewrites were on every page. My own songs were at the back, the ones I'd written alone, the ones I'd never shown anyone because they were mine and I wanted to keep them that way.
I picked up the notebook. It was heavier than I expected, or maybe my hands were just weak.
I opened it to a random page and saw Boone's handwriting, big and careless, with my notes underneath in blue ink.
Change this line. Too many syllables. Try "stayed" instead of "remained.
" He'd circled my note and written YES next to it in all caps.
I closed the notebook. My hands were shaking again, worse now, and I felt something hot and sharp rising in my throat. I put the notebook back on the shelf. Carefully. Like it was fragile. Like it mattered.
I wasn't taking it with me.
I stood there staring at the shelf, breathing too fast, my heart pounding in my chest like it was trying to break out.
I didn't understand what I was doing. I didn't understand why I hadn't said anything to Boone, why I hadn't walked up to him two nights ago and demanded to know what the hell Savannah Merritt was doing with her hands on him, why I hadn't screamed or cried or thrown something.
I'd just stood there. Frozen. Watching him lean into her touch like it was the most natural thing in the world.
And then I'd left. I'd walked out of the studio without a word, driven for hours with no destination in mind, and come back late that night to leave my ring on the mixing board before I drove away again.
God, what was wrong with me?
I should have confronted him. I should have demanded answers. I should have made him look me in the eye and tell me what he was thinking, what he wanted, whether he still loved me or whether I was just — what, furniture? A fixture in his life he'd stopped noticing?
But I hadn't. I'd left my wedding ring on the mixing board in the studio instead, like some kind of coward, and I still didn't know if he'd even noticed it was gone.
He hadn't called. He hadn't texted. He'd just left this morning like nothing had happened, and I'd stayed silent, unable to find the words to make him understand what I'd seen.
No, Boone, I'm not okay. I saw you with her. I saw the way you let her touch you. I heard what you said, and it sounded like you don't love me anymore, and I don't know what to do with that.
I hadn't said any of it. I'd just let him go.
Maybe that was my answer. Maybe I was too much of a coward to fight for this.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. The suitcase was half-packed, clothes spilling out of it in a messy heap, and I felt exhausted just looking at it. My hands were still shaking. I pressed them against my thighs, trying to steady them, but it didn't help.
I could call him. I could pick up my phone right now and call him and tell him I was leaving. I could give him a chance to say something, to explain, to — what? Apologize? Beg me to stay? Tell me it was all a misunderstanding?
Or maybe he'd say, "Okay." Maybe he'd sound relieved.
I didn't want to know. God, I didn't want to know.
I stood up. My legs felt unsteady, like they might give out under me, but I made myself move. I finished packing. I zipped the suitcase shut, the sound final and terrible, and then I stood there staring at it like it was a bomb I'd just armed.
Was it too late? For us? For whatever we'd been? I didn't know. I didn't know if love could survive being ignored for this long, if a marriage could come back from one person deciding the other didn't matter anymore. I didn't know if I even wanted it to.
The thought made me feel sick. Like I was betraying something, or giving up, or admitting I'd failed. I'd spent ten years of my life building this marriage, and now I was walking away from it with one suitcase and a guitar pick in my pocket.
But I couldn't stay. Not like this. Not invisible.
I grabbed the suitcase off the bed. It was heavy, awkward, the handle digging into my palm, and I had to use both hands to carry it. I walked out of the bedroom and down the hallway, my footsteps echoing on the hardwood. The house felt enormous around me. Empty.
I stopped at the top of the stairs. For a second I thought about going back.
About unpacking the suitcase and putting everything away and pretending none of this had happened.
About waiting for Boone to come home and sitting down with him and trying to have an actual conversation instead of running away.
But I didn't. I couldn't. Because I didn't trust him to hear me anymore, and I didn't trust myself not to let him convince me everything was fine when it wasn't.
I went down the stairs. Each step felt too loud. Too real. My heart was hammering in my chest, my pulse racing, and I felt like I might throw up. At the bottom of the stairs I stopped again, looking around the living room like I was seeing it for the first time. Or the last time.
The couch where we'd sat together a thousand nights, his arm around my shoulders, his guitar in his lap.
The coffee table covered with sheet music and coffee rings and his old notebooks.
The big window that looked out over the front yard, the one he'd insisted we keep bare because he liked the light.
It was a good house. A beautiful house. We'd bought it together five years ago, right after his second album went platinum, and I'd loved it.
I'd loved picking out paint colors and furniture and arguing with him over whether we needed a dining room table that seated twelve. I'd loved making it ours.
Now it just felt like his.
I walked to the front door. My suitcase bumped against my leg with every step, and I could feel the guitar pick in my pocket, a small hard lump pressing against my hip. I set the suitcase down by the door and put my hand on the doorknob.
I should leave him a note. Tell him where I was going. Tell him — something. Anything.
But I didn't have anything to say. Not in writing. Not when I didn't even know what I wanted from him anymore.
I opened the door. Sunlight hit me in the face, bright and warm, and I had to squint against it.
The air outside smelled like cut grass and honeysuckle, and I could hear birds singing somewhere in the trees.
It was a beautiful day. The kind of day that made you think everything was going to be okay.
I picked up my suitcase. My hands were steadier now. Or maybe I was just too tired to shake anymore. I stepped outside onto the porch, feeling the sun on my skin, the breeze in my hair, and for a second I felt dizzy with the enormity of what I was doing.
I was leaving. I was actually leaving.
I pulled the door shut behind me. It clicked closed, the lock catching, and the sound felt final in a way that made my chest ache.
I stood there on the porch for a second, staring at the closed door, waiting for something to happen.
For Boone to come home early and see me standing here with my suitcase.
For the door to swing back open like the house itself was trying to pull me back inside.
But nothing happened. The door stayed closed. The house stayed silent.
I walked down the porch steps and across the driveway to my car.
I threw the suitcase in the back seat, slid into the driver's seat, and started the engine.
My hands knew what to do even when my brain felt blank.
I backed out of the driveway, the tires crunching on the gravel, and then I was on the road.
I was going to Dee's bar. The one place in Nashville where I'd always felt like myself. Where I'd sung for drinks and tips before Boone and I got married, before his career took off, before I became the woman who ran his house and fixed his songs and stayed quiet when his family tore me apart.
Dee would know what to do. Or at least she'd let me sit at the bar and pour me a drink and not ask questions I couldn't answer.
I drove. The house disappeared in the rearview mirror, getting smaller and smaller until it was just a shape against the trees, and then it was gone. I didn't look back again. I didn't let myself.
I just drove.