21. Boone
BOONE
The notebook sat on the passenger seat.
I'd grabbed it from the house without thinking, stuck it in my truck before I'd left this morning. I hadn't opened it yet. Didn't know what I was looking for, or if I'd even recognize it when I found it.
I parked two blocks from Dee's bar and sat there with the engine running, hands on the wheel. The notebook stayed where it was.
God, I was an idiot.
Tuck had told me removing Savannah wasn't the same as fixing what I'd done. He was right. I'd spent the last week trying to figure out how to win Carly back, and I had nothing. No plan. No words that would make a difference.
I cut the engine and got out.
The street was busy for a weekday afternoon, people walking in and out of shops, a few musicians setting up on the corner with guitar cases open for tips. Nashville in September felt like it was holding its breath, summer not quite gone, fall not quite here yet.
I walked toward the bar.
She was outside.
Carly stood near the front door, talking to someone I didn't recognize. A woman about her age, holding a to-go cup and laughing at something Carly had said. My wife smiled, the real one that used to light up our kitchen in the mornings before I started checking my phone instead of looking at her.
I stopped walking.
She hadn't seen me yet. Her hair was pulled back, and she wore jeans and a jacket I'd bought her two years ago for her birthday. She looked good. She looked happy, and I hadn't seen her look that way in so long I'd convinced myself she didn't anymore.
My chest went tight.
The other woman said something else, and Carly laughed again, shaking her head. She touched the woman's arm, easy and comfortable, the way she used to touch me when we were alone and the rest of the world didn't matter.
I could walk up to her. Say her name. Try to start a conversation.
But I knew what would happen. That smile would disappear the second she saw me, and whatever moment she was having would be over. I'd take it from her just by being there, the way I'd been taking things from her for years without noticing.
Tuck's voice echoed in my head. You can't just remove the villains and expect her to come back.
She deserved this. A moment where she wasn't carrying the weight of what I'd put on her, where she could stand outside a bar and laugh with a friend and not think about the husband who'd let her down or the family who'd treated her like she was nothing.
I turned around and walked to my truck.
My hands shook when I reached for the door handle. Not much, but enough that I noticed. Enough that I had to stop and breathe and force myself to get it together before I got back inside.
The notebook was still on the seat where I'd left it. I picked it up, ran my thumb along the worn black cover, and started driving toward the studio.
The building was quiet when I got there. Most of the crew had the day off, and the main recording space was dark. I went to the back room, the one I used for writing, and sat down at the desk.
For a long time I just stared at the notebook.
It wasn't mine. Never had been. Carly had started it the first year we were married, back when we were writing together in our apartment and couldn't afford a studio.
Every song we'd worked on was in there — her notes in the margins, my lyrics crossed out and rewritten in her handwriting, melodies sketched out with her careful notation.
I opened it.
The first page hit me harder than I'd expected. Her handwriting, small and precise, dated ten years ago. First draft — needs work. A song I'd recorded on my second album, the one that had gone platinum. The one everyone thought I'd written alone.
I flipped through more pages.
Every song. Every goddamn song. Her notes were everywhere, fixing my rhythms, changing words that didn't scan right, rewriting entire verses when I'd gotten stuck.
She'd drawn little stars next to lines she liked, question marks next to ones that needed fixing.
There were dates in the corners, timestamps of late nights when we'd stayed up working through problems I couldn't solve on my own.
One page had a full verse crossed out with a note in her handwriting: Too abstract. What are you really trying to say here?
I remembered that fight. I'd been pissed at her for tearing apart something I'd thought was good, and she'd waited until I'd finished yelling and then played it back for me on her guitar, showed me exactly where it fell apart. She'd been right. She was always right about the songs.
At the back of the notebook were pages I didn't recognize — her own songs, complete and polished, things she'd never shown me. I read through one about a woman trying to hold on to something that was slipping away, and my stomach dropped.
Jesus.
My throat felt like someone had their hands around it.
I'd told her once, early on, that I wanted her name on the songs. She'd said no. Said it would complicate things with the label, with my family, with the image we were building. I'd believed her, or I'd wanted to believe her, because it was easier than fighting for her the way I should have.
She'd asked me at the bar what I thought she needed. What I thought would fix it.
I hadn't had an answer then.
Sitting there with the notebook open in front of me, I started to see one.
She'd given me everything. Her voice, her songs, her name, her work — she'd handed all of it over and asked for nothing back except to be seen. To be heard. To matter to me the way I mattered to her.
And I'd checked my phone when she was talking.
I'd let my mother dismiss her at family dinners while I sat there and said nothing. I'd let Savannah walk into my studio like she had a right to be there, and I'd let Carly believe she was the one who was replaceable.
God, what the hell was wrong with me?
The answer wasn't complete yet. I could feel it forming, like a melody I couldn't quite hear all the way through, but it was there.
She hadn't asked me why I married her. At the bar, she'd asked what I thought she needed.
At the house, she'd asked when I last defended her, when I last made her feel like she mattered, when I last stood up for her when everyone treated her like she was beneath me — when she was the reason any of it had worked in the first place.
I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes.
The memories came in pieces. Her sitting at the kitchen table with her guitar, working out a chord progression while I made coffee.
The way she'd hum under her breath when she was concentrating, the sound so soft I had to stop moving to hear it.
The night we'd finished our first song together, and she'd looked at me like I'd hung the moon, and I'd believed I could because she believed it.
I remembered the way she used to wait up for me when I came home late from the studio, curled up on the couch with a book and a cup of tea that had gone cold hours ago.
She'd smile when I walked in, ask me how the session went, listen to me talk about chord changes and bridge problems like they were the most important things in the world.
When had I stopped asking about her day?
I couldn't remember. Somewhere along the way I'd started assuming she didn't have anything to tell me, or that what I was doing was more important than anything she might be working on.
I thought about the songs at the back of the notebook, the ones she'd written and never shown me. How long had she been writing them? How many nights had she sat up alone while I was on tour, pouring herself into something I'd never bothered to ask about?
When had I stopped seeing her?
I didn't know. Somewhere between the tours and the album releases and the pressure from my family to act like the success was mine alone, she'd become part of the background.
Someone who ran the house while I was gone, someone who was always there when I got back, someone whose presence I'd taken for granted until she wasn't there anymore.
I'd thought the marriage was solid. I'd convinced myself everything was fine because I didn't want to look at what was really happening.
My phone rang.
I opened my eyes and checked the screen. My lawyer. I almost didn't answer, but I knew he wouldn't call unless it was important.
"Yeah?"
"Boone." His voice was careful, the tone he used when he had bad news. "I'm calling because I wanted you to hear this from me first. Carly's moving forward with the divorce. Her lawyer filed the paperwork this morning."
The words took a second to land.
"Okay," I said.
"I can fight it if you want. Delay things, push back on the terms, make it harder for her to?—"
"No."
He went quiet on the other end.
"No," I said again. "Don't fight her. If that's what she wants, let her have it."
"Boone, I don't think you understand what you're giving up here. The house, the assets, everything you've built — she's entitled to half of it, and if we don't push back now, you're going to lose a hell of a lot more than you need to."
"I know."
He exhaled, frustrated. "Then why the hell are you telling me not to fight?"
"Because she's right," I said. "She's been right about all of it, and I've been too damn stupid to see it. If she wants the divorce, I'm not going to make it harder for her."
There was a long pause.
"Alright," he said finally. "I'll tell her lawyer we're not contesting. But Boone — you need to think about this. Once it's done, it's done."
"I know."
He hung up.
I sat there with the phone in my hand and the notebook open on the desk, and for the first time in years, I let myself feel the full weight of what I'd done.
I'd lost her. Maybe not permanently — I didn't know yet, couldn't let myself believe it was over for good — but I'd lost her trust, her faith in me, her willingness to keep fighting for something I'd stopped defending a long time ago.
She'd stood outside that bar today and smiled like she meant it, and I hadn't seen her do that in months. Maybe longer. She'd been happy for a moment, and it hadn't had anything to do with me.
That should've hurt more than it did. But mostly I was just glad she still could. Glad there was still a part of her I hadn't managed to break.
I'd told Tuck I was determined to win her back. I'd meant it. But sitting there in that empty studio with her handwriting in front of me and the memory of her smile outside the bar, I understood something I hadn't before.
Winning her back wasn't about grand gestures or removing the people who'd hurt her or proving I could be better.
It was about becoming the man she'd fallen in love with in the beginning — the one who'd listened when she talked, who'd seen her for who she really was, who'd believed she was worth defending because she was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
I didn't know how to be that man anymore. I'd lost him somewhere along the way, buried him under tours and album releases and my family's expectations. Under the weight of trying to please everyone except the one person who'd actually mattered.
But I was going to find him again.
I was going to figure out how to be the man she'd married, the one who'd sat with her in that cramped apartment and believed they could build something together, the one who'd known the songs only worked because she was there making them work.
And if she still wanted the divorce after that — if I did everything I could and it wasn't enough — then I'd let her go.
But I wasn't giving up. Not on her. Not on us.
The notebook felt heavier in my hands than it had when I'd first picked it up. Ten years of work, her voice woven through every line, and I'd never once made sure the world knew it was hers too.
That was going to change. All of it was going to change.
I just had to figure out how.
I opened the notebook again and started reading.