28. Carly
CARLY
The bar was quiet for a weeknight.
I sat at the corner stool where the wood was worn smooth from years of elbows, mine included.
Dee was wiping down the far end of the counter, the rag moving in slow circles that made no sound at all.
The place smelled like beer and lemon cleaner, familiar enough that I didn't notice it anymore unless I thought about it.
A couple sat in one of the booths by the window, talking low over their drinks.
The jukebox was off. Even the street outside was quiet, just the occasional car passing.
My mind wouldn't shut up. It kept circling back to the same thing, over and over, like a dog with a bone I couldn't take away from myself.
"You want another?" Dee asked.
I looked down at my glass. Still half full, the ice melted into pale crescents floating on top. I shook my head.
She tossed the rag into the bucket under the bar and came over, leaning her hip against the counter. Her hair was pulled back and she had flour on one sleeve. "You've been staring at that drink for twenty minutes, Carly."
"I know."
"You planning to tell me what's eating you, or do I have to guess?"
I traced the rim of the glass with one finger, watching the condensation bead and roll down the side. My throat felt tight, like there was something lodged in it I couldn't swallow past. God, I didn't even know where to start. I didn't know how to explain it without sounding like an idiot.
"It's Boone," I said finally.
Dee didn't say anything. She just waited, the way she always did when I was working up to something. Patient. Still. It was one of the things I loved about her, that she never rushed me.
"He put his phone down when I talked to him," I said.
The words sounded ridiculous out loud, like I was a kid reporting that someone had shared their crayons.
My face heated and I wanted to take it back, but it was too late.
"Three days ago at this bar. He actually looked at me the whole time. He didn't check it once."
"Okay."
"And he told me Savannah's gone." I was talking faster now, the words tumbling out. "He said he left the deal with her father, left his parents, all of it. He said Emily came with him. He said he was done and he meant it."
Dee nodded slowly. "That's good, isn't it?"
"Is it?" I heard my voice go sharp and hated it. "How do I know it's real? How do I know he's not going to change his mind next week when his mother calls or when the label threatens to drop him?"
"Do you think he will?"
"I don't know." My hands were shaking. I flattened them on the bar to make them stop. "That's the problem, Dee. I don't know."
She studied me for a moment, her dark eyes steady. "You're scared."
"Of course I'm scared." My voice cracked and I looked away, blinking hard against the burn behind my eyes. "People don't just change like that. You don't wake up one day and decide to be a different person. It doesn't work that way."
"Sometimes it does."
"Not for him." I wrapped both hands around the glass, needing something solid to hold onto.
My chest ached in that hollow way that made it hard to breathe right.
"He's done this before, Dee. He says he's sorry, he says he'll change, and then a week goes by and it's back to the same thing.
The phone, the tour, his mother calling the shots. I can't—I'm not doing that again."
"What did he do before?"
I blinked. "What?"
"You said he's done this before." Dee tilted her head slightly. "But from what you've told me over the years, he's never actually left his mother or Savannah or the deal. He's apologized, sure. He's promised to do better. But he's never walked away from all of it. Has he?"
I opened my mouth to argue and then closed it again. She was right. He'd never done that. Not in ten years. He'd said he was sorry a hundred times, but he'd never actually changed anything that mattered.
Until now.
Maybe.
"What if this is just—what if he gets bored again?" The question came out small, almost a whisper. "What if the next album comes out and suddenly it's all too much trouble and I'm back to being invisible?"
"What if it's not?"
The question hung between us like something I could reach out and touch. I didn't have an answer. I'd spent three days trying to find one and I still came up empty.
The door opened behind me with the soft chime of the bell above it. I heard footsteps, two sets, and then Emily's voice.
"Carly."
I turned on the stool. Emily stood just inside the door with Tuck right behind her, both of them looking like they'd walked straight from somewhere important.
Emily wore dark jeans and a sweater, her hair loose, and her expression was careful.
Too careful. The kind of careful that meant she was holding something back.
My stomach dropped like a stone. "What's wrong? Is Boone?—"
"He's fine," Emily said quickly, holding up one hand. She came closer, stopping a few feet away. "Can we talk to you?"
I glanced at Dee, who gave me a small nod and moved down the bar to give us space. Then I looked back at Emily, at Tuck standing silent and uncomfortable behind her. He looked like he'd rather be anywhere else, and that made my pulse kick up. "Yeah. Okay."
Emily pulled out the stool next to mine and sat down slowly. Tuck stayed standing, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his shoulders hunched.
"I need to tell you some things," Emily said. Her voice was steady but quiet. "And I need you to just listen, all right? Don't interrupt. Don't argue. Just listen."
I nodded, even though my throat had gone tight and my heart was pounding. Nothing good ever started with I need you to just listen.
Emily folded her hands on the bar in front of her. Her nails were short and unpainted. "Boone left the deal. Not just in theory, not just in his head. He walked into our father's office last week, told him he was done, and walked out. He hasn't been back since."
I stared at her. The words made sense individually but together they sounded impossible, like she was describing someone else entirely. Not Boone. Not the man who'd spent ten years tangled up in his family's expectations.
"He fired Savannah the same day," Emily continued, her tone flat and factual. "Told her she was never to contact him again, that it was over and he meant it. When she showed up at the studio two days later he had security walk her out."
My hands had gone cold. I pressed them together in my lap. "And your mother?"
"He told her he was finished taking her calls.
" Emily met my eyes, and I saw something hard in her face, something that looked almost like anger.
But not at me. "He said she could either respect his decisions or she could stop pretending they had a relationship.
She called him six times that night. He didn't answer once.
She hasn't spoken to him in three days."
I couldn't breathe. The air felt too thick, pressing down on me. I wanted to believe her. God, I wanted to believe her so badly it scared me. But the fear was stronger, the fear that had been living in my chest for months.
"Why are you telling me this?" My voice came out hoarse.
"Because I was there and I saw it." Emily's expression softened just slightly. "I brought him the truth about Savannah. I told him what she'd been doing, what Mama had been planning with her and her father. The whole thing, Carly. Everything."
"Why?" I asked. "Why would you do that?"
"Because he's my brother," Emily said simply. "And because it was the right thing to do."
I swallowed hard. My throat hurt. "He didn't know?"
"He didn't know." Emily's voice was firm, certain.
"I swear to you, Carly, he didn't know. He thought Savannah was just part of the business, that she was there because of the deal and that was it.
He didn't know Mama was pushing them together.
He didn't know about the things Savannah was saying to you. "
My vision blurred. I blinked hard, willing the tears back. Not here. Not now. "The pregnancy."
The word felt like broken glass in my throat. Savannah's voice echoed in my head, smooth and poisonous.
"It was from before you," Emily said quietly.
"Years before. When they were teenagers and stupid.
She got pregnant and ended it and cut him off without a word, and then she dug it up years later and used it like a weapon when she thought it would get her what she wanted.
" She paused. "It had nothing to do with you or your marriage.
Nothing. She lied, Carly. About all of it. "
My chest felt like it was cracking open. I couldn't tell if it was relief or grief or something else entirely. "Okay."
"Carly." Tuck's voice was quiet, rougher than usual. I looked up at him and he shifted his weight, his jaw tight. "I need to tell you something."
"What?"
He hesitated, like he was trying to decide how much to say.
Then he sighed and ran one hand through his hair.
"I was with Boone at his recording studio a few months back.
We were talking in one of the rooms and I think you were outside in the hallway.
I didn't know it at the time, but I figured it out later. "
My heart stopped. Just stopped completely.
"You left before he finished," Tuck said. He met my eyes and didn't look away. "He said, 'I don't think about her the way I used to. I think about her all the time now, and I just realized I never tell her that.'"
The world went very still.
The recording studio. The hallway. The conversation I'd heard through the door, the one I'd carried for months like proof that he was done with me.
I can't keep pretending everything's fine when it's not.
She doesn't know. I'm not ready to tell her yet.
I'd left before he finished. I'd walked away thinking I knew what those words meant, that he was leaving me, that he'd already checked out.
But that wasn't what he'd been saying at all.
He'd been talking about the song. About realizing he thought about me all the time and never told me. About finally paying attention. That was what he'd told me when he came to the bar and said he'd written the song about us, about our marriage, about losing me because he wasn't paying attention.
The conversation I'd overheard had never been about ending things. It had been about him waking up.
"Oh God," I breathed. The words came out shaky and too loud in the quiet of the bar.
Dee appeared beside me, reaching across the counter to cover my hand with hers. I looked at her and saw something in her face that might have been hope or might have been permission. Maybe both.
Emily stood up slowly, careful. "I'm not asking you to forgive him," she said. "That's not my place and I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm just telling you what I know because you deserve the truth. What you do with it is up to you."
I nodded. I couldn't speak. My throat had closed up completely.
Emily squeezed my shoulder once, brief and awkward, the touch of someone who wasn't used to giving comfort but was trying anyway. Then she and Tuck headed for the door. It closed behind them with a soft click that sounded too loud in the sudden quiet.
"Carly," Dee said softly.
I slid off the stool. My hands were shaking. My whole body was shaking, actually, vibrating with something that felt too big for my skin. "I have to go."
"Where?"
"The studio." I grabbed my jacket off the back of the stool and shoved my arms through the sleeves. One of them was inside out and I didn't care. "He's always at the studio when he's working through something. I have to—I need to see him."
"Do you know what you're going to say?"
"No." The word came out like a laugh, sharp and slightly hysterical. I shook my head. "I have no idea. But I'll figure it out."
Dee smiled, just a little. "Go."
I went.
The drive to the studio took forever and no time at all.
My hands were tight on the wheel, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat, in my wrists, behind my eyes.
The streets were empty and dark, the city quiet in that late-night way.
I kept hearing Tuck's voice in my head, steady and certain and completely matter-of-fact.
I think about her all the time now, and I just realized I never tell her that.
He'd said that. Boone had said that. In a conversation I was never meant to hear, months ago, while I stood in the hallway believing the opposite. The thought made something crack open in my chest that I'd been holding shut for months. Maybe longer.
I pulled into the studio lot and parked crooked across two spaces, not caring, not even thinking about it.
The building was dark except for one window on the second floor where the light was still on.
Boone's window. Of course it was. He practically lived in that studio when he was working on something.
I got out of the car and started toward the door at a half-run, my breath fogging in the cold night air. My jacket flapped open and the wind cut through my sweater but I barely felt it. All I could think about was getting inside, getting to him, seeing his face when I told him?—
I stopped.
The door was locked. The handle didn't turn when I pulled on it. Of course it was locked. It was after midnight and the building was empty except for Boone upstairs, and I didn't have a key anymore. I'd given it back months ago when I'd left, when I'd thought I was never coming back.
I tried the door again anyway, yanking on it like that would make a difference. It didn't. The glass was dark and I could see my own reflection staring back at me, wide-eyed and slightly wild, my hair a mess.
My phone. I could call him. I could tell him to come down, tell him I was here and I needed to see him.
But my phone was in the car and my legs wouldn't move, wouldn't carry me back across the parking lot.
I just stood there like an idiot, staring up at that lit window on the second floor, at the shadow that moved across it.
He meant it, I thought. The words echoed in my head, stronger than my heartbeat. He actually meant it.
The light stayed on. The door stayed locked.
And I stayed where I was.