Chapter Twenty-One
· Brooks ·
“You know, most kids are afraid of attics and basements,” Addie mused, leaning against the wall opposite the basement door.
Mr. Barrows had just allowed an overeager girl to barrel down those stairs, shaken his head, mumbled something about coffee, and trotted off toward the kitchen, leaning on his walker.
His bad hip was the main reason he’d agreed to selling.
This house was beautiful, but it was the kind of old that came with narrow passages and steep stairs.
“Most kids aren’t excited by the idea of overseeing every step of the renovation in a house like this because there might be old trash under the floorboards or inside the walls. She is genuinely hoping for old matchboxes or fragments of newspaper.”
“You know…” Addie tilted her head, considering the steep stairs in front of her. “Despite all its historical bravado, Wild Fields doesn’t have a museum. Skye could change that.”
“Maybe one day. I’m letting her take the lead on that.”
“For what it’s worth, this house is a much better fit for her than your place in Nashville.” Addie craned her neck, looking over the wood-paneled ceiling in the hallway and the curved banister with its ornate carvings leading upstairs.
“I hope so.” Before all the pictures and videos from yesterday’s meeting with Mason could flood my brain, I turned to the basement. “You okay down there, kiddo?”
I got myself a two-syllable “Da-ad” that told me just how annoying I was for checking in.
Addie snickered and quietly mimicked Skye’s “Da-ad.”
“Fine.” I smiled and shook my head. “If she’s going to inspect every nook and cranny, we’ll have a few minutes. Come on. There’s something I want to show you.”
“You are not going to ‘show’ me the bedroom with Skye and Mr. Barrows here, are you?” She made air quotes and raised her brows at me.
“No, get your mind out of the gutter, Addie baby.”
“It’s been like forty-eight hours,” she whisper-hissed but grinned widely. “I’m starting to think we entered a dry spell.”
“Four years. Trust me, I can go two days,” I reminded her, and guided her through the living room—a large sun-flooded space overstuffed with everyday items that spoke of how much time Mr. Barrows actually spent in that La-Z-Boy with the TV dinner table—toward the back door.
“What am I looking at?” she asked, squinting through the window.
The timber shed a couple of steps away from the main house was only two decades old and almost as big as Adriana’s cottage.
“Guesthouse. They used to rent it out to tourists. I’m going to turn it into a music studio.”
She whirled around, her thick braid whipping me in the chest. “You want to record music here?”
“The last few weeks have reminded me that the thing I’ve always enjoyed most in my career is collaborating with other musicians.
That was the reason my place used to be an open house for all my friends.
I got to engage with my special interest, got to listen to their new and experimental stuff without any pretense, just midnight pizza and living room jam sessions.
I would love to have people here. Let them play music around a fire pit like we were at camp and sit on the front porch with their morning coffee to work out the kinks in their songs.
We’d record backyard sessions. Obviously not for a few more years.
It’ll take a while to have the studio up and running, and I want Skye to be older before I consider having anyone over, but… that’s the idea.”
“I love that.” She smiled at me and stepped closer. “I’m proud of you.”
“For what?”
“I know you took on Bravetown for Skye, and I know how hard it is to stay true to yourself when Bravetown is everything here.” She laid a flat hand on my chest and awarded me a sweet smile.
“I also know you’ve, first and foremost, been a dad these last three years and I selfishly missed hearing you sing. ”
“Likewise. I love your voice.” I folded my palm over hers. “And in case you ever want to get on that second album, you should know—”
“We’re not talking about that.” She yanked her hand away and fell a step back, the shutters closing over her face.
“Addie, please let me finish. I should tell you—”
“Just because you should tell me, doesn’t mean I should have to hear it.” She shook her head at me.
“Your contract—”
“Brooks. No.” She huffed and turned away, dodging a laundry basket and a stack of Sudoku magazines to head back toward the basement door. “Found any secret passageways yet?” she called down.
Skye was at the top of the stairs in the blink of an eye. “You really think there’s secret passages in this house?”
“Guess we have to ask Mr. Barrows.”
· Adriana ·
It was a dick move but I asked Brooks to drop me off at home.
I wasn’t scheduled to work and had planned to spend the day with him and Skye, but I could barely look at him after he brought up my second album and the contract that went with it.
On any other day, he might have been able to persuade me to talk about it. But after that video?
Sure, he claimed that he had nothing to do with it, but it still felt strange. He didn’t tell me about the house until the contracts were signed. Then he took me singing, and someone recorded it. Then he revealed that he’d build a whole studio in his backyard. And then he wanted to talk contracts.
My trust issues may have been bad, but the timing of it all just didn’t add up.
“I brought the three best men Tennessee has to offer: George and Jack.” Esra held up two bottles of whiskey and slipped past me into my living room. “And Lucky.”
Lucas trotted in behind her with a ridiculously large bucket of popcorn under one arm and a Rattlesnake Saloon paper bag smelling of burgers and fries under the other.
“Noah doesn’t make the list?” I asked, a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth.
It had taken exactly one vaguely worded text message from me for Esra to declare she was coming over after work. Lucas was a welcome bonus. I’d spent the last few hours alone with my thoughts and had Tupperwared enough food to get me by on meal prep for a month.
“You mistake Noah for a man. He’s a god. A sex god,” Esra laughed.
“She may have already had a private audience with Jack in the passenger seat,” Lucas added.
“Guess we have some catching up to do.”
An hour later, I wasn’t even pretending to have manners anymore.
I was face-deep in the popcorn bucket. Lucas had gotten it from some girl that worked in a movie theater two towns over, as some sort of reward for providing her with multiple orgasms. I called him a popcorn gigolo and he didn’t correct me.
“I mean you would think”—I resurfaced from the bucket with sticky sweet popcorn clinging to my face—“that he’d talk to me about the house first. I don’t even want veto rights. I just want to be part of the confer—cover—converstation.”
Wow. Alcohol. Words. Hard.
“Total red flag, diva,” Lucas said and snapped his fingers through the air. He’d decided to be one of the girls tonight. He got the full experience, sitting on the floor in my living room, getting drunk, and shoveling down crappy foods.
“More of an orange flag,” Esra said, eyes narrowed on the needle in her hand as she tried to thread another kernel onto her popcorn necklace. “Y’know, it’s not like there’s loads of houses. You gotta swoop in. Housing market’s tough.”
“Shut up, you moved in with your boyfriend. You don’t know market things.” I rolled my eyes at her.
“Yeah,” she snorted, “totally didn’t ask him though. I just showed up and was like, ta-da. Walkin’ red flag, baby.”
“Hmm, no, that’s not a red flag. That’s making moves. Playing the game. You locked that down. Yes, you did.” Lucas clapped his hands between sentences. His version of one of the girls was more like a middle-aged wine mom, and both Esra and I giggled at the way he shimmied his shoulders.
“I gotta lock it down?” I plucked some sticky popcorn from my cheek and shoved it in my mouth. Esra leaned over and picked some off my brow for her necklace.
“You already did, hunbun,” Lucas said.
“Huh? I did?”
“That.” Esra pointed at my hand. At my ring. Engagement ring.
“Oh.” I grimaced. “I don’t know. Might just be a fancy ring.”
“Don’t say that,” she whined. “He loves you, and wants to wife you, and make lots of babies.”
“Okay”—Lucas had his phone in his hand—“the internet says we can burn his picture to get rid of his presence in your life, or donate everything he’s given you, or go out and make sure you get under someone else to get over him.”
“They’re not broken up,” Esra screeched.
“But it doesn’t really feel like we’re in this together,” I grumbled and regretted the words as soon as they were out. I had to lay off the whiskey. One more sip and I’d tell them about this whole thing being fake.
“Is that a yes or no on burning the pictures?” Lucas asked and pointed up at the wall, where Brooks and I were beaming, side by side, on stage. God, that Adriana had been so stupid. She’d let herself be lulled in.
“First, I want to smash something,” I said.
A few minutes later, we stood in my dim driveway, the guitar case open at our feet. I stared at the stupid expensive Gibson they’d sent me on tour with. I couldn’t wait to see it come apart.
“Sure you don’t wanna sell it? Get yourself a lil treat with the money?” Lucas asked.
“No, it has to go,” I grunted.
For the first time in years, I curled my fingers around the guitar’s neck, and I didn’t feel a surge of panic. I knew what I had to do. I stepped over the case, a couple feet away from my friends, so they wouldn’t get caught in the fray.
“Hold on. Wait.” Esra held up a finger and swiped across her phone screen. A moment later, some metal band screamed at me from her speakers. Perfect.
Fuck this stupid boho country girlypop guitar and the stupid image they wanted me to sell at the price of my dignity.