Chapter 23
At ten that night, Willow and Ash stood just behind Midtown Tavern’s swinging kitchen door. They decided that a late-night set would work best since families often came in during the earlier evening hours when the kitchen was still open.
“I know your music is kid-friendly enough,” she’d told him. “But they might not be the most willing audience if they have to hand over their electronic devices to yours truly.”
So they waited now as Casey walked out with an empty milk crate that would soon be packed with cell phones and tablets.
Willow wanted to be at peace with the fact that any sort of connection to Ash Murphy meant a connection to a very vocal public. Logically, she knew that what strangers said didn’t matter. But she was made of more than that. Sometimes the mind outweighed the heart, but sometimes the heart made you forget that logic even existed. Tonight she’d settle for home-field advantage…or, in Ash’s case, home town .
“If there’s one thing I can promise you,” Casey assured her. “It’s that Meadow Valley takes care of its own. The surrendering of devices is only a formality.”
Ash grabbed her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze, pulling her back to the moment. “You okay?” he asked. “Say the word, and we can run out the back door just as easily as we came in.”
She smiled. “I’m good,” she assured him. She even picked up her loosely sneakered foot and wiggled it in the air. “Even standing on my own two feet!” After staying off of it for the rest of the day after their ride to the clearing. Rest and pain medication at regular intervals had done the trick enough that she could stand while she played or perch on one of the two stools Casey and Boone set up for their performance.
She squeezed his hand back, this man she fell for years ago. This morning everything about him had seemed so complicated. But tonight, when he smiled at her from the kitchen of a small-town bar, he just looked like a guy with a guitar about to do the thing he loved.
“Thank you for your cooperation with the devices!” they heard Casey call out to the crowd. “We have something very special in store for you all tonight. While he’s been keeping a low profile on his family’s ranch, I know some of y’all might have seen a certain Murphy brother around town these past few weeks.”
“We see Eli Murphy every day!” a man’s voice called in reply. “That’s nothing new!”
Ash shook his head and chuckled as laughter bubbled up from the tavern patrons. “Once an asshole, always an asshole, huh, Boone?”
Even when they were separated by a door, Ash’s brothers brought a smile to his face that Willow hadn’t seen before their time in Meadow Valley.
“ Not Eli, darlin’, but let’s give it up for my husband, the dad-joke comedian!”
Rueful ooohs followed Casey’s remark, which only made Ash’s smile grow.
But the anticipation was building. Willow’s pulse quickened. This was always the part where she was the most nervous, right before the audience knew she was heading out onstage. Everything after was cake, and she really wanted to get to the cake.
“Should we put her out of her misery?” Ash asked, and while he was referring to Casey, Willow understood.
Either he could feel her hand go clammy in his, or he just knew that she needed to burst through the door—to rip off the bandage— now .
She nodded, and without another second of hesitation, Ash pushed the door open and nodded for her to take the lead. But this was his town, and she wanted him to get the welcome he deserved… One that maybe didn’t involve blunt objects being aimed at his head.
“You go first,” she told him. “I’m right behind you.” He hesitated for a moment, but she shooed him forward. “This is your homecoming, Murphy. Go get it.”
He answered her with a swift nod and pressed his palm to the door, but when she loosened her grip on his other hand, he only squeezed her tighter.
“Oh, no you don’t, Morgan,” he told her. “This is our entrance.”
Ash might have been the one to stride through the door first, but he made no move toward their makeshift stage until she was standing beside him.
Whistles and hollers erupted from the crowd, and Casey spun to see that her time as emcee had just ended prematurely.
Sorry! Willow mouthed, but Casey answered her with a beaming smile.
“Well, folks!” she called over the din. “I should have known he’d upstage me. Let’s welcome—well, I guess you already are—Ash Murphy and Willow Morgan!”
Colt and Jenna flew up and out of their seats. Eli, Beth, and Boone followed as Casey joined the group at a table right in front of two wooden stools and two mic stands, otherwise known as the stage.
Ash started playing before they’d even made it to the mics, and Willow waited for recognition and then reaction. The credit went to Jenna who yelped with laughter and backhanded an unsuspecting Colt on the shoulder right as he was about to take a sip of his beer.
Willow bit back a laugh as Ash finished the opening guitar riff and then launched into the first verse of Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” Was it too on the nose? Maybe, but sometimes words were just words, and a song was just a song. Singing with Ash beside her strumming on his guitar, she realized how much she hoped she was right.
They’d roughed out a set list that afternoon. They’d intersperse their original songs with duet covers. Right now Willow sat on her stool, leaning into the mic for the harmony on the chorus as he sang the song she’d always wondered about.
“I Loved You Once.”
Something niggled at the back of her mind while Ash launched into the bridge and then the final verse. It was the same sense of déjà vu she’d had when they were arguing about the words she’d chosen for the chorus of the duet.
It’s just a song. They’re all just songs. And they’re all about you.
The wine at the bonfire. Ash holding her hands so the room would stop spinning and then staying with her in case it happened again.
She’d flat out asked him if the song was about her , and he told her what she’d never in her wildest dreams thought she needed to hear.
She stared at him as he sang the final refrain, his eyes closed as he went somewhere other than the sticky floor of a local bar.
I loved you once and broke your heart.
Spun out of reach and called it art.
Made my bed and played my part.
I’d trade it all to go back to the start.
I loved you once.
I loved you once.
I loved you once.
I loved you once. I love you still.
And every damned day between then and now,
All the days to come, this is my vow.
I’ll love you. I’ll love you. I’ll love you. I will.
Everyone in the bar sang the last three lines with him, but Willow sat transfixed, forgetting her part as she let it all sink in. Every word he’d written… Every song he’d sung…
When the last string had been strummed and the whole audience broke into applause, Ash finally opened his eyes and glanced her way.
Willow flung her guitar over her shoulder so it hung across her back, slid off her stool, and threw her arms around Ash’s neck.
“They were all for me ,” she said. And then she kissed him, not caring who saw, what they thought, and what they might decide to post on social media once they got their phones back in their possession.
“Every last song,” he admitted, his lips parting into a smile against hers. “A song is never just a song, Wills. At least…not mine.”
The tavern patrons had plenty to say about Ash moving his own guitar out of the way so he could plunge his fingers into her hair and kiss her like only he could. There was continued applause, some whistles, and even a Get a room! that sounded an awful lot like Boone.
Willow kissed a trail along his jaw and then whispered in his ear. “We’re supposed to do one more song,” she reminded him.
“They don’t know that,” he whispered back, sending a wave of goose bumps over her flesh and setting her on fire from within. He kissed her again and then spun toward the crowd.
“Willow Morgan, everyone! Get your tickets to see her at Acoustic Acres next month!”
Before she had a chance to give him the same recognition, Ash’s hand was around hers, and he was pulling her through the crowd and back toward the kitchen. Like a couple of teenagers fleeing a party that just got busted, they ran toward the back door, stopping only to toss their guitars into their respective cases before bursting out into the night.
“Wait!” Willow cried before they got twenty feet from the tavern. “Eli drove us here!”
Ash stopped and spun back to face her. “We can walk. It’s only a mile back to the…” His expression fell, and Willow’s shoulders sagged.
Willow sighed. “Should we go tell Mom and Dad we need a lift home?”
“Or…” Ash replied.
Five minutes later, their guitars rested in the bed of Eli’s truck, and Ash was giving her a piggyback ride down the dimly lit street.
“This is insane,” she told him. “You can’t carry me for a mile.”
“Do you plan on kissing me again when we get back?” he asked.
She laughed and then planted one right on his cheek. “I plan on doing lots of things to you when we get back,” she teased. “If that’s okay with you.”
He picked up the pace, almost breaking into a jog.
“Whoa there, wild stallion,” she cried. “If you fall and put us both out of commission, the only thing I’m going to be doing to you is calling 911.”
Ash slowed to a more respectable pace.
“Fine,” he relented. “But maybe you should tell me some of those things you plan on doing to me…just to make sure I can handle it.”
“Hmm,” she began. “Before or after I throw you down on the bed and take your pants off?”
Ash swore. “You know what?” he added. “I think I’m better off being surprised. Otherwise I’m not going to be able to walk very well for the rest of the way.”
“Fair enough,” Willow replied. “If the whole point is to get home before I properly thank you for carrying me there, I should probably let you concentrate.”
He paused, resituated her on his hips, and then said. “Can we maybe not talk at all ? Even words like ‘properly thank’ get my imagination going, and then things start happening below the belt, and then the whole walking thing becomes much more difficult than it has any right to be.”
“Sorry,” she replied, then kissed him gently on the side of his neck.
“ Will ow,” he pleaded, and she laughed.
“Sorry again! Lips sealed and promising to refrain from all kissing activities…until we get home.”
He thanked her, and she enjoyed the quiet sounds of summer as Meadow Valley’s town center gave way to the quiet country road that led to the ranch.
Crickets chirped, frogs croaked in a nearby pond, and Ash was carrying her home.
“Are you okay?” she asked after a few more minutes. “I can probably walk the rest of the way.”
“No way,” he told her. “Besides, I can see the light outside the guesthouse already.”
Willow squinted, sure he was lying just to make her feel better. But there it was. A beacon calling them home.
Ash must have heard the call too because his pace quickened as the Murphy property grew near.
Willow grinned. She couldn’t wait to get there either.