5. Bailey
bailey
. . .
This is the biggest tour of my career. The kind of tour that doesn’t just happen, it’s built, piece by piece, over years of a career and months of planning and pressure and second-guessing.
It has bigger venues, with longer runs, in new cities I’ve never headlined before.
This is a full-blown production, not borrowed lights and rushed sound checks.
I have played festivals, opened shows, and even shared a tour.
I did a small tour for my last album... but this...
this is different. This is the kind of tour you don't typically get this early in your career. It feels surreal.
I should feel triumphant. Instead, I feel like I’m holding my breath. Like everything depends on this tour being successful.
Every day starts early and ends late. My meetings blur together. Set lists get rewritten. Outfits are adjusted, lighting cues tweaked.
I’m excited, genuinely, but I’m also terrified.
Because this tour is proof. On this tour, I get to show them that I’ve outgrown the girl they signed years ago.
Proof that I don’t need to be packaged and polished into something easy to sell.
Proof that I can carry this on my own. I get to have a guitar in my hand, a piano on stage.
I get to sing a few songs stripped down by myself.
If I can make this work, really work, I could finally stop running. I could go home.
That should excite me, I should feel so fulfilled...
Luke is here with me, just like he promised.
I think part of my unease is that I had half-expected him to cancel, to come up with an excuse, a reason he needed to be somewhere else, working on his career instead of working on our marriage.
The first night, when I spotted him near the side of the stage, something in me finally unclenched.
Like I was holding a breath and could finally let it go.
He was leaning against a speaker case, arms crossed, eyes fixed on me, not on his phone, not scanning the room, but on me.
For the rest of the show, my body relaxed, almost like I needed him to be here for all this to make sense.
After the show, he was waiting backstage, sweat still clinging to my skin, adrenaline buzzing through me.
“You were incredible,” he said, pulling me into his arms. “Jesus, Bailey. You owned that stage. The way the crowd went quiet when you did the acoustic set and then their voices joined yours...”
I laugh into his chest, breathless. “It’s just the first night.”
“It’s the first of a lot,” he says. “They’re going to add dates. I can feel it. No one can say you didn't earn all you got after this.”
Hope flares, but so does panic. More dates mean more time away from him. But he is here now, I have him with me for a whole month.
We eat late, still buzzing, sharing fries from the hotel room bed like we used to. He talks about the shows, about moments he liked, about how good it feels to watch me up there again. For the first time in a long while, I let myself imagine this sticking.
Sitting by the mirror of the second city on our tour, I struggled to get all my pins out of my hair.
I didn't even hear him come in, but then I felt his presence behind me.
His strong, calloused hands wrapped around mine, and I stopped.
My eyes met his in the mirror, and I almost cried because he looked like my Luke.
Exactly the same, but his eyes, they were all my old Luke, and the way he was looking at me was a mix of love, awe and heat.
We didn't speak. Luke moved on instinct and carefully removed the pins and then ran his fingers over my scalp, eliciting a half groan, half whimper from me.
It hasn't just been carrying everything on my own that has been hard...
It is everything else I have missed from being so distant, so far away from the love of my life.
It's the loneliness, the memories that haunt me, the intimacy, and yes, the sex.
Luke and I had always had such a healthy sex life...
and I know because we were each other's first, each other's everything, some people assumed we'd outgrow each other.
But it was different, we experimented and grew together instead of apart...
until recently... There was never anything I felt like I couldn't go to Luke with, do with Luke.
I am pulled back into the moment when Luke kisses the top of my head and then pulls me up from the chair and into his arms.
"You are so incredible, Sunshine. Do you know that? I am the luckiest man..."
My back is to his front, and he pushes my hair over my left shoulder, while we are still facing the mirror.
I watch him as he rubs his hand over my silk-robe-covered body that I changed into as soon as I got into my hotel room.
The heat from his hands sears through the silk, and a shiver runs through me.
Our eyes are locked through the mirror, and I wonder what he sees when I am just me. When I am stripped down of everything this career has made me, and I am just Bailey.
Luke breaks eye contact to drop kisses down my hairline and then my neck and collar bone, his scruff tickles my skin as he moves, and I can feel my nipples pebble under the silk.
With one hand he tugs the robe back, revealing my shoulder to him, he continues his kisses until he bites down on my shoulder earning a yelp turned moan from me.
He growls in response and then drops down to his knees behind me, pulling my robe with him. He spins me, and the rest of the robe drops to the ground. Luke's eyes are pure fire as he takes me in bare before him, he gently pushes me back so I am leaning back on the counter behind me.
"God Bailey, I need to taste you, it's been too long," he groans.
Luke is still fully dressed, on his knees before me, but I don't feel exposed or shy. I feel powerful. Luke is all man, and seeing the look on his face, knowing I put that there. Makes me feel...
He tosses his hat on a chair and then wraps both hands around the back of my thighs, resting just under my ass cheeks.
And then he is on me, he doesn't start slow, he doesn't tease, he dives in.
His scruff adds to the friction of his mouth, teeth and tongue.
He pushes me back, my back now pressed against the cold mirror, and he uses the angle to push apart my legs so he can get better access.
He growls into my pussy and doesn't slow or take it easy, he feasts and I can feel my orgasm building, and I know it won't take me long to get there.
He pushes one leg over his shoulder to free his hand, and he bites my inner thigh as he slides a finger inside of me.
I buck and moan, as he keeps working me, adding a second finger while he sucks and flicks my nub with the tip of his tongue.
My hands go to his hair. It is as much to keep me upright as it is to feel my hands on him. My fingers tangle in his mess of dark hair, as I chant his name, "Luke... fuck... Luke... I am so close... don't stop."
He slips in a second finger and twists and pumps in and out of me until my entire body locks up and I am cuming.
He continues to suck while he slows his fingers.
When my body starts to relax, he places my leg back down and stands.
Without words, he pulls his t-shirt up over his head, revealing his expanse of chest, abs and tattoos, then his belt buckle is next.
I watch transfixed as he undoes his jeans and they fall to the ground, his boxer briefs follow, and then I am being lifted, spun until my back is against the wall, and Luke is pushing inside me.
He kisses me with a fierce intensity, and I can taste myself on his tongue.
I hold on to him as he pistons in and out of me, his hard body moving fast.
"I love you!" He moans out.
I get lost in us, in the feel of him on me and in me, the feel of him everywhere.
His scent, his sweat. Then we are moving again, and he drops us both on the bed, slowing his pace.
Angling my hips and grinding his pelvis on me, setting off another orgasm.
It rips through me so suddenly that I scream out.
Luke follows shortly after, but he doesn't move, like he can't bear to separate from me, move away from this.
The pace of the tour, the emotional rollercoaster of us, the love we just made, it all pulls me under.
I wake in foggy moments of Luke cleaning me up with a warm cloth, whispering sweet words, him tucking me in and then falling, secure in his arms, a tear of joy slipping free as I am pulled back into sleep.
By the beginning of the second week, the buzz is real. Social media lights up, with fan-recorded clips circulating. Reviews hit, and my team is giddy, barely able to hide it.
Rachel pulls me aside after soundcheck. “There’s already interest in extending the run,” she says carefully. “A few more cities. Maybe a few extra dates at locations where we are already booked and are now selling out. Nothing official yet.”
I glance at Luke across the room. He’s laughing with my drummer and seems so relaxed.
“Let’s see how this week goes,” I say.
I want this time.
I want him.
That night, he watches from the wings again, but his phone buzzes once. Then twice. He checks it quickly, like he thinks I won’t notice.
But, I noticed.
He still kisses me after the show, still tells me he’s proud, but something has shifted.
By the end of the second week, it’s impossible to ignore. He’s physically here, standing beside me at catering tables, walking with me through venue corridors, but his attention drifts. He steps away to take calls. Keeps his voice low. Apologizes with a look instead of words.
I don’t ask who it is. I’ve learned not to. Asking never stopped it.
At lunch, someone from the label drops into the conversation casually.
“We should talk about collaborations again, Bailey. The fans are begging for it. We could work it into the show, maybe co-write something during the tour. It would line up with what you are already doing out there with your solo sets.”
I smile politely. “I’m good for now.”
They press anyway. “Jackson Reed’s team reached out again.”
I shake my head. “No.”
Luke is quiet beside me.
That night, lying in bed after the show, I stare at the ceiling while he scrolls on his phone. A memory slips in, uninvited.
A dive bar in Nashville, barely fifty people inside. Sticky floors. Christmas lights strung too low. The place everyone whispered about, where scouts showed up if you were lucky.
We played originals that night.
All songs we’d written together.
Luke on guitar, eyes locked on me like the rest of the room didn’t exist. My voice shook at first, then steadied as the crowd leaned in. When we finished, the applause felt too big for the space. We’d walked home buzzing, talking over each other, dreaming out loud.
There was no fear back then. No resentment.
Just us and the music.
I think that was the last time we were like that together.
That can't be right, can it?
In the present, Luke rolls toward me and kisses my shoulder absentmindedly. “You were great tonight.”
I turn toward him. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he says too fast. “Just tired.”
I nod.
At the planning meeting for week three, Rachel corners me with her tablet.
“They want to add six more dates at the end of the tour,” she says. “Big ones. If you say yes, we need to move fast, because we would also be adding extra dates to eight sold-out cities.”
I hesitate, glance down the hall toward my green room.
“Give me a minute.”
I open the door and almost walk into Luke, bags packed and in his hands. My stomach drops.
“I’ll be back,” he says before I can speak. “I need to go. Just a few days. This is...” He stops himself, smiles like he knows how it sounds. “This is the opportunity, Sunshine. This is it. What I have been working so hard for.”
It’s always it.
“You said you’d stay a month,” I say quietly.
“I know.” He sighs, scrubs a hand through his hair. “Plans changed and I can't pass this up, Bailey. This means too much for my career.”
And what do I mean to you?
I want to scream, beg, cry... do something. But I don't think that would change anything.
So, I don’t fight him, I don’t beg. I just nod, because I know how this goes.
He kisses me goodbye like it’s a promise. Like it’s temporary. Like he isn't breaking another promise. After the door closes, I stand there for a long time, staring at nothing. Then I pull out my phone.
Book the dates, I text Rachel. If they want them, take them.
The reply comes almost immediately. Got it.
I sit on the edge of the couch, hands folded in my lap. He was here for me for barely two weeks… and the first opportunity he was gone and I was left all alone.
Again.