Chapter 9
Stephanie
The guitar case sat in the corner of the cabin for days before I could look at it.
Not my guitar—that was still in LA, probably being cataloged by my team as an "asset" or boxed up by someone who didn't know it was the same one I'd bought with tip money when I was sixteen.
This was the one Clay had brought, still sporting the price tag from Austin, still smelling like a guitar store—wood polish and new strings and possibility.
It was Tuesday morning, two weeks since Liam had brought me to Texas. The breakfast dishes were done, Poet was grazing happily in the pasture, and I'd run out of excuses.
The case opened with that familiar click that hit me right in the chest—sharp, clean, unmistakable. Any guitarist would recognize it in their sleep.
Inside was a gorgeous Martin acoustic.
Golden wood, warm and glowing in the morning light spilling through the cabin windows. Clay had chosen perfectly—classic lines, no unnecessary flash, the kind of instrument made for people who worked, not posed.
It was beautiful enough to make my throat tighten.
I lifted it out of the case slowly, careful like it might bite or shatter or disappear if I breathed wrong. The weight settled into my arms—familiar, grounding, terrifying, comforting. All the conflicting pieces of who I used to be.
I sat on the edge of the couch and rested the guitar in my lap.
For a long moment, I didn’t even try to play. I just… held it.
Then muscle memory took over.
My left hand slid to the tuning pegs, fingers adjusting instinctively. The low E was sharp. The A was flat. D and G were a mess. B was nearly perfect—go figure. High E was just barely off.
I plucked each string lightly, listening, correcting, listening again.
Spinning pegs. Tiny metallic creaks. Soft humming vibrations against my palms. It felt like waking something up. Maybe waking me up.
Once the tuning felt right, I positioned my hands. Left on the neck. Right arm around the body. The guitar cupped against me like an old friend returning after a long, painful absence.
I took a breath. Strummed. It came out wrong. Thin. Unsteady. Like my hands had forgotten what my soul always knew.
“Come on,” I whispered to myself, throat thick. “You know this.”
I adjusted my grip and tried again. Second chord—better. Third—almost music. Fourth—the hint of something real, something warm, something like belonging.
By the time I ran through a simple progression, muscle memory started sliding back into place, my fingers remembering the dance even if my heart hadn’t quite caught up yet.
The sound filled the cabin in small, soft waves, and for the first time since LA, I felt something loosen deep inside my chest.
Not joy. Not yet. But possibility.
Like maybe, just maybe, the part of me that made music wasn’t gone.
Just waiting.
I started with something easy—an old Emmylou Harris song I'd learned when I was twelve. My voice cracked on the first line, rough from disuse and thick with emotion I wasn't prepared for. But I kept going, pushing through the cracks, finding the melody like following breadcrumbs home.
"In the hour of not quite rain..."
The words were whispers at first, then stronger, though tears were streaming down my face. This was who I'd been before LA, before the machine, before the stalker. Just a girl with a guitar and something to say.
My whole body felt tight at first—shoulders hunched, ribs aching under old bruises, breath catching high in my throat like it didn’t trust me to use it. My fingers trembled on the strings, not from fear exactly, but from the weight of everything inside me pushing to get out.
I didn’t hear the door open, but I felt him before I saw him—Liam’s quiet steadiness settling into the room like a warm blanket. He set a glass of water on the table, then stepped back onto the porch. Not leaving. Just… giving me space to breathe. To be. To fall apart or not. Whatever I needed.
The Emmylou song ended, the last note trembling into silence. My fingers drifted automatically, finding an old progression I’d been working on months ago—before LA, before the stalker, before everything shattered.
The chords felt different now. Heavier. Rooted. Like they’d been waiting for this exact moment to mean something new.
There’d been lyrics once—half-formed lines scribbled on hotel stationery at 3 AM. Mississippi. Hurricanes. Things that chased you even when you ran.
“Mississippi mud on my rental car…”
The words rose in my throat on their own. Soft at first. Tentative. But real.
My chest squeezed painfully, like the lyrics were pulling splinters out of old wounds. My hands steadied. My breath deepened. Heat pricked behind my eyes, that hot-warning kind that meant something inside me was loosening, cracking, breaking free.
“Looking for home in every dive bar, every neon sign, every fallen star…”
The ache in my ribs didn’t matter. The tremor in my fingers didn’t matter. The fear lodged under my sternum didn’t matter.
Because for the first time in weeks, my voice felt like mine again—not manufactured, not perfect, not a polished product to be sold.
Raw. Cracked. Human.
“But home ain’t a place you can find on a map,
It’s the arms that catch you when you collapse,
It’s the voice that calls you back from the dark,
It’s the safe place to rest your battered heart.”
Something inside me broke loose then—snapped, melted, exploded. My whole body tingled, like I’d been frozen and was finally thawing. My throat burned with emotion that ripped its way out on each lyric. My stomach clenched, then released. My shoulders shook.
And God… the chorus. It came like a tidal wave.
“So take me back to where the horses run,
Where the morning tastes like rain,
Where love ain’t just another thing you’ve done,
But the reason for the pain.
Take me back to where I’m known,
Not for what I’ve sold but who I am,
Take me back, take me home,
To the place where I began.”
I didn’t think. Didn't craft. Didn't censor.
The song poured straight from the aching center of me—lines and music and truth I didn’t know I’d been carrying. A dam breaking. A release I hadn’t dared hope for.
By the time the last chord faded, my whole body was shaking. Tears tracked silently down my cheeks, dripping off my chin, warm and relentless. But they weren’t the panicked kind. They didn’t feel like drowning.
These were cleansing. Washing out the fear. Making space for something new.
“Stephy…” His voice was soft enough that it didn’t startle me. I looked up.
Liam stood in the doorway, arms braced on either side of the frame like he needed it to hold himself up. His eyes were bright—too bright. His jaw was tight, like he’d been holding his breath the whole time.
“That was beautiful,” he said, voice low and thick.
I wiped my cheek with the back of my hand. “It’s not finished,” I said automatically, the old perfectionist reflex.
“Sounded finished to me.” He stepped closer, sunlight catching in his eyes. “Sounded like you.”
“It won’t sell records,” I whispered, half to myself. That’s what management and the label would say, anyway. What I’d been told over and over when I showed them songs like this.
He shook his head, gaze never leaving mine. “That,” he said softly, “is the kind of song people feel in their bones. And the kind of song you needed to sing.”
And for once, I couldn’t argue with him.
"Fuck the records." He came inside, sat across from me. "Sorry. But seriously, Stephy. That song... that's the girl I knew in Austin. The one who played open mics and made entire rooms go silent with her voice. Not Stevie Wilson, the brand. But Stephanie with something real to say."
I set the guitar aside, wiped my face with my sleeve. "I haven't written anything real in years. Everything's been committee-approved, focus-grouped, analyzed for maximum market impact."
"But you just wrote that."
"I started it months ago. Just finished it now." I laughed, shaky. "Guess I needed to actually find home before I could write about it."
Liam stood, walked to his jacket hanging by the door, and pulled something from the pocket. A small notebook, leather-bound, worn around the edges.
"I bought this for you," he said, setting it on the table. "Was going to wait for the right time."
I opened the cover. In his careful handwriting: "Songs You Haven't Written Yet."
"Lee..."
"You don't have to write for anyone else. Not the label, not the fans, not even me. Just... write. Whatever comes out. However it comes out."
I flipped through the blank pages, all that possibility, all that space to fill with whatever I wanted. No rules, no expectations, no committee approval needed.
"Thank you." The words weren't enough, but they were all I had.
"Play me something else?"
So I did. I played fragments of melodies that had been haunting me.
Lyrics that didn't fit the Stevie Wilson brand but felt like me.
A song about Poet, about horses knowing secrets humans were too complicated to understand.
Another about the sound Clay's guitar made when he played on the porch, how it wrapped around the evening like a blanket.
My voice got stronger with each song, finding its way back to power. Not the manufactured power of stadium shows, but the real power—the ability to tell truth through melody, to make people feel things, to connect.
"I wrote this the night before..." I paused, not wanting to say it. "Before the attack. Never got to finish it."
The melody was darker, minor key, something that had been pressing at me for weeks before everything happened. About feeling like a product, a commodity, something to be packaged and sold.
"They paint my face like a masterpiece, Dress me up in rhinestone lies, Tell me smile, never cease, While something inside me dies..."
It was angry, raw, nothing like the empowerment anthems the label wanted. But it was true.
"That's powerful," Liam said when I finished. "That's the kind of song that changes things."