Chapter 9 #2
"Robert would never let me record it."
"Then Robert's an idiot. And also, who says he gets a vote anymore?"
I looked at him, this man who'd saved me in every way a person could be saved. "I'm still under contract. Three more albums."
"Contracts can be broken."
"It would cost—"
"Steph." He leaned forward, intense. "What's it costing you to stay? Your voice? Your sanity? Your safety?"
He was right. Of course, he was right.
I picked up the notebook, grabbed a pen, and started writing. Not a song, just thoughts, feelings, everything that had been bottled up for months.
Music used to be my language, my way of making sense of the world. Somewhere along the way, it became my prison. But sitting here in this cabin, with a horse named after poetry and a man who knew me before I was a commodity, I'm finding my voice again. Not Stevie Wilson's voice. Mine.
Liam read over my shoulder, his presence warm and steady. "You could write a whole album here. Your own terms, your own truth."
I scoffed. “An album no one would want to produce."
"Clay knows a guy in Austin. Independent studio, does things old school. Analog equipment, no autotune, just real music."
I glanced over at him. “You've thought about this."
"I've been thinking about it since the day I saw you on magazine covers looking like someone I didn't recognize. You were meant for more than being packaged and sold, Steph. You were meant to tell stories, to move people, to be real."
I played another chord progression, something hopeful this time. "It would be career suicide. Walking away from Nashville, from the machine."
"Or it would be career rebirth. Doing music because you love it, not because someone's forcing you to."
The next song came out of me before I could stop it. Before I could think. Before I could breathe.
It was about him. About us. About that night in Austin we never talked about and all the years between and whatever this was becoming now. Too honest. Too exposed. Too mine.
But true. So terrifyingly true.
“We were kids with dreams too big for Texas skies,
You went your way, I went mine,
But every song I sang was just a disguise,
For the melody you left behind…”
When the last note slipped into silence, it felt like the world held its breath.
“Steph…” he breathed, voice low and raw.
“I know.” I swallowed hard. “I can’t record that one.”
His brow creased. “Why not?”
“Because it’s ours,” I said softly. “Some songs aren’t meant for the world. Some songs are…personal. Private. Just for the person who inspired them.”
Something shifted in his face—something soft, something unbelievably tender.
Like the words hit a place in him he kept locked up from everyone else.
He crossed the room slowly, like he didn’t want to startle me, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to touch me. Then he knelt beside my chair, his hands reaching for mine with a kind of quiet reverence that made my throat close.
His fingers laced through mine, warm and steady.
“You’re going to be okay,” he said, and it wasn’t a promise. It was certainty. The kind forged in fire and grief and history. “You’re going to be more than okay. You’re going to be brilliant again.”
A breath hitched in my chest. “How do you know?”
He let go of one hand—only one—and lifted his fingers to my cheek. Slow. Careful. Like he was touching something breakable. Something sacred.
His thumb brushed the faint yellowing bruise by my temple. Not pity. Recognition.
“Because you’re you,” he said, voice thick. “You’re the girl who wrote songs on napkins at truck stops. Who played until her fingers bled because there was something you needed to say. That girl is still in there, Steph. And she’s coming back.”
I leaned into his palm—just barely—but enough. Enough for him to know it was okay.
Enough for me to feel the heat of him grounding me.
My gaze fell to the notebook on the coffee table, blank pages waiting. To the guitar in my lap, already molding to my hands like an extension of myself. To this man kneeling at my feet, who believed in me more fiercely than I believed in myself.
Something inside me cracked open.
He must’ve seen it—felt it—because he leaned in. Not to kiss me. Not like that. Not yet. Instead, he pressed his lips to my forehead—slow, warm, devastating.
A promise.
A vow.
A lifeline.
My eyes fluttered closed, breath trembling out of me, and for the first time since LA, I felt…safe. Wanted. Seen in that way only he could see me.
“Lee…” I whispered.
His forehead stayed lowered to mine for a beat longer, his breath mingling with mine. Just an inch, and our lips would touch. And this fragile, beautiful thing we’d been tiptoeing around for the better part of two decades would take over. “I’m right here,” he murmured. “I’m not going anywhere.”
And God help me, I believed him.
I picked up the guitar again, and this time the chord rang out clear and true. No cracks, no hesitation. Just music. Just me.
For the first time in months, maybe years, I felt like myself again. Not the product, not the brand, not the victim.
Just Stephy with a guitar and something true to say.
The notebook already had three songs sketched in it by lunch. By dinner, there were five. By the time the sun set, painting the Texas sky in shades of pink and gold, I had the bones of an album. A real album. Mine.
"Thank you," I told Liam as he made dinner, me still playing, unable to stop now that I'd started. "For the notebook. For believing. For everything."
"Always," he said, and I knew he meant it.
The music flowed through the evening, through the night, through the healing and into something new. Something better. Something real.
I was coming back. Not to who I'd been, but to who I was meant to be.
One song at a time.