Chapter 38

CHAPTER

THIRTY-EIGHT

B elle paced like a caged tiger in the appointed backstage room at the ritzy restaurant where she’d be playing her first concert gig in over ten years.

The Globe in Jackson Hole required reservations, and men had to wear jackets. Women couldn’t wear shorts. Everything about this moment felt wrong, like she’d been dropped into someone else’s life and couldn’t get out.

“Belle,” Boston said.

When she turned to face him, the world narrowed to just his handsome features, his wide eyes, and that headset he wore.

“You’re on in five,” he said. “Harry only has one more song, and then we’ll be introducing you.”

She nodded, her teeth clenched together. She wanted to run out the back door of this restaurant and vomit. Then she’d get in her car and just drive as far and as fast as she could. She knew the way to northern Wyoming, and she could go even further into Montana, up through Canada, and never have to be seen again.

It was a strange thought for someone who had worried so much about being seen and heard. Boston didn’t turn and leave because his job was to make sure she got delivered to the stage with her guitar ready to go.

Harry had wanted her to wear a funky T-shirt the way he did, but Belle had flatly refused. People already thought she was using him for her advantage, and the last thing she wanted to do was copy his T-shirts. So she wore what Belle felt most comfortable in: a pair of blue jeans, a pair of cowgirl boots with a really pointy toe, and a sleeveless blouse made of the lightest fabric she could find.

She knew she looked good in lavender and blue, and she’d found this blouse just down the street at one of the high-end boutiques. It billowed in a pale purple with blue and navy flowers splashed across it.

Belle had loved it on sight, and it fit great as well. She’d spent too much money on it, but Harry said the concert tour had a budget and that he could pay for her wardrobe. She’d taken him up on that, and she prayed with everything she had as she left the corner of the room to collect her guitar that no one would find out about the clothes he’d bought for her.

“All right,” she said. “I’m ready.”

“You’re warmed up and everything?” Boston asked.

She nodded in tight bursts as she looped the strap of her guitar around her neck. “I’m ready,” she said again. She’d been back in this room, warming up, singing, strumming her guitar, and pacing for the past hour since Harry’s live stream had started.

As she left the room behind Boston, she coached herself with every step to just take one more. Please be with me , she prayed. I don’t have to be perfect, but please don’t let me make a fool of myself.

Belle hadn’t performed live for a long time, but she knew that live meant no do-overs . They couldn’t stop and go back to the beginning the way she and Harry had just yesterday when she’d made a mistake.

For all the times that Belle had wanted to be seen, she couldn’t believe that she didn’t want that now. In fact, she didn’t want any eyes on her at all.

Boston brought her to the edge of the camera range where she’d stood when Harry had come out to greet everyone at the Globe. He’d taken forty-five minutes before the concert even started to go around and talk to patrons and guests, sign albums and posters and T-shirts and cards, and then he’d jogged out from this very spot, taken his guitar from the bassist, and welcomed everyone to Jackson Hole.

It was his first concert tour here, and he’d already played with Bryce, which meant his cousin sat out in the audience. As Belle watched, he casually lifted a glass of soda to his lips and took a drink. Codi sat with him, at a table for four alongside Kassie and Reggie. Belle really didn’t want to perform now, because none of them had heard her sing before.

“No one has,” she whispered.

“What was that?” Boston asked, leaning closer .

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

Harry finished the song he was playing, and he grinned out into the crowd as they clapped and whooped and cheered for him. Then he twisted his guitar around to his back and leaned into the mic.

“You come out when he says your name,” Boston hissed, and he didn’t wait for Belle to confirm before he took off. He carried a stool in his hand and went right up on the stage, placing it next to where Harry stood. Then he jogged back toward her and picked up the next one.

“My next number is one that I didn’t even write,” Harry said. “It comes with a very special guest who’s only performing with me for the next ten shows, right here in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

“We chose Jackson Hole for her to perform with me, because she lived and worked here for several years, and she loves this small mountain town and all its restaurants and shops and tourists as much as I love Coral Canyon.”

He looked over to her, his smile absolutely radiant, and Belle once again felt like she might throw up. She couldn’t return the smile, but Harry acted like she had.

“She’s a gorgeous singer and a talented songwriter, and she also happens to be my girlfriend.”

He threw his hand toward her and said, “Please, welcome to the stage here at the Globe in Jackson Hole: Belle Graves.”

The crowd clapped appropriately for someone they’d never heard of before, but who obviously excited Harry. Belle forced herself to take the first step out of the shadows. She did, instantly feeling the weight and zoom of the cameras as they landed on her. She walked toward the stage, her smile suddenly there, and she took the two steps up and right into Harry’s arms.

Harry had left his mic to greet her. He paused, hugged her, swept a kiss along her cheek, and whispered, “We’ve got this,” in her ear. Before he turned to face the restaurant crowd and cameras again, he took her hand and led her back toward the mics, where he stopped at hers and said, “Isn’t she amazing?”

Bryce, Codi, Reggie, and Kassie all cheered louder than the others, yee-hawing and whooping, and that made Belle grin all the wider as she shook her head at them. Harry settled himself onto his stool, getting his guitar into position, and Belle did the same. Her mic was too high, and Boston adjusted it for her.

“Thank you, Harry,” she said. “You’re too kind.”

“I’m just glad she said yes, folks,” Harry said, and that caused laughter to go through the restaurant. Harry chuckled too and asked, “In all seriousness, how long was it until our real first date?”

Belle knew this script, but he sounded so natural, and she hoped she could be as well. “I met Harry when I was looking for someone who had been reported missing,” she said, gazing out into the crowd. She looked straight into the camera, imagining that she was at lunch with her best friend. “I had no idea who he was, and he was real cagey about what he did for a living. Wouldn’t tell me where he lived, told me he had a job, but he ‘just wasn’t working right now,’ that kind of stuff.”

Harry laughed right out loud. “I did totally do all that, and this was after I answered the door without wearing a shirt.”

Belle laughed too, and the sound of it made her marvel. She sounded truly happy, and Belle wanted nothing more than to be happy. As she looked at Harry under the bright lights that had been set up specifically for this concert in this restaurant, Belle had the distinct thought and feeling and confirmation that she was where she was supposed to be. She reached over and threaded her fingers through Harry’s.

“He asked me out pretty much right away,” she said. “But I wouldn’t commit because he didn’t live here. In fact, I’m pretty sure I said something like, ‘I live in Jackson, and you live here, there, or Nashville, and that’s nowhere near Jackson.’”

She grinned and said, “We had a few phone dates before life blew up. And then somehow, miraculously, God brought us back together in the airport, of all places.”

Harry wore a soft grin and so many feelings in his expression. “Finally, airports are good for something,” he said, and that caused more laughter.

“This song is called ‘These Empty Halls,’” Belle said, sticking to the script, though part of her wanted to derail everything. “I wrote it a while ago in my own failed attempt to become a country music singer. It’s for anyone who’s ever loved someone or something so deep that you can still feel them after they’re gone. ”

She nodded over to Harry, who said, “‘These Empty Halls,’ ladies and gentlemen.”

She started to strum, and just like always, whenever she played this song, her fingers knew their spots on the strings, and every movement felt effortless. A constant prayer moved through her mind as she plucked closer and closer to the first word she’d need to sing all by herself.

“I walk these empty halls where memories still linger.”

Harry joined her then, his guitar adding body and fullness to hers. He was such an expert at what he did that he made no mistakes, and Belle sank into the song. When his voice joined hers on the chorus, “I come home to shadows where your love still holds me tight,” Belle had to dig down deep to hold her tears back and keep her voice strong.

She played until the end, Harry adding the riff that he’d written just for his guitar to finish out the piece. She looked over to him, pure joy bursting through her. He grinned back at her. Finally, they played the last note, and they let their guitars reverberate through the space.

Everyone in the restaurant seemed to be holding their breath, wondering if that was really the end of the song or not. Finally, Belle took her hands off her guitar. Harry did too, and the restaurant erupted.

They had a planned outro too, because Belle was only playing this one song with him. With the talking and the playing, she only had to be on stage for seven minutes. Never had they rehearsed Harry getting up and yelling, “Isn’t she incredible?” before he drew her into a big cowboy bear hug .

But he did do that, and Belle had to bow several times as the applause went on and on before she could get away from the stage and breathe.

And she instantly wanted to get back out there and perform again.

Every cell in Belle’s body still vibrated as Harry followed her into her hotel room that night. They’d be living and staying in Jackson for the next month, and he had a suite up a few floors and down the other hall.

“I just can’t believe it,” Belle said, her eyes glued to her phone. “These comments are actually nice.”

Harry chuckled behind her and closed the door. “I told you it would be amazing.”

He had, but still. “Boston put up a twenty-second clip of the song,” she said. “Forty-nine minutes ago.” She turned toward him, her eyes as big as she’d ever made them. “It has three million likes and just over a million comments already.”

She held up her phone, pure disbelief pouring through her. “And they’re all nice.”

Her portion of the concert had been finished for less than two hours. Boston had recorded the song with Harry’s phone, and then posted a shortened clip with the words, Debut performance by country music sensation Belle Graves, only in Jackson with me for the next nine shows.

That was the whole caption on Harry’s social media, and then of course the hashtags that Harry and Boston and Uncle Morris had chosen for this tour. Then there was Belle’s name: #BelleGraves, #TheseEmptyHalls, her self-titled song.

The one she couldn’t get a record label in Nashville to pick up and produce.

“It’s just unbelievable.”

“You’ve gone viral, baby,” he said, his arm snaking around her. “Are you too big-time to lay with me on the couch?”

Belle couldn’t tease back with him right now, because she’d never been viral. She wasn’t the type of woman to go viral, and she didn’t know how to deal with viral eyes.

“This is scary for me,” she whispered, and she laid her head against Harry’s chest so she could listen to the steady thrum of his heart and try to find strength and courage from it.

“It’s scary, all right,” he whispered. “Because you’re gonna have fifteen hundred people from Nashville calling you after this.”

“Don’t say that,” Belle said.

“Well, you’re not going to go to Nashville, are you?”

“No,” she said.

“You won’t even consider it?” he pressed.

Belle sighed as she pushed out of his arms. She’d told him about her experience in Nashville and how she’d had a manager who’d stolen from her and ruined everything. She paced away from him and over to the window.

“You don’t have to decide right now,” he said as he came up behind her. He slid one hand along her arm. The strength of his chest behind her back felt so comforting and so warm.

“Come lay down.”

She let him lead her to the couch, but it wasn’t very comfortable at all. He groaned as he sat back up. “This is terrible,” he said. “Maybe the couch in my room will be better.” He looked over to her. “You want to try it?”

She looked twenty feet over to the bed, but she wasn’t sure if she could suggest that they lay there, even if they didn’t do anything but hold each other and talk about the incredible concert Harry had just finished and her tiny, seven-minute part in it. He must have seen her looking, because he looked that way too. Then he got up without a word, took her hand, and led her over to the bed.

He kicked off his boots and climbed on first, and Belle eased into his arms, both of them lying on top of the comforter.

“Yeah, this is way nicer,” he murmured.

“Tell me how it’s just me and you,” she said. “Tell me how small the world is right now.”

She couldn’t even imagine all those people online listening to her song, even if it was only twenty seconds. Boston had, of course, posted a snippet where both Harry and Belle were playing and singing together, as it was Harry’s social media and Harry’s concert tour.

“The world is so small,” Harry whispered. “It’s just this room. Just this bed. It’s just you in my arms, and me at your side. ”

He started to take a breath, and Belle mimicked him. She held hers while he did, and then she exhaled, letting everything go—the enormity of the sky, the vastness of the universe—until everything narrowed down to just Wyoming, then Jackson Hole, then this hotel, then just her room, then just her and Harry lying on the bed together.

“You’re safe with me, Belle,” he whispered, and that made tears come to her eyes. She leaned her head back and looked at this dark, beautiful, handsome cowboy.

“I’m falling in love with you, Harry,” she said.

He didn’t grin or beam or put on any of his celebrity persona. He simply growled out, “Good,” and kissed her.