Chapter 27

Three people in a queen-size bed wasn't the most comfortable way to spend a night, but it didn't really matter, as Brighton barely slept anyway.

Mostly, she tossed and turned on the edge of the mattress, both Adele and Sloane sleeping like the dead, Adele's limbs spread like a starfish in the middle. The woman was definitely used to sleeping alone. Still, sleep played a never-ending game of hide-and-seek with Brighton while the last week and a half—well, really, the last fifteen years—played through her mind.

She kept getting stuck on the transitions—following Lola to Berklee, agreeing to move to New York, and even letting Lola leave Watered Down last night. In the moment, Brighton had been too shocked to follow her, Lola's words processing and taking on meaning too slowly in her mind. And then, once everything had clicked, Adele had refused to let her leave the bar, instead guiding her back to their table and putting a glass of bourbon into her hands.

"Let her chill out," Adele had said, threading her arm through Brighton's. "You can't keep running after her all the time, baby girl."

"I'm the one who left her, Adele," Brighton had said.

Adele had only tilted her head, her eyes softly narrowed. "Are you?"

Brighton had opened her mouth, closed it. It was true, of course, that Brighton had done the physical leaving five years ago in Grand Haven, but maybe Adele was right too—Brighton had spent her entire life chasing Charlotte Donovan.

Who the hell was chasing her?

Brighton released a soft groan and sat up in bed. The room was quiet but for the soft sound of ambient rain emanating from Adele's phone. A full moon silvered through the curtains, making the space glow. After checking her phone—4:43 a.m.—Brighton gently lifted Adele's leg off her own and pushed the covers back. She put on her cardigan, then slipped out the door.

She walked down the hall, stopping in front of Sloane's closed door. There wasn't a sound, no movement, but Lola was a heavy sleeper. Brighton closed her hand around the doorknob, weighing her options. The last time she had invaded Lola's room in the middle of the night…well, good things had followed. Still, this was different.

Brighton had put everything on the line for Lola.

She'd gotten on a stage, played Lola a song— their song. And Lola had simply…gotten up and walked away.

Anger surged through Brighton's veins, sudden and cleansing. It felt good to feel rage instead of guilt and pain and longing. She was so fucking tired of this—the ways she bent herself for others, the ways no one, no one , seemed to really see her.

She gritted her teeth, ready to tell Lola all of this, to finally lay it all out instead of constantly racking her brain over Lola's needs, years of guilt driving her every action and thought.

She gripped the doorknob and twisted, then flung the door open, not giving two shits if she woke Lola up with the noise. She needed to talk, so that's what they were going to do.

Brighton stepped into the room, opened her mouth to say Lola's name—she even planned on using Charlotte— but everything died on her tongue at the scene in front of her.

A too-still silence.

A perfectly made bed.

A completely empty room.

No suitcase other than Sloane's, no violin, no black clothes hanging in the open closet.

Brighton felt her shoulders drop, realization settling over her like a heavy winter coat—Lola was gone.

The next couple of days were a blur of everyone treating Brighton like she was going to break, feeling like she might actually break, and wanting to punch a hole through Nina's wall.

Several holes, in fact. Several walls.

She couldn't really settle on an emotion—anger, sadness, heartbreak, disappointment, sheer white-hot rage. Adele tried to get her to talk about it, but Brighton didn't want to talk. The day after Lola left, Brighton's parents finally arrived back in the States, and Brighton spent two hours on the phone with them recounting the shit show of the past week of her life. Her mother wanted her to come home, to take some time.

But she was so goddamn tired of taking time. She was tired of thinking and wondering and regretting. Plus, if she went home to Grand Haven, she'd land on the living-room couch, watch every Pixar movie ever made while guzzling her mother's extensive supply of French wine, and quite possibly never leave the house again.

No.

She wasn't going to wallow, and she wasn't going to talk about how she wasn't going to wallow. There was nothing to talk about, really. Lola was right—they'd reconciled and had fun, but they had different lives.

Now Brighton wanted to live hers.

Unfortunately, living her life meant dealing with her Katies problem, as well as once again jumping on the Nash-Vegas hamster wheel of finding gigs and, you know, putting her entire heart and soul in the hands of strangers and booking agents.

"I don't know if I can do this," she said to Adele a few days after they'd gotten back to Nashville. It was New Year's Eve, and she was sitting at the bar with her laptop in Ampersand after her afternoon shift, clicking on one venue after another, reading up on their booking processes.

"You can," Adele said as she sifted through receipts. "You have to."

"I don't have to."

Adele lifted a brow. "You do if you don't want to be a sad sack nursing gin and tonics by yourself on New Year's Eve, mourning your dashed hopes and forsaken dreams."

"Jesus, dramatic much?"

Adele grinned. "Just putting it all into perspective, baby girl." She arranged the receipts in her hand, tapped their edges against the bar. "You talked to her yet?"

Brighton laughed through the tightness in her throat. "You clearly don't know Charlotte Donovan very well."

Adele shrugged. "I don't, you're right. But I do know what running scared shitless looks like, and Charlotte is—"

"Adele, stop." Brighton held up her hand, sighed. "Look, I know you're trying to help, but just…don't. Okay? I'm fine."

Adele sniffed. "Sloane hasn't mentioned her much, though I know they all reunited in London a few days ago. In case you were wondering."

"I wasn't." Brighton kept her eyes on her computer screen, her vision blurring on the Station Inn's booking page. She was lying, of course—every single day she had to stop herself from asking Adele if Sloane had said anything about Charlotte. She knew Sloane had been pretty pissed at Charlotte too, and part of Brighton really did just want to know if they'd worked it out.

The other part was hungry—dying of starvation, really—for any indication that Charlotte wondered about her too.

A bad habit.

And like any bad habit, she needed to wean herself off Charlotte Donovan. Eventually, she'd stop wondering. Eventually, her mind would stop wandering back to their time in Winter River, to their time as kids, as teenagers, even to their time in New York. Eventually, she'd stop feeling that thrum between her legs at the mere thought of Charlotte's mouth. Eventually, her chest would stop feeling like she'd been punched when she heard a violin play.

Eventually, she'd stop thinking about everything she would've done differently.

She shook her head, needing to focus on something else. She clicked over to the Katies' website, just like she'd been doing at least a dozen times a day since she'd gotten back, wondering what the hell to do about "December Light." She really didn't want to get lawyers involved. She had dated proof in her notebook that she had written the song, not to mention the track she and Lola had laid down at a studio in Grand Rapids, which she knew meant she owned the copyright automatically. Still, it all seemed so messy and involved. But she also knew she couldn't just let it go. "December Light," while bittersweet, was her song.

Their song.

And no matter how much Brighton was determined to finally move on, Charlotte was a huge part of her history, her story. And that song…it meant something.

Hell if she was going to let the Katies simply take it.

She clicked on their schedule page, her eyes snagging on today's date in a very long list of upcoming concert dates. She leaned closer, made sure she was reading the information correctly.

"Hey," Adele said, leaning on her forearms, the sleeves of her checkered button-up rolled to her elbows. "Idea."

Brighton looked up. "Oh?"

"I think you should play here."

"Here?"

"At Ampersand. You're comfortable here. I've got some slots open in January. It'd be a great way to get your feet wet again. This could be your home base."

Brighton sat back, folded her arms. It wasn't a bad idea. Ampersand was small but reputable. Already, a few bigger names had come through here, up-and-comers who went on to make real names for themselves beyond the Nashville bubble. And god, Brighton wanted to play. She'd already written two new songs since being back in town—as everyone knew, romantic misery was excellent fodder for art—and she was starting to feel restless, that artist's need to not only create but also put that creation out into the world.

"Okay," she said before she talked herself out of it. "You sure you don't mind?"

Adele frowned. "Mind? Are you kidding? Baby girl, you're good . You'll bring in business, I have no doubt. Deal with it."

She slapped a bar towel at Brighton's arm. Brighton laughed and grabbed it, pulling on the end. "Okay, but first…I need you to do something with me. Tonight."

Adele tilted her head, a mischievous grin already settling on her face.