Chapter 25

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Adam

It's been a while since I've made a meal this extensive.

Short ribs. Roasted carrots. Homemade angel biscuits. But I'm going for broke tonight.

Last week was more like a fantasy than real life. Laney and I were together almost nonstop. Even when I was doing stuff with the band, she was right there on the sidelines, watching, cheering me on.

But that isn't what my life is like normally.

And I want her to know that this life, my Lawson Cove life, is good too.

It's stupid to think that I'm in competition with myself, but her childhood bedroom made it clear how much she loves Deke. I don't want her to be disappointed that she's dating Adam instead, because I can't be Deke.

Not anymore. Not ever again.

I spent a long time up on the ridge over the weekend, avoiding the ravine that practically killed me, and thinking through everything that happened over the past week.

One thing became perfectly clear.

I never should have gone back. Never should have said yes to Freddie in the first place.

In the weeks right before my mom died, she called me every day.

And every day, she told me how much she wanted to see me. I hadn't been home in months, but I was in Europe on tour, and we had shows too frequently for me to just jump on a plane and leave.

I couldn't go see her without disrupting the entire tour.

So I didn't go.

I listened to her tell me she was dying, and I convinced myself I had time.

I let Kevin convince me I had time. I prioritized money and fame and fan expectations over my own life—over my mother's life.

And I disappointed the one person who deserved it least.

I missed years that I could have spent with her so I could sing for everyone else.

It doesn't matter how much I loved making music then or how much I love making it now.

I won't make the same mistake again.

Which is why I have to make this life really count.

Laney knocks on the door right on time, and she looks beautiful. Casual, in jeans and a soft green sweater that's loose and hanging off one shoulder.

I feel a sudden impulse to kiss that shoulder, to press my lips to the hollow right above her collarbone and breathe in the scent of her .

Fortunately, I'm not an animal lacking all self-control, so I say hello instead.

"You look amazing," I add. "Thanks for coming."

Ringo is at her feet, holding his sit like a very good boy, and I lean down to give him a treat.

"Did you seriously just pull a random dog treat out of your pocket?" Laney asks as she comes inside.

"Hazards of the job," I say. "Are you hungry?"

"Hungrier now. It smells amazing." She takes Ringo off his leash, and he runs into the living room where Goldie is lounging on her dog bed.

Laney steps close, one hand lifting to my shoulder as she leans up and kisses me, lingering just long enough for this to be more than a hello kiss.

"You look good too," she says, her voice soft. "Now feed me. I'm hungry enough to eat my arm."

Heat spreads through my chest and something like relief washes over me. I worried it would be weird tonight, that we might not find our footing after everything that's happened.

Seeing her last night helped, but this—this gives me the hope I need.

We're going to be okay.

And we are okay.

Dinner is easy. The short ribs turned out perfectly, the wine compliments the meal just like I hoped it would, and the yeasted angel biscuits are the best batch I've ever made. By the end of the meal, I'm buzzed on good conversation and good wine and a growing certainty that this is exactly what I want my life to be.

There may still be a niggling sense of doubt at the back of my mind.

But it's only a matter of time. The doubts will fade .

They did before. They will again.

"Okay. You have to tell me where you learned to cook like this," Laney says as she helps herself to a second serving of white cheddar grits. "I've never thought about serving short ribs over grits, but this is unbelievable." She cocks her head to the side. "Actually, I've never made short ribs. But if I had , this combination wouldn't have occurred to me."

"Mom taught me the basics," I say as I grab another biscuit. "But I mostly learned through trial and error. When we were still living together in Knoxville, Sarah would do all the shopping, so I did all the cooking."

"Did either of you go to college?" Laney asks.

Her question is curious, but not judgmental, so it's easy to answer honestly. "Sarah has a marketing degree she did online. But I didn't. At the time, it felt too risky to put myself out there in such a public way."

She puts her fork down on top of her empty plate and slides it forward. "That must have been a weird time. Right after. What did you do to stay busy?"

"I cooked," I say. "I taught myself how to play guitar. I worked out a lot."

"The muscles are finally explained," she says through a grin. "And Sarah was with you the whole time?"

"She spent three months in foster care right after Mom died, but as soon as she was eighteen, she moved in with me, and we were together until we moved here and she wanted to get her own place."

"You were just kids," Laney says. "I can't imagine living on my own at eighteen. I mean, college didn't really count for me because my parents still gave me so much support."

"We definitely floundered for a while. But we figured it out. Mostly thanks to Sarah. She did pretty much everything that required face-to-face interaction. Attorneys, real-estate agents. She handled it all."

"Sarah was a big part of why you left in the first place, wasn't she?" Laney says. "With your mom gone, you only had each other."

I stand and grab our empty plates, then carry them into the kitchen. "Yeah. She was."

Laney follows me into the kitchen with the platter of short ribs and sets it on the counter. She holds the sides of the platter for a long moment without moving, her face pensive.

"You okay?" I ask.

"Yeah," she says, but then she turns away. "I'm gonna go check on Ringo."

She disappears into the living room while I finish clearing the table and top off our wine glasses. When I go in search of her, the dogs are alone in the living room. Ringo is conked out in the center of Goldie's bed while Goldie is stretched out on the floor, giving me a look like I should be proud of how patient she's being with her guest.

I finally find Laney in the music room, standing beside the piano, her eyes fixed on the empty bookshelf in front of her.

Two boxes sit on the floor, both filled with music.

I hold out her wine glass, but she shakes her head, so I set it on the back of the piano.

"Adam, what are you doing?" she asks, and I breathe out a sigh.

"What does it look like?"

She huffs. " Why are you packing up all your music? Where are your guitars?"

"Put away. "

"Why?" she repeats.

I drain my wine and walk back to the kitchen, but she follows after me. "Please answer my question." The pleading tone of her voice makes my heart tighten painfully.

I don't want to argue with her about this, but there's only one way I can answer her question, and she isn't going to like it.

I turn and lean against the counter, hands pushed into my pockets. "Because I'm not going to play anymore."

"Why?" she says, her voice practically a whisper.

"Because it's not worth it."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"It makes sense to me," I say.

She shakes her head and steps toward me. "Adam, if we're going to be together, then I need to understand how you're feeling. Explain it to me."

I lift a hand to the back of my neck. "There's nothing to explain. I just don't want to sing anymore."

"I don't believe you," she quickly says. "Do you know what I listened to on the way over tonight? I listened to ‘The Start of Forever.' The version you did in the studio, and Adam, I've never heard anything like it."

I close my eyes. I worked hard over the last few days to construct a reality in my mind where all of this was going to be okay. I still have Hope Acres, I still have Laney, my life can still be everything I want it to be without Midnight Rush.

But I must have been building with popsicle sticks and Elmer's glue, because that reality is crumbling now, my control crumbling right along with it.

"How did you even hear it?" I ask darkly, but even as I ask the question, I know the answer. It was Freddie who called her the night I left Silver Creek. It was probably Freddie who sent it to her.

Sure enough, she crosses her arms over her chest and says, "Freddie sent it to me."

I don't know why it irritates me—probably for stupid and irrational reasons that have everything to do with my heightened emotional state—but arguing about this would be easier than arguing about why I'm not going to sing anymore, so I dig in.

"Freddie, huh?"

It's mean and spiteful to even imply she's texting Freddie for anything but the most benign reasons. I don't mean it at all, but the only part of my brain that's functioning right now is the part that wants this conversation to end.

Laney's jaw clenches the slightest bit, but then her gaze softens. "Don't do that," she says gently. Too gently. "Don't sabotage this conversation by accusing me of something you know full well would never be true. Freddie only texts me because he's concerned about you. He sent me the song because he knows how I feel about you. "

"I'm not sabotaging anything."

"You are," she snaps back. "And I think you're doing it because you don't want to be honest with me."

"Honest about what? What do you want to know? You asked me where I put my guitars. I told you I put them up. I told you I'm not going to sing anymore. I'm being honest about that."

"But you aren't being honest about why."

"Why doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters," she says.

She doesn't get it. She can't get it .

"Adam, I want you to answer one question…not unlike the one you asked me."

I lift my eyes to meet hers, hands propped on my hips.

"If you took away everything else. Kevin. Your mom's death. All of it. All the conditions and circumstances and crappy things that have happened in your life. Take it all away."

She pauses and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Her hand is trembling, and I have to clench my hands into fists to keep from going to her, pulling her against my chest.

"What would you do with your life?" she finishes. "Would you sing?"

Yes.

I don't even have to think about the answer. It's just there, solid and certain in my mind. Not that it matters. There's no point in even asking the question because I can't change what happened. I can't fix what I screwed up. I can't bring my mom back.

"It doesn't matter," I say.

"What you want always matters," she says.

I grip the edge of the counter. "What I want? The last three months of my mother's life, she called and called and begged for me to come home. That's what she wanted. And I didn't do it. There was too much at stake. I couldn't risk the tour. My contract wouldn't allow it. And a dozen other BS reasons Kevin gave me. I hadn't seen my mother in over a year. And then she died."

Laney's eyes close, her voice quivering as she asks, "You didn't get to see her?"

My shoulders drop, some of the fire draining out of me. There's been an ache in my chest for eight years, right between my ribs. Sometimes it dulls to the point that I can forget it's there, but it only takes a word, a look, a random thought for it to flare to life, reminding me all over again what I've lost.

The ache is more like a volcano right now, hot pulsing pain, but it eases the slightest bit for having been spoken out loud. For having admitted things—feelings—that I've never admitted to anyone else. "I was on stage in London when she died."

Laney holds my gaze for a long moment before she crosses the kitchen and wraps her arms around my waist, squeezing until I lift my arms and let them fall around her shoulders. Her hands slide up and down my back for a solid minute, maybe two, while we just stand there.

I breathe in the scent of her hair, savor the feel of her pressed against me. But even this feels like too much. She shouldn't be here with me. I thought I could compartmentalize, build a life apart from my past.

But then I let Freddie in, and it ruined everything.

Maybe it's going to ruin this, too.

"Laney, I can't sing anymore because I stood on my mother's grave and promised her I wouldn't. I can't because after what I did, after the way I disappointed her, I don't deserve the chance. I don't deserve any of it."