Chapter 15

15

O tis Young stood on Isabella's front porch, the ding-ding-dong of her doorbell chiming through her house. He was leaving town today, as he didn't see the point of staying in Florida now that Morris had left. Everyone in his family seemed to be up in Coral Canyon for the summer, and he'd been there too for the past few weeks.

He'd realized how much he liked it there, and since he hadn't been able to pen anything for the last album Country Quad had under contract, he'd decided to return to his hometown for now too.

Luke, Trace, and Morris had, and getting one of the twins back into the family felt like a miracle Otis shouldn't overlook.

He did look back to Isabella's door and reached to knock this time. She should be home. They'd made lunch plans before his flight back to Wyoming. While he'd been in Coral Canyon, he'd spoken to her every day. They'd talked about their relationship and her perhaps leaving her educational counseling job here and going up to Wyoming with him.

Mav had done it, and while Otis was fifteen months older than Mav, he didn't mind following in his brother's footsteps.

She still didn't come to the door, and Otis pulled out his phone and called her. The line rang and rang, making his heartbeat do strange flips in his chest. "Isa," he said to her voicemail. "I'm on your front porch. I thought we were goin' to lunch today before I head back to Coral Canyon."

He didn't know what else to say, so he hung up. Frustration built beneath his breastbone, making his lungs work harder to expand. "Where is she?"

Otis had a temper that flared from time to time, and he had to force himself back to a reasonable place mentally. Only then could he think straight. He'd barked at Mav about dating Dani, and then sixty seconds later asked him about the app. That was about how Otis lived—in sixty second chunks where he reacted, took a minute to think, and then acted like a rational human being.

He was trying to get better about skipping that first step and lashing out, but it was hard for him to undo what felt natural to him. Right now, he wanted to bang against Isabella's door with both fists and demand to know where she was.

She'd never left him high and dry like this, and Otis turned away from the door so he wouldn't act on his impulse to pound it to the ground.

The Florida sunshine blinded him, and he settled his sunglasses in place beneath the brim of his cowboy hat. He looked and felt foolish standing on the woman's porch, and he returned to the rental car. His tall frame barely fit inside, but he managed to fold himself into the driver's seat, where he immediately texted Isa.

I'm going to Benito's , he said. That was our first date, and I thought you'd like that before I left town.

He waited ten seconds, watching his phone without blinking. Surely she'd answer. Tell him she'd run into some traffic and she'd meet him there. Explain that her boss had called an emergency meeting she couldn't miss.

Otis wasn't a genius with arranging flights—Mav had been doing that for him and the rest of the band members for over a decade—but he could figure it out. If Isa couldn't see him for a few more hours, he'd wait.

His pulse flipped oddly again, telling him something. He looked up from his phone and to Isabella's front door. She wasn't there. She hadn't put up a note.

He also had the very distinct feeling she wasn't going to call him back or respond to his texts.

She'd ghosted him.

Panic clawed at his ribs now, trying to separate them so it could get to his heart. He pressed one palm to his erratic heartbeat, feeling it jump against his fingers as it tried to get away from the inevitable.

When he and Lauren had finally called their marriage over, Otis hadn't really felt anything. He'd been numb from the months of counseling, of trying to be the man Lauren wanted him to be—a man he wasn't.

She'd taken their daughter home, as they'd been touring with him at the time. She lived in Dog Valley with Joey now, and Otis saw his daughter as often as he could. She was seven and going into third grade. She loved to read and do crafts, and she made Otis smile every time he thought of her.

He'd been steadily falling in love with Isabella Marquez, but he hadn't introduced her to Joey yet. Not live and in person, at least. He'd shown her plenty of pictures, especially over the past few weeks as he and Joey had been together in Coral Canyon.

Otis leaned his head back as his heart gave one loud, booming beat in his chest, and then cracked. He gasped for breath, confusion riddling his mind and making him frown.

"This isn't what's happening," he said, though he knew it was. Deep down, he knew . He told himself that things with Isabella had been going so well. He'd been dating her for eight or nine months now. No, she hadn't come to Mav's wedding, but that had been in April, during a very busy semester change for her.

No, she hadn't introduced him to her parents, but they'd been traveling all the times Otis had been in town.

No, she hadn't let him kiss her until they'd been talking for about three months and they'd been out about a dozen times. That was normal.

"It is," he told himself. Lots of women didn't want to move very fast. Heck, he was fine going slow too, because he still had an album to make with his brothers, and his future wasn't set in stone.

He could admit that he'd been paving a path in his mind. One where he helped Isabella pack her belongings and move them north. One where she adored his daughter, and they started a family in Coral Canyon, where Tex and Mav lived now.

His mind spun, because his next thought told him that Tex would have to go to Nashville to make the album, same as Otis.

Otis shook his head. "Call her again." He took a deep breath to try to calm himself. His phone had connected to his car, and he tapped the screen to call Isabella again.

She didn't answer.

He didn't bother leaving a message.

"Can't sit here," he said to himself. His flight didn't leave for another four hours, but he backed out of her driveway and headed for the airport.

He didn't cry, because the anger kept the tears at bay. He kept his phone plugged in on the way, and no one called or texted. By the time he returned the rental and went through security, the numbness had set in.

Once in the member's lounge, he tried texting Isabella one more time. I'm at the airport. I don't know what happened or when I'll be back in Florida. Call me tonight.

He sent the message, knowing she wouldn't call that night. For one, Isabella never called him. He always called her.

As he sat there, waiting waiting waiting for his flight, his irrational mind churned up all the things about his relationship with Isabella that should've told him he was far more into her than she was him.

Pure humiliation filled him, and he leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He let his mind drift, and his thoughts went wherever they wanted. Here, there, up, down, and around.

All at once, the lyrics to a song came forward, and Otis's eyes snapped open. He scrambled for his phone, humming a tune to go with the words. He started thumb-typing, and he couldn't get his fingers to move fast enough to keep up with the song streaming from him.

Title: When She Won't Call Back

He practically punched the top of the app and put that in, then went back to the lyrics he'd hastily typed out.

Twenty minutes later, the inspiration dried up, and Otis sagged into his seat again. He'd been struggling with the songwriting for six solid months. Nothing would come. No music. No words. Nothing.

He should've known that country music can only be penned from a place of desperation and agony. Country Quad did play some upbeat songs, but those usually came into Otis's mind from things he did with his family. He and Tex had started a song just after the Fourth of July that Bryce and Tex had been working to finish.

All of their ballads came from Otis and Luke, and they always spoke about loss and how to recover from them.

Otis had no idea how he'd tell everyone waiting for him in Coral Canyon that his girlfriend had ghosted him. "It reflects more on her than you," he said to himself as his phone notified him that his plane had started boarding.

He stood up, checked to make sure he hadn't left anything behind, and headed for the gate. Every step closer to Wyoming told him that it didn't matter why he went home. His parents wouldn't mind that he'd lost Isabella. They wouldn't blame him. They wouldn't demand to know why he was such a monster.

They'd envelop him in their arms and tell him how sorry they were. His brothers would surround him with love and sympathy—sometimes to the point that Otis would start to get irritated with them.

Embarrassment squirreled through him, mostly because he'd been so blind to Isabella's dislike of him. She sure had acted like she liked him, and a warning from the band's agent from years ago entered his mind.

You guys have to be careful , he'd told then. You're celebrities now, and sometimes there are people who just want to separate you from your money. They sometimes just want to see if you can help them, not if they can fall in love with you.

He wasn't sure if that was what Isabella had done or not. He hadn't given her any money. He hadn't helped her get into the music industry or get a promotion at work or anything like that.

On the plane, he texted Mav that he thought Isabella had broken up with him by completely ghosting him, and then put his phone on airplane mode. He needed a few hours before he could handle the condolences.

He thought of his disastrous relationship with Lauren.

He thought of his daughter.

He thought of Tex fixing up their boyhood home and ranch.

He thought of Mav and Dani's wedding and how perfect it had been.

He thought of Ames Hammond giving Tex that beautiful German shepherd and how he must've felt doing that.

Another song crowded into his mind, this one about grieving the loss of something that never really belonged to you. A woman, a dog, a ranch.

Otis wrote two songs on the way home from Florida, and when he landed in Jackson Hole, he found Mav, Dani, Beth, Boston, and Joey there to greet him.

"Daddy!" His daughter ran toward him, and Otis dropped to his knees, overcome with relief and joy to see her. He caught her and hugged her tightly until she said, "Daddy, you're squeezing me to death."

"Sorry, Kangaroo," he said, pulling back and smiling at her. Tears did burn in his eyes then, the gratitude he felt for his daughter overwhelming him. He was also so grateful he hadn't introduced Isabella into Joey's life, so she didn't have to feel as shredded and tattered as he currently did.

He got to his feet and took Joey's hand in his. Mav wore compassion and worry in his eyes, and he hugged Otis for a good, long minute without saying anything. When he pulled back, he said, "It's going to be okay, Otis. We've got pizza in the truck, and you can stay with us as long as you want."

"Thank you," Otis said through a raw throat. Eight months. He wasn't sure why the past eight months were going to scar him so badly, only that the wound was open, and he didn't see it closing any time soon.