Songbird: Music & Lyrics Book 2 Read online

  The baby pushed the bottle away and Stevie shifted her so that she was on her shoulder. She began the rhythmic rubbing and patting of her back until a huge burp escaped from the baby’s mouth. She resettled her in her arms and offered her the bottle again.

  “Stevie? What happened?”

  She couldn’t stop the tears this time. They fell from her eyes unfettered as she watched the baby suckle the bottle.

  “I went to him after the concert. I felt it too. That connection. He’d been so good to me during the filming of the music video and then last night it just felt like that, whatever there was between us was nowhere near finished. So I went to him and he turned me away. Told me it could never work between us. He told me he was no good for me and that hooking up with me had been a mistake.”

  “Oh, honey,” Darla murmured. “So we hate him again?”

  Stevie snorted a rueful laugh. “Yep. Let’s hate him again. It might hurt less.”

  Nate growled as the knocking on his trailer pulled him from sleep. He’d broken his no-drinking rule last night. He’d felt justified. His life was going to shit anyway so why not drown his sorrows and do a little bit more damage to his liver? At least the alcohol numbed the pain enough so that he could sleep.

  The banging on the door started up again and he sat up. Pain speared through his head and his stomach roiled. God. He felt like shit. With a groan, he pushed up off the bed and pulled on a pair of sweatpants. It was probably Mabel. She was always on his fucking case about something. They were supposed to be leaving today, so she was probably impatient to get on the road.

  He flung the door open. “What?”

  “You look like hell.” Darla. Not Mabel.

  He sighed and leaned against the doorframe. “What do you want, Darla?”

  “Can I come in for a minute?” she asked trying to peer past him into the interior of the trailer. “Or do you have some sleazy groupie in there?”

  He stepped back and swept his hand across him to indicate she could enter. “No one in here but us chickens.”

  She climbed the stairs and looked cautiously into the trailer. “No skanks?”

  He sighed and sat at the table. He closed his eyes and leant his head back against the seat. “There’s no one here, Darla. What the fuck do you want?” There was no heat in his tone, just resignation.

  She sat down across from him and took time to really look at him. Nate squirmed under her examination.

  “Well at least you look worse than Stevie does.”

  He didn’t answer. How could he? What would he even say?

  “What the hell, Nate?” Darla said, slumping back into the seat. “I told you not to hurt her. I warned you I would come for you if you did.” She huffed out a sigh. “I really thought that you finally had your shit together. I believed you’d grown up and that you finally saw Stevie for who she was. Then you had to go and piss it all away, and for what?”

  “Darla—”

  “No, really. For what?” She sat up in the seat and leaned forward as she warmed to her subject. “What crawled up your ass and turned you back into the chicken shit that you were five years ago?”

  Nate screwed his eyes closed and tried to think past the pounding in his head. Would Darla even understand how he felt about Stevie? Would anyone? They all saw him as such a fuck up and he doubted that anyone would believe that he was actually trying to do the right thing this time.

  “You wouldn’t underst—”

  “Try me, asshole,” she spat. “That is my god-dammed best friend and you’ve ripped her fucking heart out. Not once, not twice, but three fucking times now. Give me a reason not to shoot you in the balls because I am damned close to doing just that.”

  Nate dropped his head in his hands. “I’m doing it for her,” he mumbled.

  “What?”

  He sighed and lifted his head. “I’m doing it for her. I know you don’t think I’m a very good person, but I am honestly trying to do right by Stevie. I’m in love with her for god’s sake—”

  “Then why the hell are you pushing her away?”

  “If you would shut up a minute and let me talk.” He took a deep breath. “Stevie is in the middle of a tour and the last thing she needs is to get tangled up in a relationship… any relationship. By the end of this tour she is going to be a fucking superstar. I would be a liability to her. I know she’s hurting right now, but she will thank me in the long run. I would be nothing but baggage for her and that’s something she doesn’t need. I need to let her go so she can experience the success that is coming her way unencumbered. I’m not explaining myself very well. Do you understand?”

  “You’re doing this for her?”

  “Yes,” he said, looking down at his hands. “I want her to have everything. I know she is going to be the hottest new talent around and everyone is going to want a piece of her. The last thing she needs is for someone to put the two of us together. It would ruin everything for her. I’m persona non grata at the moment. Yes, we have a song together, but anything more than that would be poison for her right now. I would be poison.”

  Darla sat back and studied him. “You really are in love with her.”

  He nodded sadly. “I really am.”

  “Well fuck me,” she breathed.

  “And this is my penance,” he said, “for walking away from her five years ago. This is my punishment for not believing in her… in us. I don’t get to have her. Not now and probably not ever. I fucked everything up back then and it’s coming back to bite me in the ass now.”

  Darla leaned forward and laid a hand over Nate’s. “Don’t write her off just yet,” she said. “I understand what you’re trying to do and I even applaud you for it, but don’t write off the future just yet. Let her have her success, let her get through this tour and you finish yours. When you’re both back in Nashville then see what the lay of the land is. Stevie loves you, has loved you for most of her life. I don’t understand it, but I know that she has never stopped loving you.”

  “It’s too late, Darla. I’ve done too much to make up for.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. You’ve changed. I like this side of you Nate. This unselfish side who sees others and wants the best for them.”

  He didn’t say anything. He didn’t think he deserved Darla’s admiration.

  “Here’s what you are going to do. You are going to finish your tour and you are going to win back every fan you lost. You are going to reclaim your fucking rock star status so that when you finally go to Stevie, the two of you will be on equal footing. She needs you in her life but not until you have something to offer her, something strong and sure. So that is your mission. Take this opportunity you’ve been given and run with it. Prove to her that you really are the man that she always thought you were.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Stevie climbed onto the bus and headed straight for her bunk. They had been driving for a couple of hours and had stopped for a quick break and a leg stretch at a tiny little gas station in the middle of nowhere. She felt like she was coming down with something, or maybe that was just the effects of a broken heart. The poor thing had been broken more times than was healthy and the fact that the same guy did the breaking only exacerbated the damage. Stevie didn’t think she would ever be able to love again. She didn't think her heart would ever be whole enough to try.

  She closed the curtains to her bunk and lay down with her earbuds firmly in her ears. She didn’t feel like doing anything but wallowing in her self-pity. She had hours of sad music to act as the soundtrack to her pain. ‘Just a Fool’ by Christina Aguilera and Blake Shelton. ‘Different for Girls’ by Dierks Bentley and Elle King. ‘Unlove You’ by Jennifer Nettles. ‘Every Time I Hear That Song’ by Blake Shelton. These songs had the words she couldn’t find.

  She closed her eyes and let the music lull her into a quasi-sleep. She didn’t think she would ever sleep properly again. She couldn’t risk it. She knew that as soon a she let her guard down she would dream about him and s
he just couldn’t face it. Waking up and knowing it had all just been a dream would be like losing him all over again.

  Had she ever really had him? She’d held him in her arms and made love to him. She’d kissed him and touched him; run her hands and her mouth over every inch of his body, but was he ever really hers? For a little while, perhaps. For maybe a zeptosecond she had actually had Nate; had really been able to call him hers. But in less time than it took to blink, he’d been gone again. Nate was her unicorn. Her Eleanor. The only person in the world she truly wanted and the only one she didn’t think she could ever have.

  The curtain was pulled roughly aside and Stevie blinked into the light. “What?”

  “Come and write with me,” Jace said.

  Stevie groaned. “I can’t.”

  He looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “You have never not been able to write, Stevie. I don’t know what is going on with you, but you need to get it out. You and I are the same. We need to get the words out or they turn to poison in our system.”

  “I’ve got no words,” Stevie said.

  “Then play your guitar. I can see it inside you - the hurt. I don’t know what happened and I don’t want to know. What I do know is that you need to get it out. If the words aren’t there, then the music definitely is.”

  Jace was right. The music moved within her like a sad refrain. She’d been hearing the same melody over and over again and it was just about driving her crazy.

  “Fine,” she said, sitting up, “but it’s not going to be pretty.”

  Jace just shrugged and led her to the back of the bus. Up the front they had seats and a television and a little kitchenette. The back of the bus had been set up as a place they could come to rehearse or jam or just strum away on a guitar and not bother anyone.

  She threw herself down on the couch and pulled her battered Takamine towards her. She didn’t play this one on stage, but she always composed with it. There was something about holding the well-worn guitar on her lap that allowed the music to flow out of her soul and into her fingers. She closed her eyes and started to strum - nothing coherent, just nonsense notes and scales. She tried to pick up the thread of the melody in her head. It wasn’t a sweet, heartbreaking song. It was angry and harsh and something she had never written before. It was also being elusive. Every time she thought she had it, it skittered away from her like a frightened mouse.

  “You’re forcing it,” Jace said from his position on the couch, his own acoustic in his hands.

  “I can’t find the thread,” she said with a sigh, lifting her hands from the strings.

  “Okay, so let’s start by playing something else. What are you listening to?”

  Stevie looked down at her phone. The song she had been listening to before Jace had interrupted her was ‘Ain’t No Little Girl’ by Kasey Chambers. It was gritty and raw and exactly what she was feeling. She started playing and Jace joined in. It started low and slow. Stevie sang the words and closed her eyes, feeling the pain of the song.

  When they finished the song, they both kept playing and the song morphed into the melody that Stevie had been hearing in her head. It wasn’t perfect yet, but the bones were there. She and Jace had written songs together before and they knew, almost intuitively, how the other one thought. They teased the song out, filling it with complex chords and minor keys. Stevie sang a few words here and there, but it was just a phrase or two. It was nothing like they had ever written before. Court’n Jacks were all about the power ballads heart-wrenching songs. This one was angry and rough and had grit that rubbed against her like sandpaper. It felt good, that abrasiveness. It was a relief to feel it when everything else around her had begun to feel all the same. She had become numb and this song was the only thing that seemed to get through the sponginess that surrounded her like a cocoon.

  “‘Not Dead Yet,’” she said, opening her eyes to look at Jace. “That’s the name of this song.”

  He nodded his head and sang a few words. A feral grin split her face. No. She wasn’t dead yet.

  She did eventually sleep, if only for a few hours. Jace had made her play with him until she could barely keep her eyes open and her fingers refused to work. She was grateful for it, and for Jace. Without it there was no way she would have slept. It was only after she had emptied herself of all the messed up emotions that she could close her eyes without fear of them invading her dreams. So she had slept, a short but dreamless sleep, and in some weird way, she felt better.

  She took a quick shower. The bus was still moving which made showering tricky, but she managed it. Dressed and feeling a little bit more human, Stevie made her way to the front of the bus where Nadine and Vanessa sat watching old Charlie’s Angels reruns.

  “I’d definitely be Farrah Faucet,” Nadine said.

  “No way,” Vanessa said, “I’d be Farrah. We’re like twins, her and I.”

  Nadine snorted. “No way. You’d be the other one…the serious one. What was her name?”

  “Kate Jackson,” Stevie said, “but Vanessa wouldn’t be her, she’d be Jaclyn Smith. Jace would be Kate and I would definitely be Farrah.”

  “So who would I be then?” Nadine said indignantly.

  “You’d be the other blonde that they brought in for season two… Cheryl Ladd.”

  Nadine slumped back in her seat. “The ring in?”

  “No,” Stevie said sitting down beside her, “that would be Shelley Hack.”

  “How do you know so much about Charlie’s Angels?” Vanessa asked.

  Stevie shrugged, “My mom was about everything seventies and eighties. She named me Stevie for goodness sakes. After Stevie Nicks. We would spend hours watching her favorite shows and Charlie’s Angels was one of them. Wonder Woman was another.”

  Both girls were quiet and the fun of before had fizzled out. Stevie didn’t know what it was that she’d said to cause such a reaction.

  “What did I say?” she asked. If they were going to spend all this time together on the bus, they needed to not let things fester.

  The two girls shared a look and Stevie knew they were doing some weird sister thing where they could read each other’s thoughts. The non-twin twin thing they did.

  It was Nadine who spoke first. “It was just hearing about your mom,” she said. “It made us wonder what it would have been like to grow up with a mom like yours.”

  “What was your mom like?” Stevie asked, desperate to know the story but not wanting to push them too far. They never talked about their parents. This was the first time Stevie had ever heard that they even had parents.

  “I don’t really remember her,” Vanessa said.

  “She died when we were young,” Nadine added, cutting Vanessa off before she could say anymore.

  “So your dad raised you on his own?”

  Nadine turned to her with an overly bright smile. “Yeah, something like that.” She turned to peer out the little sliver of front window they could see. “Hey, it looks like we’re stopping.”

  Stevie let the subject drop. There was something about their past that seemed a little off, but it wasn’t her place to pry. Stevie just hoped that it wasn’t something that the press would find out and make a big deal of. Reporters had already been digging into the band members’ pasts and she had the uncomfortable feeling that it was only a matter of time before some skeletons were found. She knew she was on tenterhooks waiting for someone to discover the videos of her and Nate performing back in the day. Once it was on the internet it was almost impossible to get rid of and she didn’t think Darla had taken the videos down, not unless Nate’s record company had made her. Somehow Stevie would have heard about it if she did. There was no way Darla would remain quiet about something like that.

  The bus came to a stop and there was a muted sound of a gathered crowd that came through the bus walls. Stevie had expected the venue to be empty - Lily wasn’t scheduled to arrive until the next day. Court’n Jacks were to have the venue to themselves for the day to give them a
chance to rehearse and get used to the stage. Lily had played here before and had wanted to take an extra day before getting back into the swing of the tour. Jace and Stevie had jumped at the chance of having the venue to themselves.

  “Are those fans here for us?” Vanessa said as she moved the curtain to look out the window.

  “They probably think it Lily’s bus,” Stevie said.

  “I don’t think so,” Nadine said, joining her sister at the window, “they have signs.”

  Stevie squeezed in next to the other girls to see for herself. A crowd of people had surrounded the bus and they were indeed holding up signs. Signs with her and the girls’ names on them. And Jace’s name, and the name of the band. These were their fans.

  The door of the bus opened and Marci hustled on. It closed behind her with a snap and Marci looked a little shell-shocked, like she’d just run the gauntlet.

  “Right, okay,” she said as she appeared to be getting her breath.

  “What’s happening outside?” Stevie asked.

  “That,” Marci said with a grimace before a big smile, “Is what happens when you have a number one single. ‘No Good for You’ just topped the charts!”

  There was a moment of silence before the girls started to scream and jump around, hugging each other. Stevie stood stunned and was soon joined by Jace who was rubbing his head as he squinted sleepily at his hysterical sisters.

  “What is going on?” he asked in his husky, not quite awake voice. He’d pulled on a pair of well worn jeans, but his chest was bare. It took moment for Stevie to drag her eyes away from all that naked male chest. Who knew Jace had been hiding all that under his clothes?

  “‘No Good for You’ just hit number one,” Marci said again for his benefit.

  “And we’ve got fans!” Nadine squealed.

  The next few hours were a little crazy, but the good kind of crazy. Marci managed to corral the fans into some semblance of order and they had an impromptu autograph signing. The local press had picked up on what was happening and cameras appeared to get footage of them as they shook hands and posed for selfies with the fans. Stevie wasn’t big on crowds, but when they were all there for her it was kind of…empowering. The heartbreak and melancholy that she had felt would never leave was shunted aside by having a hundred fans screaming her name and wanting a photograph with her.