Facing the Music

by Andrea Laurence

  “And now,” Gloria announced from the stage, “it’s time to crown our prom king and queen and have their first dance. Blake Chamberlain, please come to the stage!”

  Blake groaned. Not now. They needed to finish this discussion.

  “Go,” Ivy said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Blake hated to walk away when Ivy had that look on her face, but there wasn’t much else he could do. The spotlight found him in the crowd, so he made his way to the stage.

  The attendees applauded as he was given his crown and scepter. It seemed like an odd exercise, considering this wasn’t something anyone had voted for. When they were finished, he stepped to the side and waited for Ivy.

  “And our prom queen tonight is Ivy Hudson!”

  The spotlight found her at the back of the crowd, following her up the stairs to the stage. They pinned on her tiara and gave her a small bouquet of roses “courtesy of Petal Pushers Florist.”

  Ivy stood beside him as the crowd cheered. It was a little surreal to be up here with her again. The first time, they’d been ecstatic to have won. He’d been pumped to be there with Ivy and more than a little nervous to think that tonight was the night. Now, things were different. There was just the blossoming of romance between them. But even so, they once again had Lydia interfering with their happiness.

  “And now, our prom king and queen are going to have their spotlight dance.”

  Ivy put her flowers down on the table as Blake helped her down the stairs to the center of the dance floor.

  The first haunting notes of Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away” started. Blake supposed it could be worse. They moved together to the music, slowly rocking back and forth as the occasional lights flashed around them. No press were allowed at the dance, but of course most people had their phones and were taking pictures of their own. This was probably the first prom where the queen looked pissed at the king.

  “Smile, please,” Blake said. “If not so I can enjoy your beautiful face, do it for everyone who came tonight. Otherwise I’ll be forced to do things to make you smile. Like pick my nose. Or sing to you.”

  Ivy smiled, but he wasn’t sure whether it was just to keep him from singing. It seemed sincere enough.

  “Don’t let her ruin tonight,” Blake said. “I wanted this dance to be special, like our first one was. I don’t want to spend tonight with you mad at me.”

  Ivy looked up at him, her green eyes near black in the dim light of the dance. “I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself for being so easily manipulated by her even after all this time. She just . . .” Her voice faded away. “She knows how to go straight for my jugular. Lydia loves to exploit my every insecurity.”

  Blake’s brow knit together in confusion. “You’re a gorgeous, talented, rich rock star. Half the men in America would kill to be me right now. What have you got to feel insecure about?”

  “I’m human, Blake. That girl on the album covers and in the music videos isn’t real. I have as many insecurities as the next woman, especially when I come home to the place and the people that knew me before I was anybody special.”

  “You were always someone special, Ivy. Maybe it took a platinum album to convince you, but you were always special to me.”

  “Blake . . . ?” Ivy said quickly, and then seemed to lose her courage.

  “What is it?”

  Ivy sighed and looked at his bow tie instead of his eyes. “If that night at Auburn never happened and we didn’t break up when we did . . . would you have asked me to marry you one day?”

  Blake was a little stunned by the question. It was something he hadn’t thought about in a long time. “Why on earth would you ask that now, after all these years? What did Lydia say to you?”

  A tiny flush of pink embarrassment rushed to Ivy’s cheeks. “Lydia . . . Lydia said you thought I was good enough to sleep with, but that you never would’ve married me because I wasn’t good enough to be a Chamberlain.”

  “Jesus,” Blake muttered, softly shaking his head. If there weren’t a hundred people watching and a spotlight highlighting their every move, Blake would’ve sought out Lydia and given her a piece of his mind.

  “So . . . would you?” Ivy pressed.

  “Yes,” he said simply. “I had every intention of marrying you and making a future together. Ivy, despite the fact that I was the one who ruined our relationship, I was already thinking about rings. I was planning to propose that Christmas.”

  Ivy’s eyes grew wide as Berlin cranked out the last few notes and Gloria invited everyone onto the dance floor for the next song, Madonna’s “Crazy for You.” With the spotlight gone, they were once again blanketed in the dim multicolored lights. Dozens of couples crowded around them, forcing them closer together.

  Blake crooked his finger beneath Ivy’s chin and lifted it so she had no choice but to look at him. “There’s no such thing as ‘good enough’ or ‘not good enough’ to be a Chamberlain. We’re just a family, not a pantheon. Don’t let anyone ever tell you you’re not good enough for me.”

  Ivy’s eyes searched his face for a moment. He kept waiting for her to say something, but she didn’t. Instead, her palms gripped his lapels and pulled him down until their lips met. There was so much emotion in her kiss, so much behind every desperate caress and nibble of her lips and teeth and tongue. Appreciation, desire, relief.

  There, on the darkened dance floor, it was easy to give in to it. He let his hands roam over the slick fabric of her dress. Here, they were public, yet somehow it felt like they were all alone in the crowd. It was just like their first prom all over again. Nervous bodies pressed against one another. Hormones racing with the thrill of the night’s possibilities.

  Desire surged through his body, tensing his muscles and sending his blood furiously pumping through his extremities. The hardened ache of need strained against his ridiculously tight tuxedo pants, making him thankful it was very dark.

  “Ivy,” Blake whispered against her lips as he pulled away. “I want you so badly. I’ve wanted you since I saw you naked outside your cabin that first day.”

  “I was not naked.”

  Blake smiled. Even now, she argued with him. “The memories of your mostly nude body have haunted me for a week. Holding you now, I can’t stop thinking about touching you again. About having you again.”

  Ivy smiled, her body pressed into every obvious inch of his need for her. “It is prom night, after all.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  It took longer than they wanted to finish out their duties for the evening, but eventually they were able to hand over their crowns and slink out of the dance unnoticed. There was a rush of adrenaline surging through Ivy’s veins as they slipped into his Corvette and peeled out of the parking lot. She felt seventeen again, her stomach aflutter with nerves about giving herself to Blake for the first time.

  That night had been romantic and wonderful. She didn’t expect the same from tonight—they weren’t blissfully in teenage love like they had been then. Still, she hoped it would be an occasion to remember for all the right reasons.

  If she’d thought kissing Blake was a bad idea a few days ago, going to his house with the intention of having sex with him was a horrible plan. But so much had changed since she came home, she couldn’t help herself. Obviously this wouldn’t turn into anything serious, but there was something cathartic in their reunion. The two of them making up and making love felt like it would somehow heal their old wounds.

  Even hearing him say the things he’d said tonight had done a lot to help her put those past hurts behind her. Even after they’d apologized for what they’d both done, the doubts that Lydia planted in her head back in school had always bothered her on some level. Blake thought she was good enough. She had to believe he meant that.

  She also had to believe that nothing had really happened between him and Lydia. It had take
n time for her to get back to that mental place, but it made more sense. She’d watched Lydia chase him all through school without success. Blake had never been interested in her, even before he asked Ivy out. If at any point he’d wanted Lydia, he could’ve dropped Ivy and had her in a second. But he hadn’t. From the way he spoke about her now, nothing seemed to have changed.

  “So, I thought you still lived in Rosewood,” Ivy said after they’d been driving for quite some time.

  “I do. We’re almost there.”

  They turned off the highway onto a dirt road that meandered through the trees. They rounded a corner and crossed a small bridge that spanned a creek before they came to a large clearing in the woods.

  Blake’s house was exactly what Ivy would’ve expected but nothing like she could’ve imagined. It was rustic in style, with clean, contemporary lines. It was two stories high with a large, sloped A-frame roof on one end and floor-to-ceiling windows.

  They pulled around the back and Blake hit the button to open one of the four garage doors that lined that side of the house. Inside, the garage was large and immaculate with white linoleum floors, white walls, and bright lights. His truck was parked in the far bay, with his boat and his two dirt bikes parked in between.

  Blake helped Ivy out of the car and walked her to the door. It opened into the large open space of his great room.

  Ivy walked in, a little stunned by the beauty of his home. It was as though someone had taken every bit of his personality and shaped it into a house.

  The two-story-high ceiling of the kitchen had skylights on the sloped roof that came down and fanned out to the more intimate dining room. The near wall was entirely covered in stone with a professional grade stove carved into it. The kitchen island was made of distressed ebony cabinetry and a shiny black granite countertop. There were arched exposed beams overhead and worn, reclaimed wood floors underfoot.

  “Do you like it?” he asked as he tugged at his bow tie and slipped out of his tailcoat. “It used to be an old mill. I had it pretty much gutted and redone, although I tried to reuse as much of the original material as I could. All the stone and beams are untouched. And the floors.”

  Ivy wandered into the living room. There was a massive fireplace and plush leather couches that invited sitting and watching football on the wide-screen television mounted above it. “It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anyplace like it. It must’ve cost you a fortune.”

  “Well,” Blake said with a shrug, “real estate is cheaper out here than it is in California. Still, I put a lot into it to get it just right. I wanted a place to live out the rest of my life, and this is it.”

  Ivy walked over to a pair of French doors that opened out onto a deck. Blake followed her and opened the doors up. “Go on outside. I’ll get us a drink and meet you out there.”

  Blake returned to the kitchen as Ivy stepped outside. It was cool in the woods, but not uncomfortable. The deck was large and partially covered with a set of furniture for gatherings and an outdoor kitchen. There was another fireplace near the seating area, which roared to life as she got close to it. Ivy leaped back, turning when she heard Blake laugh.

  “Sorry. It’s gas. I flipped the switch as I stepped out,” he said, offering her a glass of white wine.

  Ivy took a large sip to calm her nerves and walked over to the railing. The property sloped down a little where the creek flowed by. She looked out into the woods, but couldn’t spy a single light in the distance. “Got any neighbors?” she asked.

  Blake leaned on the railing beside her and shook his head. “Not really. I bought twenty acres and my nearest neighbor owns fifty, so I’ve never even seen the guy.”

  “That’s nice,” Ivy said. “I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have enough space to breathe. Sometimes it feels like I’m never truly alone. There’s always someone around, someone watching.”

  “Have you ever . . . considered getting a place a little farther from the rat race of LA and Manhattan?”

  Ivy turned to him with a smirk curling her lips. “You mean like moving back here?”

  He shrugged and sipped his wine. “I know California and New York are where you conduct a lot of business, but there’s nothing that says you can’t have a place to go that’s away from all that. Where you could have some real downtime, be that here or a mountain house in Tennessee or a chalet in Colorado.”

  “I’ve thought about it. The last few years have just left me so little time to devote to anything other than work. When I go back to LA, it’s back into the studio to record a new album. That means new videos, promotional trips, maybe another tour next summer. Kevin is pushing me to tour Asia this time.”

  “You have to make the time to have a life, Ivy. There’s a whole world outside the music business. You deserve to have a home that isn’t crawling with press and a relationship that isn’t documented daily online.”

  Ivy heard what he said, but it seemed like an impossibility.

  “It took a three-hundred-pound linebacker to make me reevaluate things. Since high school, my life had been nothing but football. I was going to be Brett Favre or Joe Montana and play ball into my forties. And then, there I was, lame at twenty-four. It took a long time for me to figure out what I was supposed to do with my life. Hell, I’m still trying to figure it out.”

  “You really can’t play anymore?”

  Blake shook his head. “It was a freak occurrence. I’d been hit harder a hundred times before, but this time ruined everything.”

  “May I see?” She didn’t know why, but she wanted to see the scars. They’d both changed over the years, but his injury was physical proof of everything he’d been through. She needed to see and understand what had happened to him while they were apart.

  He hesitated for a moment, biting his lip, and then he finally nodded. Blake didn’t seem comfortable with the idea, but the fact that he would do it anyway spoke volumes. He lifted his foot up onto the nearby patio chair and tugged up his gray slacks. There were red scars running across his kneecap and down his calf. Another on his thigh disappeared beneath the rolled cuff of his pants.

  “It’s pretty gruesome, so I don’t show many people. I got a new knee and some titanium rods that reinforce the shin bone and femur. It took twenty-three screws to hold it all together. Unfortunately, it didn’t make me bionic. It made me a benchwarmer.”

  Ivy reached out and ran her fingertips gently over the scars. He shivered under her touch, squeezing his eyes closed for a moment. “Did I hurt you?” she asked, pulling her hand away.

  “No.” Blake sighed and put down his leg. “I’m just not used to people looking at it, much less touching it.”

  “Does it still hurt?”

  “Yeah, although not as much as my pride. Even after all the physical therapy, I’m still only at sixty percent of my previous flexibility and mobility. I can jog slowly, but not for long. There’s no way I could make it through training camp, much less take another hard tackle. Out on the football field is a line of guys looking to lay the quarterback out on the turf. I couldn’t risk it again. But it was a good excuse to get a spa put in,” he said, pointing to the hot tub set into the deck on the far side. “Therapy,” he said with a smile that seemed hard wrought.

  “Do you miss it?”

  “Every single day. The only thing that makes life bearable some days is working with the kids.”

  Ivy was glad he had something. She felt more than a touch of guilt knowing she had exceeded her every goal and he had lost it all. “Coaching seems to come naturally to you. I’ve heard nothing but how great you are with the players and how much they seem to love you.”

  At last, Blake smiled with genuine warmth. “Sometimes things work out the way they’re meant to. Grant likes to remind me of that when I’m feeling down about things. I still have football, it’s just not the way I envisioned it. And now I have time to settle dow
n, start a family, and have a life outside of the game if I want to.”

  Settle down. Those were words she hadn’t considered in a long time. Ivy wasn’t sure if it was the cooling air or the serious turn of the conversation, but she started to shiver in her strapless dress.

  Blake looked at her and frowned. “Let’s get back inside. I’ll give you the tour of upstairs.”

  Ivy followed him back into the house and up the circling wood-and-iron staircase that led to the second floor. Blake’s injury hadn’t been noticeable to her before, and even now he wasn’t limping. He’d ridden horses and danced. He’d walked all night around the fair. However much pain he was in, he did everything he could to hide it.

  “There’s an elevator in the far corner of the house,” he said as they neared the top. “I had it put in because I knew eventually these stairs would be a problem, but I refuse to use it until I absolutely have to.”

  Blake opened a door into a dark room and flipped the switch. “Here’s the media room, used most often for watching football with my brothers, of course.” There were rows of leather chairs facing a large screen and a projector mounted in the ceiling.

  Down the hall was his office. The space was lined with dark wood bookshelves that were filled with leather-bound books, trophies, plaques, and photos of his football glory days. Ivy expected him to spend more time showing off some of his achievements, but he skimmed right past them. The layer of dust on the desk indicated he didn’t go in there very often. He tried to be positive, but the office was proof to her that he wasn’t over losing his football career yet. It had to be hard to be trapped between pride in your achievements and sadness over having to stop before your time.

  “Here at the end is my room.”

  Blake opened a set of double doors made of old wood. “These were repurposed outer mill doors,” he said. The sharp A-line of the ceiling continued into the room with sloped ceilings that framed the king-size bed in the center of the room. The bed had a stone-and-wood headboard they had to circle around, since the bed faced the wall of windows, not the entrance.