He ran the five steps to the common area, this time catching TJ’s attention. “Where’s Kelsey?”
“With you.”
He shook his head. His breathing raced; a panic like he had never known set in. He wondered if she had somehow slipped past him and was in his room again. He looked. No Kelsey. He stuck his head through Alex’s open door, then assaulted Craig, knowing that Kelsey liked him and may have crawled in after leaving him. Craig didn’t even get upset, and JD assumed that his terror showed on his face.
She wasn’t there. All four of them converged in the common area toward the front. His voice strained, giving away his feelings, but he didn’t care. “We’re on a moving bus. Where could she have gone?”
Alex looked at him askance. “I thought she was with you. She was a two-thirty last night.”
That made TJ and Craig raise their eyebrows, but Alex kept talking. “I thought I heard some noises that would indicate things were going well.”
“You did.” JD laid it out there. It didn’t matter what his friends knew. Nothing mattered except finding Kelsey. “We did, but I made her cry.”
TJ stood up, putting his hands on JD’s shoulders, but he couldn’t stand being touched, even by his younger brother, and he shrugged the hands off. TJ spoke anyway, “Listen, JD, the bus wasn’t in constant motion. Maybe she got off. Where are her things?”
JD barely heard the end of the question. He slammed toward the very front, crossing the line he wasn’t supposed to while the bus was in motion, and he got the driver’s attention, “Ben, did the woman who came on last night get off?”
Ben nodded. “Yup. About four-thirty.”
“But she didn’t get back on?” Horrifying thoughts assaulted him. Had Ben left her there? Was she stranded?
“Said something about fetching a car and getting her flight.”
JD felt his heart slow. He wasn’t sure he believed Ben. Surely Kelsey wouldn’t have . . .
But he ran back and checked his room. Sure enough, both her bags were gone. Kelsey had left, voluntarily, in the middle of the night. She had gotten off at an unknown gas station somewhere along the freeway.
JD sank into the corner of his room, sitting on the floor, feeling the rumble of the bus beneath him. A while later TJ joined him, having asked a few more questions of Ben. “She got off about halfway between St. Paul and Chicago and told him she would get one of the local rental car companies to drive out to her. She said she was heading back to St. Paul.”
JD didn’t respond, but his brain did. She had decided to wait at a gas station, for a stranger, rather than stay on the bus with him. It was easier to drive hours out of her way, than stay and let the bus drop her off at O’Hare Airport.
All he could think was that he had made mistake after mistake.
Every scenario he’d played in his brain before yesterday involved him telling her how he felt before any sex happened. He’d held his beating heart out to her last night, but hadn’t said so.
“What happened?” TJ’s voice was like his posture, beside JD on the floor, simply offering support.
JD knew he didn’t have to answer, but he had no control of the words pouring out of him. “Everything was great, but after, when I realized I hadn’t told her . . . I didn’t get a chance to. She started crying.”
“Jesus, JD.” But TJ’s voice was full of sympathy.
“She misses her husband still. I guess she wasn’t ready. Then she disappeared.” His breath came in gulps as he realized the ramifications of Kelsey not speaking to him.
TJ’s arm slung around his shoulder. “I just have a hard time believing she didn’t feel the same way about you. It seemed it was always written all over her face. She’ll come around.”
“No.” JD didn’t believe that. Kelsey had always been decisive. She stuck to her guns, she wouldn’t have run if she’d intended to turn around.
“Sometimes women are just slow to see what’s in front of their faces. People say it’s men, but that’s not always true.”
JD prayed his brother was right, but he didn’t believe the plea would be answered. He prayed that Kelsey was all right.
TJ fished through the leather bag in the corner, pulling out his brother’s cell phone. JD stared at it as it was slapped into his hand.
“Call her. Find out if she’s okay.”
JD nodded, hitting speed-dial. It went straight to voicemail, sending his heart pounding again. What if she wasn’t okay? What if she was beside the road, or something had happened at that gas station?
TJ watched, and tried again. “Would the babysitter know where she is?”
JD nodded and punched through his contact list until he had Bethany. He waited while the phone rang, his hands close to full-on shaking. He didn’t know if Kelsey would ever speak to him again, but worse, he didn’t know where she was, didn’t know if she was safe.
“Hello?”
“Bethany! It’s JD.”
“Oh hey, how are—”
He cut her off, he didn’t have time for pleasantries, “Do you know where Kelsey is?”
He heard the frown in her voice, but she answered. “She called a few hours ago, said her flight was a little late and asked if I could pick up the kids at school. Is that okay? Are you coming back?”
His breath expelled, and his shoulders sighed. Kelsey was okay. Her phone wasn’t answering because she was in the air. “No, it’s okay. Thank you, Bethany.”
He simply hung up, unwilling to listen any further, unable to carry on a conversation.
“She’s all right.” TJ could tell just from watching JD’s posture.
“She’s on a later flight.”
“Okay.” TJ’s hand rested on JD’s shoulder while he stood. Silently, he left.
In a moment, JD was alone in the corner of his room, his head resting in his hands. He didn’t see how things had gone so wrong, when they had felt so right. Maybe they had only felt that way to him. In his head, it hadn’t been sex, it had been something he’d never experienced before. Afterward had been something he’d never experienced before either. He’d had no idea how to handle it, and clearly he’d handled it wrong.
Those same thoughts cycled through his brain. Never really changing, just seeping deeper and deeper into him, down into some level of acceptance of what had happened.
At one point, TJ had brought him food. JD had wanted to tell his brother where to put it. He was spoiling for a chance to yell his frustrations at someone. But he discovered he hadn’t the energy.
Later, the bus rumble changed underneath him, although JD barely noticed it until it bounced him around too much. Just then he felt the bus stop, and the small lurch as the brake was set.
Again TJ came to sit beside him. For a moment he just sat, offering his presence. But he was TJ and it wasn’t long before he offered his voice, too. “She should be home now, right? With the kids?”
JD looked at his watch, somehow it had become four in the afternoon, and from the view out the window, he was very much in Chicago. He nodded.
TJ simply picked up the cell phone that JD had left lying beside him on the floor. It hadn’t rung. She wasn’t calling him. “You always call her when we get in.”
JD didn’t answer, so TJ punched buttons until he found Kelsey’s number. JD didn’t pay attention until his brother handed him the phone, “It’s ringing.”
He panicked, his thoughts and heart racing, but TJ saw that and talked him down. “You always call her when we get in, you can’t change that now. You have to go on tonight. And you clearly need to hear her voice.”
What if she hangs up?
He didn’t get to worry further than that, because her voice answered, sweet and unsure. “Hello?”
TJ left the room, and JD closed his eyes, using all his energy for the conversation. “Hey, Kelse, it’s me, JD.” He didn’t know why he’d said that.
“I know.”
“I just wanted to see if you got in okay.”
Something i
n her tone softened. “Yeah, I’m here, and so are the kids—”
She sounded like she was about to hand him off, so he butted in. “You gave me a hell of a scare. I just had to be sure you were all right.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I just had to . . .” She didn’t finish.
“I know. I just needed to hear your voice.” He sighed, too tired to think of anything else to say. “Can you put Andie on?”
“Of course.”
A few moments and a few shuffling noises later he heard his daughter, bright and cheerful, “Hi, Daddy!”
It was exactly what he needed.
Somehow he made it onstage that evening. The guys asked nothing of him, except that he hit his notes. He spent Friday in a haze, trying to figure out what to do to fix the rift between himself and Kelsey, but he came up with no solutions.
When the bus stopped, they had only half an hour to unload. But TJ showed up in his room again, and handed him the cell phone. “Call her.”
JD shook his head. “I called her yesterday. She’s okay.”
“You call her every day. And things are not okay. I can see that in your face.” He held the phone out, waiting for JD to take it from his hand. But JD didn’t. TJ continued, “I would imagine her face looks much the same. She needs to hear from you. Call her.”
Still JD simply looked out the window at the unfamiliar skyline that had come to a standstill. He didn’t even know where they were, and he didn’t care.
What he did know was that TJ was almost right. Kelsey probably didn’t need to hear from him, but he needed to hear her voice. Needed to put every patch in place before he had to face her. So he took the phone.
TJ looked at him, “Good boy.”
At any other time, it would have been insulting, but right now it just passed by. TJ stood in the doorway just long enough to see that JD dialed Kelsey’s number, then shut the pocket door, and left him with his thoughts and the ringing of the phone.
It rang long enough that he wasn’t sure she would pick up. The dreary sky outside beyond the bus let loose, hitting the window with a smack of rain, and keeping him from hearing any noises from the phone.
Her soft voice startled him. “Hey, JD.”
“Hi.” It bothered him how he warmed because she had simply picked up and deigned to speak to him. For a moment he couldn’t think of anything else to say, but he realized if he didn’t speak, things would only get worse. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Do you want to speak to the kids?”
“No.” His voice sounded weary to his own ears, “I want to talk to you. Tell me what’s going on.”
She could have interpreted that any way she wanted. “I got a check from the label.”
“And?”
“It’s huge.” There was a pause. “I thought I would take the kids on a small vacation later.”
“You deserve one. Maybe you leave the kids with me and you go with a friend.” He smiled, until he realized that he might wind up babysitting while she went on an overnight with a date. His stomach turned at the very thought, but he worked hard to hold steady.
There was a pause. He had caused it, they had never had pauses before, but after a few seconds ticked by unused, she filled it in. “Brenda called me. They wanted to know what I would do with photos of their girl band. For t-shirts, a poster.”
He gave her what she’d given him. “Of course she did. You’re an amazing photographer. You’ll get it.”
“Thank you.” She didn’t pause, but her voice was soft, as though she couldn’t quite commit herself to the volume required to be excited. “I have to research the band. So, if you could watch the kids a few nights, I could go see them perform.”
“I’ll be back on Sunday at six a.m. Any time after that will be fine.”
He heard a trace of a smile. “You don’t have to watch them the day you get in. Maybe later.”
“Whatever you want.” He meant that about more than just the babysitting, but didn’t know how to say that. He would give her anything, except unlimited space from him. He just needed her too much.
When he hung up, he hadn’t spoken to the kids at all. He wished he’d had time, but repairing things with Kelsey was far more important.
That night he went on stage remembering what he played for: Kelsey’s studio.
He asked her Saturday evening when he called if she had started clearing the garage for her portrait shop yet.
She hadn’t.
She asked if Alex and Bridget had patched things up. As far as he knew, Alex had fixed them that very evening. If only he could do as well.
This time he asked if he could let himself in and sleep on the futon, so he’d be there when Andie woke up.
She hesitated.
After all the times that she had led him in there and sent him to bed, all the days he had just stayed there when the layover between tours was too short, she hesitated.
He was about to promise that he’d stay in the back room, that he wouldn’t come climb into bed with her, when she said, “Sure, that would be okay.”
“Thank you.”
It grated. He’d never had to ask her before. Never felt the urge to thank her profusely just for letting him stay. Of course, he had never before pushed himself on her and made her cry.
They hung up and he went about getting into the theater and getting his bag into his dressing room. All the while, he was thinking that he knew he hadn’t forced himself on her. She’d been willing, at the time. But maybe if he’d talked to her first, instead of just kissing her and totally losing his head, they both would have realized how she felt and not made such a colossal mistake.
Of course, if they had talked, and he had told her how he felt, she might have pulled away just as much. Maybe it was better the way it had gone down. He had a chance to redeem himself.
The only problem was that he knew what it felt like to be inside her—to have her kiss him back and move with him. But he wouldn’t have that again, and the knowledge only hurt him. So he shoved it to the far reaches of his brain.
He went out on stage and tried to smile. He played for the people in the audience, trying to convert new fans. They would support him in the coming months, if the band could rack up the numbers. He did a fine job of faking it, until they got to I am. The song was now a knife twisting deep in his chest.
He realized that he had written that song too close to the heart. He hadn’t played with anything to make the song work better. He’d simply told it exactly as it was. The problem now was that he recognized that he was all those things in the song. Except for one, hopeful.
TJ sang the last line in the spot light. The instruments were quiet; the way it was intended to be. It was a damn good thing, too. Because, by that last line, his jaw was clenched tight, and it was all he could do not to smash his guitar in frustration. But country fans weren’t used to musicians smashing instruments on stage.
So he pulled it together and made it through.
They hit the road for the last time, and he packed everything before falling into a deep sleep of exhaustion. Dreams came in senses, not stories. And when he jolted into reality with the stopping of the bus, he could still smell her on his sheets.
He blinked awake, dressed and brushed his teeth before getting off the bus. This made him the last one off. Only TJ addressed the Kelsey issue, with a hug and a ‘go get’em,’ before leaving him to drive home himself.
Problem was ‘home’ was his condo, and ‘home’ was Kelsey’s house, too. His car arrived at the curb without knowing how he’d gotten there. The sun had peeked out from behind clouds while he had driven.
Still he pulled out his instruments and hauled his tired and fearful feet to the front door. Using his key, he let himself inside. The kids rushed at him, already awake and up, screaming and clamoring for hugs and kisses.
He grabbed each of them in turn, giving a bear hug, and asking how they were. But there were only the three kids, and it didn’t
take that long.
Kelsey had stood at the fringes of the frenzy, in her oversize t-shirt, but this time she had pulled on sleep pants, and JD felt the loss right there with the idea that she had already altered things because of Wednesday. She would glance at him, meet his eyes, and offer a forced smile before looking away.
Still, he did it. He stood up and looked her square in the face, and held his arms out to her.
She hesitated until he felt the sting of rejection.
Then her feet started to move. She came to him, and the hug she gave him was stiff and awkward, but it was all he was allowed to hope for.
She started to pull away, and he wasn’t going to hold her too tight, to keep her there. Instead he waylaid her by leaning over and speaking into her ear. “I’m sorry.”
He felt her head shake ‘no’ from where she had leaned against him. This time she whispered. “Don’t be. It was my fault.”
“No. It was mine.”
Chapter 32
JD ran home to get nicer clothes before they all went to church. Andie walked with Allie and Daniel, the three of them chattering endlessly. Kelsey was clearly in control of the little group. And he wasn’t included.
It was the same thing they’d done plenty of times before. Only this time he didn’t hold her hand. She didn’t even scoot closer to him after the kids had left for the story, she remained a full seat away on the hard pew. She didn’t relax during the sermon, her eyes didn’t wander, and she stayed a little too focused.
On the surface everything was fine, they functioned together. The details made a world of difference, and a world of hurt. His mind had wandered during the sermon. He almost felt her moving against his fingers, thought about what she looked like lying there naked, and how her eyes went hot with want when he’d shed the last of his clothes.
Church was about the last place he should have been thinking of that. Her skirt was meant to be proper—it wasn’t improper, certainly no one looked at her funny for wearing it to church—but it skimmed her curves so that he could see the dip of her waist and the flare of her hips. The sweater covered her from chin to fingertips, but it was white and soft and fuzzy and begged to be touched.
Our Song Page 27
