by J. R. Rogue
Blind Melody
Copyright © 2020 by J. R. Rogue
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover Design: Cover Me Darling
Editing: Christina Hart of Savage Hart Book Services
Proofreading: Amanda Cuff of Savage Hart Book Services
For anyone who has found
a second—or hell, seventh—chance at love.
Blind Melody
A MUSE & MUSIC SERIES NOVEL
J. R. Rogue
About Blind Melody
I’m not a song. I don’t have blue eyes like the girls you sing about. I have a blue soul.
Sonnet Rosewood needs a new chapter—the kind that doesn’t remind her of anything she’s leaving behind in the Ozarks. So, when opportunity beckons to escape to the Great Smoky Mountains for a writing retreat, she answers with a firm yes.
But the arrival of a decade-old and short-lived fling at the cabin changes everything.
How quickly we push past the barriers we erected between ourselves for years.
Recognizing the beautiful voice of the unexpected guest reminds her of his name, Hunter Hart: the man she wrote as forgettable, who vowed to show her he was anything but if given a second chance.
Maybe you want the challenge more than you want the girl.
What started as Sonnet’s attempt to escape her past thrusts her straight into the responsibilities of another’s, making their future sound more and more like the sad songs they’ve been writing together. While their passion is undeniable, their happily-ever-after is not. The single father’s rules leave little room for a different kind of love. And Sonnet has rules of her own—to never again wait for a man to open his heart to her.
Contents
It Won’t Be The Same This Year
Either Way
Kinfolks
Who Am I
Fire Escape
Don’t Give Your Heart to a Rambler
Brand New Man
Some Girls Do
Peter Pan
Don’t Close Your Eyes
Cover Me Up
Dangerous
We Really Shouldn’t Be Doing This
Lonely Ain’t The Only Game In Town
If You Wanna Touch Her, Ask!
Let’s Work Together
What She’s Doing Now
Between An Old Memory And Me
Would These Arms Be In Your Way
I Wanna Go Too Far
I Don’t Want To Be A One-Night Stand
Rumor
You Don’t Even Know Who I Am
Used Heart For Sale
Hard To Forget
Queen Of My Double Wide Trailer
Lovin’ You Against My Will
Life Ain’t Always Beautiful
Why Can’t We
Back On The Map
In A Week Or Two
Rope The Moon
Meet Me In The Middle
It’s Never Easy To Say Goodbye
She Don’t Know She’s Beautiful
Enough Is Enough
This Woman And This Man
Friends In Low Places
I’m Just Here To Love You
Lost In The Music
I Know That Hurt by Heart
She’s Every Woman
Brown Eyed Bird
This Romeo Ain’t Got Julie Yet
Georgie Off My Mind
Love Without End Amen
This Ain’t Tennessee
Learning to Live Again
That’s What I Get For Loving You
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by J. R. Rogue
It Won’t Be The Same This Year
Sonnet
I’m going to be real with you. I, Sonnet Rosewood, love Christmas more than any other holiday on the calendar. Nothing compares to it—not the Fourth of July, not Halloween, not Thanksgiving, none of them. Christmas is the best. Candies, cookies, wrapping paper. Tiny villages and cheesy movies with predictable plots. Hiding the pickle ornament on the tree, nutcrackers, silver and gold. The feeling, the glitter, the snow globes.
It’s probably toxic, the fake snow—and my clinging to the excitement—but I latch on anyway.
Maybe it’s the feeling of it. Hope. There’s nothing more powerful, or more crushing.
And the idea of Christmas? It never hurt me. Not like the humans in my life.
So, selling my Christmas trees, my wreaths, and everything that made my home warm and cozy in the late months of the year—everything but my childhood ornaments—gutted me.
I watch the last woman I connected with on Facebook Marketplace drive out of the parking lot; the Christmas tree my ex-husband and I picked out years ago, now sticking out the back of her SUV. My eyes feel like wells of salt, but there’s no one left in my life to witness my tears.
Before she moved, my mother consoled me over my ending marriage. She’s the only one in my family who’s been through a divorce. Four, to be exact. She perfected the art of catch and release. As a traveling nurse, she also perfected the art of finding men who lived elsewhere—and convincing them to move to our small town to start a life with her. And when it didn’t work out, which it never did, they left. They moved away. They went back to wherever she found them.
While she tried to comfort me, my mother didn’t have any real advice for me when I needed it. As my former life slipped through my fingers. Her exes moved away; mine did not. And no one tells you what to expect when you go through a divorce in a small town. Instead, they tell you what to expect in a small-town marriage. Because the picture is pretty.
I witnessed it in the form of revolving stepfathers I never warmed to.
It’s a life of potluck dinners, everyone knowing your name and remembering your anniversary, and a childhood friend standing up to be your maid of honor.
It’s all sold in a neat little box. I’ve never been one for cute packages wrapped in silk ribbons, unless we were talking about Christmas, but I bought it. I bought the life I lived and used to love because it was familiar.
And then, when it all fell apart, so did I. Small-town whispers are the loudest noise in the world. Betrayal comes from those you least expect it.
I look at my car—packed with a month’s worth of clothes and nothing else. The rest of my belongings are in storage, and the last bill tying me to brick and mortar has been paid.
I’m free to go wherever I want. Free to settle down in any city that beckons me. Well, at least after this little trip I have to take now. But I haven’t felt the call of passion or desire in so long, I wouldn’t know what to do if the tug reached me.
There’s a cabin in the woods hosting weekly writing retreats high in the Smoky Mountains, expecting me. I booked the trip the day after I got out of the hospital due to a panic attack, three hours before my therapist suggested a vacation of sorts at my session later that day.
I already knew what I needed, and her confirmation didn’t soothe me. The heart in my chest was as broken as she’d been expressing it was for months. It just took a little longer for me to catch on, to see through the fog.
The car keys in my hand are heavy. I look at them, and my attention falls to my pale skin. I’ve been borderline agoraphobic for months. Grocery delivery, my saving grace. Or maybe just another bar on the prison I willingly locked myself in.
The city limit sign is five blocks
away. All I have to do is cross it, to never come back, never see him again, never see my former best friend again. Never see anyone again who’d told me bullshit lies.
There’s nowhere that endings cannot follow me, but I can live in denial for a while. Denial and I are like lovers—far closer than I was with my ex-husband, that’s for sure. Then again, anything dark was a better lover to me than he’d been.
At least when I didn’t fuck the darkness for a while, it didn’t make me feel like shit. It just waited for me to return.
My body is stiff when I move to my car, open the door, and take a seat behind the wheel. The vehicle is new. Another purchase made to wipe the slate clean. To ease my heart. I convinced myself that if I surrounded myself with new things—a new car, new clothes, the promise of a new life—the ache would go away.
My therapist reminded me my problems didn’t stem from material things, that a shopping spree would be a temporary fix, but I did it anyway.
Preston hated my shopping habits. So, I shopped with the money I’d been awarded in the divorce. Our life was cut cleanly down the middle. He got the house; I got the money and the freedom I’d reached for our entire marriage.
He got the town, the people, the family. I got an open road and my words. The words that ripped us apart. I look at the passenger seat. Next to my purse sits the novel I wrote. The words that ripped love out—root and stem.
The truth is, I would have always chosen the words over him.
No marriage could have survived that.
My car is not packed to the hilt. There’s a suitcase in the trunk, and two duffle bags in the backseat. That’s it. But it still feels cramped, loud, and heavy. If I don’t exit soon, I might start hyperventilating.
Shedding my belongings slowly over the past year has felt like ripping a flaming bandaid off sensitive skin. But even after getting rid of ninety-five percent of my belongings, I still feel choked by the remnants of my past surrounding me in this vehicle.
I didn’t know where I would land for most of our separation, and this writing retreat is just a different temporary fix. I have no idea where I’ll go when it’s over.
The temptation to live in Nashville is there. But I have a past that haunts. I don’t want to stand close to it. I don’t want to think about him. So I drove through it, only stopping for the night in Knoxville before heading straight to the Smoky Mountains.
The one thing I knew for sure when I left Missouri? I didn’t want to live in the town I saw my marriage bloom, then ultimately wither in.
The cabin in front of me is massive, but with the owner being a millionaire, I shouldn’t be surprised.
I need to avoid looking at the whites of my knuckles, so I close my eyes and count, then hum to the song surrounding me. My car stereo is still playing the Christmas music I listened to for most of my trek through Tennessee. It’s a little out of place for most in October, but I don’t care.
I keep my eyes closed for three songs—three slow and somber Christmas songs filled with piano and choir, violin, and cello.
When I finally make my way out of my car and toward the property, it’s the leaves that wake me up. I can hear them so clearly beneath my feet. The death of a new season comes into focus. Maybe this will be a new season for me. Finally. Because only at the end of the last, can the new season begin.
There is only one car in front of the cabin. A sleek black car, a model I don’t recognize. I don’t know shit about cars, but anyone could smell the money from a mile away. Whoever the author is paying to run the writing retreat I’m walking into, obviously makes a shit ton of money. It can’t actually be Seraphina Daniels, can it? I sweat a little at the thought.
The last time I visited a cabin in the woods was for my honeymoon. Preston and I never got to take the trips we wanted. Carefully laid plans were lost in the bustle of everyday life. It never slowed down, and in the mania of our lives and warring interests, we lost ourselves.
One year later, and I can’t stop comparing little things to my life before. I know this is partially due to my entrapment in our town during our divorce. But now, I’m staring my new beginning in the face. Full windows, like eyes; an expansive front step, the grinning mouth.
My hand turns the knob, and I walk in, calling out. My hello echoes. The voice that greets me is husky and kind as I close the door, turning to the sound. The room I’ve entered is enormous. Long picnic-style tables extend from the other side where the kitchen sits, with its ivory cabinets and ebony granite. Windows let the other part of the property in, glittering. I see mountains. So many mountains. I can almost taste the mist.
A woman with dark hair and tattoos covering her arms smiles at me from across the room.
I’m stuck, staring. It’s Seraphina Daniels. New York Times Bestselling author, Seraphina Daniels. Jesus Merry Christmas.
“Hi,” I finally say.
Either Way
Sonnet
Halsey warned everyone not to meet their idols, but I didn’t take her song lyric to heart.
I’ve been a fan of Sera’s since she started writing; back when she wrote erotica. Before her poetry and women’s fiction. Before the movie deals and fame. Before the movie star boyfriend, Tristan Kane. And with that, the tabloid gossip.
I’m a complete fangirl of hers. And for the past ten minutes, I’ve been standing on the back balcony of the massive cabin she owns, listening to words fall from her mouth as she tells me about her retreats. I already know everything she’s telling me—I read it all on the website—but to hear it from her is mesmerizing.
I went to one of her poetry readings in St. Louis five years ago. Her cadence, the way she pauses, all of it pulls a person in.
“We aren’t stiff around here,” she says. “We don’t have guided classes or sessions. Everyone who comes here isn’t learning how to write. They’re mostly learning how to enjoy writing again. Maybe the business of it has gotten in the way, or they’ve been burnt out for a while. You’re on your own for breakfast and lunch. We have the two fridges you can use in there,” she points inside, “and the grocery store is at the bottom of the mountain. You should have passed it on your way in. There’s also a mini fridge in your room,” Sera says, walking back into the cabin.
I follow her, nodding along like a bobblehead as we cross the room to a staircase, descending down flight after flight of stairs.
“You’re going to be on the bottom floor, away from the regular guests since you’re staying the whole month.”
“Do people ever do that?” I know my request was weird. I’m surprised my email was returned so kindly when I sent it. I sounded clipped and erratic, even in the written form. It’s how I felt that day.
“No, you’re our first. But we have room down here.” She smiles as she turns, stepping off the last step into an open area.
Bedroom doors surround us on every wall. There’s so much white here, which is surprising given the exterior. It looks like a regular southern cabin on the outside. Inside, you’re greeted with creams and grays, colorful art, and pewter.
“Dinner is catered every night,” she continues. “The schedule is stuck to that fridge. Normally everyone starts coming out of their shell around four PM. There will be a lot of night owls. Are you one?”
“Not really, but I’ve had a bit of insomnia lately.” My routine is so far gone I don’t remember what it feels like to rise with the dawn. To put my hands to the keyboard while my ex-husband slept.
“Well, this floor will be perfect for you then,” she says. “The artists we bring in normally just sleep down here. They spend the rest of the time upstairs. As I said, we don’t have classes, but the professionals we bring in are required to be accessible. If they’re writing, they’re out in the common rooms, so they’re always able to give advice, talk shop, talk the business they’re in.”
“Sounds…exhausting,” I admit with a laugh. I can’t imagine being on for a week straight.
“It can be. Especially if you’re an int
rovert like most of us are. I’ve found that the novelists and poets need a vacation to decompress after being here,” she smiles, “but some of the songwriters and singers thrive in it. They love talking.”
I recall the fact that Sera is married to another writer herself. A songwriter. “Does your husband love talking and all of this?” I sweep my hands around the room.
Sera’s face softens. “My husband…is an enigma. He likes talking about music and writing. And I never see it on his face, the drain. But when we get home, he needs the quiet. He fakes extroverting better than I do.”
“I think it’s a learned skill.” I can fake it quite well with a bit of liquor.
“I’ll never master it,” she smiles again, pausing. “So, I’m curious. Why a month? Do you write full-time?”
I don’t want to answer. Embarrassment floods me, though I know it’s silly. Here is this woman standing in front of me, who makes millions of dollars writing. She has the dream I am so desperately chasing. The goal that tore my marriage apart.
The only reason I have this month free is because I don’t have a side job at the moment, which I normally do—to supplement my writing income, as a precaution. After this, I’ll have to pull my minuscule belongings out of storage and start a new life. But before then, I need to figure out who the fuck I am inside. A month spent at a cabin in the woods might not do it, but it’s a start.
