Nashville - Boxed Set Series - Part One, Two, Three and Four (A New Adult Contemporary Romance)

by Inglath Cooper

  I turn my head, meet eyes with Thomas. He’s everything I could ever imagine a brother being. I realize how lucky I am to have him as my best friend. I nod once. It’s only then that I let myself look full on at CeCe. Her face is wet with tears, and I’m nearly bent double with the desire to pull her into my arms and give her the comfort she needs.

  I’m going to have to wait for her to ask me. That day may never come. There’s no way to know. But unlike the last time the three of us sat in this truck headed west to the city of our dreams, we have a few more knowns in front of us. And, like Thomas said, we’ve got each other. Regardless of what else lies ahead of us, that’s something. Really something.

  ♪

  50

  CeCe

  Holden’s arrival in Nashville unleashes a storm of media interest in the three of us. Mama had told me over these past weeks about the coverage on Beck’s death and its devastating effect on Case. I hadn’t read any of it, knowing that every word would be like a refresh button to renew the pain bouncing around inside me.

  But the morning after we get back from D.C., the knocks at our door start before seven o’clock. I hear Thomas mutter his way down the hall, open the front door and then shut it again to a string of disbelieving cuss words. No sooner has he slammed the door than my cell phone rings. I pick it up from the nightstand, glancing at the number. It’s Rhys, Case’s manager. I consider not answering it, but then a pang of fear for Case and that something might have happened to him, makes me.

  “CeCe,” Rhys says, “sorry to be calling so early. How are you?”

  “I’m all right,” I say.

  “Look, I’ll just be up front. Case is mad as fire about this, but the phones have been ringing off the hook over at the label with requests for interviews with you guys. And now that Holden is back in Nashville, I’d like y’all to do a few.”

  “What?” I ask, not sure I heard him correctly.

  “Interviews,” he says, his voice not without compassion. “About what happened.”

  “But that’s impossible,” I say.

  “I know it’s a lot to ask,” he says. “But the label is taking the stance that this event happened while you were on tour and fans want a glimpse of it from your point of view.”

  The words release an instant balloon of anger inside me. For several moments, I cannot speak past it.

  “Rhys, I don’t want to talk about it in public, and I’m pretty sure that Thomas and Holden don’t either.”

  Silence takes up the space between us until he says, “Here are the cold hard facts, CeCe.” His voice is low and regretful. “There’s a clause in the contract you signed that says you understand that media interviews are a part of promoting the tour as well as your band and that you agree to support the experience with media exposure.”

  I remember skimming through the clause and not thinking any more of it than what it appeared at face value, willingness to help promote it through normal channels of media exposure.

  “But this is different,” I say, outrage bubbling up. “This is using something horrible to profit, and I don’t want any part of that.”

  “I know that’s what it feels like, CeCe, and from your point of view, I understand. From theirs, the tour was an investment, and this is just a continuation of that.”

  “What does Case say?”

  “He said to tell you to do it, CeCe. The label has already checked everything out with their legal guys. They have the right to request this of you. You don’t want to take that on.”

  “So you’re telling me that we have to go outside and talk to these people who are currently banging on our door?”

  “No,” he says. “That you ignore. If we need to send over security, we will. The interviews will be arranged and the label will decide which networks get you first.”

  “Get us first,” I repeat.

  “I’m sorry,” Rhys says, taking a deep breath. “I didn’t mean it like that, CeCe, it’s early for me, too. I know this is awful. It’s not what any of us would ask of you, but my advice is just to get it over with so you can all move on.”

  “And if we decline?”

  “Then I’m afraid you’re going to have a lawsuit on your hands. A very big one.”

  ♪

  THE NEXT MORNING at five-thirty a.m. a car service picks the three of us up to drive us to the first of the four interviews we will be doing to live up to our contractual obligations.

  We don’t talk during the ride there, we don’t even meet eyes, and for the next few hours we simply operate on autopilot, answering the questions that are asked of us. Making predictions about how this will affect us in the future. Agreeing about the extent of the tragedy. And the interviewers are sympathetic. I realize they’re just doing their job, but even so, when it’s all said and done, and we’re back in the car headed home, I feel as if I have been pried open and autopsied alive.

  ♪

  51

  Holden

  The next few months pass in a blur of days spent trying to write and nights in a battle with sleep that mostly won’t come.

  Like the media clause in the contract with the label, we had also agreed to produce a record following the tour should the label deem it a successful enough venture to warrant one.

  We drag our feet to delay going into the studios and work on a record that none of us wants to make.

  We use the excuse that we’re working on new material, but for eight weeks, I don’t write a single word. I sit with my guitar perched on my knee and my pad and pencil on the stool beside me. Not one word comes during the whole of that time. I don’t feel any sense of frustration about it, just an emptiness where the well of creativity inside me used to be. I have no idea if this will ever change or if it’s gone for good.

  It’s been weeks since Thomas last asked me how it’s going. I’m sitting on the sofa one afternoon, Hank Junior and Patsy napping next to me when Thomas walks in the room and drops into the chair across from us.

  “Got anything you want to play me?” he asks.

  “Not yet,” I say.

  “The label gave us three months to recover,” he says. “Their words, not mine. How are we going to go into the studio in a couple of weeks if we don’t have any material?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We could look at songs from other writers,” Thomas says. “That would take some of the pressure off.”

  I glance at him, concern evident in his eyes. “Is that what you want to do?”

  “No, but you shouldn’t be forced to write until you’re ready to write.”

  I stand my guitar against the arm of the couch, drop my head back, running my hands over my face. Patsy scoots over and puts her chin on my leg. I rub her ears saying, “Man, I don’t know why I can’t. I want to.”

  “The fact that you can’t means you’re not ready to.”

  “So he gets to take that away from me, too?” I say angrily.

  Thomas starts to say something, looks off and then back at me. “She’s going to forgive herself at some point.”

  He doesn’t need to say her name for me to know he’s talking about CeCe. “I don’t think so. We live in the same place, but we’re basically strangers passing each other in the hallway without meeting eyes. Most of the time she’s not even here.”

  “She’s been doing a ton of demos,” Thomas says. “I think anything to fill the hours between when she gets up and when it’s time to go to bed. She’s also going out to check on Case a few times a week.”

  “How’s he doing?” I ask.

  “Sounds like he might be drinking again.”

  I hate to hear that. I do. It’s not a secret that alcohol once had a pretty grim hold on Case when he first started to make it in the music business.

  “You know what I see?” Thomas says.

  “What?”

  “We’re all just treading water, keeping our head above the surface to get through to the next day. And you know what that means?” I say nothing,
but he goes on anyway. “It means he wins. It means that he pulled off exactly what he set out to do. Pulling everybody else down into the lake of misery he’d been swimming around in, feeling sorry for himself about all the crap the world had thrown at him.”

  Thomas’s eyes flicker fire. I look away from it.

  “That just really pisses me off. I don’t think we should hand that to him on a silver plate tied up in a big red bow. But we pretty much are, all three of us, and Case, obviously. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t even imagine the extent of his grief, and I know he must blame himself. He almost took our lives that night. Almost. Should we just go on and concede defeat? I know you, Holden, and everything that’s happened is going to give you something big to say. You just have to let yourself believe that’s okay.”

  I want to argue with him, tell him he’s wrong, but the thing about Thomas is, he has a way of seeing through to the truth of things, even when it’s hard to say and especially when it’s hard to hear.

  I pick up the guitar, put it across my lap, pick out a few chords. “You got any ideas?” I ask without looking at him.

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact I do. It’s something I said to CeCe when I first got back from the hospital. Might make a good hook.”

  “What is it?”

  “Bad guys don’t win for good.”

  I think about the words, pluck at the guitar for a couple of minutes and then offer, “Go stand where we once stood.”

  Thomas raises an eyebrow and nods, “Yeah?”

  I sound out a rhythm for the words, test out some chords. Another phrase comes to me, “Fill the fears.”

  Thomas immediately says, “Cry the tears.”

  And that’s what we do for the next three hours. Try a line, cast it aside; try another and decide it’s a keeper. By that evening we have a song. Thomas sings it like it’s a song that needs to be heard. I guess maybe it is.

  I remember it’s true what they say about music; it consoles, it heals. And by the time we’ve recorded a rough demo on my laptop, I can actually feel its beginnings in me.

  ♪

  52

  CeCe

  Three weeks later

  It’s after eleven when I let myself in the apartment door. I hear Hank Junior hop off the couch even as I’m turning the key in the lock. He’s there to greet me, tail wagging hard.

  “Hey.” I keep my voice low in an effort not to wake up Holden and Thomas if they’ve already gone to bed. “Shh, come on boy.” I pat my leg for him to follow me to the kitchen.

  But I stop short at the sight of Holden sitting in a living room chair.

  “Hi,” I say, startled.

  “Hey,” he says. “How’d the demo session go?”

  I shrug. “Long, but good songs. I think I’ll head on to bed. I’m pretty tired.”

  “Could we talk for a minute, CeCe?”

  My stomach drops with the question. It’s been months since we’ve talked alone, been alone. “Now’s not a good time, Holden.”

  He looks up at me, anger flashing across his face. “When will it be a good time, CeCe? You don’t look at me, much less talk to me. I know you have your reasons, and I’m not questioning them. We’ve each had to do what we had to do to get through this. Cutting you out of my life wouldn’t have been my method, but it’s yours, so I’m respecting that. I guess I’m wondering though how we’re going to pull off the first recording session for the album tomorrow.”

  I shake my head and keep my expression neutral. “We just each do our thing,” I say.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” he disagrees. “Our practice sessions over the last couple of weeks don’t sound anything like we used to sound. Why go into the studio if we don’t sound like we’re all part of the same whole?”

  I drop my backpack onto the floor, its contents making a harsh jangling sound. “Are we?” I ask.

  “Are we what?”

  “Part of the same whole.”

  “Can I be honest here?” he asks, frustration clouding his face.

  I nod once, biting my lip, knowing somehow that I need to hear what he’s about to say, but I don’t want to.

  “I think Thomas and I are on the same page, CeCe, part of the same whole. It’s pretty clear that you’re not. Is this something you still want to do? Make music with us?”

  It’s a fair question. I can’t deny it. And one I haven’t let myself exactly face these past months. I walk over to the couch and sink down onto the cushions.

  “What do you want me to say, Holden?” I hear the edge of anger in my voice. It’s unfair, but it’s there, and as much as I try to deny it, it won’t go away. Some days I wonder if it will actually swallow me whole.

  He looks at me for a long time before he finally says, “Do you really think the two of us loving each other caused what happened that night?”

  The question is threaded together with hurt. I’ve been so consumed with everything going on in my own head that I’ve given little to no thought to what Holden must be thinking or feeling. The selfishness of this startles me now. It’s not the way I once thought of myself, as someone capable of this, but then I’m not sure I’m the same person I was before the shooting. I don’t know if I will ever be that person again.

  “I don’t think we caused it,” I say carefully. “But everything I said to you, everything I felt for you. . .now it just feels. . .tainted.”

  Holden visibly flinches, my words like a physical slap to his face. I’d like to take them back just to spare him the hurt, but it’s taken months to get to this point of truthfulness. It would be cowardly for me to back away now.

  “That’s not what I was expecting you to say,” he says.

  “What were you expecting?”

  He shakes his head. “That you need time. That there’s still a chance for us.”

  “I don’t even know who I am anymore.” I look down at my hands. “I wake up every morning and tell myself it’s okay for me to be here, but is it? Is it really? And what should I do to be deserving of it? It feels like my life is just this big field of land mines, and I’m trying to figure out how to weave my way through without stepping on one, without causing a blast that’s going to blow up everything around me.”

  “I know,” Holden says softly. “I don’t think we’re supposed to live that way though.”

  “A lot of things aren’t supposed to happen.” I hear the anger in my words. “But they do. I feel like I was so naïve before, making my plans, following my heart, like it was all going to end up in some pink bow happily ever after. We were part of that, but there is no happily ever after.”

  Holden leans forward, elbows on his knees. “There’s good in this world, CeCe, and there’s bad. What we saw that night was the very worst part of a human being, one who’s given in to hatred and envy and resentment. Somebody who’s let all of that take the place of hope and forgiveness. I guess that’s pretty much what any of us can be reduced to if we let the punches life throws out take us down for good. But somehow we have to find a way to get back up again, to duck the next swing, and even if we take another one on the chin, keep standing, keep fighting.”

  I don’t even realize I’m crying until Holden gets up and walks over to the chair where I’m sitting. He takes my hand and laces his fingers through mine. Even though I don’t want it to, it feels like a lifeline. The first I’ve felt since that nightmare night.

  My grip tightens into his of its own accord. He stares into my eyes, making no pretense of hiding what he’s feeling: sorrow, regret, yearning and sympathy. I make an effort to hide what I’m feeling, to keep from my own eyes all of those same emotions.

  I see that I’ve failed when he stands up, and without letting go of my hand, pulls me up in front of him. He says my name the way I’ve heard him say it in my dreams all these months that we’ve been apart. A song I associate only with my feelings for him. I let it play through me, feeling every note deep in the center of my heart.

  I try my hardest to keep the
wall around me in place. But when it starts to crumble, there’s absolutely nothing I can do to stop its fall. I guess he knows it’s happening even as I do because he’s right there to catch me. I all but collapse into him, a soft cry of defeat slipping from my throat. Holden gathers me up and into him, as if I am some rare, precious find that he thought lost to him forever.

  He strokes my hair with one hand and says, “Shh, baby, don’t cry.”

  I don’t know how to stop. It seems as if this is all I do when I’m alone. It’s only in staying busy, putting myself in a room of people involved in normal everyday things like recording demos that I function in a way that even remotely resembles normal.

  It feels so good though to stop pretending, stop trying to act like I’m on the road to putting it all behind me because here in Holden’s arms I realize how far from that I am. I want to melt into him, lose myself in the comfort I feel here.

  He leans back, brushes his hand across my cheek. I look up at him and, although the light in the room is dim at best, I see that his love for me still exists. It’s there in his eyes like the shine of a star I thought too far away to actually see.

  “CeCe,” he says, “I’ve missed you so much.”

  “I’ve missed you, too,” I say, and with the release of the words, I feel the impact of their truth and how utterly lonely I’ve felt. Even though we’ve been living in the same apartment, we might as well have been hundreds of miles apart. That’s no one’s fault but my own.

  He runs his hand through my hair and anchors it at the back of my neck, his thumb making a soft circle of comfort. “What can I do?” he asks. “How can I help?”

  I shake my head. “How do I answer that when I don’t even know what’s wrong with me? I get up every day thinking this will be the day when I’m my old self again, when I want to do the things I used to do, that maybe I’ll actually laugh at something. And then it doesn’t happen. I go to bed thinking okay, maybe tomorrow. I’ll feel better tomorrow. Life will seem normal again tomorrow. But it never does.”