I cut the thought off with an angry blast from the truck’s horn; at least that still works. I don’t care about the noise now, or the risk of waking someone up. Let them shout out their windows at me. Let them twitch their curtains and complain. I’m past that now. You actually thought it was going to happen, that hateful little voice in my head sneers at me. You actually let yourself get your hopes up that you could get out of here – that you’d be something more than a waitress for the rest of your life. I mean, really, Carrie… how dumb can you get?
The tears come thick and fast, just when I thought I didn’t have any tears left in me to shed. It’s not fair, I scream internally. None of it. Not Hale. Not my Dad. Not this. None of it. IT’S. NOT. FAIR!
But fair never had anything to do with it, not really. If things were fair, I would never have had to wait so long just to lose it at the last minute. What’s fair about that, eh? How could a world possibly exist where that seemed just?
A soft rat-tat-tat of knuckles against glass pulls me back to the real world. ‘Everything OK?’ Hale asks. His face is a mask of concern, of distant worry. I recognise that look from years ago: back then, he would have pulled me close, convinced me everything was going to be fine… but he can’t, now. No matter how much it would help, I’ve asked him not to, and so he’s circling, holding back.
‘Peachy,’ I say, wiping my eyes as best I can so I can pretend just for a second that he didn’t see me bawling like a toddler. ‘Just perfect. Everything’s fine.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Yeah. I’m OK. Really.’ I try to give him a smile, but my face doesn’t seem to get the message. ‘See?’
‘Do you need a ride?’ He flashes me a grin, but it doesn’t land; with the smoke still lingering at the back of the truck, it just seems cruel – too cruel, even for him.
‘Don’t joke, Hale,’ I beg. ‘Please. I’m not in the mood.’
‘Who’s joking?’ He points over his shoulder, away from the truck, and it takes me a moment or two to realise what he’s suggesting. If the truck won’t do the job, perhaps his bike will.
‘On that thing?’ I ask.
‘Sure. You’ve got places to be, remember?’
‘I couldn’t. We couldn’t. It’s five hours to Austin.’
‘I can get you there in four.’
‘Hale…’
He steps forwards and takes my hand in his, closing his fingers around my own. I forgot how much I missed the touch of his skin, the warmth that radiates off him when his body is close to mine. ‘Carrie,’ he says. ‘I want to do this for you. With you, if I can. This is important to you – too important to let Pete’s piece of crap truck and a slice of bad luck get in your way. You’ve waited too damn long for this.’
‘I’ve only been planning it for about eight hours. I’ll cope.’
‘Sure, eight hours,’ he says. ‘Eight hours and about ten years. But yes, you’ll cope. You always do. But aren’t you tired of just coping? Don’t you think it’s time to start living instead? Don’t you think it’s time to start going after what you really want?’
Oh, buddy, I think. I really do. More than you could possibly know.
‘It doesn’t matter if that’s me,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t matter if you decide you want to be with me when we get back, or if you don’t. This isn’t conditional. It’s your decision, completely. Just let me do this one thing for you. Please. I owe it to you.’
‘Why? Why would you think you owed me anything?’
He looks at me like I’ve gone insane. ‘For the sandwiches down at the lake,’ he says. ‘And the time you came out to help me at the Stop ‘n’ Shop. And for the other night, after the bar. And for everything else, Carrie. God, just for every damn thing – every act of kindness you gave me over that summer, when I needed it most. But I’m not offering ‘cause I think you need repaying. I’m offering because I love you, Carrie. I love you. And that’s all.’
And there he is, standing with me, holding me so close that I can feel his heart beating in his chest: both Hales at once. The Hale who ran, and the Hale who’s asking to stay. Reckless Hale, and Hale my harbour. Danger and security, passion and safety. All mixed up together, all in one man.
Hop on your stupid bike, I had told him at the trailer as he rode away from me. Run as far and as fast as you can, and hope that sometime in the future you decide you’ve found something worth taking a risk on – because until you do, you’re going to lead a real lonely life.
But despite all of that, he came back. To me. For me. I could go to Austin and it might be the worst decision I’ve ever made; I could fail out of my classes and end up with nothing to do except slink back home to Eden with my tail between my legs. Hale could run at any moment, far and fast and never to be seen again. I’m his risk, and he is mine.
And yet nothing I’ve ever experienced has managed to live up to that. Nothing has ever made me feel safer. No one has ever made me feel more alive.
‘Penny for your thoughts?’ he asks, and I shake my head.
‘Just rattling around,’ I say. ‘Nothing important.’
He pulls a map out from the compartment on the back of his bike and hands it to me with a smile – that old Hale Fischer charm that won me over in the first place, at a quiet little spot by a river all those years ago. ‘So… where do we go from here?’ he asks.
Well, I think as I take it from him and we begin to plan our route to my future under a street lamp and the first stirrings of a Texas dawn. Isn’t that just the question?
Epilogue
The support act strums the final chord on his guitar and smiles out at us. ‘Thanks a lot, Austin!’ he shouts to the crowd. ‘You’ve been great, goodnight!’
His name is Tony, and he’s a nice enough guy. I went out for a drink with him and the band and the road crew one night, when the tour made its way down to New Orleans and my time away from Hale became too much to bear. I figured, why not? I had a weekend free from college, and with Hale splitting the cost of the plane fare with me I could just about afford it. He made a bit of a fuss about that, telling me he’d pay for the whole thing if it meant having me there with him for a couple of days, but I shot that idea down pretty quickly. I pay my own way, no matter what. No matter how successful he is.
As Tony leaves the stage, he shoots me and the girls a little wave, and I swear that Rachel almost swoons her way into a dead faint right then and thee. ‘That’s it,’ she says with a grin. ‘If you can date a rock star, I can too. This is the life, Carrie. This is the life.’
I make an executive decision not to tell Rachel about Tony’s boyfriend. I’m scared the disappointment might crush her.
On the other side of me, out of the corner of my eye, I can see Ashley manoeuvring her way through the crowd with three overpriced and undersized beers in her hands. ‘Sorry I took so long,’ she says as she draws close. ‘Got chatting to a cute guy at the bar.’ She gestures with her head over to a guy about her age – twenty-two, maybe twenty-three, his chin covered with a dusting of designer stubble and his hair piled high into a man-bun. He hasn’t taken his eyes off her the whole time she spent walking back to us, and when she turns around he gives her a sly wink that tells me we’ll probably be making his acquaintance once the show is over. Good for you, Ash, I think. She deserves a bit of a break. She’s been so busy with our various courses that she’s barely had time to breathe recently, let alone flirt with hot guys with questionable hair choices. Then again, none of us have had what you’d call an easy time of it. This is the first night we’ve really had off since the course started. Nursing school is rewarding, for sure, but no one could ever say it’s not hard work. Still, the three of us are getting through it, together.
For the first time since I was a teenager, I actually have friends: honest-to-God, real-life friends. It’s a weird feeling, but not one I’m going to start complaining about any time soon.
I take my drink from her, but as soon as s
he sees me reaching for my bag to pay for my share she bats my hand away. ‘No chance,’ she says. ‘You got us these tickets for free. The least I can do is buy you a beer.’
‘Right up against the stage, too,’ Rachel chimes in. ‘Pays to have connections, eh?’
More than you could know, I think.
I’ve missed Hale like crazy these past few months, while he’s been out on the road. If it hadn’t been for the girls, I don’t know what I would have done. It’s weird to think about, really. For years, I barely even thought about Hale, except as a vague concept. I lived my life perfectly fine without him, thank you very much – and I still do, don’t get me wrong; I’ve got more going on right now than I have at any point in the last decade – but I find myself thinking about him constantly throughout the day.
It’s worth it, though. By all accounts, the tour has been a massive success – far beyond even the wildest expectations of Hale or his record company. His new publicist – a friendly Midwesterner with small, dark eyes over an enormous beard that makes him look more like he should be chopping lumber than managing an Instagram account – can’t keep his excitement to himself, but Hale’s taking it all in his stride. He’s got another two weeks running up and down the west coast, and then it’s back to New York to work on the new album – but not before he comes down to Austin to visit me for a well-deserved rest.
I can’t wait.
Even Mom seems to have come over to the idea of it all. The last time I spoke to her, she told me to make sure I invited Hale over to dinner sometime so she could get to know him personally. Just the four of us, nothing too fancy: me and Hale, Mom and Pete. ‘I’ll even cook,’ she said. ‘If Pete will let me get into my own kitchen, anyway. Honestly, it’s like that man forgets I ran a restaurant for thirty years sometimes, it really is.’ She grumbled, as she tends to do, but I could tell she was smiling while she did it. I took that as a sign that things were going well between them.
‘Is that Carrie?’ Pete asked from across the room. ‘Tell her I say hi.’
Our phone call took place at eleven o’clock, well after her usual bedtime. I took that as a sign that things were going well too.
Mom’s happy. I’m happy. Even the Diner seems to be doing just fine without me, three months on. Pete’s new menus are… well, I won’t say they’re going down a storm, but they’re at least a firm fixture now. Even Jerry and Al have been tempted to try his moussaka from time to time, and have deemed it passable. ‘I’m pretty sure they think it’s got actual moose in it,’ Pete said when he told me, ‘but I’ll take it. As long as I don’t start serving ratatouille, I think we’ll be fine.’
Sometimes I wonder if I really was worrying over nothing for all those years. Maybe I could have moved away all along. Maybe everything wouldn’t have imploded the second I left Eden. I could have gone to do my nursing degree years earlier. I could have spent all this time working towards the life I always wanted, way back when.
But if I had, I wouldn’t have been there when Hale rolled back into town. I would have missed seeing him again entirely, passing each other by like two ships in the night. All this would never have happened.
And how could I have let myself miss out on that?
The crowd is growing restless behind me, eager for the main event. I can feel the nervous crackle of excitement, of two hundred people all waiting for the same thing. When he finally comes out a minute or two later, the audience has whipped itself up into a frenzy; at the sight of him, they let out a loud cheer of approval.
I can’t say I blame them. He looks magnificent. He’s wearing a black button-down shirt, open to a little way down his chest – far enough to tease, but not far enough to reveal any of the scars. The bruises from his fight with Scanlon have long since healed; in fact, that night seems a world away now. Three months is a long time.
He pulls a stool over to the microphone, and adjusts the stand downwards until it’s just in front of his lips: a perfect fit. I watch as he scans the crowd, his eyes creased up against the spotlight as he runs his gaze along the front row, until it stops on me and he smiles. I wonder how many women in the audience would like to be in my position right now. I wonder how many of them think that smile is meant for them.
A lot, I’d wager. Hale always did know how to work a crowd.
After the whole Merry fiasco, we decided to keep our relationship private – not hidden, but not splashed all over the internet either. I was very firm about that, and Hale agreed. Just because I was dating someone famous, it didn’t mean I wanted to spend my life staring down a camera lens. I was much more comfortable behind the scenes than in the spotlight. As far as I’m concerned, he can sing his heart out and make every woman in that room feel like he’s singing directly to them. I don’t mind sharing him with them for a couple of hours a night.
Not as long as I’m the one who gets to take him home after the show, anyway.
That’s the difference between me and the rest of the crowd, I think. I don’t just see Hale as he is now, on stage with hundreds of people giving him their applause and approval. In my mind, that’s just a part of him.
I see him as he was at sixteen, out by the river, strumming along to Otis Redding and Chuck Berry for a girl he’d only just met – a girl who had wandered a little way off the beaten track and changed her life forever.
I see him under the cherry blossom tree out in the park, hesitantly waiting to kiss me for the first time as the flowers shed their petals all around us.
I see the way he looked at me the first time he saw me naked, before he pressed his body against mine and showed me what I had been missing all those years.
I see him broken and bruised and in need of care – and I see Hale the fighter, always pushing himself further and harder, no matter how hard that might be. I see his softness, and his stubbornness, and everything in between.
I see the moments we’re alone, and the future we’re going to have, stretching out into the next few weeks and months and years, and so, so far beyond…
I see what was and what is and what one day will be.
And it’s always, always Hale.
‘Hey there, Austin,’ he says, pulling his eyes off me and turning at last to the crowd. ‘How are you all doing tonight?’
Pretty fine, I think as the cheers swell like an ocean behind me, and I smile. Pretty damn fine.
I hope you enjoyed the book you just read.
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To show my appreciation, here’s a sample from another book in the Bad Boy Musicians series:
Smooth
Chapter One
By the time my phone rings, my mental to-do list is almost complete.
The pasta on the stove is cooked to a perfect al dente, and there’s a bottle of hearty red Chianti uncorked, breathing and ready to be poured. (Check.) The bridesmaid’s dress, picked up fresh from a last-minute alteration on my way home from work, is currently hanging over my closet door in a garment bag. (Check.) Rocky is at my mother’s apartment across the city, no doubt already fat with treats and slobbering affectionately on every item of furniture she owns, revelling in the attention of being her substitute grandchild for the week. (Check, check, check.)
It’s a good feeling, being on top of things.
I’m plating up the pasta when I hear the vibration against the marble countertop, buzzing away like an angry little wasp as I carefully ladle out the Bolognese sauce into the pan of tagliatelle, savouring the smell. I turn at the noise, and a thin line of red sauce splashes its way onto my dress.
Fuck.
With one hand, I grasp for my phone before it goes to my voicemail, and with the other I reach for
a strip of paper towel to wipe off the spill. Oil and tomatoes, I think. Well, there’s no way that’s going to be difficult to get out.
‘Hey, honey,’ I say.
It can go to the dry cleaner in the morning. Carter can take it in for me on the way back from the airport. Sure, he’ll complain, but…
‘Hey.’
… but I’ll make it up to him tonight.
His voice is clipped, restless. ‘Everything OK?’ I ask. ‘You sound tired.’
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Tired.’
‘Rough day at work?’
‘Something like that. Look, El…’
The stain looks a lot worse now I’ve wiped it than it did before. ‘Could you give me a second?’ I say as I head over to the tap and run the water cold. ‘I just spilt something.’
‘This is important, El.’
I smile, even though I know he can’t see me. ‘So’s this. You don’t know how much I paid for this dress.’
It’s a joke, at least partially – my attempt to get some lilt into his voice again, to cheer him up after a bad day – but it doesn’t seem to have any effect. ‘Did you get the packing list I emailed you this morning, by the way?’ I ask. ‘I know you’re not flying down until Thursday, but I figured getting a little bit of a head start couldn’t hurt, right?’
I know it’s maybe not the best time to be nagging him, but that’s Carter through and through. He’s not a head start kind of person. He’s also not a checklist kind of person, which means it’s sometimes a little bit of a surprise when he manages to make it where he’s supposed to be on time.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I haven’t checked my email all day.’ There’s a clicking noise in the background, like a metronome: a car blinker.
‘Are you still driving? How far away are you?’ I’m a little surprised. His office is only fifteen minutes from my apartment, even in traffic.
Reckless: A Bad Boy Musicians Romance Page 28
