Sloan shoved up from the chair, went to her bedroom and the walk-in closet, and sorted through a pile of clothes on the floor until she found her bikini. She would lay out at the pool, work on her tan. In LA, glamour radiated from the depths of glowing bronze skin. In Windemere most people sported “farmers’ tans,” necks and forearms browned by the sun, torsos as pale as milk.
In their first meeting following Sloan’s win, Terri had insisted, “No secrets. I can’t shape your future if there’s something that blindsides me from your past.” Sloan slipped on the bikini, realizing that now she had a dilemma. There were things in her past she didn’t want to talk about to anyone. This letter had hit her hard, and she was unsure how to tell Terri, or even if she should say anything until she personally checked out the story. And not over the phone but in a face-to-face meeting with this Lindsey person. If the story was bogus, Sloan could deal with Lindsey without involving Terri at all.
Sloan went down to the pool, mulling over a way to slip out of LA without too many questions being asked.
“You seem distracted. Any problems?”
Sloan glanced up from her dinner plate at Terri sitting across the table. They were in a restaurant, eating a late supper, Sloan with a platter of fries and a burger, Terri with her small green salad. The woman was in her fifties, waspishly thin, dark haired, and stylishly dressed, always looking polished and pulled together, even after a fourteen-hour day. “No…no problems.”
“I wouldn’t think so. Three of your songs from the show are topping iTunes downloads. All we need is one more song to round out your EP.”
They’d spent most of the evening in a recording studio listening to songs and trying to pin one down that was special enough for the extended-play CD, but so far the producer, Tom Jackson, wasn’t satisfied. “Tom’s being too picky. What’s wrong with just grabbing another song from the show?” Sloan dragged a fry through a glob of ketchup.
“We want something extra special, something original, if possible.” Terri’s phone vibrated. “A text. Excuse me.”
Sloan was anxious to get started on her solo album, and a successful album would launch her even higher than the contest. She jiggled her legs, impatient for Terri to finish texting. She also checked out the restaurant, its low lights, the candles on every table, and the pale pink linens, all giving the room an elegant ambience intended to enhance the dining experience. There weren’t many diners this late in the evening, but the ones Sloan saw were couples, a reminder that she hadn’t had a date in much too long. She shelved such thoughts, reminded herself that relationships were complicated, and breakups painful. She wanted to focus on one thing only—a singing career.
Terri laid down her phone and picked at her salad. “You ever write any songs?”
“I’m better at performing others’ music.”
“You stated on your American Singer audition form that you were once lead singer in a band. Don’t you have any music from those days? Most bands write their own stuff.”
It had been necessary to put some of her musical experience on her contest form, but her time with Anarchy had ended badly, and she didn’t want Terri to dig up her former band days. “That was high school, and we played a different genre of music.”
“Doesn’t matter. Songs can be rearranged. So you got something lying around?”
Sloan heaved a sigh. “I worked with the lead guitarist on a few numbers.” Jarred’s image flashed in her mind, and then Dawson’s and all that had happened. “The songs aren’t very good.”
“So you do have some recordings of you with the band? An old CD, maybe? I’d like to hear the music.” Terri was like a bulldog, and not letting go. “Tom can judge their worth. Where can I get the music?”
Sloan gritted her teeth. “Some stuff is stored on my old cell phone, back at the apartment. Battery’s totally dead.”
“I’ll pick it up when I drop you off tonight. Give it a listen.” Terri took a sip of her wine. “Don’t be embarrassed. Lots of singers have material they’d like to forget. I’m your agent, Sloan, your promoter. I have one purpose in your life now, and that’s to keep your momentum moving forward. This is a tough business, but if you’re lucky, very lucky, you’ll be able to climb into the stratosphere and become a star. Don’t you want to be rich?”
Of course Sloan wanted the money, but fame was even more of a lure. She ignored Terri’s question and tossed another ketchup-laden fry into her mouth.
Terri stared longingly at Sloan’s diminishing pile of fries and sighed. “You won’t be able to eat that way all your life, sugar. Trust me about that.”
Sloan spitefully gobbled another fry.
Sloan was lying on a poolside lounger considering how to best smoke out this Lindsey character, when a shadow fell across her. Sloan winked open one eye, saw Terri backlit by the sun. “Let’s go up,” Terri said. “I’ve got news.”
Once inside the cool air of the apartment, Sloan wrapped herself in a thick terry cloth robe, poured Terri a glass of pinot grigio that she kept on hand for the agent. She grabbed a sparkling water for herself. Handing Terri the glass, she asked, “What’s up?”
Terri placed Sloan’s old phone on top of a stylish stone coffee table. “Tom and I listened to the songs on your old cell, and you were right. Most of the songs are as you said—not very good.”
“Told you so.”
Terri handed Sloan the outdated phone. “Except for one.”
“Really? Which one?”
“ ‘Somebody’s Baby.’ Great title. Great song, and your voice is perfection on it.”
Sloan felt as if her knees were going out from under her. She dropped to the leather sofa, the room spinning. Not that one. She’d totally forgotten about the song she’d written late one night in a spasm of pain and tears. She didn’t remember recording it, but apparently she had.
Terri’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t look as pleased as I thought you would. Maybe you should have a glass of wine.”
“Why that song?”
“Because it’s a great song, Sloan. Tom likes its slower pace, and the lyrics. He thinks it will balance the EP, and he has good instincts. He also likes the way you sing it, your passion, your tenderness.” Terri waited a few beats, inviting Sloan to speak. When she didn’t, Terri added, “He wants you to hit the same vibe at the studio, with all the bells and whistles of additional musicians and a good sound mixer. This is a huge opportunity.”
Sloan said nothing. The song had come from a dark place inside her, from a time of unfathomable sadness. She felt her eyes fill. “I—I don’t know if I want—”
Terri stared at her. “Are you kidding? Of course you do! And if the label’s full support can’t persuade you, think about getting double royalties for penning it and singing it. More money, long copyright. I don’t understand your reluctance.”
The plush apartment was flooded with sunlight, but all Sloan saw was herself alone in a basement bedroom with her old battered guitar, a melody chasing her soul, and words spilling out of a well of personal pain.
Terri eased down beside her, took Sloan’s hand. “It’s a breakup song, isn’t it? About some guy you loved and lost. Like the singer Adele. You know, those amazing songs she sang about her and her boyfriend splitting up. They’re classics.”
Instantly Sloan saw how Terri had made the assumption. “Somebody’s Baby” was indeed filled with the lyrics of goodbye and brokenhearted loss.
Terri’s voice soothed, saying, “It’s a wonderful song, Sloan, and no matter how personal it was at the time, this is the here and now. We want that song for the EP and your album. Don’t bog this down. It’s just words and music. And isn’t that the business we’re in?”
Sloan shut down her feelings, raised her eyes to meet Terri’s gaze, and mentally balanced her private inner chaos with recording the song for the world to hear. Wiping her eyes, she said, “You’re right. It was a breakup song, but it happened a few years ago, and I’m over it now.”
Terri offered a delighted smile. “Excellent. I’ll schedule the recording studio. I have a good feeling about this, Sloan. A very good feeling.” She stood, picked up her purse, and headed to the door, where she turned. “He must have been a hell of a guy to leave you this shaken up so long after the fact.”
Sloan made no comment, heard the soft click of the closing door as Terri left, then whispered, “He was. He truly was.”
Dawson Berke realized that moving forward with Alana Kennedy, the girl he loved, wasn’t going to be simple. He was, after all, a doctor’s son, so he knew about survivor’s guilt, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and other psychological issues brought on by trauma. Still, he wanted Lani in his life no matter the heartaches of their shared past, and he believed that together they could get beyond what had happened. From his perspective Lani’s feelings of guilt were self-imposed and undeserved.
This April marked a year since his return from Chicago to Windemere, and reuniting with Lani. He’d been unsure if she would come to see him when he’d asked, but she had, and over those early euphoric spring months, they’d grown closer. He had assumed they would move forward together, but over time, he had seen that what had happened was keeping her from the life she deserved and the future he wanted with her. Grief had immobilized her.
He had rented an apartment not far from the interstate, close to his construction worksite, in an area booming with suburban growth. Windemere was expanding, changing, and he had settled miles from the streets of brick and stately trees and renovated Victorians called Old Town, where Lani lived with her sister, Melody, an attorney, in a brick building of refurbished apartments built in the 1940s. Dawson thought Melody, the apartment, and its location added to Lani’s inertia and that as long as Lani lived so close to places linked to sad memories, she wouldn’t move forward. He wanted Lani to live with him, but Melody vehemently disagreed.
Dawson had argued his case with Melody, meeting inside a small eatery flush with aromas of coffee and fresh pastries. A table had separated them, but it may as well have been an acre of land. He’d said, “I love her. And she loves me. When we’re together, she’s happier. You’ve got to see that’s real.”
“I know what you feel for each other is real, but don’t you get it? You’re part of her problem. That’s not your fault, Dawson. It’s the circumstances. You’re not to blame in any way, but her emotions are wound around you like a coil. Living with me represents a time when she didn’t have this weight on her heart, this idea in her head that she’s to blame for what happened. She’s my little sister, and she needs my support.”
He didn’t think Melody gave his and Lani’s love for each other enough credit. He was with Lani almost every night. The gaps between her dark spells were growing wider. He saw it in unguarded moments when they joked and laughed together, felt it in the way she burrowed into him, holding on in the dark—two souls searching for comfort. “I need her too, Mel. It isn’t over for me either, you know. She’s the one helping me go on, day in, day out. I want to wake up with her every morning.”
“She needs space, Dawson, separation. She needs more than you. She needs a purpose, a direction!”
“I won’t walk away from her. End of discussion!” He had scooted his chair from the table. The legs had made a screeching sound that had turned heads in the café.
Melody had reached out and caught his hand. “And don’t you walk away from me. This might be our only chance to talk in private, while she’s out at Bellmeade with her damn horse. Think about it. Lani is a few terms away from her finishing her RN degree, something she’s wanted all her life. I’ve met with her supervisor, and she could have her old job at Windemere General in a heartbeat. And yet she spends her days grooming horses, mucking stalls, and shoveling animal shit at Bellmeade for Ciana Mercer. What a waste of Lani’s talent and ambition!”
Melody’s tortured expression had given Dawson pause. He’d calmed and said, “That job is helping her, Mel. I went through the same thing. I did hard physical work, but…news flash…when your body aches and you’re physically wiped out, your mind catches a break. You’re too tired to think and rehash a past that can never be changed.”
“She can work just as hard in school and at the hospital. Be patient.” Melody had waved her hand in dismissal. “Maybe I can find her a good therapist.”
Dawson had fisted the table. Why hadn’t Melody been able to see that Lani’s hard exhausting work at the Bellmeade Stables was therapy? “Don’t push her. She’ll come through this.”
Melody’s desire to help Lani return to the enthusiastic, gung-ho girl that Melody had watched grow up was also an invisible coil. One night, wrapped in his arms, Lani had said, “My horse, Oro, is like a good friend. He never ever pushes me. Sometimes I ride Oro bareback and we run against the wind. I feel his mane stinging my face, hear his hooves pounding on the track, dirt flying like stones against my legs, and for a few minutes the pain inside me goes away…and I’m free. Oro runs, he carries me, and all I have to do is hold on.”
Dawson had pressed his lips against the crown of Lani’s head, knowing he was hearing her deeper meaning. Melody’s pushing and urging Lani to return to her former self was hurting more than helping. He knew Lani in ways Melody never could, because he and Lani shared a mutual and a brutal wound, in some ways the same wound, but also very different. It had left deep scars on them both. Once she’d fallen asleep that night, he’d whispered, “If you fall, my love, I’ll catch you.”
That day in the coffee shop, resigned to nothing changing between him and Melody, Dawson had known they were at an impasse, so he’d said, “Enough. We’re getting nowhere, and I’ve got to get back to the job site.”
Still gripping his hand, Melody had said, “Please promise me you won’t push her, Dawson. You have a power over her I don’t. You and I can fight like dogs whenever you want. I don’t care what you say to me, or think of me, but don’t take her away yet. Right now she’s very fragile. I know we can agree on that.”
The pleading look in Melody’s eyes had dampened his frustration with the woman. Their love for Lani rose from different streams, each just as passionate. And they both knew that he held the winning ace—he held Lani’s heart. “I get that we both love her. I won’t use my ‘power,’ Mel. But I won’t let go either. Sooner or later, she’ll come through the pain. And when she does, you’ll have to step back. No matter what, you are her loving sister. You need your own life too.”
Almost imperceptibly Mel had nodded, and Dawson had left the coffee shop knowing he’d told only a half-truth. Darkness and pain lurked inside him, but over time it had grayed, and the sharpness had dulled. Life had resumed, a new rhythm had been discovered, new paths had been followed, memories had gotten shut into boxes and tucked away inside closets. They slipped out occasionally, but more to comfort than to wound. He knew that one day the same would happen for Lani too.
Lani understood that her sister and the man she loved were fighting about her. She wished they wouldn’t, but she had no inner resources to cope or change things. She loved them both, but she was smart enough to know that release from her internal prison was something she must achieve on her own. Neither Melody nor Dawson could do it for her.
After what had happened, having Dawson in her life felt like an undeserved gift, one she’d wanted for a long time, never dreamed she’d have, and didn’t want to lose.
She had helped him search for his apartment, had gone with him to choose furniture—some new, some used—and had arranged places for everything in the single-bedroom unit. She’d suggested colors, chosen small appliances, pillows, pictures, tabletop decorations, bed linen. “White,” she had said, standing in front of shelves stacked with bedding in a department store. “And this comforter.” She had held up one with multicolored stripes because he’d insisted, “No flowers.”
He hadn’t cared what she chose, because she had seemed engaged and happy, once more like the Lani he remembered. “Buy anything you like,
” he’d told her, secretly hoping that if, despite Melody’s objections, Lani moved in with him, she’d feel like the apartment was her home too.
When the buying fervor had been over, the apartment decorated, the activity completed, Lani had crashed. The world had spun around her. Melody’s life was filled with law cases, court filings, late nights at her office, dates with a guy she’d met online and really liked. Dawson’s life was busy with juggling his workload at Hastings Construction and classes at Middle Tennessee State University toward a degree in construction management. One day he would design houses. Meanwhile, he learned all he could about the business. And she, Lani? She had fallen into limbo. She couldn’t find her way back to wanting her RN degree and a job at the hospital. She wasn’t sure she ever would.
When Ciana had asked her to resume her former high school job at Bellmeade Stables, Lani had been grateful to be given a reason to get up every day. No task was too difficult, too dirty, too big, or too small for her to tackle. Exercising and bathing horses housed at the stables, helping Jon work and train quarter horses that were to be sold, spreading fresh straw in stalls, even giving Ciana a helping hand in the fields kept Lani busy and feeling useful. Life had had a rhythm that summer, an easy ebb and flow tied to the rising and setting of the sun, the blooming and fading of seasonal flowers, the solitude of rainy days puttering around the barn and talking with Ciana. Her evenings had had a rhythm of hanging with Dawson, making dinner together, going to movies or for late-night swims in the lighted pool, the water warmed from the heat of the day…and of lying in his arms on sheets of white cotton, skin to skin and sleepy-eyed. Sometimes she’d stay the night, but she usually returned to the apartment she shared with her sister. To keep the peace.