I park behind the venue and sit in my car for a moment, staring at the building that’s housed my second home for three years. This place is my sanctuary, the one space where I control everything and nothing surprises me. Last night changed something about that dynamic, and I don’t like it.
“You’re early.” Jovie’s voice startles me, and I turn to find her emerging from the storage room with a box of napkins balanced against her hip. “Figured you might be.”
“Why would you figure that?”
“Because you’re avoiding something, and when you avoid something, you throw yourself into work.” She sets the box down and crosses her arms.
I grab the broom from its hook and start sweeping around the stage area, because busy hands mean I don’t have to make eye contact. “I’m not avoiding anything. I’m doing my job.”
“Uh-huh. That’s why you called me three times last night after closing to discuss the lineup for next month.”
Fuck. I forgot about that.
“I was being thorough.”
“You were being manic.” Jovie appears beside me, plucking the broom from my hands before I can protest. “Sit down. We need to talk.”
“We don’t need to talk about anything.”
“Rye Elizabeth, sit your ass down.”
The use of my full name means she’s serious, so I settle onto one of the stools and prepare myself for whatever wisdom Jovie thinks I need to hear. She leans against the bar, watching me with the careful assessment of someone who’s seen me navigate three years of barely controlled chaos.
“He got to you,” she says finally.
“Who got to me?”
“The guitar player. Darian. Don’t play dumb—it doesn’t suit you.” Jovie’s voice carries the gentle firmness she uses when she’s trying to save me from myself. “I watched you during his set. You looked like someone was performing surgery on your chest.”
The observation hits too close to home, but I’m not ready to admit that watching him play felt like emotional archaeology. Like he was digging up parts of myself I buried for good reasons.
“He’s a talented musician. That’s all.” But he’s also hot, fucking sexy, and looks like someone who only wants to be called good when he’s doing something very, very bad.
“Bullshit.” Jovie moves closer, perching on the stool beside mine. “I’ve seen you watch talented musicians for three years. This was different.”
“Different how?”
“Different like you recognized something in him. Like maybe he recognized something in you too.”
My shoulders tense because she’s right, and I hate that she’s right. There was something in the way Darian looked at the room, at the audience, at me. Like he understood what this space means, what it costs to create something worth protecting.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not interested in complications.”
“Who said anything about complications? Maybe he’s just a good guy who writes good songs.”
The pregnancy test sits on the bathroom counter like a loaded gun. Two pink lines that might as well be prison bars, trapping me in a future I never planned for. My hands shake as I stare at the plastic stick, willing the lines to disappear or at least rearrange themselves into something that makes sense.
Jason’s voice carries from the bedroom where he’s packing for the tour that starts tomorrow. Three months opening for a country act that could change everything for him. He’s beentalking about nothing else for weeks—the venues, the crowds, the industry connections he’ll make along the way.
“Rye, have you seen my lucky pick? The tortoiseshell one?” His footsteps approach the bathroom door. “I can’t find it anywhere.”
I shove the test into the medicine cabinet behind a bottle of aspirin and unlock the door. “Check your guitar case. You always leave it in there.”
He appears in the doorway, hair mussed from running his hands through it, eyes bright with the kind of excitement that makes him look younger than his twenty-four years. “There’s my girl. You’ve been quiet tonight.”
“Just tired.” I move past him toward the bedroom, where his duffel bag lies open on our bed like a mouth waiting to swallow our life whole. Clothes scattered everywhere, guitar picks and spare strings mixed in with socks and T-shirts. The chaos of someone who lives for the next gig, the next opportunity, the next chance to prove himself.
“Come here.” He catches my hand, pulling me against his chest. “I know this is hard. Three months feels like forever, but it’s going to fly by. And when I get back, we’ll have enough money to get our own place. Maybe even record that demo we’ve been talking about.”
