“Tonight’s special musical guest will be Lena Clarkson.”
My gaze shot over to the screen to see a smiling Lena walking out onto the set, waving to the camera.
How could she be smiling?
I felt miserable inside. Like a piece of me was missing, and I had no idea why. Yet, there she was on camera, smiling. As much as I hated to admit it, she looked good. Her hair had been styled in long, dark tresses falling over her shoulders, and she wore a dark green pantsuit that accented every curve of her body to perfection.
Every second I stared felt like a dagger to the chest.
“Turn that shit off,” Preston yelled over to the bartender.
“No,” I yelled louder. “Leave it.” I needed to see it, to prove that if she could move on with her life so fucking quickly, then so could I.
Lena reached the microphone stand and stood in front of it. She closed her eyes briefly before opening them.
“I originally planned on doing the first single from my new album, but I changed my mind. I want to sing something else off the album for you all tonight.”
She turned to the band behind her and said something out of the earshot of the microphone. A breath later, a slow melody began playing from the keyboard. I didn’t recognize it.
She promised to play all of her new songs for me before she played them for anyone else. Another lie she told me.
“Before I start, I’d like to say that, um, I broke a promise. I told someone very special to me that I’d sing all of my news songs for them, first.” She paused and looked down at the floor. “Unfortunately, things didn’t work out that way. But this is the first time I’m playing this song for anyone. I hope he hears it.
“This one is titled ‘Cry Wolf’.”
The hold she already had around my heart tightened another centimeter.
She opened her mouth, and magic came pouring out. Her voice was smooth as honey and comforting as warm milk in the middle of the night. Even as I sat there pissed as hell at her, her voice had a defrosting effect on the ice around my heart.
But it wasn’t until I listened to the lyrics that something began to shift inside of me. The song was about finding herself. The renewal of a relationship with herself through finding love. It spoke about honesty and truth telling. The hard truths and the uncomfortable ones.
“I would never cry wolf to you,” were the last words of the song.
A buzzing sound started in my ears when the studio audience began clapping as she finished the song. I couldn’t do anything besides stare at the television.
I watched as the TV host approached Lena. He asked her a few questions about her music and the song she sang. It was her answer to his final question that shook me to the depths of my core.
“What is the title of your new album?”
She looked right at the camera and said, “All of Me.”
Three simple words pierced through my heart enough for me to see her. The sadness in her eyes even though she continued to smile for the cameras.
You have my whole heart.
I remembered those words she’d told me months ago. Lena had told me she loved me, and I believed her. I felt it in my gut. I knew she wasn’t lying when she told me those three words. And she wasn’t lying up on that stage when she sang that song. A song I knew she wrote to me.
“You’re dating her, right?” The woman’s voice shocked me back to reality.
I pivoted my gaze and looked across to the end of the stool. There stood a young woman who looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her.
“We don’t want any, sweetheart,” Joel said, dismissing her.
She smiled and shook her head. “No.” She waved her hand. “I was just saying that I hope Lena’s doing okay after that guy threatened her at The Tavern a few weeks back.”
That jolted me. “What?”
She blinked. “I’m Jude. I waitress over at The Tavern.” She pointed at the screen. “Lena was in there with some guy about a month ago. The conversation didn’t look friendly.”
