Rosie nudged the tin toward me, smiling like she was selling me happiness in a jar. “Think of it as a community nondisclosure agreement. The more you help us with our Christmas fundraiser, the less we talk.”
“And if I don’t help?”
“Then we’ll describe your jawline to the tabloids from memory,” Rosie said, syrupy sweet. “We’re very good with detail.”
Skye made a strangled sound that I was choosing to believe was a laugh. “Leave him alone.”
Esther’s look softened when she turned to Skye, though her voice didn’t. “Lass, you know we love you, which is why we’re doing this. He needs a task, otherwise he’s just going to be mooning about the inn bugging you. Which, from your emergency text message this morning begging us to get you out of there,thiswill get him out of your hair. The town needs the money. This is fate wrapped in glitter.”
“I hate glitter,” Skye muttered, but the fight had gone out of the line of her shoulders. She was also looking everywhere but me.
She wanted to get away from me?The thought saddened me, even though I could understand why. I’d been a first-rate arsehole to her, drunk on fame, and allowed Glen to produce the song he’d found written in my private notebook. While I’d been touring, making money, and enjoying its benefits, she’d been reminded over and over again that I’d used her for my own win.Selfish, Byrne. Unforgivable, even if I’d not known how successful the song would be.
“How much do you need? I could just transfer funds,” I said, finally speaking.
“We accept.” Cherise beamedat me.
“But that still doesn’t keep you busy and isn’t enough to buy our silence,” Esther jumped in, glaring at Cherise.
I put my palms up. “Fine. What, exactly, are we talking about here?”
Six women and one bookstore owner leaned forward as one.
Harper tapped a marker on a sheet of paper. “Event ideas, go.”
“Acoustic set,” Shannon blurted. “Small. Intimate. Secret.”
“Storytime with a rock star,” Rosie said. “You read a romance book. We all fan ourselves and faint.”
Skye rolled her eyes. I smiled. Even though I’d just met several of these women in the pub briefly last night, it had been enough to make quite the impression. Resistance was futile, it seemed.
“What? It’s brainstorming.” Rosie shrugged.
“Open mic butyouhave to be the judge,” Meredith offered. “Also, you have to go last and blow everyone’s socks off.”
“Massage classes,” Cherise suggested, then flushed when the women turned to look at her. “Sorry. That one escaped.”
“A charity single,” Esther said, eyes gleaming. “We’ll call itKingsbarns at Christmasand make the choir kids sing the chorus and release it on the internet.”
“No,” Skye said flatly.
“No to which?” Esther asked.
“All of it.”
“Why?” Meredith asked, disappointed. “The tiny children in elf hats would be adorable.”
Skye dragged in a breath and turned to Harper and Rosie, who were watching her expression closely. “Because he doesn’t need more attention. Because I don’t want this to become a circus. Because the last time a song got between us, it burned the house down.”
Harper’s eyes flicked to me. “We’re newish,” she said. “But we’ve heard … bits. Fill in the holes so we know which lines not to cross.”
It was strangely merciful, the way she asked. Not hungry. Not nosy. Just … kind.
Skye stared at her hands, and I waited. Did she want me to tell them what happened? Did she want me to explain that I’d thought about her every day since she left me and wondered a thousand times if we could have somehow made it work? But then she spoke, and my heart broke again for the woman who I’d thought would be my forever.
She told them about the band making songs in a dusty garage, the manager who smelled like cigar smoke and new suits, the contract and the fight. She told them how she didn’t trust Glen and I had, how she left to save herself from watching me choose everything but her. She told them how I wroteSkyeand the world sang it and she got to be famous without asking and without pay.
She did not tell them about the kitchen floor we sat on after gigs, eating toast with jam because that’s all we had money for. She didn’t tell them the exact way her laugh sounded when I came up with a terrible rhyme. I didn’t mention that I called twice and hung up both times because I was a coward, or that I drove past the inn at midnight and didn’t stop, because apparently I preferred the worst version of myself.
