“Contracts break,” I said.
“At what cost? Millions? My career? Everything I’ve sacrificed?”
“Is it still a career if it’s killing you?” I asked softly.
Lightning cracked closer, lighting her face for a heartbeat—her bruises healed, but the shadows in her eyes were still deep.
She swallowed. “I don’t know who I am without being Stevie Wilson. I’ve been her for so long I’m scared I lost Stephy.”
“You’re here,” I said. “On this porch. Drinking whiskey and watching a storm like it’s speaking to you.”
She blinked at that.
“It feels like it is,” she murmured. “Like it’s telling me something.”
Thunder growled in reply—low, distant, but closer than before. A sound that traveled through wood and bone, a warning rolling over the earth.
“I can’t stay here forever. I can’t hide.”
“Maybe it’s not hiding,” I said. “Maybe it’s breathing.”
She didn’t answer, but her fingers tightened around her glass.
Another flash lit the sky—this time jagged, raw, tearing through the cloud cover like claws.
“You know what’s crazy?” she whispered. “In LA, I couldn’t write. Nothing. Everything I did was for the label, for the machine, for someone else’s idea of me. But here…” She pressed her hand over her heart. “Here, the songs won’t stop.”
“Maybe that’s your answer.”
She laughed, soft and disbelieving. “What, become a ranch hand?”
“No. Become the version of yourself you forgot.”
The air shifted again—heavier, colder, carrying a kind of static that made the porch lanterns flicker. Storm pressure. Storm promise.
“I feel like I’ve been walking in a dream,” she said. “Smiling for cameras but dead behind the eyes. Pretending everything was fine when I was falling apart.”
“And now?”
“And now…” Her voice cracked. “Now I’m waking up.”
Wind swept across the fields, bending the tall grass, rattling the barn roof. The storm was close enough now that the temperature dropped in seconds—a cold finger dragging down the back of your neck.
She shivered and reached for my hand. Needing connection.
“You know what scares me?” she whispered. “What if he’s out there now? What if he finds this place? What if coming here only bought me time?”
Lightning flashed again—bright enough to make the horses whinny in their stalls. The thunder that followed rattled the porch boards beneath our feet.
“He won’t touch you again,” I said. “Not here.”
She swallowed hard. “But what if he brings the storm with him?”
“Then he’ll meet both of us,” I murmured. “And he’ll learn storms aren’t the only thing he should fear.”
She squeezed my hand like she believed me. Like she needed to.
Rain started to fall in fat, slow drops—each one hitting the dirt with a tiny explosion.
