The presenter walks back out, chattering into her microphone, all practiced excitement and TV gloss.
“Oh my goodness, what a performance!” she beams, gesturing between them. “And look at this—country music’s favorite couple! Noah Lane and her fiancé, Bradley Hemstock!”
The crowd loses its mind again. Bradley lifts his hand, all teeth and charm, and pulls Noah in tighter at his side, pressing a kiss to her temple.
She doesn’t lean into it. Doesn’t smile up at him.
She just goes still.
The presenter moves closer, holding the award out in both hands. “This is for you, Noah. Best Female Country Star.” Her voice trembles with genuine awe. “You’ve had an extraordinary year.”
Noah reaches for the award, but Bradley gets there first. He doesn’t snatch it, doesn’t do anything anyone could point at and call wrong, but he steps in just enough that her fingers brush the side of the trophy instead of the base. His hand curls around it, and he liftsit high, grinning out at the cameras like this is his achievement.
His other hand stays on her, fingers locking around her wrist where the cameras can’t quite see the force of it.
From this angle though, from this couch, I see everything.
The way the tendons in his hand flex.
The way her skin whitens where he’s holding her.
The way her shoulders pull tighter, a tension that doesn’t belong on a woman who just won a damn award for living her dream.
“We’re so thankful.” Bradley turns toward the presenter, stepping subtly in front of Noah as he does. “This has been an incredible journey, and we’re just gettin’ started. Wedding’s in a week, and I can’t believe I get to marry this girl.” He looks down at Noah like she’s a prop to complement his speech. “Aren’t we, babe?”
The microphone hovers between them. The presenter looks at Noah expectantly. The crowd quiets, waiting for her to say something sweet, something quotable.
Noah gives a small nod.That’s it.Her mouth tilts at the corners, but it’s not a smile I recognize. It’s thinner. Brittle. A mask she learned to hold the first time she had to be professional on camera. Her eyes flick to Bradley’s hand, just for a second. I see the pulse in her neck jump. She goes to speak, lips parting, but Bradley’s thumbpresses just a little tighter into the soft skin of her wrist. A warning disguised as devotion. No one else would recognize it, but paying attention to Noah is my specialty.
“She’s been workin’ so hard.” He keeps going, taking the mic from the presenter as if it belongs in his hand. “Late nights, long tours, studio sessions. I’m just proud of her. Really proud.” He kisses her again, catching the side of her forehead this time. The crowd eats it up.
All I see is the slight flinch she can’t hide.
My chest compresses. I know that look. The look of someone who isn’t allowed to say what they really feel. Someone who’s learned the cost of speaking their truth is higher than the crowd will ever see. My fingers tighten around my glass until I think it might crack. I want to reach into the screen, rip his hand off her, and drag her away from all of it, away from him. Away from that stage that used to be everything and now looks like a cage.
“She doesn’t look happy,” I mutter, voice hoarse, like someone else is saying it through my mouth. My heartbeat grows louder than the show. Louder than the host’s laugh, than the crowd’s cheer, than Bradley’s smug grin as he keeps talkin’ about wedding plans like Noah’s simply a decoration on his arm, and not the woman he’s about to marry.
The anger comes quietly at first. A simmer. Then it starts to boil. All week I’ve been killing myself trying notto think of her—waking up before dawn just to saddle a horse, staying out in the fields until the sun burns itself out, saying yes to every damn job that keeps my hands too full to reach for the past.
And here she is anyway, bleeding through the screen. Looking like she’s crying out for help in a language only a few of us learned to understand.
Something inside me snaps.
I stand so fast the bourbon sloshes out of the glass and onto my hand. My breath pounds in my ears, tethered to the sight of his fingers on her, his mouth near her ear, the way she swallows something down that should never have to be swallowed.
The empty glass suddenly isn’t enough. The ache inside me claws for release, and my eyes land on the half-full bottle sitting there on the table, all amber and anger and bad choices. Before I can think better of it, I snatch it up by the neck and hurl it across the room. It leaves my hand with a weight I feel all the way up my arm. The bottle spins once, catching the lamplight, then smashes against the far wall with a crack that ricochets. Glass explodes in a spray, shards pinging off the floorboards, bourbon streaking the paint like a stain that’ll never wash out. The sound is violent enough to still the air. Then the silence rushes in, thick and accusing.
“Fuck,” I rasp, the word ripping out of me. My hands drag up over my face, fingers digging into my temples likeI can knead the rage back into something manageable. I drop down onto the couch, elbows hitting my knees, palms covering my eyes. My chest seesaws, breath trying to outrun my thoughts and failing.
Colors spark behind my eyelids as I press my thumbs against them. “What are you doin’, Starlet?” I fight back the emotions. “And what the hell are you lettin’ him do to you?”
RHETT
16
A soft soundcuts through the storm, shredding the inside of my skull. The hushed slide of slippers across wood. The quiet click of a door opening.
Grandma Jo’s bedroom is right off the living area, a relic of old farmhouse design that never made sense to me until now, when her presence feels as natural as the creak of the floor under her steps.
