He pauses.
“Someone always pays for the dream. Sometimes, it’s you. Or the people who love you. Usually, it’s a little of both.”
I raise a brow. “Am I the small thing in this analogy?”
He shakes his head with a quiet laugh. “This probably makes no sense. All I’m saying’s that the world’s about to pull her in a hundred different directions. It’ll be hard to keep track of up from down, left from right. I’m glad she’ll have you to ground her. We all need that.” He meets my eye. “You’ll be there for her?”
My throat tightens.
For the rest of my life. Longer, if you believe in that sort of thing. I’ll figure out every impossible thing between here and there if it means keeping Summer Starling.
“For as long as she’ll have me.”
THIRTY-FIVE
The outdoor lights flip off,and more stars, tiny clusters not visible before, shine in the inky sky. There are so many. Yet, I can only see a fraction of them.
I tug the blanket tighter around my shoulders, shimmying down the lounger until I’m flat on my back.
I should be more excited about the CMAs. It’s one of the things I dreamed about as a little girl, watching Carrie Underwood and Miranda Lambert walk the red carpet while I sprawled across the blue one in our TV room, with its wood-paneled walls and furniture my grandmother bought decades earlier. But, in my head, I was there in one of those sparkling gowns, with perfect posture and a perfect smile.
And now I will be.
Yet, instead of being out-of-my-mind happy, I’m sitting on the balcony off Miles’s and my bedroom feeling like I might cry about it.
My.
Despite what I thought when I drove here in Betty Bronco, this place does feel like mine.Like home.And unlike the double-wide trailer I grew up in, it’s not one I want to leave. It has nothing to do with the square footage or the number ofbedrooms, and everything to do with the man who shares it with me.
I never wanted to leave my family, but I wanted a different life. The one I dreamed of. But I didn’t expect a new one on top of it. Didn’t think a life full of hockey scores and a much-too-demanding cat could fill me just as much as spotlights and a stage.
I played with Barbies, but Ken was a placeholder, not a person. I never could picture his face. Not once, in all the years of almost-relationships and wrong-time-wrong-person and collecting friends instead of lovers. And then, without meaning to, I could. Ican.
The door slides open. The man himself pauses at the threshold, then steps out onto the balcony. Of course he found my hiding spot.
“There you are.” He looks down at me, shirt untucked, sleeves pushed up, hair messy from running his hands through it. “What’re you doing out here?”
“Thinking.” I pat the cushion at my side in invitation.
“Anything you wanna share?” He sits on the lounger, near my hip.
I’m definitely not going to unload all of that, so I say, “You ever wonder why important people are called stars? The hockey star, the movie star, country music star, Summer Starling—” I make an arc with my hand, as if my name’s up there.
He tips his head up.
“Never really thought of it.”
“Like they’re so rare and brilliant. Yet, there are hundreds of billions of stars in the sky. They come out every night. I’m not sure you could pick a more abundant, ordinary thing.”
He smiles, fingers absentmindedly playing with my hair.
“Feeling existential, are we?” His gaze tips down again.
I huff a laugh. “Guess so.”
Miles lies back, settling at my side, then pulls me close. His fingers draw lazy patterns on my arm where he holds me, making sure I don’t slip off the side.
Silent, we look up at the twinkling lights.
