I look up at him, which might not be my best move if I had any hopes about this night going further than this bar. I’m pretty sure I look like a drunk raccoon with mascara smearing down my cheeks. “You have to go back to celebrate with your team.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Maddox…” I say with a serious tone. I shouldn’t be surprised when he answers right back.
“Gabrielle…”
We have a stare down for a beat. Is this man really trying to dig his heels in the ground about this? “Are you always this stubborn?”
“Some would say it’s my middle name. Which is Jacob, by the way.”
This man is infuriating. Hot. But infuriating.
“Maddox. I’m a stranger who invited herself into your night on a dare. I’m now crying on the floor of a bar. You just won the biggest game of your career. You’re telling me you’re willing to sit here and listen to me vent instead of having the night you rightfully earned?”
He doesn’t say anything, and for a second I feel like I might’ve gotten through to him. But as soon as I think that, the man somehow gathers me into his arms, and stands up with me in them, before taking a few steps over to an abandoned chair.
This is something I can safely say has never happened to me before.
“Not only am I willing to listen, Iwantto listen,” he says, his gaze holding mine where I couldn’t possibly think about looking anywhere else. “You were meant to come up on that stage tonight with me. And I’m meant to be here with you right now. And if we spend the rest of this night in this chair, then so be it. But I promise you this, Gabrielle, there’s no place else I’d rather be than here with you.”
My vision might be blurred from the tears and the steady stream of alcohol tonight, but even with those impairments I can tell by the sincerity of his voice that this man is one-thousand-percent serious. My tears have started to subside, but now my body feels like it’s crashed from the biggest adrenaline rush of my life, and the only thing holding me up is Maddox—physically and emotionally.
“I didn’t think I was going to cry,” I admit, my head falling to the crook of his shoulder. “It was just a song.”
“A song is never just a song,” he says. “Every song brings out some sort of emotion in us. And I have a feeling that song was a lot of emotions all wrapped up into one.”
“You have no clue.”
“I don’t. I want to, but I don’t have to know. You’re right. We’re basically strangers. But so you know, I can listen with the best of them.”
I have a feeling he’s not tooting his own horn with that one. The man seemingly is amazing at everything he does. And it’s not that I don’t trust him. It’s that saying these words to anyone is hard. Hannah and Shelby are the only two who know, and even then I didn’t tell them until after the divorce was underway. I was ashamed. Mad. Sad. The same emotions I’m feeling right now.
But I don’t want to ever relive this again. I want this to be a full exorcism. And I have a feeling the only way to truly purge all of this is to say the words out loud. Even if it’s to a man I just met.
“He never let me sing.”
There. I said it. Not loud, but the words are out there. Though I’m not sure if Maddox heard me judging by the confused look on his face.
“Did I hear you right? I know it’s loud in here, and someone is doing a horrible version of a horrible song, but did you say?—”
I nod, actually wanting to say it again. “He didn’t like it when I sang. So I stopped. Tonight was the first time I’ve sang in seven years.”
His eyes go wide. “Seven years?”
I nod, then cringe at the way Justin’s words could deflate me in an instant. Killing my confidence, and my joy. I knew Justin was never the biggest fan of my singing. He never came to any of my choir shows or musicals in high school. If it was karaoke night when we went out with friends, he’d always have some sort of remark when I said I wanted to sing. But that moment? When he walked in the door and said “I just wanted to come home from the office and have some peace and quiet. Not have to listen to this fucking racket that’s barely even words.”It was theworst thing he’d ever said about my voice. I knew then—and now—I’m not Nashville's next big star, but to hear my singing being called “a racket” doesn't exactly make a person feel good.
That was the last day I sang with even the possibility of anyone hearing me. I didn’t want to sing in the house for fear that it would start a stupid fight, and at the time, I didn’t think it was that big of a deal to give it up to preserve the peace. I wouldn’t even sing in the shower. And then, as the years went on, I stopped all together.
In the grand scheme of the mental fuckery Justin put me through, me not singing is probably ranked around nine or ten on the list. But, it’s a prime example of how he treated me and how so many things in our marriage got put on me to “fix” when I didn’t break them. He had the formula nailed down: He didn’t like something; he complained and picked fights about it; I swallowed it and sucked it up for the sake of squashing the fight.
Rinse. Repeat. Suffer.
But not anymore.
Seven years ago, I was listening to my favorite song. I was minding my business. Cleaning. Meal prepping. Doing my best to enjoy chores that I did as a wife.
