Maybe that’s even what it looks like right now.What itfeelslike in this very moment. Like we’re just a man and a woman sharing a home. Sharing a life.
I wish it were that simple. But sheismy employee. I am her boss. She’s my son’s nanny. She’s a lot younger than me and dependent on me for shelter and money. And I might be an asshole in all kinds of ways, but abusing my power over someone more vulnerable has never been one of those ways.
Watching her puttering around barefoot in her little sundress, already at ease under my roof… it activates some deep protective instinct in me.
She’s my responsibility now. She’s under my protection.
I think about those shards of glass I swept up. I think about beautiful, glimmering things that seem so strong, right up until the moment they shatter.
And I’m the kind of person that breaks everything they touch.
Which is exactly why I need to keep my hands off Sadie Sullivan.
Chapter 9
Sunrise
WALKER
As usual, I’m up with the sunrise the next morning.
I love waking up early at the same time every day. It feels like a luxury after spending months at a time on tour, barely knowing what time zone I’m in, losing track of day or night. The only constant in my life being the view of the clouds out of the window of a private jet.
It’s no way to live.
A man is meant to have the earth beneath his feet. To let his body fall in with rhythm of the seasons. To sleep in a bed of his own.
With a woman of his own beside him.
At least I’ve got three out of four going for me these days.
Sadie and Jonah are still asleep, and I feel a sense of satisfaction knowing they’re slumbering peacefully in their beds.
I don’t dwell on the stray thought that I’d feel a hell of a lot more satisfied with Sadie inmybed.
Downstairs I make coffee, enough for two, and check the weather report and my email.
Weather’s good. Email is not.
The president of my record label has taken to emailing me himself every week. Not to bug me to make another record already, like I know he’s dying to do. He’s too smart for that. No, he talks to me like we’re friends.
I mean, I like Carter Caldwell fine enough. We came up together. Me as an artist, him as a music exec. We went from up-and-coming artist (me) and A&R boy genius (him), to Grammy-winning Stagecoach headliner and record company president.
It’s been a wild decade for both of us.
In some ways, we are friends. But I don’t need to hear from him every fucking week like I’m one of his golfing buddies getting ready for bottomless mimosa brunch, or whatever the fuck it is the suits do with their free time.
Now he’s asking if I want to come back to Nashville to do a televised benefit concert at the Grand Ole Opry.
I reply the same way I reply to most of his little pen-pal missives. Some variations on the grab bag of:
no
stop emailing me
we’re not friends
fuck off
