Whiskey River Rockstar (Whiskey River Series Book 3) Page 17

  “It’s that bad?”

  His mouth tightened. He let out a suppressed breath. “To the state of the world, hardly.”

  “I don’t care about the state of the world right now. I care about you.”

  “I know. God, I know.” His voice broke, and he turned to her. He couldn’t stop himself, he shivered in her arms. He was on the edge—that sharp, slicing edge—and he could feel it starting to cut, could feel the bleeding start.

  She tightened her arms around him. “It’ll be all right. Whatever it is, we’ll fight it, fix it, get past it.”

  She sounded scared. And he’d done that to her.

  “Zee, I’m sorry, I—”

  “I’m not going to lose you again, Jamie Templeton. So whatever it is, you just hang on.” She hugged him fiercely this time. “And someday you’ll write a song about it, and that will be all that’s left of it.”

  A harsh, choking sound broke from him. And the dam broke within, and he couldn’t hold it back.

  “There won’t be another song. Ever.”

  “Jamie?”

  He made one last try to stop it, but failed. The truth came ripping from him. “It’s gone.”

  “What’s gone?”

  “The music, Zee. It’s gone.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Zee felt another tremor go through him. She held on, trying to process what he’d said.

  “Gone?”

  In the dark she felt more than saw him nod.

  “What, exactly,” she said carefully, “do you mean?”

  “It’s just not there.”

  “How can you say that, after the wedding? That was the most incredible—”

  “Old.”

  “What?”

  “That was an old song. Already written.”

  “Jamie—”

  It came out in a rush then. “Every time I try for something new, it comes out just a variation on an old one. Music, lyrics, doesn’t matter. It’s gone.”

  “No, it can’t be,” she said soothingly. “It’s as much a part of you as those green eyes.”

  “It always was. Now there’s just this…hollow place inside. Like I’ve been scoured out.”

  She was sitting up now, looking down at him. In the dim light she could see only the faint gleam of the blond streaks in his hair, the shape of his jaw. But she could tell that jaw was clenched. He was fighting for…something. To tell her more? To not tell her more?

  “This has…never happened before?”

  “Not like this. I’d feel dry sometimes, but there were places I could go and just sit and soak in the world, and eventually it would come out as music. And if that didn’t do it, there were things I could do, like go to the beach, or for a long drive.”

  “Or a batting cage?” she said, trying to lighten this up, trying to make it anything but what he seemed to be saying it was. And it was true. Jamie had been a star baseball player in school. Some thought that would be the career he pursued. But then the music had called, and he had never looked back.

  “Tried,” he admitted. “Everything, Zee. I’ve tried everything that has ever worked, and nothing.”

  The old Zee, the one who had been angry with him, would have asked if that was the real reason he’d come home. But now all she could hear was the agony in his voice and the thought barely formed before it was smashed and discarded. It didn’t matter, even if it was true.

  Besides, there was no room for it, because her own horror at what he was saying was rising within her. Jamie, without his music? No more of those tunes that made you want to dance, no more driving anthems that made your pulse race, no more lilting melodies that made you wonder how a piece of music you’d never heard before could make your heart soar?

  “All right,” she said slowly, “so you drained the well dry, and maybe Derek put the lid on it. That doesn’t mean it won’t refill again.”

  He shook his head, his eyes closing as if the pain was physical as well. “I haven’t written a new song in nearly a year.”

  She didn’t know what to say. She knew that every season’s touring usually included several new songs. Some instantly took off, embraced by fans and with concert videos posted practically before they got off stage. Others didn’t and were discarded, although it seemed every song had devotees—some just had a smaller number.

  She remembered asking him once, toward the beginning when she’d been amazed by his productivity, where it all came from. He’d told her he didn’t know, but that sometimes the pressure inside got so big that he had to open the tap for a while, or he’d burst. But for him, to go a year without producing anything was akin to the river running dry. Whiskey River sometimes ran low, sometimes in a dry year down to a trickle, but it never, ever ran dry.

  But Jamie apparently had.

  “Jamie—”

  “Derek dying was what made me face it. I did a good job lying to myself up until then. Pretending it was just temporary. But at his funeral I realized the music was as dead as he was.”

  She needed time to think about this, painful as it was. There had to be something to do about it, she just needed to figure it out. Because a world without his music was not a place she wanted to be.

  “We’ll figure it out,” she whispered. “There’s an answer, we just need to find it.”

  And since she didn’t know what else to do right now she simply held him, until the warmth of their closeness blossomed into heat. And then she made love to him, slow, sweet, lingering over every spot she knew made him gasp or writhe, stroking, kissing, tasting, until there was room for nothing in his mind but her and how she was making him feel.

  She began it with every intention of driving all else out of his mind, and it ended with both of them nearly screaming with the intensity of it. And when he came with a rough shout of her name, she held him within her as if that alone could heal the hole within him.

  *

  Zee went into the office, her mind preoccupied with what Jamie had told her. He’d gone back to Aunt Millie’s, she suspected because working like a fiend took his mind off of it. She realized she hadn’t made coffee, went back to the kitchen. She was working by rote, going through the motions. She’d done it while half-asleep enough times that doing it while utterly distracted was nothing.

  He’d meant it. She could sense it. That he was utterly convinced this was more than just a block. That the gift that had always lived in his soul was truly gone. When he’d left her this morning, she’d been hesitant to let him go alone. She’d already warned him not to even think about shutting her out now that he’d told her, because she’d known from his expression that his thoughts were veering that way.

  She poured her first cup with an automatic motion. Picked it up and headed for the office as she reminded herself of what Deck had told her, about different ways of dealing. And Jamie’s way was clearly much closer to that of the famous writer than to her own, she thought as she hit the switch on her computer. And so she’d let him go, with the warning that she’d be checking on him. And she would, as soon as she finished—

  Jamie’s voice echoed through the office. She realized she had automatically put her phone in the sound system and begun her play list, because she always did. For a moment she stood frozen, the sweet, innocent love song made impossibly, achingly beautiful by the power and emotion of that voice swamping her. Memories of nights in his arms tangled with the ache this song always roused in her and then twisted into some hard, tight knot of anguish at the thought that maybe he was right. The idea that there would be no more of this, no more music like this, with the power to stop people in their tracks, make them cry or smile or dance or sing along even if they had the voice of a Texas mule was…

  Unacceptable. Utterly and totally unacceptable.

  No matter how she’d felt about him, justified or not, Zee had ever and always loved Jamie’s music. She loved the way he turned an everyday phrase into a refrain that tugged at the heart. She loved the way he tweaked the melody just a bit
from what might be expected, throwing in a minor chord to reframe the chorus from the rest. She loved the way his playing went from hard and pounding to so light and ethereal it didn’t seem possible it was the same instrument.

  And most of all she loved his voice, the most amazing instrument of all, and the way it could go from choirboy pure and light to achingly full of longing to rough and low and downright sexy. And the way he had sounded at the wedding, full of the emotion that made his songs burrow into people’s hearts.

  A shiver went through her and she wrapped her arms around herself at the thought of losing that. There would always be the music he’d already done, but no more new songs? No excitement at the release of a new one, no happy wondering what his clever mind and nimble fingers and agile voice would combine to produce next?

  Definitely unacceptable.

  And when she thought of what such a loss would do to him, how entwined with his very identity his music was, she fairly ached with the pain of it, for him. So much she couldn’t bear it. She had to do something.

  She turned on her heel and walked to the door to True’s side of the house. For years he would have been gone by now, well into a long, hard workday, but that had changed, along with many other things, with Hope. He called out a “Come on in,” and she opened the door.

  Despite her inner turmoil, she paused for a moment to enjoy the sight of her brother and Hope in a close embrace in the kitchen next to the open dishwasher. “Aren’t you two domesticated,” she teased.

  “I’m just glad to have dishes to clean,” Hope said.

  “And I’m glad to let her,” True said with a grin. “For now. What’s up?”

  “Where do we stand, work wise?”

  “Pretty much done.” True gave her a slightly embarrassed smile. “Now that the wedding’s over, I thought I’d take a few days off. Except for looking in at the rescue, of course.”

  Zee grinned at him, and it wasn’t just because he’d just solved her problem for her, as he so often did. “A vacation? True Mahan is actually going to take a vacation? The world may stop turning.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” her brother said, grinning back now. “Why? Somebody call with a job?”

  “Nothing urgent, just a couple of requests for estimates. I put them off until after the wedding anyway.” She hesitated, then went on. “I wanted some time off, too.”

  “Can’t imagine why,” True said, still grinning.

  “That, too,” Zee admitted.

  “But there’s more, isn’t there?” Hope said. Zee didn’t know if it was her experience of being on the run for so long or if she was just a quick study, but her future sister-in-law had learned to read her pretty well. “Jamie? What’s eating at him?”

  “Yes.”

  Silence spun out for a moment. Then True spoke, softly. “Take whatever time you—and he—need. If anyone can help him get past whatever it is, it’s you.”

  She hoped he was right.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “I was thinking,” Zee said.

  Jamie looked up. “When are you not?”

  “If you wanted a mindless female, you—”

  “Came to the wrong place,” he finished the old mantra for her, making sure she saw he was smiling. Then he added, “More than ever now.”

  He went back to the cabinet door he was fastening. He’d been checking on Kelsey’s horses in the mornings, and working on this in the afternoons. He’d stripped the kitchen cabinets and repainted them a bright white, and was just now putting the doors back on. It had been a lot of work, but a lot of work was what he wanted right now. What he needed.

  Well, that and the passion-filled nights with Zee. Those, he thought, could get him through damn near anything. Just as they had years ago. He had…not forgotten, but time and distance had clouded the memories a bit, of how cracklingly, vividly alive she was, and made him feel when they were together. Especially in those hot, fevered moments in the Texas night.

  “I want to make one suggestion,” she said, not looking at him, “and then you can go back to wrestling on your own. Will you listen?”

  Damn. He thought she’d been awfully quiet about it since he’d poured his guts out to her the night after the wedding. They’d worked on the house side by side day after day, and she’d never brought it up. He hadn’t talked about it since, although he couldn’t deny the pressure relief telling her had given him. It didn’t make the weight of it any less. It was only that he’d shared it. He’d forgotten how she could do that for him, but he remembered now.

  And she’d gone a week and a half. A record for Zee, when she had something in her teeth.

  He tightened the last screw, checked that the door swung easily and silently, then straightened. He turned around. She had the last door on the small kitchen table, and was replacing the hardware.

  She was, he realized, waiting for an answer. That was a change, he registered. But then, she usually, at least before, wouldn’t have even asked, she would have just said what she wanted to say. So she was being careful. Whether it was because of what he’d told her, or just general tentativeness because they’d rekindled…them, he didn’t know.

  “You’re at the top of my list of people I’ll listen to,” he said.

  She looked up then. She was smiling, and he knew he’d somehow found the right thing to say. “Short list?”

  He grinned. “Very.”

  Her smile widened, but when she spoke her voice was quiet, serious. “Later, when they’re back and when you’re ready…talk to Deck.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “Who better to understand what you’re going through?”

  He stared at her. “Deck?” The guy was a freaking genius, his books so intricate and smooth and engrossing that Jamie couldn’t imagine him ever stumbling. “I can’t imagine he ever—”

  She held up a hand. He stopped. “That bad place he was in when Kelsey first met him? Part of it was he was completely blocked on the last book.”

  He hadn’t known. He’d thought it was mainly Deck’s past Kelsey had had to fight through. “He was?” he said, rather inanely.

  “It was so bad he was going to kill off Sam.”

  Jamie’s breath caught. He really hadn’t known that. Kill off his boy hero, the main character beloved by millions?

  “So when you feel you can, talk to him, will you?”

  He wasn’t sure he could. Then again, who better to understand than someone who’d been there?

  “Maybe.”

  “He might have some real answers.”

  “Maybe,” he said again. He never would have thought of it on his own. Maybe he had some walls of his own to batter down. He hefted the screwdriver in his hand, tapped at the bright red handle as he considered. “Maybe,” he repeated a third time, with more emphasis, thinking he might really do it.

  “Do. I can only give support,” she said softly. “And tell you that the only thing I love more than your music is you.”

  That blasted all other thoughts out of his head. She’d said it. She’d actually said it, that she loved him. And done it as casually as if it were a given, and had been all along.

  “Zee…”

  It was all he could get out. Something had exploded in his gut, leaving him hot and cold and shivery all at the same time. And had the strangest feeling that if he let out what was jammed up in his throat it would be some kind of primal howl.

  And then he thought how very Zee this was, to pick this moment, when they were in the middle of paint and sawdust and scattered tools, a very matter-of-fact moment to say matter-of-factly the one thing he’d never dared hope to hear again.

  Because he couldn’t speak he went to her, pulled her into his arms. He simply held her, until his throat loosened enough to where he could get the words out.

  “I love you, Zee. I never stopped. I just got…lost for a while.”

  “I know,” she whispered.

  And later they found themselves showering off sawdust that had w
ound up in some interesting places.

  *

  “Well, you look disgustingly happy,” Jamie teased.

  Deck grinned at him. “I didn’t even know this happy existed.”

  Clearly the two-week honeymoon on some private island had agreed with the new Mr. and Mrs. Kilcoyne. “I’m glad for you, man.”

  “I know.” Deck eyed him knowingly. “You’re looking a bit happier yourself.”

  “I am,” Jamie said, then hesitated.

  “But?”

  He let out a breath. He didn’t really think anybody could help him. But if anyone could, it might just be this man.

  Besides, he’d promised Zee.

  Once he started, it came out easily, either because he’d already told Zee, or because he was barely two sentences into it before Deck was nodding understandingly.

  “Been there, my friend,” Deck said when he’d finished, “and it sucks in a very, very big way.”

  “Yeah. But you got through it.”

  “Thanks to Kelsey,” Deck said. “But she says I had to be ready to hear it first.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “Not consciously, so I don’t know if it would work intentionally done that way,” Deck said. “I can only tell you how it happened.”

  “Desperate,” Jamie said dryly. “Shoot.”

  Deck shrugged. “I started thinking of it as over. Cut it out of my life, tried to cut it out of my mind.” He grimaced. “I think cutting off a finger would have been easier.”

  “I get that,” Jamie muttered. He already felt like something crucial had been amputated.

  “I kept telling myself I was done. That I’d had unexpected success and I should be glad I’d had even that. That I should figure out what I’d do with myself now that I wasn’t writing anymore. I had enough money, so that wasn’t a worry. So I worked around here,” he said, gesturing at the house and the garden that was a green oasis even in the brown of an early Texas summer. “Ran a lot. Swam a lot. Until I was so exhausted I could hardly move. Tried to get too tired to think.”

  “Did that work? Because it sure as hell hasn’t for me.”