Chapter Eighteen
Jamie stared out at the river, determined to keep his eyes pointed that direction. One glance at her face told him the words he hadn’t meant to say had registered.
There was a moment of silence when he could almost feel her wrestling with whether to pursue what he’d nearly let slip. But then he’d always been tuned in to the moods of Zee Mahan. When his friends had griped about their girlfriends getting mad or upset for no reason, he’d always said, “There’s a reason, even if it doesn’t make sense to you.” And the answer had always been, “Easy for you to say. You and Zee read each other’s minds.”
Read each other’s minds…
He damned well hoped that was a skill she’d forgotten.
“You said you were here for a reason?” he asked, sharply.
“Just a warning,” she said, her tone too carefully neutral to be accidental.
His mouth quirked sourly. “Only one?” The list of things she could warn him about was long and varied.
“For now. I was just in town.”
“Congratulations.” He could snipe, too.
He kept staring out at the river, watching the shine on the water ripple as it slid past. Finally, she spoke again. Calmly. And in that moment, she suddenly reminded him of Aunt Millie, who never reacted quite the way he’d expected. It had been one of the joys of living with her. He’d loved his parents, grieved them to this day, but Aunt Millie had been an adventure.
“When you said people got weird, I thought you meant in a fan sort of way.”
He glanced at her then. “I did.”
“I didn’t realize being a fan meant wanting to know every bloody, grim, unpleasant detail of your life.”
“That,” he said dryly, “is just being human.”
“Not what I’d call it.”
“So you don’t want every bloody, grim, unpleasant detail?”
“So I’m just a fan?” she countered.
He sighed. “You know you’re not.”
“Then you should know it’s not a matter of me wanting. It’s a matter of you needing to get it out.”
He looked back at the river. After a moment she spoke again.
“You used to get it all out in your music. You’d play up here for hours.”
“Just did that,” he pointed out.
“You were playing,” she agreed. “But it was pure pain. That song is full of sass, but you could have been a cover band for all the energy that was in it.”
He seized on the words, needing the distraction. “We have one. Out in L.A.”
“A cover band?”
He nodded. “They call themselves Can of Worms.”
She laughed, sounding as if it had been startled out of her. He risked a glance. She was smiling. “They obviously heard the story of how you got your name.”
He nodded. “They’re actually not bad. I went to see them once.”
“They must have been in heaven.”
“I just snuck in.” His mouth quirked upward. “Their front man is a lot prettier than me.”
“Jamie Ford Templeton, there’s not a man alive prettier than you.”
“And there’s not a woman alive prettier than you, Zinnia Rose Mahan.”
That easily they slipped back into it, the words they’d once said so often. He hadn’t intended it, not really, because he hadn’t expected her to say the old mantra. But now that she had, all he could seem to do was sit here and stare at her, remembering when she had said the words and meant them, when he had held and treasured her heart.
“Do you remember?” he asked softly. “When we talked about everything, solved all the world’s problems with youthful ease and ignorance?”
“And now we can’t even talk about our own.”
“Do you have problems, Zee? Besides that idiot who finally came home, I mean?”
She looked startled. Then slowly, tentatively, she smiled. “Besides him, my life’s actually pretty rosy right now. The guy who deserves more happiness than anyone in Whiskey River finally has it, so I’m good. Admittedly, Hope wasn’t a Whiskey River girl, but she is now, so that’ll do.”
He shook his head in slow wonder as he looked at her. “You love this place down to your bones, don’t you?”
“It’s home,” she said simply.
“You said there were other places you’d like to see. Where?”
She looked thoughtful. “Seen the southwest pretty much, so…Montana. The Dakotas.”
“The wilder places,” he said. “No desire to visit the big cities? New York, San Francisco?”
“Maybe to fly over.” Her nose crinkled in that way that had always made him smile. “All of this is avoiding the point.”
“The point of what?”
“Why I came out here. To warn you.”
“Of piranhas circling?”
She grimaced. “I thought vultures, but that likeness is a little more apt.”
“I’ll take them over the sharks of L.A.”
Her head tilted as she looked at him quizzically. “If it was so bad, then why did you stay?”
“Because that’s where it took off.”
“But this is where it began.”
And where it will likely end.
He suppressed a shiver. Zee’s gaze sharpened. Woman never missed a thing, and she knew him too damned well. “You said you weren’t using. Was that true?”
He realized where her mind had gone, that she’d thought the shiver a sign. He couldn’t blame her, after what had happened to Derek, but that didn’t mean her doubts didn’t rankle.
“What do you want, a story for those piranhas? I’d rather you just fed me to the sharks.”
For a moment she said nothing. Then she stood up. “I only came to warn you about them. I thought you might want to get it over with in town, where you can escape. Sooner or later someone will figure out you’re here, and if the curiosity isn’t assuaged, they’ll show up here.”
She turned to head for the ladder.
“Zee.”
She stopped, but she didn’t turn back to look at him. He couldn’t get the next words out. He hadn’t told anyone, not even True, how crazy it had gotten. How far from his roots he’d gotten. He swallowed tightly. Forced himself to speak.
“I thought…at first it was just being away, where nobody knew me. It was heady territory, for a kid from Whiskey River. Bright lights and big city isn’t just a meme, it’s the truth and it’s addicting.”
She was listening, although she still didn’t turn around.
“That headiness, I thought it was freedom. And I won’t deny I went a little crazy, wondering why I’d never realized how trapped I’d been. But that morning after Fort Worth I woke up feeling like hell, and finally realized what I’d thought was freedom was just being out of control. And where I was headed if I kept going. More important, I realized what was missing.”
She did turn then. She didn’t speak, but those wide blue eyes were fastened on him. She deserved this, he thought. And he hadn’t realized how much until now.
“There was no one to do what you did—what you’d always done—for me. Kept me centered, anchored.”
She finally spoke then. “Some would say anchored is the same as holding back.”
“Only someone who hasn’t been too close to hurtling out into space.”
“Why didn’t you come home then?”
“Because the next day we got asked to open at the Staples Center.”
The show that had begun the dazzling rise, the bursting into awareness of the newest, hottest band around, never mind that they’d been slogging around the edges for nearly two years. He’d called Zee that night, a little delirious with excitement.
He realized suddenly he had a chance to ask something he’d always wondered about. Was doing it before he thought about it.
“Did you know? That night? About Aunt Millie?”
She smiled sadly. “Yes.”
So even as spitting mad as she’d been at him then Zee had gone along with his aunt’s wishes, not to tell him about her illness then. She’d told him herself, later, that she hadn’t wanted anything to detract from the excitement she could hear in his voice. And later, when she had told him, in her blunt, reality-accepting way, she softened it by saying she’d had the best things in life already: a soul mate, a child she adored, and now to see that child achieve a dream denied to most.
“I’m so glad she lived long enough to see you hit the big time,” Zee said softly.
He lowered his gaze to the guitar case. “She had a lot of faith in me.”
“She did. And rightfully so, obviously.” After a moment she added, “She never stopped talking about those two weeks on the road with you.”
He’d managed that, before she’d gotten too ill to travel, before the cancer had her in too much pain to even move. And the guys, especially Boots, had treated her like visiting royalty, and watching that had inspired what would become their biggest hit, “Those Who Came Before.” It had inspired even more than a song, but he didn’t want to say anything about that until it was all final.
“I still miss her, so damned much.” His throat was almost too tight for the words to get out.
“I know.” His gaze snapped back to her face. “But she was so proud and happy, Jamie. And you gave her that.”
And then Zee was gone, barely making a sound as she went down the ladder.
For a moment, Jamie just sat there. Heard her car—that damned green car—start, then the sound of tires on the gravel drive.
Emotion was choking him. If he didn’t do something, if he didn’t move right now he was going to be crying like a baby in the next ten seconds. He scrambled to his feet. Dug in his pocket for the keys to the Mustang.
“Might as well get it over with,” he muttered.
He went to the small landing at the front of the tree house, bent, grabbed the edge and dropped to the ground, foregoing the ladder.
Whiskey River, here I come.