“I thought you’d be happy.” He leaned in closer, trying to soften his eyes. He looked like he’d swallowed a fart, which might have been his brand of empathy. “I helped you out.”
“Helped me out?” She shot up from her chair, snatched her purse from the table. “I gave everything to that story, to this job?—”
“I think you’re overreacting. You should see this as baby steps, training wheels for the next time. In a few years?—”
“A fewyears?”
“—we can talk about getting your first solo byline.”
At the conference room door, Brinton grimaced. Hopefully, it was the last time this asshat had the privilege of seeing her face. “That’s the thing, Rich. I’m done waiting for the next time.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
At the hospital, the electrocardiogram machine’s persistent beep was Jamie’s confidant. Emma Lou had hit her head after overshooting her serve on the tennis court. It had been touch-and-go, but the surgery was successful. Doctors expected her to recover, though it would be slow, given her age and risk factors. For now, she hadn’t woken up.
Jamie had sent everyone else home hours ago, but he wasn’t leaving her side. He’d been through enough trauma in the last twenty-four hours. He couldn’t bear losing her too. There wasn’t enough whiskey in the world to make him forget how it felt to have found serenity and to squander it.
The fallout from theLandmarkteaser article had been swift. Tex relayed that the record label had canceled his current record deal, album release, and next month’s tour. Which meant, in the eyes of the town, his career was dead.
Jamie wasn’t exactly surprised. He made his choice when he agreed to hire Melvin, make two albums with him, and keep up the facade in front of an intrepid journalist, with whom he unwittingly fell in love.
Rightfully, Brinton hated him. He needed her to hate him so that she, at least, could be happy. Even still, the loneliness hacked at him.
When Jamie turned on his phone, it was flooded with missed calls and texts about the article, but he ignored them all. He leaned forward in the metal folding chair, which squeaked against the linoleum floor, and held his head in his hands.
The door creaked open, followed by familiar heavy footsteps.
“You should eat something.”
Jamie looked up to see his father, his figure shadowy in the low light. He held out a Styrofoam cup filled with black coffee and a pack of Zebra Cakes. They were his favorite when he was a kid.
“You remembered?” Jamie asked. He took the cellophane package and the coffee.
“Mm-hmm. I remember your mama pitched a fit anytime I brought them home. ‘Too much sugar,’” Jamie Sr. said, chuckling and shaking his head at the distant memory.
Perhaps it overwhelmed them both, because the next thing Jamie knew, thick tears had spilled down his cheeks.
“Sammi told me about Ms. Shaw,” his father continued.
“I cared about her daddy,” Jamie choked out, through ragged sobs. “But I had to let her go. You were right.”
His father gripped his shaking shoulders, which soothed Jamie enough to catch his breath. He dragged his eyes across his T-shirt sleeve.
Jamie Sr. slid a metal folding chair beside his son’s. “I think you and I are a little more alike than I’d hoped. I thought if I worked hard enough, stayed disciplined, I could give your mama this sterling life, and that would fix her problems,” he continued. “That she’d be happy. All the money, resources, and doctors didn’t give her what sheneeded. Sheneededme to show up for her in a way I couldn’t. Sheneededme to stop trying to control every outcome and listen. But I didn’t know how. I didn’t come up in one of those ‘feelings’ households like on TV. So I was blinded by whatIthought was best. Then, I lost her.”
“We both did,” Jamie said. His throat was raw from the exertion of speaking.
Jamie Sr.’s eyes darted to Emma Lou, whose chest faintly rose and fell in time with each damning beep. He sniffed and sighed deeply, then drug his palm against his own face.
Was he crying too?
Jamie had never seen it before, wasn’t sure what else to do but sit in discomfortwithhis father, for once, quietly absorbing every wave of emotion. Together. His body ached with stress but somehow, the pang dulled with his father now beside him.
“Jesus, seeing her like this brings me back to that God-awful night,” Jamie Sr. started. “First your mama, then I found you slumped over the steering wheel. They brought you into a room just like this. I swear, I thought I had lost you too.”
He shook his head. “To think I put ambition over your happiness, what you wanted for your own life, for so long, I…”
As his father’s voice broke off, Jamie felt like he was trulyseeinghim for the first time. Not as a man who ruled with an iron fist and a long memory. But as a man who’d made mistakes—maybe just as big as his own.
