Page 90 of Three Months Yesterday

And then my phone buzzes on the nightstand, and I know without looking it’s the man I want to hear from most. I reach for it and the screen lights up in the dark, Beckett’s message right there for me to see.

Beckett

Tell the little nugget good night for me. I don’t want him, or his mother, forgetting I’m here for them.

I press the phone to my chest and close my eyes. And all of a sudden, the quiet doesn’t feel so empty.

Aaron’s voice grates as he follows the label executives out of the conference room. It’s warm and polished, the way it always gets when he’s performing the part of attentive manager, but it irritates me more than usual today.

A few handshakes and back slaps before the soft click of the door closes behind them and his attention is back on me.

I don’t move from my seat.

The meeting ran an hour and forty-three minutes. I know because I watched the clock on the wall the entire time—the second hand making its slow, indifferent lap while three people walked through marketing rollouts, streaming projections, and a tour schedule I’ve seen a dozen times before. They were important things, things that needed to be discussed, agreed on, and finalized. But not a single one of them required me to be sitting in this room, in this city, instead of hearing about them from the comfort of Stonebridge Hollow.

Aaron turns back to me, already loosening his tie and settling into his let’s debrief posture I’ve watched him assume for almost twenty years. He opens his mouth to say something I don’t care about, but I don’t give him the chance.

With a calmness I don’t feel, I ask the question that’s been running through my mind for the last hour and forty minutes. “Why did I need to be in the city for that?”

He pauses, his hand still on his tie. “What?”

“That.” I gesture at the now empty conference table still littered with half-empty water bottles and crumpled napkins from the pastries Aaron provided. “Tell me what part of that meeting required me to be in the city so urgently.”

Aaron pulls out the chair at the head of the table, falling into it and folding his hands on the surface—the way he does when he’s about to manage me. “It’s important for the label to see you in person, Beck. It shows engagement, commitment⁠—”

“I’ve been with the same label for fifteen years. Worked with those exact people the last five.” The words come out flatter than I intend, but I don’t correct them. “They know me and my work. They know I’m not going anywhere. They don’t need the face-to-face time a new client requires.”

Aaron’s jaw tightens—just slightly. He shifts tactics, and I watch it happen in real time in the way his expression recalibrates. “It’s not just about the meeting.”

“Then what’s it about?”

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve pushed back on Aaron over the entirety of my career. I can’t pinpoint what it is about this particular situation that has me so angry with him, but he’s gone too far this time.

“The stalker.” He says it carefully, as if balancing the scales of justice. “Stonebridge Hollow clearly isn’t as safe as you think it is if your stalker can find you there.”

I stare at him, dumbfounded. “It’s not your place to decide what is or isn’t safe for me. That’s what I have Ian for.”

“Ian is a security consultant, not a⁠—”

“Ian has a background to support every decision he’s ever made,” I interrupt. “I trust him to do his job. You’re my manager, Aaron. You manage my career, not my life.”

The silence that follows is thick. Aaron looks at me, something shifting behind his eyes, and I don’t bother trying to name it. I let my gaze drift to the window, the city stretching out twenty stories below. It’s gray and cold and indifferent, nothing like the place I left. My eyes fall to my phone and I think about the text sitting there.

It came in just before the meeting started. I saw it light up the screen and almost didn’t look, but something in my gut told me not to wait. Something in my chest loosens every time her name shows up, and it’s a reflex I stopped trying to fight weeks ago.

Madison

So…one of your songs came on the radio on my way into town and the baby wouldn’t stop kicking. Looks like you’ve got another fan.

I couldn’t stop staring at the words, the image so clear in my mind I felt like I was right there next to her. Madison behind the wheel, one hand resting on her stomach, my voice filling the cab while the little nugget kicks against her palm.

I don’t know when I started calling him little nugget, but I like that I have a nickname for him, one that no one else has. It’s easier than thinking of him as anything else, than thinking of him the way my heart calls for me to think of him.

Very little about my life has changed, and yet everything is different. I still love music, still feel it as part of my soul. These last two months in Stonebridge Hollow have felt more like the early days than anything has in a long time. It reminds me of the way I used to write. The way songs used to show up uninvited, demanding to be played. I’ve written more in the cottage than I’ve written in the last two years.

Music isn’t the problem.

But producing at this volume? Touring at this pace? Living my life as if music is the only thing keeping me alive? That’s not what I want anymore. I don’t know why it stopped being enough, but I don’t care.