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“Stay down!”
I have no choice but to follow the federal officers’ directive. Laken is pinning me to the ground with his body—hislifelesslystill body.
“Laken?”
It takes everything I have to push him off me, and when I do, my world is ripped from beneath my feet for the third time in my life. He’s been shot, and the entrance wound is puddling blood around his frozen and rapidly whitening frame.
“Help me!” I scream while rolling Laken onto his stomach to compress his wound. “It’s not my blood,” I assure the brunette, who falls to her knees beside me two seconds later. “He’s been shot. He’s bleeding.” My voice croaks when I add, “He wasn’t meant to be here. He was supposed to walk away.”
I repeat my mantra over and over again as they load Laken onto a gurney and race him toward an awaiting ambulance. Then I repeat it even more when the last man who should be offering me comfort wraps me up with one of his famously warm hugs.
“He wasn’t meant to be here. He was supposed to walk away.”
EPILOGUE
NICOLE
Nerves take flight in my stomach when I walk onto the stage at the annual Country Music Awards in Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena. The mood is subdued. I’m not surprised. It always is when I perform this song. It was the number-one hit on my first album. It is titled: “It Should Have Been Him.”
As I stand behind a microphone, the scene reminds me so much of the ending ofA Star is Born.I can see the tears in the audience’s eyes, and I haven’t even started singing yet.
That is how much this song moves people.
That’s how much it moves me.
After wetting my lips to loosen them up, I soundlessly signal to the stage crew that I’m ready.
I’ve performed this song hundreds of times since it was written, but there won’t be a single time the opening line doesn’t come out croaky.
It should have been him…
Breaking down and shattering into pieces….
He stole you just as the magic was starting to begin…
And now I’m skeptical about letting anyone else in…
I don’t want to ever forget…
all the precious moments we shared…
The love, the laughter, the feelings…
The memories we’ll never get…
He took the best parts of you…
And twisted them to make you out to be the villain…
Before he broke my heart in two…
and made me doubt every word we’d written.
But I’ll never forget…
all the precious moments we shared…
The love, the laughter, the feelings…
