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Sniffling, Nora nodded and didn’t deny him when he leaned down to press a kiss against her lips. She wanted to believe him. Sheneededto believe him, and so she did.
That night, Creed fell asleep wrapped around her in her bed, but Nora-Jean laid awake, too consumed by her thoughts to find rest. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw him. The boy she loved.
She couldn’t remember how many conversations they’d had under the stars; conversations laced with promises of forever—a forever filled with love, family, and the three babies they were going to make together. She was fourteen years old when she gave her heart to Lawson Steele. More than a decade later, his name was still scribbled all over her soul, like it was a page in her high school notebook.
She’d been the one to end it. She was the one who walked away, but he’d left her behind first. After she told him they were done, the man she loved didn’t come chasing after her. Now, the life she’d managed to create without him was taking her for a ride. It scared the hell out of her.
Exhaustion beckoned her to close her eyes at dawn, and she slept until she heard a front door open and close. Her studio apartment was small, and the walls were thin. It wasn’t unusualfor her to hear her neighbors coming and going—but this door had been closer.
Her eyelids parted. In spite of the bright morning sun which greeted her, there was a cold empty feeling that washed over her. Instantly, she knew.
Knew he was gone.
Knew he wasn’t coming back.
Knew she was all alone.
Much as she wanted to convince herself Creed had merely gone out for breakfast, she was too tired to entertain the lie. She’d seen the look in his eyes the night before. It wasn’t fear. In the moment, she couldn’t decide what it was. Neither did she feel inclined to figure it out. He hadn’t left, and that was enough.
Now that he’d gone, she realized what she saw in his lingering gaze was acceptance. Not acceptance of what they had done—whothey had made—but acceptance of what his future would look like without her in it; what his music would sound like without her raspy tone and her original lyrics. She understood his passion for music. It lived inside of her, too. As her eyes welled up with tears, she admitted to herself she wasn’t all that astonished to learn he’d chosen his music over her.
Still hurt, though.
Rather than stay in bed and cry about it, Nora got up to do what she always did when life sucked. She dragged her feet over the carpet and sleepily looked for her purse, where she knew she’d find her journal full of songs. When she opened her bag and didn’t spot her songbook, she frowned in confusion. Nora raked her fingers through her hair, pulling it away from her face before she began digging through her bag again. It was fruitless. She dropped her bag on the floor, unwilling to believe the worst as she started hunting for her most prized possession. She became fully awake the more frantically she searched, but her apartment wasn’t large enough for her denial to take root.
Just like Creed—her journal was gone.
Standing in the middle of the room, she covered her face with her hands and pulled in a desperate breath. It did little to settle her stomach, which turned as she tried to remember the last time she’d used her journal. She wasn’t one to lose things. Especially not that. All of her ideas were in there. Her favorite compositions were in there. She’d been using the same leatherbound book for more than two years.
Creed leaving without a word was cowardly. Creed leaving, stealing her words, it was a betrayal so profound it made her ill. Literally. Without warning, she found herself in the bathroom, vomiting little more than what remained in her stomach from the previous night. She retched until she was empty, and then she cried until she felt wrung dry.
Without her journal, there was only one way she was going to make it through the day. With what little energy she had left, she got up, rinsed her mouth, grabbed her phone, and climbed back into bed. Wrapped snugly in her blanket, she called her lifeline.
“Hey, bestie, what’s up?”
“Mitzi Belle…” she hardly managed.
“Nora? Nora, what’s wrong?”
“I screwed up. I screwed up so badly,” she sniffled.
“Oh, babe, I’m here. I’m here and we’ll get through it. Whatever it is—it’s not stronger than you.”
Nora-Jean wanted to believe that was true, but she wasn’t so sure. Before she could deny it, Mitzi insisted, “Tell me what happened.”
Five years later…
Evelyn gasped from where she sat, buckled into her booster seat in the back of Nora’s old Honda sedan. Catching a glimpse of her daughter from the rearview mirror, Nora saw her favorite pair of golden-brown eyes light up in excitement as she begged, “Mommy, turn it up! I like this song.”
Before she could even reach for the dial, Evie was mumble-singing along to the lyrics, missing every third word but catching the melody all the same. Nora laughed a little, wondering what kind of mother let her four-year-old sing a country song about a guy from a bar who could sweet talk a girl out of her dress. She only thought about it until the chorus blared through the car, then she was singing along, too.
There was a reason she’d dubbed her child her mini-me. Evelyn Belle might have been born with her father’s pretty eyes and warm, honey-brown hair, but the rest of her was all Nora—right down to her taste in music.
Besides, Evie had no idea what a bar was. And so long as Nora had anything to do with it, her mini-me wouldn’t know what it was like to have her heart broken for at least another decade. Maybe even two, if she was lucky.
They reached their destination before the song was over, but Nora didn’t dare kill the engine with one more round of the chorus to go. She unbuckled her seatbelt, turned in her seat, and pretended she was holding a microphone as she sang with herdaughter. Evie grinned, took up her own imaginary microphone, and belted out the end of the song.
Nora lived for moments like this.
