Page 81 of A Song for Another Woman

He frowns, not because he doesn’t understand, but because he does.

I take a step toward him. “When the next wildfire comes along. The next song. The next girl with a bright voice and a camera in her hand. The next room where everyone looks at you like you’re brilliant, hungry, and necessary.” My voice starts to shake, but I don’t stop. “What happens when I’m the boring thing at home? When I’m tired? When I’m ordinary? When no one is clapping for you because you came home on time and asked me how my day was?”

His face goes pale. I almost look away, but I don’t.

“What happens then, Cade?”

He breathes once. Twice. Then he says, “I come home.”

The words are simple enough that I almost miss them.

He takes one slow step forward, stopping well out of reach. “That’s the answer. I come home. Not because you ask the right way, not because you make it easy, and not because you’re shining bright enough to compete with the room. I come home because I know what it costs when I don’t.”

My eyes sting harder.

“I don’t get to act confused anymore,” he says. “I know what the wildfire is now. It wasn’t Melody, and it wasn’t music. It was me wanting a version of myself that didn’t have to be responsible to the person who knew me best.”

His voice roughens. “I don’t want that man back. I don’t miss him. He had stadiums, deals, and every door open, and he was empty enough to let his wife cry alone in a house with marble floors.”

I stare at him.

“I want ordinary with you,” he says. “I want boring with you. I want every version of home I was too stupid to recognize because I was waiting for it to feel like applause.”

His eyes hold mine. “You are my life.”

My throat closes. Cade looks wrecked by the words, as if saying them stripped something out of him and left only bone.

“It took me too long to know how true that was,” he says. “But there’s no life without you. Take the career. Take the awards. Take Lonesome Strings, Silver Creek, and every stage that ever made me feel like a king.” His voice breaks. “Take you, Emmy? I’m nothing. Not because of what you can do for me or what you make me, but because I don't want to live in a life without your voice, your touch. Without your jokes and your smile. You're it, Emmy. You've always been it.”

The first sob comes out of me before I can catch it. His whole body jerks like he wants to come to me, but he doesn’t. He stands there and lets me cry without making my tears about what he needs.

I cover my mouth, but it doesn’t help. The sound gets through anyway, small and broken.

“I wanted to hate you,” I say.

“I deserved it."

“I did hate you sometimes.”

His eyes close. “Good.”

The sob that leaves me then is uglier. Honest.

I drop my purse on the plastic-covered floor and press both hands over my face. For months, I’ve held myself together with rules. Don’t answer. Don’t go. Don’t listen. Don’t soften. Don’t tell him. Don’t hand him the one reason he might stay even if the love wasn’t enough.

The rules kept me standing, but they also kept me alone.

“Emmy,” Cade says, barely above a whisper.

I lower my hands. He’s staring at me like the whole world has narrowed to the space between my sweater and my shaking fingers. I could hide from it for one more minute, maybe two, but I don’t.

“I’m pregnant,” I say.

The room empties of sound. Cade doesn’t move. His face goes blank in the way a person’s face goes blank when the mind refuses to do the cruel, beautiful arithmetic too quickly. His gaze drops to my stomach and stops there. His mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

I put one hand low on my belly, and the gesture breaks him.

He takes one stumbling step backward and hits the edge of the temporary counter. One hand comes up to his mouth, his eyes filling so fast the tears spill before he can do anything about them.