Page 9 of A Song for Another Woman

Her smile fades at the edges, but she doesn’t retreat. “What?”

I should leave. I should call it. I should say, clearly enough for the room and the phone and the whole hungry machine,Don’t do that again. I’m married. My wife is not a prop in whatever this is.

Instead, I clear my throat and turn toward the band. “From the bridge,” I say.

Cy closes his eyes. Melody steps back.

The room exhales, and we work until three in the morning.

On the drive home, I grip the steering wheel and tell myself nothing happened. It's technically true. It's also completely chicken shit.

By awards week, “Wildfire” has turned into something no one can control and everyone keeps pretending they planned.

The song is number one. Then it stays number one. Interviewers ask where the fire came from with the same smirk every time. Melody ducks her head and says, “Ask Cade,” like the answer is intimate. I laugh because laughing is easier than correcting.

Duke claps me on the back afterward and says, “Perfect. Keep it loose.”

“People are getting the wrong idea,” I tell him once, in the back of a black SUV while Emmy’s name glows on my phone. I don’t answer because Duke is mid-sentence.

Duke looks genuinely unmoved. “People buying the wrong idea still counts as buying.”

“She’s my wife.”

“She’s secure,” he says. “She knows the business.”

That should irritate me. It should scare me, hearing Emmy reduced to a stable element in a campaign. Instead, it relieves me.

Because if Emmy knows the business, then I don’t have to explain why I missed dinner again. If Emmy understands performance, then I don’t have to look too hard at what I’m allowing onstage. If Emmy has been my biggest supporter since the beginning, then support becomes something I can depend on without looking too closely at the struts.

At the awards, the performance lands like a match in dry grass.

The lights. The shared mic. Melody’s hand on my arm. The crowd rising before the last note dies.

I feel young under those lights. Young, necessary, and forgiven for every stale song, every soft review, and every private fear that I had become a monument to a man who used to be good.

When they call our names for the award, Melody throws herself into me. I catch her. I know where the cameras are. I know Emmy is somewhere in the room.

I don’t look for her fast enough.

At the microphone, the words come out hot, grateful, and reckless. I thank everyone: Duke, the label, the band, and Melody, for bringing the match.

The crowd loves that. I can feel them loving it.

Then I remember Emmy.

My gaze cuts toward the audience, but the lights are too bright to find her. “And my wife, Emmy,” I say, the words suddenly too small for the room. “Thank you for always supporting me.”

It isn’t enough. I know it as soon as I say it. Unease flickers at the edge of the high.

Then Melody’s arm slides around my waist, Duke is grinning from the wings, the band plays us off, and the machine swallows the moment whole.

The after-party is all heat, noise, perfume, and liquor. People touch my shoulder like they helped raise me.

Duke moves me through the room with one hand at my back. “Cameras by the step-and-repeat. ThenPeople. Then CMT. Then we’ll get you and Melody together for a few.”

“I need to find Emmy.”

“In a minute.”