HeartStrings Page 3

  Sand was going to be one of the singles off the new album. Everyone loved it. Still he didn't feel any happier.

  The world still looked a bit off. The city looked different, darker despite the fact that he always saw it in the same lack of light. He always rolled in between two and five a.m. These days, when he let himself into the nice house he'd bought with the money they made, the air inside pushed back at him. It felt like even his house didn't want him.

  They'd been on the road for three months off and on. Craig had figured it was the tour, but he was home for a stretch now. The guys had a break from each other, he wasn't going to hear from TJ or see JD's glow or Alex showing picture after picture of the perfect Olivia on his phone for at least a week.

  He hadn't slept well, which was why he'd been up and watching the town roll by. His house was a three bedroom, something he could easily afford. TJ had himself a small mansion he was making payments on. JD and Kelsey had added on to her house. Alex and Bridget lived where the homes were brick and the schools were good, and Craig was pretty sure they were in hock up to their eyeballs.

  The band was doing well. The others were spending their money.

  Craig was socking it away. No kids to spend it on. Small house, a few neighborhoods over from JD and Kelsey. Far enough to not be asked to babysit, close enough to call them family. Or as close as he got to it.

  He almost owned the house. That was a win. Each month was a struggle to decide—pay the mortgage off faster or have cash on hand, just in case something went wrong? He agonized over it. But he was here and content now with the decisions.

  Tired as hell, he finally walked in his own door and first took care of the guitar and the bass he carried with him. When he was in high school, he'd read something about the pioneers, and how they always took care of the horses before they took care of themselves. Because the horses made their lives possible. When he'd gotten his first acoustic guitar that had been the real deal, he'd cared for it before himself. He still did.

  He'd sold that guitar what seemed like a long time ago, and he regretted it to this day. With that last thought, he crawled under the covers and fell into a sleep that was as melancholy as his waking hours had been.

  He woke up the same way.

  With nothing left to occupy his time, he admitted to himself that he'd been happy. That all these shows and tours had happened and no one had recognized him. He was as safe from his past as he could be. This time he wasn't going to come out of the funk he was in just because he'd written a great song about a girl on a beach and how she'd slipped through his fingers like sand.

  That was just musical stylings. She hadn't slipped through his fingers at all. He'd kissed her goodbye. She'd walked away. She wasn't the one who'd gotten away, not like the song suggested. She couldn't be, because he hadn't tried to keep her. He'd simply let her go.

  Maybe she could become the one who got away. Or maybe she wouldn't. But he had to find out. Craig stood on his back patio in the middle of the afternoon, jeans slung low on his hips the only thing he was wearing. He hadn't done anything other than roll out of bed and think he needed fresh air and to at least try to get back the girl he had known.

  The one that he'd written into Sand.

  Chapter 5

  "What do you mean, you're going to be late, Jason?" Shay gritted her teeth.

  She never learned. Jason never learned. He said he was 'going to be late' but he was already late. The fact that he was calling to say so was a step up, but he was so far down that a single step didn't mean much to her these days.

  "I'm stuck in traffic. I'll be there. Don't be a bitch."

  It rolled off her. He was always stuck in something: work, traffic, maybe some girl. Shay didn't care about it for herself, she cared for Owen, who sat reading a book—something he could drop at a moment's notice—and waited for his dad to show. Her heart twisted that her little boy already understood at six that his dad didn't think he was important enough to show up on time.

  "We'll see you when you get here!" She chirped into her phone and hung up.

  The way Shay considered it, she owed him nothing emotionally or effort-wise. She would owe him literally nothing except that the court had disagreed with her. The court said she'd hit him too, and she had.

  He'd smacked her around after Owen was born. Then he'd escalated to pushing or slamming her into the wall. The last time he'd punched her, she'd pulled the dirty frying pan he'd left on the stove and whacked him upside the head with it. If it hadn't been such cheap aluminum, it might have knocked him out for longer.

  She'd leapt over her husband, run into the tiny closet they called the baby's room and grabbed the sleeping child. Owen had screamed, his face turning red, but she'd cradled him close, once again jumped over Jason where he lay directly in the way of the door and made it out the apartment door. She was in the central hallway of the apartment building, when Jason grabbed her hair.

  If the neighbor hadn't been coming out the door right then, Shay might have a very different story. But the couple across the way had ushered her inside. She'd filed for divorce the next day.

  The downside of hitting him back was that they both had injuries to show the judge. His head, her face. The judge ordered parenting classes and anger management classes for both of them. Shay attended every one. Jason attended none. But it was too late. The judge had set visitation that same first day, and Shay didn't have the money to fix it. She was saving to fight back, though that was a long road. How much would it take? She couldn't run out halfway through.

  Then there was Aaron. Her toddler was out with his dad right now. While she was certain Jason would never hit Owen, and she inspected him every time he came back, Aaron's dad was a different breed.

  Brian Wilson imagined himself as talented as the lead singer for the Beach Boys. Shay knew now what her ex had most in common with the legend was his mental instability. He'd never hit her. She didn't make that same mistake twice. No, she'd chosen a new one.

  He'd called her ugly and stupid. He tried to ignore Owen out of existence, and sometimes her, too. She'd been useful as a way for him to get a son. Though why he couldn't have done that with any of the other women he was screwing on the side, she didn't know.

  When—at eight months pregnant—she'd come home from running errands to find her second husband in their bed with another woman, she'd known it was over even before he asked her to shut the door so he could finish. He'd be out to talk about it in a while.

  She hadn't been there when he was done, despite the fact that he was done pretty quickly. She hadn't talked about it to him except through a judge. And she'd thought if she left before there was a baby, maybe this time she could get out. Big mistake.

  It was a boy. A man laid claim to a boy, Brian said. That might be true, but Shay had pointed out that since he wasn't a real man, she didn't know what that had to do with their situation.

  Brian was not amused, and she and Aaron had paid for that true, but snotty, remark ever since. Aaron was out with his dad since yesterday afternoon. She'd loaded him up with things to do, but that was hard because he was three. Brian did not know what to do with a three-year-old, and he didn't bother to try to figure it out. Shay was afraid her toddler was second-hand-smoking weed, and probably watching porn or at least adult shows. The only good news was that Brian had a girlfriend who seemed a little more together than he was. Shay wanted to warn the girl off, but she didn't dare take away her son's best care provider when he visited. So she kept her mouth shut.

  It seemed she spent too much time working around her ex-husbands. Even now, she was in loose workout pants and a sweatshirt with all the cuffs cut out. With UCLA emblazoned across the chest, it was the closest thing to trendy that she had on. Zoe sent it when she got into grad school there. Shay loved to wear it, both because it was from Zee and because it was a reminder that there was a way out.

  Her hair was finger-combed up into a loose knot held in place by a ponytail holder and a fabric p
encil. She was supposed to be working, but she'd known that wasn't going to happen. The few times she'd been actively doing something with Owen, Jason had showed up, miraculously on time, and demanded to know why his son wasn't ready.

  So she puttered around, dealing with a schedule not her own. She fed Owen what he was willing to eat between chapters of the book he clutched. She pulled out her machines and set up the kitchen table for work. She purposefully hadn't put makeup on. The last thing she wanted to do was make Jason think he might want her again.

  He'd done that a few times when he'd been lonely. After she'd divorced Brian. He'd talk her up, tell her she was pretty, and how much he wanted her. It was all bullshit, and Shay had wised up.

  Though she would never trade either of her sons, she'd sure managed to tie herself to two royal bastards for the next fourteen years, nine months, and twenty-seven days. That was how long it was until Aaron turned eighteen.

  She could handle it. But while Owen wouldn't be Owen if Jason wasn't his father, and Aaron wouldn't be Aaron without Brian, she wished she'd done a hell of a lot better job picking out their fathers. Instead, she lived a life of trying to be the best parent she could be. On top of that, she worked to make up for what their fathers lacked. Then, when the day was done, she just let a lot of it go. She wasn't making her kids eat extra vegetables or watch less TV because their fathers had no control or concern about their children's well-being. She could only do so much, and in the past year she'd worked on the fine art of saying "fuck it."

  She kissed Owen on the forehead, then turned to check her work. "Whatcha reading?"

  He held up the book. "It's about a boy who gets a car that he fixes up."

  "Oh?" She didn't look at the book; she was looking at the bolts of fabric she had stacked on her shelves. The boys had books, she had bolts. They had hot wheels, she had embroidery machines and sergers. Hailey needed something flirty, knee length, and one-piece for on stage. Must go with teal blue cowboy boots.

  "Then, the car starts fixing itself." She could tell by the sound of his voice that Owen was eating one of the peanut butter crackers she'd set out. He continued, "But now, it seems like the car is killing people! Which is kinda cool."

  She turned and oh, shit. There was Stephen King, in paperback, face down on the table while her angel ate crackers with peanut butter and a blob of jelly he'd apparently added to each when she'd turned around.

  Fisting her hands, Shay reminded herself that his independence and his advanced reading skills would serve him well in the future. And she would survive the now. "Is it a good book?"

  "It's really good, Mom." He popped another cracker in his mouth, almost letting the jelly slide onto the upholstered chairs she'd found for a song.

  She took on the other problem. "Don't you think that's a little old?"

  "Mrs. Vreeland says we need to read as high a level book as we can, so we become better readers. I'm trying to do that." He sounded so adult.

  Shay forced a grin. She couldn't take the book away. Well, she could, but he'd found a way around her the last time she'd tried. If she was going to do it, now was not the time. Which meant he'd have the book finished by the time he got back from his dad's tomorrow night. She also tried to remind herself that Mrs. Vreeland probably hadn't meant for her son to read adult horror novels.

  The knock at the door jolted her. She was both relieved that Jason had finally showed and a little heartsick that she'd be sending her baby out with that asshole. In a reminder of why she did all this, she looked to Owen as she opened the door.

  "Jason." She said it without turning to him, with as little feeling as she could, and stepped out of the way before he could push his way in.

  "Shay?"

  Her head snapped around. That was not Jason's voice. "Craig?"

  Her heart thudded against her ribs, her hands started a fine tremor, and her voice quit working.

  He stood in the doorway of her tiny house in a neighborhood made up of people who couldn't afford anywhere better. Neither of them spoke. She stared. He stared.

  No wonder. The woman he met at the beach had flowing curls, not hair that had dried in a towel and couldn't decide if it was wavy or straight. It now couldn’t decide if it would stay in the knot or break loose and hang haphazardly around her face. The beach girl wore high end clothes, not sweats.

  Shay had only worn a bra because she didn't want Jason staring at her breasts. Now she was supremely grateful. She wanted to invite Craig in, but she couldn't. There was a tiny entryway, so Owen couldn't see the doorway and Craig wouldn't see Owen.

  She heard her son's feet hit the ground and his voice asking without excitement, "Dad?"

  Craig jolted at the sound of a kid.

  So did Shay, but for an entirely different reason. "No, Owen. It's not your father. Go back to reading." Then she turned to the man who managed to look incredibly out of place on her doorstep, and she hissed. "What are you doing here?"

  "I . . . I just wanted to see you." He stammered. Thrown off by circumstances, or maybe by the sight of the real Shay Lynn Leland, he was no longer the assured man she'd had her one-night-stand-turned-fling with.

  "How did you even find me?" She stepped forward into the doorway, hoping to keep Owen from seeing him. She didn't date, and she didn't want her sons to be exposed to boyfriends. Since this was the closest she'd come in the last three years, her instinct was to keep the two separate.

  "I called Hailey." He looked lost.

  Well, he was lost. He shouldn't be here. Didn't he know that showing up in reality ruined the fantasy? Did he not understand that he was a snow globe to her? Something she took out and shook occasionally to spark a memory. Damn Hailey for giving out her address. She hadn't even given the man her last name! The whole three days, she'd never said she had two sons, or lived in Virginia, or that she was usually a mess.

  And good God, Jason could show up any moment. What would he do if he found a man on her doorstep? Would he haul her back to court? Get jealous or violent? He'd done okay with Brian, but Brian had been a mellow musician-wannabe. He'd been no threat to Jason's perceived masculinity. One look at Craig and Jason would know he'd been bested. That was a bad combination.

  Putting her hand square in the middle of Craig's chest, she pushed him back even as she fought the zing that raced up her arm. The feel of him beneath her fingers was wilder than any imagined memory she had of how good the two of them had been together.

  But that was fantasy. Three days out of reality.

  Right now, reality was that her ex-husband might be pulled over down the street, watching her. Right now, she was what she usually was: a mom fighting to put food on the table for her kids, to get them a decent education, and help them grow beyond the crap roots they had. So she pushed against his chest and told him, "You have to go."

  Then she closed the door in his face.

  Chapter 6

  Craig had booked one of the better hotels in Bristol. He normally would have saved the money, but he'd gotten used to nicer places when other people put the band up somewhere. More than that, he'd decided that—should he fail miserably—he'd want to come back somewhere pleasant. Somewhere he could order room service and wallow in what went wrong, rather than having to eat from a vending machine or suffer the wall bangers in the next room.

  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

  But after getting the door slammed in his face and dragging his ass back to the nice hotel, he flopped onto the bed and didn't do anything else. Numb to his bones, he asked why the hell he'd ever thought this was a good idea.

  Until he'd seen his file, just after his tenth birthday, he'd harbored the ridiculous hope of getting adopted. Some kids did. Before that day, he'd checked out the house, the parents, and made a decision. If he liked the family, he would flat out ask them to adopt him.

  There was always a different reason not to. They were just a foster family. They would help him find an adoptive family, but it wasn't them. They already had e
nough children. Looking back as an adult, he could read the refusals for the excuses they were.

  At one point, he'd been plucked from a relatively cushy family and dumped into a group home. He ran away. Ran back to the family he thought had loved him. He told them what was happening at the group home.

  They sent him back.

  No report. No help. Just, "Your time with us is over and we all should move on."

  Then, once he'd seen his file, he knew that asking was useless anyway. Eventually, he got out. Made mistakes. Hit bottom. Worked hard and clawed his way to where he was. He didn't ask anymore.

  So why the hell had he gone to her and asked?

  Of course this was the outcome. This was always the outcome. Every time he asked, he was kicked like a puppy. He'd learned that a long time ago. He thought he'd also learned not to ask. Not to get kicked. But it seemed the lessons wore off after time and he had to learn them again.

  So he lay face down on the very nice, fluffy white comforter and reminded himself of what he already knew. This time he would make sure it stuck. This time he wouldn't need to re-learn it in another ten years.

  He ignored the ringing of his phone. Probably Hailey calling to check up and see how it had gone. He almost barked out a harsh laugh. He wasn't going to tell her. Let Shay gossip about how her three-day fling had showed up at the door wanting more.

  He wondered if she believed he'd just driven here almost on a whim. Or if she wondered if he thought, because she agreed to an extra few days originally, that she'd just agree to more now.

  Rolling over, he looked at the ceiling and considered Shay's house. The woman he'd met had been refined and elegant. The house was anything but. The siding was faded and sagging. The front steps were concrete with pieces missing and cracks that made you wonder when the next step would just break off. The door hung slightly askew in the frame.

  He'd lived in a house just like that once. He'd been five or six, the family packed in. The father—Mr. Green—complained that the house leaked like a sieve and he was glad there were so many kids to keep it warm. They ate white bread and cheese squares that came in plastic. Craig understood the dynamics now. When he'd been moved from the Greens, he thought they'd come get him.