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  It had taken six months in the new house to realize that wasn't going to happen. He remembered clearly the day he'd given up hope on them. But he'd gone and gotten attached again, three homes later.

  When he looked back, he told himself he was only a kid then. He could have had it easier, had he kept his head down, and not tried to become part of the family. But he didn't know. What was his excuse now?

  The phone rang again.

  He didn't even look. He couldn't talk to Hailey with her bubbly, just-got-married enthusiasm. She'd been excited to hear that Craig and Shay had "met" at the wedding—at least that's all he'd told her. That he talked to the beautiful bridesmaid not long enough to get her last name. That was kind of a lie. It had been plenty long, but she hadn't volunteered it. He probably wouldn't have volunteered his if it hadn't been public knowledge.

  After only a little cajoling, Hailey had happily given up Shay's phone number and even address when he said he'd like to just show up and surprise her.

  Hailey told him that Shay had been her best friend growing up. It wasn’t a casual mention. It was a warning; they all knew Hailey had it hard before hitting success with the label they were all on. But what Hailey didn't know was that he could make her 'poor' look positively stable and elegant.

  He assumed Hailey was warning him that Shay-at-home was not the same elegantly dressed bridesmaid he'd seen at the wedding. So Shay's house had not been a surprise to him. Now he realized that what she meant was that Shay was not normally as open and welcoming as she'd been at the wedding.

  He'd almost expected the yard that needed to be mowed. Maybe even the sweats and haphazard hair. He knew from the start that she probably didn't usually spend her days reading on the beach and getting massages and blowouts at the spa. But he had not expected the kid. Nor the door in his face.

  She'd looked harried and tired and worried, and it made him worry about her. Craig pushed those thoughts aside. No point in worrying about a woman he'd known for three days three months ago.

  He told himself it was better to get kicked now. Not later when he was invested. And why risk an investment now anyway? The only ones he'd ever made that worked were the guys in the band and himself.

  He told himself he'd paid for a nice hotel, and it was worth heading down to the bar to get a cocktail. It didn't matter that the day had turned gray and was threatening rain. It had been sunny on his way out to Shay's—almost as if his mood was controlling the weather. But not anymore. Now he could get a nice drink in a nice bar. Maybe find a nice woman, or at least a warm one, and break his three months of apathetic celibacy.

  Grabbing his phone, he headed for the door and saw the text.

  Not from Hailey.

  A string of numbers showed across the top. He frowned, but he hit the button.

  —This is Shay. Can you come back? I'll explain.

  Shay turned up the volume on her phone and ran to the bathroom. She wet her hair down and tried to give her hair some direction. Any direction. It was the fastest track she knew to something decent. There wasn't time for a shower.

  She didn't know how far away he was.

  She didn't know if he'd come back. If he'd text first, or just show up at the door. If he did, at least this time she'd be ready.

  Her hair wasn't really styled, but it was better. She'd never get it straight in this kind of time frame, but at least it was relatively smooth. She changed into a pair of jeans that fit and added a draped cottony top.

  "Too much." She muttered. He'd already seen the house. Seen the yard that hadn't been mowed because the neighbor who'd been mowing it had lost his job. He no longer needed her to watch his kid, and so her lawn wasn't getting mowed. If she had an extra twenty, she should have hired him to do it. Maybe he'd work for a casserole? But too little, too late. Craig was in town now.

  Why? She had no idea.

  Shay peeled the nice top and traded it out for her best fitting long sleeved tee. She was pretty sure it had come from the discount store. Then again, Shay herself pretty much came from the discount store. If Craig was going to show up at her house, he was going to get the real deal. He'd probably run screaming, but at least she'd know the score.

  She started to grab for her makeup, then stalled her hand on purpose. She could only do so much. She didn't want to answer the door in any way that suggested she was going to roll right back into bed with him.

  Laughing at herself, she applied a small amount of concealer and about two more minutes’ worth of work. She declared herself done and figured he probably just realized something was missing—his key, a favorite bookmark?—and wondered if it had gotten mixed in with her things. She'd say "no." He'd say "thanks anyway." And it would all be over.

  The phone hadn't dinged. No return text.

  Though she told herself it was nothing—that she'd already ruined anything that might have happened from Craig showing up on her doorstep—she was still incredibly disappointed. What did she think was going to happen?

  "Shay, I've finally found you! I'll take you away to live in my McMansion in Nashville and treat you like a queen!"

  She snorted at the thought. Surely she was nuts, because one—she was talking to herself. And two—she wouldn't take that offer in a million years. Men who offered to take you away could do that because they had everything and you had nothing. In three years, you'd live in a bigger house, but you'd still have nothing. You'd have a man who told you how to dress and act. A man who provided like that constantly remembered that he was the provider, and wanted you to remember it, too.

  No thank you. Shay had shit to do.

  And she was late. She was supposed to be working on that dress for Hailey. Also, there was a set of gowns to be made for the local theater. That was some of her most favorite and most hated work. The gowns were interesting, bright and showy. They had to be for the stage. But the unfinished seams—who would see them? The theater didn't want to pay for it—drove her bonkers.

  After five minutes of staring at her fabric, picking out complementary textures and colors for Hailey, then scrapping them and starting over, she decided to work on the theater gowns. She couldn't afford to sit around and wait for a man who wasn't likely to show. He hadn't even responded.

  She cranked her cheap dress form to match the measurements of the lead actress and pulled out a bolt of a shimmery burgundy fabric. It was relatively cheap and scratchy. Perfect for theater. The woman would wear petticoats the theater already had. She could wear a low cut t-shirt under the top.

  Pulling out a white gauzy fabric, Shay held it up, eyeballing if she had enough. Then she stepped back and thought about the dresses. Ten of them. She had enough of the white for three. Good.

  She'd been ten when Hailey had seen a skirt she told Shay would be awesome. Neither girl could afford it. So for Christmas, Shay had saved up, bought fabric and a pattern, and made a similar one for Hailey using her mother's old sewing machine. She made a second one for herself, and she'd tweaked the design a little, making the lines better, the waist smoother. Both girls like the second skirt better.

  It had taken two years for the old sewing machine to give out and take her heart right along with it. Shay had been making clothing for both of them by that time and Hailey felt the loss, too. For Christmas that year, it was Hailey who saved, hunted, and bartered. She found a used professional machine. And she kept it at her house. It wasn't safe at Shay's. Nothing worth any money was. But they were back in business, with Shay and Hailey both handing clothes down to Zoe as they were outgrown.

  By the time she graduated high school, Shay was earning some of her own money as a seamstress. The small local theater—two towns over—paid her for costuming. She had three machines, all used, all at Hailey's. Some classmates bought prom dresses and such from her.

  She'd graduated. Waited tables. Met Jason and fallen so hard in love. Had Owen. When Jason needed money, he sold off her machines one by one. Saying she didn't need to work. On the contrary, she needed to work
more, he could stay home with the baby. That had been the first threat of violence. The first hint of lockdown. She hadn't liked it, but she hadn't recognized it for what it was. By then, Hailey had blown town. So no one was there to tell her she was making a horrible mistake thinking—as Jason said—that things would be better once he found work.

  Jason had once swept her off her feet.

  No one would ever do that to her again.

  She had just given up and gotten down to real work, when the knock came at the door.

  Chapter 7

  He didn't know why he was back. Standing on the broken steps again. He'd raised his hands to knock twice before without actually doing it. A good sign he was more broken than he'd thought.

  That was why the third time, he actually struck his knuckles against the door. Then he braced himself. She'd told him to come back, so she shouldn't slam the door on him. Then again, she shouldn't have done it the first time either.

  Shay opened the door, looking definitely more together and, it seemed, a little relieved. "I'd decided you weren't coming back."

  "So had I." He shrugged, then stepped into the small entry as she moved back and offered a sweeping gesture much grander than the house warranted.

  "Welcome to reality." She offered half a grin as he moved through the small entryway and directly into a well-used living room. Toys were piled in a laundry basket in the corner, small shoes in a smaller fabric basket next to it. The carpet was worn, the couch was worn, the TV was deeper than it was wide. Yet there was something about it that called to him.

  "This is my house." She seemed to feel the need to speak to fill the space.

  He must have been staring, but he couldn't not stare. The small dining room held a large table hidden under a plastic tablecloth. Fabric draped the backs of chairs, two machines sat perpendicular to each other at one end, and a bookshelf that didn't match anything else was shoved into the corner. A clear box with a million little cubbies inside held every color of thread imaginable. "You're sewing?"

  "Yes." The way she said it held an undertone of "duh," and he couldn't say she wasn't right.

  But he was putting the pieces together. "You made the bridesmaids dresses. Hobby?"

  Even as he asked it, he realized that was stupid. People who lived in houses with the siding sliding off didn't have hobbies that required several machines and dedicated bookshelves.

  "Job."

  "Did you make the wedding gown? It was amazing." He looked at her, hands in her pockets, shy. Not the gregarious woman he'd met at the resort.

  "No, I didn't. Not enough time." She looked around as if deciding what to tell him. "I made Hailey's pieces for the tour and TV and such."

  He was putting it together. "And you make ours, too."

  She smiled at that. She was proud of it, not ashamed. "I made the tie you wore to the wedding. I recognized it. Hailey wanted them for presents for Christmas. She keeps food on my table. She's a good friend."

  He laughed out loud, some of the tension finally breaking. Some of the Shay from the frothy dress and lush hotel room was breaking through. "No she's not. I mean she's not just being 'a good friend.' She's paying for talent."

  Suddenly startled, he looked down at himself. He'd kept some pieces from tour and didn't know if he was wearing one of them now.

  She caught him. "No, you're not currently wearing anything I made."

  "My suit at the wedding?"

  She shook her head. "I can tailor suits just fine, but I don't generally make them. Usually the place you get them takes care of that. Not much business for me there." She paused a moment, then tipped her head.

  He wasn't really sure what he was waiting for. Maybe he'd hoped she would just start telling him about her life, but she wasn't doing that. She hadn't addressed that there had been a kid here earlier. And that it looked like a smaller kid lived here as well. She had two? Three? He didn't ask.

  She beat him to it. "Why are you here?"

  He shrugged. They'd agreed to go their separate ways. They'd said goodbye. It had all been very clear. And then it wasn't. He sighed. He didn't know where to start or if there even was a start. He made the decision to come here on the spur of the moment—a long moment once he factored in travel—and then he'd even come back. If he didn't answer with something, it was all a waste. So he tried.

  "I don't know." He watched as she raised her eyebrows, probably thinking that was all she was going to get. Instead he motioned to the couch. "Can we sit?"

  She didn't answer, just walked over and curled her mismatched socks up under her in the corner of the cushions. He took a seat at the other end and started again. "After Miami, Wilder went out on tour. I get depressed on tour sometimes, but I've done it enough that I know how to fix it. Only this time, the fix didn't work."

  That wasn't enough. He tried again. "I went home, and still didn't feel at home. When I thought about the last time I was happy, it was in Miami . . . with you."

  He felt like he'd laid an ugly puppy at her feet and was asking her to love it. She looked at him. Tried looking into him. None of it seemed to satisfy her.

  "You can't get Miami back. It was vacation. I can't live on vacation."

  "I know. I—"

  She interrupted him. "It wasn't about me. Why didn't you just go back to Miami and find another beach and another bridesmaid?"

  "That's not it." He didn't look at her. Couldn't stand the thought that she'd reject the ugly puppy.

  For a full minute, no one said anything. He just sat on the old couch, sinking further into the bad springs with each passing moment. When she finally spoke, she didn't reject the puppy, but she didn't accept it either.

  "I'm going to tell you three facts about my life and you're going to run screaming."

  I dare you, he thought, but he just looked at her. Her blond hair tumbled, not in ringlets but saner waves now. She was scrubbed and fresh, much like she'd been after they went swimming. Though she'd been pampered and done up in Miami, she'd never had an issue with him seeing her bare-faced or rumpled. The unadorned outfit from earlier that afternoon had not been off-putting. It was just that he had no idea what to expect, and a woman obviously mid-crisis had not been it.

  She started her list. "I have two sons. A six-year-old and a three-year-old."

  He flinched. He knew it. He wasn't one for kids. Aside from his bandmates' children, he hadn't been around them since he'd been one. And his current child-exposure-level was still as low as he could keep it.

  She nodded. "You don't even need the other two."

  "I do." He stayed put. Kids, huh?

  "I'm twice divorced. My boys have two different fathers."

  He nodded this time, now wondering what number three could possibly be. She was trying to make him run.

  "I'm flat broke."

  "Why?" He spoke it before he thought about it. What a horrible question. But if he was going to leave and never come back, he wanted to be sure she had this straight. "Is the label not paying you enough? Wilder is making enough—and so is Hailey—so that you're well-paid for your services."

  That he could do. Maybe he walked out of here with nothing else accomplished but making sure she didn't have to live "flat broke."

  "It's not that." She looked away.

  "Then what is it?" He scooted just a little closer. Something about her drew him, whether she was in a gown, or just the hotel sheets, or in her old jeans, sitting on a lumpy couch.

  "Look, you and I aren't in the same spheres. Miami was great, but it's over."

  His face must have showed the hit his heart was taking, and he didn't even know it had been exposed. That was stupid, of course. He was here. So somewhere along the way, he'd gotten his heart involved. Only it seemed he'd done that entirely in his own imagination.

  Shay backpedaled as fast as she could. "It's not you. You're great, but I can't keep that up. I have too much here. My kids need me. And you don't even like kids."

  "I don't dislike them."

/>   She clutched a throw pillow to her stomach and raised one eyebrow at him.

  Exasperated, he threw out one last attempt. "Let me take you out to dinner. Give me one date. One real date, then dump me."

  He didn't know why he was begging.

  Apparently neither did she. She was rejecting the ugly puppy. "I can't. I'm supposed to be working. I have to earn as much money as I can. I have kids. I don't have time to date."

  He sat back. "So you're earning enough money but you're broke. Kids aren't that expensive."

  He knew from experience you could raise kids on the cheap. From the looks of things, her toddler wasn't running around in Air Jordans or anything. She was probably lying about making enough, but she wouldn't admit it to him. Didn't he know a thing or two about pride like that?

  It only made him want to push harder. There was no good reason to do it, but he did it anyway. She didn't want him, but it didn't stop him. Craig stared her down.

  "Fine. I make enough, but I'm saving everything I can. I shop at Goodwill and use things until they are beyond dead. I don't have cable or a nice car. I can't even afford the clothes I make!" She threw her hands up.

  "What are you saving for?"

  "Why are you making this worse?" She seemed really upset. Affronted, even, that he would ask such a thing, but she answered. "I'm saving for a lawyer. Both my ex-husbands have partial custody of my kids. Both of them are abusive in different ways. But I have to fight two separate court battles. I can't free one kid and leave the other one in there, can I? And I have to be sure I don't run out of funds halfway through and lose." Her voice was rising. "I'd waste all that money and I'd just make them mad. I have to have enough in case one of my kids comes back from his visit with bruises! If that happens I have to save that one first. But . . ."