He looked sharply at me.
“At first it seems like you feel more than other people,” I said. “But I’ve finally figured out Charlotte’s right. You feel less. You’re numb. And you’re trying to get some of that emotion back, even if it hurts. Even if it hurts other people. I really thought you and I had a connection. I know I didn’t always show it. I tried not to. But when you broke up with me, you broke my heart. And I swear you made it worse on purpose. You wanted to make it the ultimate breakup by consummating our love first.”
“The way you acted, I honestly didn’t think you cared,” Sam said. “Not like I did.”
“I see.” I nodded. “You’re telling me I’m an emotionless bitch.”
“Not a bitch,” he said levelly, ever the gentleman.
“Really,” I said. “Here’s how much I care about you, Sam.” I opened my purse and pulled out my illustrated notebook of songs. I flipped through the pages and ripped out four together. “Here’s a song about you screwing me and then breaking up with me, thus trapping me forever in a f**king country song. This is how I felt about that last night.” I shoved the pages at his chest.
He opened the pages in his hands, but I didn’t watch him read them. I was already searching backward through the notebook for another choice song. “Here’s how I felt when I first met you, since that obviously wasn’t clear. Oh, wait.” I flipped in the other direction. “Would you rather know how I felt when we couldn’t get along, but I knew we’d be onstage together the next night anyway? Or how I felt when you undressed me in your truck?”
“Bailey,” he said sternly, like I was a little girl making a scene. “We have a gig.”
“I beg your pardon,” I exclaimed. “A gig! There’s nothing more important.” I yanked the torn pages from him, folded them inside the notebook, and shoved the whole thing back into his chest. “Here are my songs, my emotions about you, that I will never have again. Take them and climb to the top with them. I have no use for them or for you.”
I spun on my boot heel and pushed through the crowd and the stuffy air to the rooftop. As I emerged under the stars and the twinkling lights strung along the walls, I saw Charlotte and Ace at the guardrail where Charlotte and I had talked. She was on her tiptoes, about to kiss him. The hair on my arms stood up.
“Oh, don’t do it,” I said to myself, but I meant it for her. Whatever was standing between them, they hadn’t worked it out, and she was about to ruin everything.
He stayed stock-still for a moment. Then he slipped one hand behind her head and kissed her deeply. Just as suddenly, he stepped away from her. He was angry at her, pointing his finger in her face, pointing out at the crowd. I saw him mouth, “Sam,” and Charlotte burst into tears.
“That’s right,” I told her, though she still couldn’t hear me and it was none of my business, anyway. “You should never start something when you haven’t finished the last thing. People feel used that way.”
“What?” Sam demanded. He’d caught up with me.
“Absolutely nothing,” I said, grasping the hand that Ace offered me from the stage. Charlotte still stood against the guardrail, sobbing.
“Well, this will be a fun set.” As I grabbed my fiddle and tuned up, I noticed that the manicure girls stood near the door, talking with Aidan Rogers. He gazed up at me and opened his mouth in utter amazement. Immediately he pulled out his phone and thumbed the keyboard.
I muttered, “And here comes Toby.”
I had no doubt Aidan really texted Toby then, but it took Toby three songs to reach the roof, probably because he was three sheets. Despite the fact that he’d changed his hair from dyed black to bleached blond and gotten a second eyebrow piercing in the week and a half since the wreck, I recognized him right away because he was so tall and thin, a head above the crowd. He stood next to Aidan for a moment, talking with Aidan but never taking his eyes off me. Then he started to move in my direction.
I had nothing to worry about. He could stare all he wanted, but I felt safe several feet above the crowd and him. I turned away from him and watched Sam for the signal to start the fourth song.
The next time I looked around, Toby was alarmingly close. Despite the tightly packed crowd, he’d managed to push within three people of the stage. He locked eyes with me. I lifted my chin and looked at the Nashville skyline, concentrating on my solo.
Then when I looked down, he was right next to me. My heart jumped, but I didn’t. I didn’t even glance over at Sam for help. I didn’t need his help. Toby would never intimidate me again.
Even though I’d made an effort not to signal to Sam about what was going on like a helpless female, somehow he knew. “Next we’d like to do an easy Johnny Cash tune for you,” he said into the microphone. “ ‘Cocaine Blues.’ ”
I had no time to check for Toby’s reaction. “Cocaine Blues” was a doozy, not the kind of song that the lead singer of a band should drop into the playlist and spring on his fiddle player, especially after he’d lulled her into a false sense of security with Justin Timberlake and Ke$ha. We got through it okay, though, because we were professional musicians. And then when I glanced down at Toby, he was looking straight up at me and licking his lips.
I pulled Sam’s handkerchief from the pocket of my dress and wiped both my sweating palms, holding my fiddle and bow in the crook of one elbow and then the other.
“Switch places with me,” Sam called. His voice didn’t register with me at first because he’d said it outside the range of the microphone. When I understood what was going on and looked over at him, he nodded toward Toby, then moved his finger between himself and me.
I hadn’t asked for his help, but I wasn’t going to refuse it, either. Obediently I switched places with him. We took a moment to detangle our cords while the crowd whooped impatiently. Sam glanced behind him at Ace and Charlotte, who must have been motioning that they wanted to know what was going on, because Sam put up his hands and shrugged. His one-night stand’s leering ex was hard to explain during a set. He signaled to Charlotte to start the next song.
I tried not to look toward Toby. I kept my chin up and my eyes above the crowd. But he was so close to the stage that I couldn’t miss his white-blond head and the angry curses from other guys as he pushed his way from Sam’s side of the stage to my new side.