Page 103 of Not Another Love Song

Gwen felt a flush of anger in her cheeks. Mabel’s voice was stagnant, resigned. And Gwen wished she could light the fight in her again.

“That’s despicable, and I’m sorry.”

The heater burned and the Mozart hummed. Gwen waited for Mabel to say more if she wanted, but it was quiet for miles.

“Thank you for picking me up,” she said. She took a deep breath. “You are my family, you know. That’s why it hurts me so much when it feels like you’re not proud of me.”

“I’m always proud of you. But I can be better about showing it.”

Gwen nodded, pressing her ear against the window and listening as a hollow wind whistled between them in the silence.

CELLO SUITE NO. 5

Alex missed Mabel some days more than he missed his mother. It was easier to understand her detachment as he grew up—she wasn’t his blood.

Mabel would drag him out of her practice rooms by his ear when he behaved badly. Mabel would stare him down while he rifled through her sheet music, explaining anxiously that he needed something today, and she’d wait for him to stop and breathe. Sometimes she wouldn’t talk to him if he didn’t stop and say, “Hello, good morning” at the door.

And most importantly, he knew Mabel had warned his mother about Nathan’s videos in the beginning. He wasn’t supposed to see the text, but he did. Mabel tried her hardest to make Ava see that Alex was killing himself to get three videos recorded a week, sometimes four when Nathan said one was subpar and needed to be redone.

In the beginning, he had no regrets about leaving Juilliard, following Lorenz, and becoming Xander Thorne. Lorenz told him not to have any. He told Alex he needed a clean break from his mother, from Nathan, and from the life they’d chosen for him. He told Alex he wouldn’t be training him or sponsoring him if Alex picked up a violin again, or if he continued to speak to his mother. He needed to leave the Fitzgerald name behind. He’d asked for Alex’s phone to delete and block his mother’s number.

He was nineteen. Juilliard wasn’t offering him anything. His mother and Nathan weren’t advancing him. Lorenz was the only person who said he saw his potential and knew what to do with it. Lorenz was the only person in his life ready to partner with him on his career. He handed over his phone easily. Lorenz had made it easy.

The phone calls from his mother’s other lines slowed, then stopped. But on the first day of every month, Mabel left him a voicemail. She mainly called him an idiot. A child. An arrogant fool with a bow up his ass. But then she’d talk about the shop—who was stopping by, what new music she’d gotten in, how excellently her orphan prodigy was doing.

He never picked up. He never returned her calls.

The sheer volume of voicemails in his inbox (because he never deleted them) was a weight that never let up. That was his only regret in the beginning.

Later, the regrets would flow like fish in a stream. The contracts he’d signed that somehow covered ten years—all of his twenties—the power of attorney he’d signed over, the twenty-five percent instead of the usual fifteen…In the beginning, it was all worth it. Forrest had a problem with him—he was let go. There was job security in those ten-year contracts. Lorenz was happy to produce his original compositions, especially since he owned the masters.

But never picking up the phone for Mabel…that was his largest regret.

When Alex was pacing his hotel room, mini-bar raided, front desk terrorized for information, Mabel’s text came through at four in the morning.

I have her. She’s safe. Go to sleep Alex.

A sob ripped through Alex’s throat. Above that, the text Call your mother you asshole from six years ago. And above that, his request for three new pieces for his Juilliard auditions.

I have her. She’s safe. Go to sleep Alex.

He ran his thumb over those words.

He thought of Mabel, standing there behind the counter of the shop, watching him pace and flip through books, looking for perfect pieces to impress the person who would never be impressed with him, refusing to speak to him or help him until he stopped, said hello, and behaved like a human.

Perhaps if he’d done just that tonight, Gwen wouldn’t have run.

Lorenz was at his hotel room at eight a.m. Alex was too hungover to realize it then, but later he’d remember the way Lorenz’s eyes had searched for Gwen in the suite…the way he’d brought a briefcase for a casual chat. He’d brought paperwork for Gwen to sign.

When Alex broke the news to him that Gwen would not be joining them, Lorenz pressed his lips together, nodded, and stared out the window.

“Understood,” he said. “Are you able to do this tour?”

“Of course,” Alex said.

“Then please hand me your phone. I’m going to delete her number and block it.”

Alex sucked in a deep breath. “No.”

---