Page 73 of Caught Up In You

Ernie looks like he might fall over at the thought of Romy Maxwell tending his bar, but he manages to school his face back into the lined grimace I know so well. “Jonah should be here in about half an hour. Call me if his ass is late, okay?”

I give Ernie a two-fingered salute and get back to my side work, the memory of what it felt like to do this alongside Romy rushing back.

“I’m glad to see you behind a bar still,” Romy says. “You’re so good at it. You always seemed so at home there.”

It’s true. When I moved to Cardinal Springs, the little brick ranch house was supposed to be home, but I didn’t really feel at peace until Ernie hired me. Bartending’s hard work, but I love it. It’s physical, never dull, and I’m a people person, so I love the customers. Well, notallof them, but my regulars are like my second family.

“Speaking of home, you looked pretty dang comfortable on that stage,” I say as I refill the toothpick dispenser.

Romy sucks in a breath, her eyes going wide with news. “Sienna’s negotiating with the label to get me my own tour.”

I drop the box of toothpicks, sending them skittering across the bar. “Seriously? Romy, that’s huge!”

“Not stadiums, obviously. More like large clubs and small theaters. Jingle Ball and music festivals and that sort of thing. But people would be coming to seeme.”

“Well, after seeing you last night, I’m not a bit surprised.”

“I gotta get off Griffin’s tour. It’s such a redneck frat party.” She takes a toothpick from the pile and starts strumming it across the bar like it’s a lap steel. “I nearly cried when Sienna told me about his offer. Partially because I couldn’t believe I was finally going to get to do it—travel around the country playing my songs. And partially because it’shim. It felt so icky to join up after what he did to you. To us. He was the reason I lost my best friend, and now I had to choose between my career andthat?”

“Well, I’m glad you chose your career, because now you get to show his audiences what a true artist sounds like. I’m glad you’re using that dull mirror to reflect your own shine.”

“You’ll be happy to know he fumbled the bridge to his biggest hit last night.”

The song about me: “Burning Heart.” It was his first big radio hit, topping out at number two on the country charts and even crossing over onto the Billboard Hot 100. He wrote his own narrative of that night and everything that came before it, recasting me as an evil temptress out to destroy him or any other poor man who fell for my seduction. It’s full of the most obvious kindergarten rhymes—no shit, the second verse pairsloveanddove. It has a mind-numbingly boring melody and sounds like it was written in crayon on the back of a Longhorn menu. The title sounds like a symptom of a venereal disease. The worst people you know love to blast it from their lifted trucks.

Just the thought of it makes me want to shatter every glass in the bar.

Another perk of listening to most of my music on cassette in the truck? I never have to worry about accidentally hearing “Burning Heart” by Griffin Stone.

And I don’t want to spend one single, solitary second of my time with Romy thinking about that asshole. Which she can obviously tell, because she changes the subject.

“So tell me about this Dr. Owen,” she says in a syrupy, singsong voice like we’re fourth graders on the playground. “He’s a strapping fellow.”

“He’s …”

But I don’t have words to describe him. Pineapple started out as a joke, but now it stands in for all the things I can’t say, all the things I won’t let myself feel. He’s so good, and I’m such a disaster. I can’t cast him in the role of one-man cleanup crew. I’ve always made sure my mess is mine to handle, but it’s getting harder and harder to keep it from him.

Still, something shifted last night at the concert. Something feels bigger. That “4Now” doesn’t quite cover it all anymore.

“Wyatt, you’re blushing.”

I duck my head, as if keeping her from seeing it will make it not real. “Well, he’s a very good lay,” I tell her.

Romy tosses the toothpick at me, and it lodges itself in my curls. “Don’t do that,” she says.

“Do what?” I ask, swatting at my hair to shake the toothpick loose.

“Diminish the things in your life that are good.”

“I’m not!”

“You used to do it all the time back in Nashville, and it seems like you haven’t changed. You neg yourself like you’re ready for the floor to drop out. I think that’s why you were with Griffin to begin with. You knew he was going to be a disappointment, soyou didn’t have to be surprised when he showed his true colors. You’ve always gotta be big tough Wyatt Hart, ready to muscle through disaster.”

“That’s a load of shit.”

“Yeah. It is,” she says, leveling me with a look. “Nobody’s ready for disaster, for heartbreak. But when you try to prepare yourself like that, you just experience the misery twice. You can’t enjoy the good parts.”

I sigh. “But how can you call them good parts when they end in misery?”

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