Page 99 of The Prodigal Son

“Scared you’ll realize I’m not worth all of this.”

“This?” he asks in astonishment. “You think this is bad?” His arms squeeze around me tighter. “Isaac,” he mumbles, with his lips against my head. “I’d walk through hell for you.”

I hold back a sob and squeeze my arms around him, gripping him so tight I wish I didn’t have to walk away.

Kissing my head, he whispers, “You are worth everything to me.”

When I pull my face from his neck, he holds my jaw gently in his hand as he leans in and kisses me softly. I just hope he means the things he says. I feel it in his touch and the look in his eyes. But I wish I could look into the future and see that it’s him and me at the end of it all. Only then could I properly relax.

To evade some of the drama in Nashville, we head out later that night to drive toward Chicago. We play in Chicago in two nights and then we have another week off because my publicist scheduled us for some TV spots.

Lying alone in my bed on the bus, nothing feels as exciting as it did yesterday. Suddenly, I don’t care about performances on late shows or award show nominations. My life feels broken and in disarray.

Luke and Sadie call after they hear the news and I video chat with them for a while, doing my best to prove to them howokayI am. But I see the pity on their faces.

Talk about champagne problems. Please stop pitying the celebrity.

Jensen calls as soon as he lands in Austin, but our phone call feels empty and cold. I try not to look too much into it. This will pass. It has to.

I waste a couple hours on the drive watching mindless television and playing games on my phone. After falling asleep sometime between two and three in the morning, I wake up to the sound of my phone ringing around nine in the morning.

When I don’t recognize the number, I hit ignore and go back to sleep. They call again. And again.

So when paranoia sets in, I open my eyes and answer it.

“Hello?” I ask with grit and anger in my voice.

I only hear breathing on the other end of the call.

“What the fuck,” I mutter. “Who’s there?”

Is this the kind of bullshit I have to deal with now? Random fans get a hold of my personal goddamn number and call just to hear me answer.

“Isaac?”

It’s a deep, familiar voice that makes my heart seize up in my chest. My entire body is frozen as I wait for him to say something else.

“Is that you?” he asks, and my eyes widen, confirming my suspicion.

“What do you want?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady. “How’d you get this number?”

“I saw your video on the internet. I had no idea… You’re…a country star now.”

My father’s southern drawl sounds raspier than I remember, aged with time and poor life choices. It’s like static that hurts my ears to hear.

“You can’t…call me,” I reply, trying to sound more confident than I feel. “You shouldn’t even have my number.”

“It wasn’t easy,” he replies. “I was up half the night, pullin’ strings and makin’ calls.”

As soon as I signed with the record label, they offered to give me a new phone with a private number, but I didn’t see thepoint. I had been Theo Virgil with this number for years. There was no reason to go and change it.

Now, I guess I understand the reason.

“What do you want?” I growl into the phone line. “You want to rub all this shit in my face now? You want to try and make my life even worse than it already is?”

“No,” he replies, and I can’t believe how different he sounds. Not at all the loud, boisterous father I once knew who used to yell at us boys as kids. He used his voice as his power at home and at church.

Now…it’s meek and tired. He’s been beaten down, and I guess he had it coming.

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