Page 60 of Trusting Blake
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I stammer, and I fight the urge to break out into dance.I’m going tosee Blake perform live to a real audience. I’mgoing to be the one cheering the loudest.
Dad tilts his head. “Now where are our IDs?”
And with a devious grin, I don’t even hesitate to tell him. “Inside the sheet protector containing Fredo’s insurance paperwork in the green folder in the filing cabinet in the stables.”
23
“Do youhaveto drive like an idiot?” Savannah mumbles as she shoots her brother a deathly look. “You just ran a stop sign. Are you trying to get pulled over? Cindy will think you’resocool if you get your driver’s license suspended.”
Myles rolls his eyes and looks at me in his rearview mirror. “Mila, tell her to stop being such a wuss.”
“But I agree with her,” I say, clinging to my seatbelt a little tighter. “I’d prefer to make it to Blake’s in one piece, so can you please slow down?”
Myles scowls and eases off the gas as we cross through a lively – well, as lively as a town with a population of less than ten thousand can possibly get on a Saturday night – downtown Fairview. We are en route to Blake’s house. LeAnne has conferences in the city this weekend, so she’s staying at her Nashville apartment again, which means Blake has the house to himself. He’s invited us over to eat pizza while he rehearses his set ahead of Monday, and he says we are all more than welcome to sleep over in the cabin. It feels amazing not to have to sneak out for once. My parents came to the joint decision that I should at least enjoy my final few days here in Fairview before we go home on Tuesday.
Which is a fact I have yet to share with anyone. Especially Blake. The longer I keep this from him, the more the stress piles up, but I’d rather shoulder it all myself than burden him with it during the lead-up to his big gig.
“Are we gonna tell him if his set list sucks?” Myles asks as he parks on the driveway next to Blake’s truck. “Because Mila, you’re the girlfriend, so I think it has to be you to break the news to him.”
Savannah smacks Myles’s arm. “His set list won’t suck.”
“I agree with Savannah again,” I comment from the backseat. “Blake knows what he’s doing.”
“Here’s the rock star now!” Myles says, gesturing ahead through the windshield.
Blake swings open the gate to the backyard and Bailey bounds out onto the driveway, circling all of our legs as we jump out of Myles’s car. He races back and forth between each of us, unsure of who to sniff first, overcome with joy, but eventually settles on clambering all over Savannah.
I stroll over to Blake with my usual giddy smile that I’m unable to suppress. “Hey,” I say in a breathy whisper, burying my head into his chest and wrapping my arms around him.
“Longest week ever,” he murmurs, resting his chin atop my head and holding me close to him, protectively and securely. Then he pulls back, pushes my hair behind my ears, strokes my face, and kisses me.
“Why the hell did you even invite Savannah and me over here?” Myles jokes, and Blake and I both grin over at him. “We can leave if you’d prefer privacy.”
Blake drops his hands from my face down to my hip where he interlocks his fingers around mine. “Get your ass in here, Myles. You too, Bailey!”
We all move into the backyard, because despite Blake having the entire house to himself, he still prefers his private cabin outside. It has everything he needs out here, and the weather is too nice to be indoors. Plus, Bailey enjoys digging up dirt and rocketing around the lawn at full speed.
“Puppy zoomies!” Savannah cheers as she chases after him.
After ten minutes of deliberation over which pizza toppings we can all agree on – and ending up ordering two, anyway, because Savannah refuses to eat pepperoni – we all stretch out on the grass. Myles lies flat on his back, eyes closed. Savannah sits cross-legged next to Bailey, who has settled down from the initial thrill of having guests arrive, and calmly strokes him.
“So I haven’t finalized anything yet,” Blake begins, restless and unable to focus on anything but his guitar in his lap, “but I’ve picked out most of the songs I plan to cover. I just need to figure out which order to perform them in.”
I’m sitting close to him, my knee pressed against his, and I can’t wipe the smile from my face. I’m so in love with everything about him, from the dimples in his cheeks to the tremor in his fingertips as he lines them up on the fretboard. He notices my gaze latched onto him, but I don’t bother denying that I’m staring. I don’t look away, only smile wider, and he flashes me a suggestive grin.
“So I was thinking,” Blake says, “that I should open with something fun and upbeat. Something modern, something more my style. I’m set on ‘Home Sweet’by Russell Dickerson. And then I’ll follow that up with some of my favorites, like Mitchell Tenpenny and Thomas Rhett, all of your more mainstream country pop. And then I was thinking I could do some older rock classics, like the kind of stuff my dad plays, like Keith Urban and Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton, and then cover some female artists. Trusty old faithful, Taylor Swift. Or maybe Carrie Underwood. And then I’ll cover some bands. Rascal Flatts. The Chicks. And then I need a finisher.”
“You talk like that as though we understand you,” Myles says, sitting up from the grass. “Taylor Swift? Really?”
Blake pings his guitar pick at Myles. “Hey, Swift’s older work is classic. It sounds really cool when a different gender from the original artist covers a song. People respond well to it.”
“I, personally, can’t wait to hear you perform a Taylor Swift song,” I tell Blake, “mostly because I actually know her music.”
Myles flings the guitar pick over to me now and it bounces off my chest and lands in between my crossed legs. “Mila, you couldn’t wait to hear Blake perform even if he was getting up on stage with a musical triangle and some maracas,” he teases, and Savannah snorts.
“Oh, wait! I have a good finisher,” says Blake. He leans over my leg to fetch his pick, and then places it between his lips as he hoists his guitar into position. From his open guitar case on the grass behind him, he pulls out an odd-looking clip and clamps it around a very specific fret on his guitar. “This, Mila,” he says teasingly as he taps the object in response to my intrigued expression, his voice muffled from the pick in his mouth, “is a capo. It changes the pitch. Makes it higher.”
“Ohh.” I still don’t understand, but I nod anyway.
