Our Kind of Love by Kait Nolan
Chapter 2
Scraps of melody danced around the edges of Kyle’s brain, as he waited in the green room to go on The Breakfast Club, Nashville’s hottest, syndicated morning show. He itched to discharge this last duty so he could go back to his loft and write. This was the first glimmer of something new he’d had in longer than he cared to admit. If he had to reschedule his dinner plans with Caleb and Emerson to chase it, they’d understand.
He’d stayed up way too late, losing out on hours of precious sleep, coaxing out the lyrics. Like all his biggest hits, the song was a heartbreaker, which meant it was the truest thing he’d written in a long time. Maybe it was time to stop hiding the pain and bleed it out into music. It said a lot that he found that more appealing than contemplating what it meant that his mother had shown up last night.
He rolled the ring across his knuckles like a coin. Would Abbey listen if he poured the whole thing out in a song? Give him the chance to explain, at last? Or had she cut his music as thoroughly out of her life as she had him?
A woman in a headset walked in. “You’re up, Mr. Keenan.”
He rose, pocketing the ring, and followed her to the sound stage in time to catch the tail end of the host’s introduction. “—the most recent recipient of TCN’s Shooting Star Award, and arguably one of the nicest guys in country music, please welcome Kyle Keenan!”
Smile in place, hand lifted to the cameras, he strode on stage to join the host, Jillian Jessop. He gave the expected air kiss on her cheek and dropped into the waiting chair, forcing himself to sit back and relax rather than perching on the edge of the seat.
“Thanks for joining us this morning.”
“Thanks for having me.” Kyle tried not to squint in the glare of the studio lights. It was too damned early for lights this bright. They beat down on him and sweat beaded between his shoulders. Or maybe that was the anxiety. He’d performed in front of hundreds of thousands of people without blinking, but that was with a guitar in his hands. He felt naked and exposed without one.
“Now, you just finished up the Light My Fire tour with Mercy Lee Bradshaw.”
“Yes, ma’am. Just last night at the FedEx Forum in Memphis. After all these months on the road, it’s good to be back in Tennessee.”
“What’s the plan for your down time?”
“Hanging out with my family and working on songs for the next album.”
“Ooo, any hints about the direction that’s taking?”
Instead of rubbing his sweaty palms on his jeans, he winked. “It’s a surprise.” Even to me.
Jillian pursed her lips. “Okay, okay. Let’s talk about your most recent album, Bustin’ at the Seams. It’s currently number nine on the Billboard charts. What’s it like breaking into that top ten?”
“I mean, it’s amazing. That’s been one of the things on my bucket list. It’s incredibly humbling to have that many people enjoying my music, and I absolutely couldn’t do it without them. Fans are everything.”
“On that album is your first number one hit, “Hollow”. Can we talk you into playing for us?”
The studio audience cheered. Relieved to have something to do besides just talk, Kyle nodded and accepted the guitar a stagehand brought out. He made a few adjustments to the tuning by ear. It had been ages since he’d done a solo acoustic version of this. Not since he’d cut the track in the studio. As he closed his eyes and began to play, the audience faded and he lost himself in the song, the story. Something about stripping away all the frills, all the polish, made the song more raw and took him back to when he’d written it. It was a song about grief and regret, everything he’d drowned in for the weeks and months after he’d realized Abbey was through with him. There was something karmic about this being his first number one, ensuring he relived all of it over and over, never letting the wound scab over.
The applause brought him back. Jillian clutched a few notecards to her chest, looking half ready to swoon. “I absolutely see why that’s become the latest anthem for the broken-hearted. So easy for people to relate to.”
Kyle kept the guitar in his lap, needing something in his hands to stop himself from reaching for the ring. “I think that’s something the best songs have in common. They’re the ones that connect to the human experience. Everybody’s lost somebody.”
Jillian’s gaze turned shrewd. “Now, you yourself have been notoriously single since you entered the public eye. But you and Mercy Lee looked pretty cozy on the tour. Are your days of singlehood and sad songs coming to an end?”
His fingers clenched on the guitar as he struggled to hold on to his temper. He’d said in advance that this topic was off limits. A quick glance to the side showed Davis flashing an I-know-best smile. This shit needed to stop.
“Rumors of our involvement have been greatly exaggerated. Mercy Lee and I are just friends.” They weren’t even that, but it wasn’t good for his image to air his true opinion of the woman on live national television.
“Come now, there’s no reason to play your cards so close to your vest,” Jillian cajoled.
“The fact is, I can’t be involved with Mercy Lee because I’m already promised to someone else.” And it didn’t much matter to his heart that she’d sent back the ring. He didn’t want anyone else.
The host gaped. “You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen. Kyle Keenan is engaged!”
“Wait—” That wasn’t what he’d meant, wasn’t what he’d said. Was it?
But Jillian was like a shark scenting blood. “Tell us everything. Who is she? How long have y’all been together? How did you meet?”
Kyle scrambled to salvage the situation. Maybe he could make it clear he was off the market without this blowing up in his face. “She’s the only one who’s ever mattered. We’ve known each other forever, but she values her privacy, so we’ve kept everything on the down low. That won’t be changing.”
“That’s all you’re going to give us? Not even the story of your romance?”
Again with the Nice Guy smile. “That’s it.” Let the media chase their tails trying to figure out who he was talking about. There wasn’t enough here for them to connect it to an actual person. It would be okay.
“Fine. I suppose we’ll have to accept that. Let’s wrap up with a lightning round of questions.”
Dodged that bullet. Kyle relaxed. “Alright, let’s do it.”
“Favorite food?”
“Apple pie.”
“Song you sing in the shower?”
“‘The Thunder Rolls.’”
“Dogs or cats?”
“Dogs.”
“Last book you read?”
“Blake Iverson’s latest.”
“Your girl’s name.”
“Abbey.”
“Ah ha!”
Oh shit, what have I done? “That was dirty.”
Jillian just shrugged, unrepentant. “Inquiring minds wanted to know. Thanks for joining us today.” She turned her gaze back to the camera. “After the break, we’ll be back with—”
But Kyle heard nothing else. He was too busy holding in the oh shit, oh shit, oh shit echoing through his skull like a refrain. He’d said her name. Not her last name. But if anybody did any real digging, tracing him back to Eden’s Ridge, they’d find her. She’d be mobbed with media, and they wouldn’t care what the truth was… Whether they were together or not, she’d be the center of a shitstorm.
This was all Davis’s fault. If he hadn’t pressed the Mercy Lee thing, Kyle’s mouth wouldn’t have run away without his brain. As soon as he got the all clear, he strode off the stage, yanking off his mic pack and shoving it at a nearby tech. His manager looked apoplectic.
Before he could even say a word, Kyle was in his face. “You’re fired.”
For a moment, legitimate shock blanked out the anger. “You don’t mean that.”
“Oh, I sure as hell do. We’re done.” There was satisfaction in saying it. In meaning it.
“About damned time,” Griff muttered.
Color swept the other man’s cheeks. “You’ll regret this. You’d be nothing without me.”
Perhaps that had been true once, but not anymore.
“I’ll take my chances. Don’t forget about the NDA you signed.” Without a backward glance, he left Davis in the wings and headed for the studio exit, his brother right behind.
“Gonna be fallout from that,” Griff observed.
“It’ll be nothing compared to the hell that’ll be unleashed if I don’t get to Abbey before she hears about this interview.” In truth, she was probably gonna kill him either way.
“So, we’re going home?”
The place he hadn’t been able to make himself set foot in since he blew his own world to pieces. Even the idea of it had nausea setting up in his gut. But alongside the queasiness was a kernel of desperate hope because this disaster meant that, like it or not, he’d finally see Abbey again.
Kyle shoved out the door. “We’re going home.”
* * *
Mom:On the way! Thanks for everything!
“Okay, my parents are officially on the road,” Abbey announced. “Everybody, pray.” Despite all the friends who’d agreed to help, she had no real backup if something went wrong, so she needed the next ten days to go smoothly.
Taryn Washington leaned one generous hip against the spa’s front desk. “Well, I think it’s just the nicest thing you’re doing for your folks.”
“Seriously,” Nadia Flores agreed. “I wish somebody would send me on a cruise.”
Abbey shrugged. “They’ve been through a lot. If this senior care program works, it will make a big difference to everybody’s quality of life. His dementia isn’t too bad yet, but he can’t stay alone for long stretches anymore. We’re trying to keep things as normal as possible for him, and that’s just taken a lot out of us. We all need a break.”
Pru Reynolds Bohannon, Abbey’s friend and business partner, squeezed her shoulder. “I’ve been hearing good things.”
A timer sounded on Taryn’s watch. “That’s the end of the foot-soak. Anybody got time to help me out with this mother-daughter mani-pedi?”
“I don’t have anybody for another hour, and it’ll give me a chance to sit down. I’m in.” Abbey followed her into the treatment room.
Like the rest of the spa, the shiplap walls were painted a soft, soothing gray. The women in the pedicure chairs were so clearly related, sharing the same hazel eyes and heart-shaped faces. Hailing from somewhere in Kentucky, they’d come in for a girl’s trip yesterday and seemed to be having the time of their lives. Mom’s head was tipped back, eyes closed as she relaxed with her feet in the warm water. Daughter poured over her phone.
As Abbey and Taryn walked in, the girl’s eyes widened with shock, and she reached over blindly to pat at her mother’s arm. “Oh, my God! I can’t believe it.”
“What is it?” her mother asked.
“Kyle Keenan is engaged. It’s all over social media.”
Mom laughed. “Well, there goes your diabolical plan to meet him after a show and make him fall madly in love with you.”
All the air was promptly sucked from the room.
Kyle was engaged?
In the ensuing moments of shock, Abbey stood rooted to the spot, trying to remember how to breathe.
Taryn stepped into her line of sight, her smooth bronze face set in lines of sympathy and understanding. “Didn’t you need to go prep for your next client?”
Not even able to speak, Abbey just bobbed her head in a nod and did an about-face, her limbs jerking like a marionette. She strode across the building to her own treatment room, pushing the door mostly closed for an iota of privacy. Shutting it all the way would give this too much importance.
Kyle was engaged.
The breath she’d been holding wheezed out. Why should the idea of that upset her? He wasn’t a part of her life anymore. They were less than friends now. Of course he’d moved on. But none of that stopped the mental video of the day he’d proposed with that candy machine ring.
They’d been hanging upside down from the branch of one of the apple trees way out in the west orchard, seeing who could stand the blood rushing to their head the longest. He’d dropped first, landing in a heap of gangly little boy limbs. “You win!”
She’d collapsed beside him, doing a double fist-pump before wrapping her arm around his skinny shoulders. “Hang on to me. I’ll keep you steady.”
They’d flopped back in the grass, his head on her shoulder, staring up at a blue sky studded with cotton-candy clouds as they waited for the world to stop spinning.
“I been thinkin’, you’re my best friend, Abs.”
“Duh.” They’d always been best friends. They always would be.
“Your granddaddy says you should marry your best friend.”
“It worked out for him and Grandma Ruth,” she’d agreed.
“We should get married.”
As she’d decided on that months ago, when they’d watched Aladdin, she was amenable. But even at six, she’d been practical. “We can’t get married yet, silly. We’re too young.”
“When we’re older, then. How about when we turn twenty-one? That’s forever away.”
“It’s the official grown-up age.” Mama and Daddy said so.
“So, it’s settled. We’ll get married when we’re twenty-one.”
“Okay.”
He sat up, and so did she, each staring at the other with as much gravity as children could muster. Then they’d spat into the palms of their hands and shaken on it—the most serious of promises. Kyle had nodded at that and pulled something out of his pocket.
“I got this for you.”
It was a plastic ring, the kind that had come out of the candy machine down at Garden of Eden, the market in town. It might as well have been the crown jewels. The gesture spoke of forethought and intent, and she’d fallen in love with him then and there—insofar as a six-year-old was capable of such things. She’d kept that silly ring for years, a part of her foolishly believing that they’d both meant the promise they’d made that day.
He hadn’t. That had been the end of it. The end of them as... anything.
He was a grown man. A rising success. He had everything he always wanted. Of course, he’d have found someone by now. It was fine. Maybe him being taken would kill off the tiny, idiotic part of her that thought he’d someday come back to honor that spit shake, no matter how things had ended between them. The part that believed there was anything left of the man he used to be in the man he’d become.
“I’m looking for Abbey.”
The sound of her name had her shoving her reaction aside. She’d wasted enough time and energy on Kyle Keenan. There was work to be done. Scrubbing both hands over her face and slipping on a mask of professionalism, she stepped out of her treatment room.
Nadia was talking to a man she didn’t recognize. He didn’t look like their usual clients. His patchy beard seemed more like the result of not bothering to shave for weeks, rather than growing one on purpose, and she was pretty sure that streak of neon orange stuff down the front of his sweater was dust from a bag of Cheetos. Maybe a client had recommended her services? Or maybe he wanted to buy a gift card for someone else?
“Can I help you?”
The guy had a weird intensity about him that made her uncomfortable. His gaze seemed full of a manic glitter, his smile just a shade too bright.
“Oh, I’ve come a long way to find you.”
What the actual hell?
The door opened again, and she glanced toward it, hoping Pru’s husband, Flynn, was popping in as well-timed backup. Then she did a double take because a ghost walked in.
He was older, his shoulders a little broader than they’d been at twenty-one. His cheeks had long ago lost the last roundness of youth and now sported a close-cropped blond beard highlighting a very adult jaw. His vivid blue eyes met hers, and there was no stopping the electric current of hope and joy beneath the jolt of shock.
“Kyle?” She hated the breathless quality of her voice, but she couldn’t look away from the answering joy and blinding smile. He was a very vivid hallucination. The news of his engagement had broken something in her over-taxed brain.
He crossed the distance between them in a few long-legged strides, and then his hands were sliding into her hair. “Missed you,” he rasped and took her mouth with his.
Oh, yeah, she’d definitely passed out and had some kind of head injury. Because no way in hell was her ex-best friend kissing the bejeezus out of her like she’d always wanted him to. Like he was drowning, and she was oxygen. Like they hadn’t spent the past decade not speaking, and he hadn’t shattered her heart. He only ever did that in dreams because the privacy of her own mind was the only place she could still be honest.
And if she was dreaming, then it was safe to indulge in the fantasy.