Page 55 of Falls From Grace
Leaving Brynn flabbergasted, he said goodbye and disconnected the call.
Chapter Nineteen
It had been a long, black night.
The morning after she sent Brynn away, Savannah awoke feeling like she had the flu, her bones aching, her eyes swollen. She showered and dressed, feeling brittle and wishing for nothing more than to swap lives with a wild woodland creature, with no one to see today but the grass and the trees. Instead, she had a full house of people - all of whom depended on her keeping her shit together - and a recording studio to get to.
She knew how enormously privileged she was, with her wealth, her success and her fame. But at that moment, she would have traded all of it for just a moment of true privacy. After she’d left Brynn, she’d had to skirt the dinner party of musicians and other employees she was hosting, then bumped blindly into both Chester and her startled housekeeper, when all she’d wanted to do was hide. She’d blurted to Chester to fire Noah and waved off her housekeeper’s concern, desperately wishing for invisibility so no one would witness her breaking apart. And that was before she’d fled past her startled new nanny at the top of the stairs, already a crying wreck of a human being.
She took a deep breath. Everyone was depending on her, from her tiny son to her long-suffering manager. She’d come from too humble beginnings to ever entertain behaving like a brat or a diva, but more than that, she prided herself on being a professional. After all, she’d had plenty of experience over the years at putting on a brave face while her heart was cracking into pieces. She was already dreading having to face everyone after the mess of the night that had been, but the whole damn show had to go on. She would hold it together. She would not be a mess.
At her bedroom door she stopped still, frowning when she saw a note had been slid underneath. Surely Brynn hadn’t-
Tucker and I have gone out for an early walk for a couple hours. I asked Annabelle to deliver breakfast upstairs for you.
Lane
Savannah tiptoed out and found that not only was her space quiet and blessedly empty, but there was a bagel with the works, a fruit salad and fresh pot of coffee waiting on the table. In grateful silence, she sat, sipping coffee and forcing herself to nibble on enough food to settle her stomach, where it sat like lead.
By the time she arrived at the recording studio, she’d had ninety minutes to steady herself. Her game face was back in place.
“Morning y’all,” she’d greeted her band, arriving just in time to sweep in the doors with them when Greta gave the green light.
“You good?” Coral asked her, her eyes dark with concern. Savannah waved her hand.
“Fine. Let’s get this in the can,” she said with as much cheer as she could muster. “What are we doing today, again?” She tried to gather herself. Despite her efforts, her brain still felt filled with soggy cotton wool.
“Looking Back,” Coral reminded her and Savannah went cold. She and Brynn had written the song together. It was, of all things, a love song - one she herself had adored up until right this very minute - and she remembered the writing of it like it was yesterday.
It had been mid-way through their writing streak, during that incredible time where no one could so much as sneeze without a song getting written. She, Brynn, and Noah had been in the band room all morning, Tucker running wild around them and by late morning, Savannah and Noah were starting to bicker and Brynn got cabin fever.
“I’m not like you mad musicians,” she’d stood up, stretching her long limbs. “I usually work outdoors all day. I need some fresh air.”
Noah and Savannah had protested - they were right on the verge of something good, they were sure - but Brynn was insistent. Tucker was napping on the band room sofa and as Savannah’s eyes followed Brynn out the room, Noah had shrugged.
‘I’ll watch him,” he volunteered, so Savannah had caught up with her at the back door. Brynn had tossed her a blinding smile.
“Aha, gotcha,” she said, pulling on her winter jacket and slipping into her boots. “You need this too, you know,” Brynn told her as they both padded out into the snow
“Maybe,” Savannah allowed. The day was blue and cloudless, and the snow lay soft and ankle deep, squeaking under their boots.
“You start to look like a caged creature without your time outdoors,” Brynn told her. “Like a little squirrel who needs a tree to climb or something.”
Savannah’s head jerked up and she stared at her. Then she sputtered a laugh, which she tried to turn into a glare.
“You couldn’t have said like a majestic mountain lion, or an eagle that needs to soar?”
“Nope,” Brynn said smugly. “Like a tiny, adorable, angry squirrel-” she ducked and laughed as Savannah flicked a snowy branch towards her, flinging snow at her face like a slingshot.
They trudged through the snow together, down to the edge of the lake. The water lapped on the shore, breaking up shards of ice where it had frozen in the night. Savannah brushed snow off the top of the large boulder near the water’s edge and boosted herself up. Brynn joined her. Her face glowed with the cold and her eyes were bright above the burnt gold of her scarf.
“You know, this is where you first broke my writing block,” Savannah said after a while. Brynn smiled.
“I’m a genius,” she shrugged. Savannah rolled her eyes, though secretly she thought that actually probably was, in fact, true. “You literally looked for a second like you were going to kiss me on the mouth that day,” Brynn said casually, and Savannah swallowed.
“You wish,” she scoffed. They both kicked their heels against the rock and watched the icy lake. Savannah found herself imagining a world where kissing Brynn was a thing she could do and no one would get hurt by it, where it had been her that had been rescued from the surf in Malibu and gotten to fall in love.
“Hey,” Brynn interrupted her thoughts a few minutes later. “Did you bring your notebook?”
