Page 8 of Falls From Grace
He wasn’t quite what she’d expected when she’d asked her team to bring him on. His album had first fallen into her lap when she was quietly at her lowest. She was barely showing her face in public and couldn’t bring herself to even look at her guitar, let alone sing. Even listening to other people sing felt like suffering a thousand paper cuts. The first time she’d heard Noah Lyman’s Dead Star Ballads, it had simply blown her apart. It felt like a small cyclone had run through, blasting open doors in her mind she’d never even known were there. Finally, she’d felt a whisper of creativity and hope. It had reminded her of the sheer power of great music, and what’s more, it had prompted the epiphany that if she were to truly break with her past and establish a fresh path, it wouldn’t be within country music. She was done.
She hadn’t read much of the publicity Noah had done for his album, because if by chance the man behind the music that had come to mean so much to her was an aggravating, self-important asshole, she didn’t want to know about it. But what she did see, she liked, and she couldn’t shake the idea that Noah Lyman was exactly who she needed to help her navigate this next step.
She was thrilled when he accepted, but as the days counted down to his arrival, she’d felt increasingly nervous. Now it was getting real. Not only had she invited an absolute unknown into the center of her world, it was also now make or break time. The tiny flame of an idea she’d nurtured would either blaze into light or sputter into nothing. And songwriting together was an insanely intimate act; what had she been thinking, not thoroughly vetting this man?
Then, all of a sudden, the day had come and there he was. A gangly, handsome, Chinese-American, Californian hipster, with a beautiful wife in tow. She’d felt uncharacteristically shy after her long hiatus from the industry, but he brought a warm, genuine energy with him that felt wildly reassuring. He seemed to tread lightly in a room. This, to Savannah, was a huge relief. She’d had about enough of pushy alpha males in her life.
His wife, too, intrigued her. Brynn was tall and gorgeous, with gleaming chocolate-coloured hair and dark eyes. Her skin glowed with tan and she had appealing freckles across the bridge of her nose and cheekbones. She was casually cool and very hard to read. But she definitely seemed strong, which made her like Noah even more. A rock star who seemed happy to let his wife shine. What a damn novelty, she thought bitterly.
She realized the sun was fully up, light spreading higher in the trees, and she jolted to her feet, quickly jogging back to the house, back to her life and responsibilities. No longer a wild creature, but a human woman once more.
Later that day, she hugged her band goodbye as they loaded their gear into the van Remy was taking to get them all to the airport. The sky was blazing blue, but the air held the full promise of the coming winter as Savannah squinted into the midday sun.
“It was great to have you here,” she said to Coral wistfully. “I wish you weren’t going.”
“Babe, you got this.” Coral tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear for her. “It makes me so happy to see you finally getting back to what you love. It’s time to write something that will make the world go, ‘Cole who?’”
Savannah cringed.
“I don’t think I can think about it that way,” she denied. “I want that man as far away from my writer’s block as possible.”
“Oh honey, he is. I just mean…I have full faith in you. I can’t wait to hear what Savannah Grace sounds like as a free woman. You’re going to blow us all away, I just know it.”
“Thank you.” Her voice cracked and Coral hugged her tightly before sliding into the van. She wound down the window to look Savannah in the eye.
“Quit stalling and go and get to work with that sexy young rockstar you hired,” she said with a smirk. “And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Or, maybe, do.”
“He’s married.” Savannah found herself checking behind her, mortified, in case anyone could possibly have overheard. Coral just laughed and cocked a finger gun at her as the van pulled away.
Savannah hugged herself for a moment as she stood alone in the cold. She felt forlorn, like her last protection against the next stage of her life had been stripped away. Then, forcing herself to straighten her spine, she walked in to try to get said life back on track.
“So,” said Noah, smiling at her. “How do you want to do this?”
“Well,” she said. “I guess…”
Silence grew. They were sitting downstairs in the band room. When she’d bought the house, it had been a large rumpus room, and just three months ago she’d had it soundproofed and refitted. It was big yet cozy, one of the only places in the house that had no view whatsoever. She liked it that way. It felt private and warm, with its dim lighting and all of her favorite well-loved instruments.
“How do you normally like to work?” Noah tried again, and she realized she’d been staring blindly at the floor for some time. She blinked and considered his question. The last song she’d co-written with Cole, she’d been naked, soaking in the enormous bathtub at their home in Nashville, while he lazily strummed his guitar from the tiled floor beside her. She’d belted lyrics at the ceiling and he’d smiled that slow grin of his and jotted them down in his battered notebook between slugs of red wine. She looked back at Noah and found for a second, she literally couldn’t speak.
“You know what?” he said, and she braced herself. He’d flown across the country only to work with the broken half of a once hit band. What a waste of everyone’s time. “Let’s try something else?” he suggested, asking her consent. When she nodded, he stood up from his chair and gestured for her to follow him. They left the band room together, headed up the stairs and toward the back door. Following his lead and shrugging into her jacket, they headed out into the breeze.
They trudged side by side down the forest path, the cold air smelling like fresh earth and pine needles. A breeze blew up off the lake.
“I’m following you, by the way,” Noah said after a minute. She fought off a sense of mild panic.
“I thought I was following you!”
He laughed.
“The blind leading the blind.”
“This is exactly what trying to write with me will feel like,” she blurted. “Not that you’re blind in this analogy. Just me. I don’t know how to write with someone else. I mean, someone who’s not…”
“Your husband,” supplied Noah, looking straight ahead through the trees.
“Ex,” she said automatically. He glanced over at her and she shrugged. “Yeah. It’s a little weird for me I guess.” Understatement. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” He ducked a low-hanging branch and stumbled slightly. He righted himself on the path, unfazed. “It’s material.”
