Page 74 of A Song for Another Woman

The comments aren't kind. I shouldn't read them, but I read them anyway.

Turns out the wife was the muse the whole time.

Imagine trying to steal a man who built his wife an actual house.

He walked from Lonesome Strings, dropped free songs, moved to her town, saved their old bar, and Melody still thought she had a shot?

My thumb stops there. Outside the studio window, Pop sits at his desk with his reading glasses low on his nose, pretending not to keep watch. He's been doing that more lately, letting me have space from six feet away.

The clip loops again. Melody on that too-white couch, knees pressed together, hands locked in her lap. Her hair is still perfect, but the rest of her has gone dim around the edges.

The interviewer leans in. “Do you think Cade Tyler was ever in love with you?”

Melody laughs once. It isn't a pretty laugh. “No,” she says. “No. I think I wanted him to be. I think a lot of people wanted him to be. It made a better story.”

The interviewer’s face softens in the practiced way of people who smell a confession. “And now?”

Melody looks down at her hands. For the first time since I've known her name, she looks twenty-five. Not dangerous and not inevitable. Just young, tired, and finding out that wanting something loudly doesn't make it yours.

“Now I think Cade Tyler is exactly who he keeps saying he is,” she says. “A man in love with his wife.”

I set the phone facedown. The hymn ends, and dead air waits like an open mouth. My hand moves on instinct. I bring up the next track, ease the volume in, and let a steel guitar carry Harmony Ridge past midnight.

“Still with me, honey?” Pop calls through the glass.

I lift one finger without looking at him. One minute. He nods.

My palm rests low on my stomach. The slight curve is easier to find now, even under the loose black sweater June keeps calling my camouflage. The baby shifts, or I imagine it. Either way, my breath catches.

Cade is playing the Whip again tonight. He's probably packing up now.

I haven't gone. Every night, I don't go. And every night, he stays.

The back door buzzer goes off. Pop is on his feet before I can turn. “You expecting somebody?”

“No.”

The buzzer goes again, sharp and impatient. Pop walks to the side hall. I stand slowly, one hand on the console, because I've learned not to trust sudden movement. Through the narrow window in the studio door, I watch him open the back entrance. Cold night air slips in, and so does Melody Hunter.

For a second, neither one of us moves. She's smaller without the machinery around her. No white dress, no glam team, and no microphone held like a weapon. She wears jeans, a gray sweatshirt, and sunglasses pushed up into her hair even though it's the middle of the night. Her mouth is bare. Her eyes are swollen.

Pop looks at me, waiting for the word.

“It’s okay,” I say, though nothing in my body agrees.

Melody steps into the hall. “I’m sorry.”

I almost laugh. Not because it's funny, but because those words have been used so much lately they've lost their meaning.

Pop stays where he is. “You want me in there, Em?”

Melody glances at him, something like embarrassment moving across her face.

“No,” I say. “But don’t go far.”

“Wasn’t planning to.”

I open the studio door, and Melody walks in like she expects the floor to reject her. The booth is too small for both of us and everything she helped bring into my life. My cardigan hangs over the spare chair, and a stack of listener notes sits beside the mic. Proof that I exist outside the frame she once helped build around me.