Matched(14)

Will reached for Vera's strap, but it wasn't there. "Nobody's getting married."

Paisley heaved one of those Mari Belle sighs. "I'll be a teenager before I get cousins."

"Old enough to drive and vote, most like," Will agreed. "At least." And that was his biggest regret. He loved playing for a living, loved hearing his songs on the radio, loved being on a stage and the road, but some days, he wouldn't have minded going home every night to a sweet wife and a couple babies and fried chicken on the table.                       
       
           



       

That was what Lindsey had taken from him. He'd fallen hard. He'd seen what his momma must've felt for his daddy, he'd felt his world crack right down the middle when the girl who had become his everything ripped his heart out of his chest. But unlike his momma, he'd decided he preferred being somebody to being somebody's pet.

Good lesson to learn at nineteen, especially when fame came knocking not that many years later. Even the actresses and other country stars he'd dated over the last decade had agendas.

Will tugged his shirt closer around him.

"At least you and momma had each other growing up," Paisley said. "I don't have anybody."

"You got me, peanut," Will said. "And your momma and daddy, and Chicken and Biscuits, Aunt Jessie and Sacha."

"And Mr. Donnie," Paisley said.

Will grunted.

"He quit smoking, Aunt Jessie says. But Sacha-well. Like Momma says, only thing you get by digging dirt is dirty."

Will pinched his eyes shut. Too dang cold to be standing out here much longer. "Sacha have another one of her visions?" Good Lord help him, if Aunt Jessie was fixin' to have marital problems again, Will would have to clone himself to have enough hours in the day for managing his personal and professional lives.

"No," Paisley said. "But she got creepy quiet every time Mr. Donnie's name came up at dinner Sunday night."

Creepy quiet, Will could appreciate. Being fed a story by his niece, not so much.

And he wasn't sure which one this was. Might could be he'd have to talk to Mari Belle after all.

"Know what else I heard at dinner Sunday night?" Paisley said.

Uh-oh. She had Mari Belle's you should've told me yourself voice down too. And he didn't have the first clue what he hadn't told his niece. "What's that?"

"That you're playing Gellings next month."

"Oh. That." His team had just booked him to fill in for an act that had to cancel a show at Gellings Air Force Base in southwest Georgia. Mari Belle had transferred there over Christmas after working as a civil servant at a base in Vegas for years, much to Aunt Jessie's delight, since Gellings was only an hour from Pickleberry Springs. "You want tickets?"

Paisley squealed. "Does a brick sink in water? Of course I want tickets!"

"Your momma okay with that?" Thus far, Mari Belle hadn't let Paisley go to any of his shows. She liked to keep herself and her daughter out of his spotlight.

"Don't you worry about a thing, Uncle Will. I got this under control. And can you get us extra tickets? Momma made friends with Miss Anna next door, now they're in this Officers' Ex-Wives Club thing together even though Miss Anna's engaged again, and I know she loves your songs. She had Hitched going while we were playing redneck golf last weekend."

Headlights flashed over him. Time to get inside. "I'll see what I can do. Just got spotted, peanut. I gotta run. Give your momma a hug and kiss for me."

"Nuh-uh. Then she'll know we talked."

"Fair enough. You keep on making friends, and I'll get you some tickets."

"Love you, Uncle Will."

"Love you too."

Sirens wailed in the distance. Will gave a silent salute to them. Somebody needed to call 911 on his mess of a personal life.

He trudged inside and gave Mikey the wrap-it-up sign. Will needed to write. Think. Plan.

Mikey wasn't a chatterbox, but he was unusually quiet on the ride to the rental house. Knowing Mikey, he had at least half a dozen phone numbers in his pocket, and he could've stayed out with any one of the ladies, but instead, he was with Will, calling it a night so they could work.

A fire truck wailed up behind them. Will pulled over to let it pass, then continued.

The fire truck turned left.

Will turned left.

Three blocks later, another fire truck came screaming past.

Apprehension strummed in Will's veins.

A glow was visible in the night, pulsing like a layer of doom between streetlamp-lit bare tree branches and the inky black sky.

Will slowed the truck right there at the corner of their street. Fire trucks and police cars and an ambulance blocked the way.

Three houses down, flames from the house-from his house-reached out and licked the night while firefighters aimed massive hoses at the fire.

Vera.

Will was out of the truck almost before he had it in park. Mikey was right behind him.

Smoke hung heavy in the air. Will's eyes stung. His throat. His nose. And the crackling. God, the crackling fire was like the devil laughing.

Vera was in that house.

Mikey gripped his arm. "Hold on, Will-"                       
       
           



       

Will lunged forward. "Vera-"

"Whoa, Will." Mikey's grip tightened. "Stop."

"The hell I will. Vera-"

"Billy?" One of the cops approached him. Said a bunch of words. Helped Mikey hold Will back.

Vera was in that house.

Vera, her trusty wooden body, her frets, her new strings. Vera, who'd had his back everywhere from Pickleberry Springs to Nashville to New York to LA, from seedy bars to stadiums.

Vera, who'd helped him write his first song. His last song. Every song in between.

An image of Sacha touching Vera's strap barely a week ago burned in his memory.

She'd known. She'd known. And she'd sent him here anyway.

Will fought against Mikey's grip, ignored the cop. "I gotta save her."

The windows of the two-story structure were black holes with red flames shooting out. The roof had already caved in, the fire gorging itself on the wooden structure.

And Vera-Vera was wood.

All alone, burning to death. No more songs in her. No more sitting there, waiting on Will to find her tunes.

"Is there someone in there, sir?" the cop asked.

"Vera-"

"No," Mikey said.

Will rounded on his friend. "She's-"

"A guitar," Mikey said to the cop. "House was empty."

There were three people in Will's life he'd known longer than he'd known Vera.

Three.

And one of them was not only letting Vera burn to death, but he was doing it without hesitation.

Mikey suddenly dropped Will's arm. "I left a space heater on," Mikey said. "Oh, shit. Oh, fuck. Will-I'm sorry. Man, I'm-"

This time, the stinging in Will's eyes wasn't from the smoke and the ash and the cold.

He spun. He turned his back on his best friend, one of a handful of people who had known him and liked him before he became Billy Brenton, and he walked away.

Away from the fire, away from Mikey, away from Vera's grave.

Vera was gone. Bandit was gone.

And Sacha had known.

She'd known.

No way in hell did Will want to know what life wanted to take next.





THE KITCHENETTE AT Bliss Bridal wasn't Lindsey's first choice of a place to hunker down with cupcakes and tell Nat about meeting Will over spring break, but Noah wouldn't be asleep for his sitter yet, so they couldn't go to Nat's house, and Lindsey's house was too far away. So they hoisted themselves onto the countertops, and Lindsey told the story to a s'mores cupcake from Heaven's Bakery next door while Nat listened in. Lindsey didn't share all the details, but enough to give Nat an idea of her history with Will.

"I can't believe you never said anything," Nat said.

Lindsey flicked a glance at her sister and shrugged. "He wasn't in the plan. And then there was all the drama with my friends at school and-" She blew out a breath. "I don't like being wrong."

Nat snorted. "No!"

Lindsey brushed off Nat's teasing. "He was a friend when I desperately needed one, and I was a terrible friend in return. And now I don't know why he's here or what he wants. And it's ridiculous to think that he'd be here for me, but-"

"Are you a good match now?"

It was Lindsey's turn to snort. "Seriously? Nat, he's famous, he's surrounded by people all the time, and his love life is probably in People magazine every other week. I, on the other hand, am a two-bit divorce lawyer with claustrophobia and a weird psychic gift. How could that be anything other than a bad match?"

"But are you?"

Lindsey picked at a cupcake crumb on her skirt. "I don't do good matches. You know that."

"You pick three-date flings pretty well. And you told me to go for it with CJ."

Lindsey slid off the counter. "I have to work tomorrow," she said. "I should-"

Nat's phone dinged. And then dinged again. And a third time. "Jeez," she muttered. She glanced over at it, and her lips parted. "Holy shit."

"One of your new sisters-in-law?" Lindsey guessed.