Then Will turned his best I'm Billy Brenton and I'm the boss look on Lindsey. "You're driving."
She straightened her shoulders and fired back an I am a divorce lawyer and I eat babies for breakfast glare. She pointed to the kid and the guitar. "It stays in the backseat."
Why in the-huh.
Will found an unlikely smile.
It was an ugly smile, but it was a smile.
She didn't want him to play. She remembered how much she'd liked it when he played. Still did, probably. Too much, he'd wager.
"All that twangy, depressing crap will make me crash, and then we'll both be screwed," she said, but her cheeks were pink, and there was enough of a wobble in her voice to confirm what he'd suspected since he saw her Sunday night.
He still got to her too.
"Ain't so opposed to being screwed," he murmured.
Her brows scrunched together. Not a prudish scrunch. More like a We have too much history scrunch.
Girl wasn't wrong.
Will ambled to the checkout desk and paid the kid for the guitar, a bag of picks, a tuner and a pack of blank sheet music. Lindsey stayed out of the way, arms crossed over her white coat, lips tight, until the kid showed them out the rear door. In case anybody was looking in, he said.
Out back, Lindsey unlocked one of those hybrid cars. Will could've driven his truck-probably should've, to give himself a quick getaway from her house-but his gut told him to ride with Lindsey.
And when she turned down an alley he hadn't noticed, then circled past the guitar shop that had six people staring in the front window while three others checked out his truck, he blew out a breath he hadn't known he was holding.
Didn't want to talk to people tonight.
He eyed Lindsey's silent profile.
Any people.
"I really do have a psychic," he heard himself say.
She didn't answer, and Will settled in for the ride.
Six eternal minutes later, Lindsey's headlights flashed over a street sign for Joy Street, and four houses down, she pulled into the driveway of a light-colored house. Two stories, newer construction, with empty flower beds lit by fancy lights on either side of her ornate glass-paneled door.
Lindsey led him into the house through a laundry room and into a sunny kitchen with white cabinets, softer white tile floor and shiny stainless appliances like he'd gotten Aunt Jessie last year for her birthday. Lindsey's breakfast nook had a pine-stained table sitting beneath a window trimmed with lacy white curtains.
This fit the girl he remembered. The girl he'd believed in until the end of that week.
Lindsey's slender hips swung through a doorway, outlined all the right ways in that stiff business skirt, and he followed her into an enclosed sunroom off the kitchen.
A comfy looking floral couch and chair set sat around a soft ivory rug over the oak floor. Big picture windows looked out over the dimly lit yard and the privacy fence.
If that was sand instead of a dusting of snow outside, he could pretend he was at the beach house he'd rented in Destin when he first started having trouble writing.
"Make yourself at home," she said. "There's food in the kitchen and clean towels in the closet outside the bathroom upstairs."
A shower was a good idea. But he didn't have clean clothes to change into. They'd all been in the house with-he blinked.
Not yet. Couldn't mourn her yet.
Instead, he set his new Yamaha on the couch, then trailed Lindsey out of the room.
"Television in there," she said with a flick of her wrist toward the open space at the front of the house near an oak staircase. White blinds closed over the windows, fuzzy white rug in front of two overstuffed white couches, big-screen TV attached to the wall between a smattering of family photos.
Her life. Who she was. What she'd done the last fifteen years.
All that was missing was a dog.
"Feel free to stay as long as you need to," she said.
Couple hours at most, he figured. Long enough to get his bearings, then figure out where to go from here. Somewhere anonymous in Chicago. Or Nashville.
But here in Lindsey's house, he had that slinky feeling making the hairs on his neck and arms stand up. He could hear Sacha's voice. You need to go back, she'd said.
He was supposed to be here.
Will watched Lindsey until she looked at him again.
"Mighty nice of you," he said.
"I have my moments." A frown briefly darkened her expression. "Who you do and don't talk to is none of my business, but if your family files a missing persons report because you refuse to answer your phone, I'll make your life hell."
It was enough of a threat to make him pull his phone out of his pocket and hit the power button. He'd shut it off when he left Bliss.
Lindsey showed him the guest room upstairs, a kid's bedroom by the looks of it, complete with a green dinosaur comforter and dinosaurs painted all over the walls. His heart clenched.
Did she-had she-
Not his business, he reminded himself. She'd nailed it at Suckers-they didn't know each other all that well.
But the room was comfortable.
Clean.
Decorated with love for someone.
Like his bedroom at Aunt Jessie's. A safe haven for a little boy. Framed pictures of Lindsey and her nephew were scattered around the room, her smiling, the boy laughing.
Happy. With total adoration for the kid. In love, in a manner.
As if she were someone else.
His breathing evened out, but his pulse didn't. This fit what he remembered of the girl he thought he'd known too. Big heart hidden under big dreams. "Your nephew stay here often?" he asked.
"Couple times a month."
She turned to the door across the hall-her bedroom, he guessed-but cast one more glance at him. "And I'm sorry about your guitar. For what it's worth."
That thick knot clogged his throat again.
Lindsey ducked her head. An errant strand of honey-blonde hair that had escaped her tight bun caught his eye.
Woman was a mystery. A mystery who'd locked her bedroom door behind her, by the sounds of it.
Wasn't any call for that. Will didn't have any intentions of getting close to her.
He knew better.
Still, Mari Belle was like to have another conniption fit, might even disown him when she found out he'd stayed here unsupervised. Sacha would be pleased, Aunt Jessie scared. But it was only for tonight. For tonight, nobody knew where he was. For tonight, he was simply a guy mourning his guitar in private.
Tomorrow, he'd be Billy Brenton again.
An image popped into his head of Bandit curled around Vera on his tour bus's couch. Will scrubbed a hand over his whiskers.
Maybe he'd be Billy tomorrow. Maybe later.
He dropped Mikey a quick text. You got a place to stay?
I'm set. You okay? You safe? came back almost instantly.
Will eyed the pictures of Lindsey and her nephew.
Nope. Not okay. Not safe. Yep, he typed. And then he tossed his phone on the nightstand and took himself downstairs to get acquainted with the guitar who would never be Vera.
WILL'S EYES POPPED open half a second before his phone rang shortly after noon the next day. He would've preferred sleeping the whole day away-meant not facing any of what had happened last night, from the bar to the fire to coming to Lindsey's house to staying up till almost dawn writing out the pain-but Sacha's face lit his phone screen. Will winced against the bright green paint and dinosaurs all over the wall and answered the call. "Hey."
"William."
Even the hairs on the back of his hairs stood up.
The fire.
She'd told him seven years ago his house would burn down. And then-the look she'd given Vera last week-"No," he croaked out. "No more visions."
"Oh, Will. Tell me it didn't happen. I don't want to be right."
He rolled off the bed and looked around for his pants. The house was cold and silent around him. No music. No voices. No soul.
No Vera.
And Sacha knew it. Not because she'd had a vision, not because she was psychic, but because he couldn't sneeze without all of Pickleberry Springs knowing it within minutes. Not if someone snapped a picture of him sneezing and posted it to Twitter or Facebook or Instagram.
"Oh, Will," Sacha said again.
"Shouldn't have come," he said. He needed to call Mikey. Go to Nashville. To-hell.
Didn't matter where. His career was over. He didn't want to go on tour next month. He didn't want to record another album. He didn't want to be Billy Brenton anymore.
"She saved you," Sacha said. "I had a vision. Your girl. The fire. She saved you from yourself. She saved all of us."
"Stop."
"You haven't seen this through yet, William."
"Seen enough."
"She needs you as much as you need her."
He froze with one leg in his jeans. He could still smell the smoke in the denim, see the flames and ash glowing in the night. But in front of it all was an obnoxious blonde.
"Who?" he said to Sacha. "Who needs me?"
"Your girl."
"My girl burned-"
He choked. He couldn't say it. The sun was shining on the other side of the blinds. The world was turning. He could flip on the radio, hear music, make coffee, take a shower, order clean clothes online.