Matched, p.29
Matched, page 29
To go somewhere and cry like she hadn’t let herself cry since Mom died.
But she’d survived losing Mom. She would survive losing Will.
“He’s really pretty bad,” Kimmie whispered.
Lindsey choked on a laugh-sob. He was. But he was out there, unafraid of being bad, unafraid of being mocked, unafraid of failing.
And what did he have to fear?
Dahlia adored him. Lindsey doubted there was a single person in the theater who couldn’t see it.
Mid-song, Mikey slapped his hand over the guitar strings, plunging the room into silence.
“Enough of that,” he said. He stood, put the guitar on the stool, and then reached into his pocket and went to one knee.
The crowd gasped. And that was before the room erupted in rainbows from the light filtering through the massive rock he held out for all to see. “Dahlia Mallard,” Mikey said, loud and clear and booming without the assistance of the microphone, “will you marry me?”
Cheers erupted. Clapping, laughter, and joy echoed throughout the theater. Whistles rang out. Dahlia jumped onto the stage, leapt into Mikey’s arms, and shrieked, “Yes!” loud enough for her voice to carry all the way to Willow Glen.
Will was on his feet, clapping and smiling with the rest of the judges, but it wasn’t his Will smile. It was his Billy smile.
He should’ve had his Will smile for his best friend. He should’ve been able to be himself here in Bliss.
Was that Lindsey’s fault? If she’d been brave—if she’d been fearless, like Mikey, unafraid of what everyone would think of her, unafraid of being judged—would Will be happier?
“And we’re gonna disqualify ourselves from winning so ol’ Billy here doesn’t have a conflict of conscience in his judging,” Mikey said into the microphone. “I got my girl. Don’t need a trophy.”
The crowd laughed and cheered more. On their way off the stage, Mikey and Dahlia stopped at the judges’ table. Will reached over gave Mikey a man-hug, then kissed Dahlia on the cheek.
A sandstorm. Dahlia would’ve been a terrible match for—
Lindsey straightened.
Will had bad matches.
Will had bad matches.
Her heart shot into her throat. She fisted her hands to stop the shaking in her fingers, but the quaking spread up her arms.
She could see Will’s bad matches. If she could see his bad matches, then she could honestly see his good matches too.
Because she’d let herself use her gift for good?
Or because she’d let him go? Because she had nothing left to lose by reading his matches anymore?
As if he’d heard her thoughts, he twisted and looked up.
Right at her.
Their gazes locked. And held.
Lindsey didn’t move. She didn’t blink, didn’t breathe, didn’t twitch a single muscle. Will sat there, those soulful, injured brown eyes boring into hers for the eternity of half a second.
And Lindsey smelled roses. Roses and daisies and sunflowers. She felt sunshine, a warm spring breeze, dewy morning grass under a brilliant blue sky.
No thunderstorms. No hail. No locust plagues.
Just goodness.
We’re right for each other, and you know it, he seemed to say.
Will’s eyes dropped. He faced the stage again where the final contestant approached the microphone.
In ten minutes, Will Truitt would walk out of Bliss forever.
Brave.
Could Lindsey be brave? Was she supposed to be brave?
Fearless.
She wouldn’t get another chance. Billy Brenton was untouchable. And Will had taken the hint and quit calling after Tuesday.
Unafraid.
She could very well make a fool of herself if she tried to stop him tonight.
Or maybe she could fully step into the shoes of the woman she was always meant to be.
Lindsey stood so fast she tipped her chair over. “I have to go,” she said to Kimmie.
“But—”
“If I don’t come back, follow your heart. Don’t let your mother boss you around, and don’t settle for any man who doesn’t worship you like the fabulous, unique, perfect woman that you are. Do you understand me?”
Kimmie gawked at her.
Lindsey didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she bolted out of the box.
She had something she had to do.
Chapter Twenty-Two
WILL COULDN’T sit still. His knee wobbled, his toes tapped, his fingers drummed. He didn’t even hear this last performer.
That look on Lindsey’s face after Mikey’s performance—she saw something.
She saw something, and he didn’t know what. But the way those chocolate brown eyes had widened, the way those kissable lips of hers had parted, the way her gaze had bored into him—through him—had stood all his hairs on end.
She said he deserved better. But what about her? Who would stand beside her and believe in her?
She’d disappeared from her seat, and he’d made up his mind.
Will Truitt wasn’t leaving Bliss until Lindsey Castellano knew exactly how important it was to him that she was happy. He had let her leave Pickleberry Springs, he’d quit calling her office, but what kind of a man would he be if he walked away from the one woman in the world who needed him for him?
The kid onstage finished his song, said something to a Tamara, then squinted into the theater. A rustle of uncomfortable laughter rippled behind him.
“Oh, dear,” the sweet older lady on the other side of him murmured. “This happens once or twice every year. I’d hoped we’d escaped it.”
The kid squinted out into the audience. His face was getting red. “Tamara?”
Will felt for the kid. But Will didn’t know where Lindsey was, and he needed to go.
To find her.
A sudden commotion broke out offstage. Most of the theater couldn’t see it, but the judges had a decent view.
“Oh, dear, again. Marilyn’s been not entirely happy this week,” his fellow judge whispered.
“That woman is crazy when she’s not happy,” the newswoman on his other side whispered.
The kid onstage slowly backed up.
A murmur grew in the crowd.
Then a bigger commotion happened offstage, spilling out onto the stage itself. Marilyn, Pepper, and a dude Will didn’t recognize, all pushing back against something.
No, someone.
The crowd’s murmur grew to a rumble.
And then another person stepped out onto the stage, pushing right past the crowd trying to keep her out.
Her jeans hugged her hips, one of Will’s favorite sweaters clung to her breasts, and there was a war going on with her facial expressions. Hardheaded stubbornness and terror and—and something Will’s ol’ ticker was afraid to believe in.
“Oh, no,” the sweet lady murmured. “She doesn’t sing.”
Will scrambled to his feet, then just stood there. His heart was fixin’ to bounce right on out of his chest.
“Billy?” the news lady said.
He didn’t answer.
Because Lindsey had grabbed the microphone.
And Mikey was right behind her with a guitar.
Lindsey made a get on with it gesture at Mikey, who swallowed hard, glanced at Dahlia in the wings, and then at the ground.
The rumble in the crowd was getting all-out riot loud.
Marilyn Elias charged center stage, but Lindsey flung an arm out and pointed at her. “Stop,” she said, her voice coming through the mic, “or I’ll spill every secret I know about you.”
Marilyn froze.
The crowd’s rumble was somewhere between discomfort and yeah, this’ll be a good show.
Lindsey stepped fully to the mic, but she didn’t look at it.
She looked at Will. Long and slow, those milk chocolate eyes searching his face, his eyes, his soul.
He pressed a hand to the throbbing in his chest.
“I love you,” she said.
Behind her, Mikey said, “Sorry for this,” then plucked out the first few notes of a song.
Will’s mouth went dry.
He knew that song.
He wrote that song.
He made to move, but Lindsey pointed to him, and she kept pointing. “Stay.”
She missed the cue by a good three beats. Mikey went back to the lead-in chord, but she squeezed her eyes shut, took a breath that echoed around the whole theater and took half of Will’s oxygen away, and then she started singing.
Or her best impression of it, anyway.
It’s a lonely life we live, running and chasing and looking for that next gig,
None of us are ever going to be better than we’re gonna be,
Not when all we want is just to be what we want to be.
“Is she hiding a wet cat in her throat?” the news lady said.
“Shove it,” Lou Lovely said to her.
Lindsey had a death grip on the microphone. She swayed onto her toes, then rocked back to her heels, over and over while she warbled the song.
She knew the words.
Every word.
Lindsey hit the chorus—what was supposed to be the chorus, anyway—and she looked right at him.
But when we let the love in, we’re a better we than we are a better me,
Better you, better me, better free, better we,
We’re all the better that can ever be. You and me, forever, into eternity.
Will’s skin was too tight, his lungs too small, his bones too rubbery.
She wasn’t looking at him. She was looking into him. Not demanding to see, but asking that he look at her.
That he see. That he understand. That he accept her.
That he believe in her.
That he trust her.
That he love her.
He needed to stop her. She didn’t have to do this. Didn’t have to finish.
He got it. He heard her loud and clear.
Some heckling started from somewhere behind him and echoed through the theater.
But if Lindsey heard it, she didn’t show it.
He pushed his chair out of his way.
She put a hand out.
Stop, it said. I have to do this.
No, she didn’t. The only thing she had to do was to love him.
He stepped around the couple beside him and ignored the laughter and shrieks growing in the crowd. Lindsey had started the second verse, but she faltered. “Stay,” she said to Will. “Let me finish.”
Her cheeks were wet, her eyes wide, her hips swaying offbeat under the soft pink sweater that framed her figure all the right ways.
And he wanted to hold her and kiss her and love her.
Away from the crowd, away from the cameras, away from everything.
He surged toward her, but she was still too far away. He remembered her and microphones. The things she said into them.
We’re not right. We don’t match. I see these things. We won’t make it. I can’t love you.
Now, her cheeks were fire truck red, her knuckles whiter than snow, and the spotlight made her hair glow. “I was wrong. You have bad matches.”
He froze.
No.
No, not again.
“But they’re not me,” she whispered, the microphone picking up her every word.
Will’s breath left him in a rush. He stepped toward her again. And she stood there, talking faster and faster the closer he got. “I love you, Will Truitt. And I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry for what I did last week. I was wrong. When I look at you, I see sunshine. And flowers. And rainbows and puppy dogs and chocolate chip cookies. I love you,” she said. “I love you, and—”
Will reached her. He hit the kill switch on the microphone.
“—and I love you as Will, and I love you as Billy, and I’m scared to death, but I’m here, and I’m staying. With you. If you still want me.”
She was one hell of a woman.
She’d sung for him.
She’d braved a microphone and a crowd and him and herself to be here.
He pulled her into his body, stuck his nose in her hair. “I love you, Lindsey. I’ve always loved you.”
Will Truitt needed to get his pretty lady off this stage. To stop her quaking, to get her out of the spotlight, to show her how badly he’d missed her, how desperately he loved her, everything he would do for her.
Billy Brenton, though—Billy needed to kiss her. Right here. In front of all these people. He needed to show the world that this woman who couldn’t carry a tune was his woman. He wrapped his arms around her, felt the soft cotton of her sweater, the press of her breasts against his chest, then the silk of her hair between his fingers, the scent of her shampoo teasing his nose, and finally, the taste of her on his tongue.
A drum beat in his soul. A guitar riff. A fiddle and tambourines. Music.
Will Truitt was a simple country boy who fully intended to marry above his station in life. The first time he’d met Lindsey, she’d given him music. The second time, she’d given him hope.
And this time, she’d given him everything.
He would never again let this woman go.
MAYBE MICROPHONES weren’t the devil after all. Lindsey wasn’t planning on repeating her performance anytime soon, but she’d lived through it. The sun wasn’t up yet, so there was no telling if her house had been egged or toilet papered overnight in retribution for what she’d done to everyone’s ears, but she didn’t care.
Because she had a perfect moonlit night at the beach right here in her bedroom, and that wasn’t something anyone could take from her.
Will’s hand slid along her bare belly and he pressed a kiss into her shoulder. His low morning voice rumbled over her skin. “You been lying awake all night staring at that trophy?”
The trophy. Those crazy people in Bliss had declared her the Battle of the Boyfriends winner. First woman in history, worst singer ever, and yet, she’d taken home first prize. “Yep. You caught me.” She rolled into him, skin to skin, as close as she could get, and let her fingers roam his body, smiling so hard she felt it in her cheeks. “I only sang for the trophy.”
“That one goes right next to my Grammy.”
Her hands drifted lower, and his mouth found that sweet spot on her neck. “Don’t want to leave,” he said.
She squeezed his rear end. “I can be in Nashville Friday night. Unfortunately, I have some cases I need to see out, so I can only stay the weekend, but I’ll let my boss know I’m not taking on anything new.”
“Don’t go quitting your job on account of me. Already got my people working on getting me a lighter schedule so I can be home more. We’ll work this out.”
“Home?” The word put a warmth in her chest.
“Here. With you.” His lips moved to her ear, sending electric sparks all over her body. “Anywhere with you. Doing whatever you need to be doing.”
She snuggled into the crook of his shoulder, letting his hands and mouth and body wake her in the best of all possible ways. “I wanted to be president to change the world,” she murmured. “I chose to be a divorce lawyer to help good people fix unfortunate situations. But there’s so much more I can do if I quit hiding. I have a gift that could guide ordinary people toward extraordinary love. And I have you. So I think it’s my duty to see how I can use all of my talents to be my own kind of superstar.” She didn’t want to be a kept woman, but she also wasn’t too stubborn to overlook the possibilities that came with the kind of life Will had as Billy Brenton. She’d made a difference on a small scale in the last decade. With him beside her, she could make a difference on a bigger scale.
“Also gotta quit hiding those smiles under here.” Will’s thumb brushed her hip over her smiley face tattoo.
“Good call. I should get rid of those. Just toss them all out.”
He flipped her onto her back, pinning her to the bed. “Don’t you dare, pretty lady.” The hard length of him settled between her thighs, and she wrapped her legs around his hips.
He tilted his mouth to hers. “You do that, I’m gonna have to rethink this plan I have where I marry you and strip you out of those smileys every night.”
Her breath caught, and her eyes went misty.
She hadn’t thought she would ever get married. A husband, kids, a dog—she’d thought she’d be happy without them.
But now, she couldn’t imagine anything, ever, being better than making a life with the one man who understood her inside and out. “I love you, Will Truitt,” she whispered.
His lips found hers, and he kissed her—long, slow and deeply—and then brushed her hair away from her cheek. “I love you too, my beautiful snow angel. What say we make some new memories?”
She said yes. Just as she always would from now on to her sweet, perfect country man.
Not Quite a Year Later…
“YOU EVER HEAR of anybody else crashing a baby shower?” Mikey said to Will while they peered into a ballroom overflowing with women from Bliss. Christmas lights twinkled from the walls, and pink-and-blue wrapped presents spilled out in a massive pile that made the twelve-foot tree in the corner look too small.
“Ah, Mikey, I remember a time when this many women would’ve been your heaven,” Will said. “Or you nervous because you haven’t performed in public in too long?”
Mikey snorted. “I don’t get nervous. And there wasn’t ever a time I would’ve walked into a baby shower to get phone numbers.”
“Got an old BillyVision episode that says otherwise.”
CJ strolled over, glanced in the room, and then slapped Mikey on the back. “Go easy on him, Billy. Fatherhood is scary as shit the first time.”
“You got a four-year-old the first time,” Mikey shot back. He pointed into the room. “You tellin’ me you ain’t gonna pass out the first time you watch Nat try to push a—a—”
“Watermelon,” Will supplied.
“—Watermelon out her—out her—”
“Vagina,” CJ said.
“Jesus. I need some ice cream.”
A distinct laugh drew Will’s attention to the ballroom. Lindsey had taken a seat between a very pregnant Natalie and an equally pregnant Dahlia, her own belly still at the cute stage, not yet ready to pop. On Nat’s other side, Kimmie was talking and gesturing over her own baby bump.
