Page 48 of Making the Save

It was too early to tell anyone. Tyler would want to get me in a studio. My label would want to have a meeting. They would chase this fragile new song right out of my life. But Wyatt wasn’t like that. At all.

“I am. But…it’s different. Like so different from anything I’ve ever done.”

“Thrash metal?”

I laughed.

“Punk?”

“Country,” I confessed.

He wiped water off his face. “That’s so different?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Everything about it feels different. The chords. The melody. The feel of it. Every album is different, but this one is just pulling something brand new out of me.”

“Do you like country music?”

“I like all kinds of music. I love the way it can make a person feel a thousand things in one two and a half minute piece of art. It can make them cry. It can make them dance. Some people love the song. Some people hate it.” I laughed with the old joy I used to feel about music. It hadn’t been around for a long time. “When I was a kid, all we listened to was country music. I grew up onLady A and The Chicks and Tim and Faith. So, it makes sense maybe that I’d end up back here.”

“And you grew up in a trailer park. Walked away with just the clothes on your back and a guitar case. Declared independence from your mama. Made a life on your own terms. You’re right. You’re a living country song.”

I ran my hand through his hair and down over his beard. I couldn’t get enough of touching him. Between my legs his body was warm and smooth and I was trying to keep things PG under the water, but the waves kept pushing me into him, and well, it was hard to fight the waves. And him. And this sweet thrumming heat building up between us.

“How did you know about the trailer park? Did I tell you about that in Vegas?”

He shook his head. “I told you. I’m a fan. There aresomethings I know about you.”

His hand squeezed my butt, just a friendly little squeeze, but it went through me like tequila. It made me giddy and light-headed. I wanted more.

On the beach, the crowd was dissipating. Since all we were doing was standing in the waves hugging each other, they’d lost interest in us.

“Who is this John Bernard guy?”

“An asshole,” I said, with all the emotion I felt for him. “My last boyfriend.” I didn’t put air quotes around boyfriend, but my tone implied them.

“Now you have mean-giant face,” Wyatt told me.

“I didn’t like him very much.”

“Because he cheated?”

How did I explain any of this to Wyatt, who seemed to live his life completely on his terms?

There was no way I was having the conversation with Wyatt that Beatrice wanted me to have. It was too humiliating. Allthese years, and all these relationships, and none of it, apart from that first heady crush on Axil, was real. I was the definition of a fraud and I didn’t want Wyatt to know any of that.

But John was going to come up again. It was inevitable.

“John and I weren’t really dating,” I admitted.

“Like you hadn’t agreed to be exclusive at that point?”

I shook my head. “No, it’s worse. John had a reputation as a party boy. He was going for this serious role in a movie with a director who did not like party boys. He needed his reputation cleaned and Tyler thought-”

“Stop,” Wyatt interrupted. “Any sentence that includesTyler thoughtis already problematic in my opinion.”

“Tyler builds reputations. It’s his job.”

“It’s a dumb job,” Wyatt grumbled, and I liked when he was annoyed about something, his lips disappeared behind his beard. I reached up and teased them back out.