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a
choice.
    His jaw works. “How long
have you known about this?”
    “ Two weeks.”
    “ And you couldn’t have
said something before now?” He rakes his hand through his hair,
making it lay adorably every which way against his head. “You wait
until we’re out in public, with my sister, to tell me?”
    “ When you put it like
that, it makes it sound worse that what it is,” I protest. “You’ve
been in bad mood since the night Jaxon and I performed
together.”
    “ Stop saying that fu—” he
glances at the Jeep and takes a deep breath, “person’s name. I
don’t want your lips even contemplating his name. In fact, all
words that start with J are banned around me.”
    “ Like jerk, for instance,”
I say, crossing my arms over my chest. My wool sweater tickles the
backs of my hands.
    “ Exactly.” He brushes past
me, heading to the other side of the Jeep. I get in, and buckle my
seatbelt before he does the same.
    Without a word, he starts
up the Jeep and heads out of the parking lot, taking a right on
main, before heading out of town.
    “ Do you think I want to do
this?”
    He cuts his eyes at me, and
then back at the road. “Do you think this is a good time to
talk?”
    “ I had thought it
was.”
    “ Can we stop for ice
cream?”
    Cole’s hard stare softens.
“Too close to dinner, bug. How about another time?”
    Kelly, sweet child that she
is, frowns a little, and then holds up her candy cane. “What about
this?”
    “ Sure,” I say.
    “ You’re not her mother,”
Cole snaps and my lips part, shocked at his tone and
words.
    “ I know I’m not.” The hurt
that still lives in me grows. “I’ll never be anyone’s
mother.”
    His hands clench on the
steering wheel, knuckles turning white, but he manages to keep his
speed steady and his temper in check. “That’s not what I meant, and
you know it.”
    “ But it’s a fact and you
know that too.” A low blow, but I’m hurt. Maybe I’m in the wrong
for popping this on him now, but what else should I have
done—waited until New Year’s and said, “ Yay, a new year, and I get to spend the first part of it
touring the country with my ex-boyfriend .”?
    His lips smash together.
The rest of our drive is spent chatting with Kelly, like parents
who’ve had a fight but don’t want their kids to know. We’re
overeager in our answers, over cutesy with our inclusions into the
conversations, and it hurts. It stings, like stepping on a bee in a
patch of clover. Sudden and shocking.
    Instead of taking me home
with them, he drops me off at my nana’s house, but she’s not home.
She’s gone to visit her son out in California and won’t be back
until a week before Christmas.
    My parents are back in
Nashville, the baby’s imminent arrival making it hard for my mother
to travel further than an hour away.
    I trudge up the front porch
steps, my phone buzzing as I unlock the door.
     
    Jaxon: Tour—Callie, you, and me. She’s our opening act.
    Me: ur joking…
     
    I’d rather tour buck naked
with Jaxon than tour with her. Her comments to the press about me
have turned vicious. Like: I’ve always
known Violet had a drinking problem but she would just never get
help. Bless Violet Lynn’s heart.
    Bitch.
    However, all those
interviews, with close-ups on her face, make me wonder about that
scar. She didn’t have one before my accident, and I never read
about her getting hurt since then, but Nashville is its own
Hollywood and some will go to extraordinary length to protect their
newest star.
    Everett Morgan would, I
know that. He had tried for me, but no one would listen, because
the gossip was too good. The higher a star rises, the more people
want to see that same star fall flat on her face. And if a little
scandal is involved, all the better.
    A feeling of disloyalty
snakes it way through me. I shouldn’t think anything nice about
Cole’s dad. From now on, I won’t, and if I can find a way to get
out of him being my producer before my