Page 20 of August Lane

Hurt lined his voice, a slight quaver that revealed his insecurities.

It made her wonder if he’d ever talked about this before, how closely his popularity was tied to colorblindness.

It made him indistinguishable from other voices on the radio.

Jojo used to say that fitting in was how you got an invitation to the party, but taking risks kept them coming.

Luke had sat in the corner, playing it safe for so long his career had gone to rot.

“I’m asking if you’re brave enough to be honest this time. ”

“So now I’m a coward because I busted my ass to make music some redneck DJ wouldn’t toss in the garbage? You don’t think I had enough doors slammed in my face?”

“Maybe not. Look where it got you. Standing in this shitty apartment, yelling at me for telling that man the truth.”

“I’m not yelling!” Luke shouted. He closed his eyes and took a breath. “You don’t know half of what you think you know.”

“I know enough.”

His eyes flew open. “Really? So, you’re an expert in copyrights? You understand fee splits and what kind of legal clusterfuck it’ll cause if word gets out that a huge commercial hit has an uncredited songwriter? You understand all that?”

“I didn’t cause that problem.”

“Naw, you just want to make it worse. Why is that? You could have spoken up years ago about writing that song, but you didn’t. Never said a word.”

“At least I’m not a liar.”

“No, you’re just a coward,” Luke snapped. “I made mistakes, but at least I did something. I tried. It was ugly and messy.” He slapped his chest. “But it’s my ugly. My mess. You want to pick at that, go ahead. But we both know it’s because you’re too afraid to pick at yours.”

August hated arguing. It wasn’t safe. There was always a chance she would say or do something she couldn’t take back, like the other day with Shirley.

And now, with Luke, she could already feel herself turning vicious.

Mainly because he’d picked this fight while she was standing in the apartment she’d rented to know what it felt like to have something of her own.

She’d spent years in Birdie’s house, doing instead of living, never acknowledging her wants because there was nowhere to put them.

Jojo used to stand outside and yell when she got bored.

August tried it once. She stood in the yard and screamed until it hurt, but the sound evaporated, like it had never been there at all.

Giving up was how she’d survived. If he’d stayed, he would have known that. He would have seen how little of her life belonged to her anymore. If he’d called, she might have forgiven him for lying. That’s how desperate she was to have a best friend again.

“If I never faced my mistakes, you wouldn’t be standing here.” She grabbed her shoes from a rack near the front door.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re stalling,” she said, relieved at how calm she sounded.

Lacing up her Nikes gave her time to focus.

Luke was a means to an end, and she needed to treat him that way.

This wasn’t the boy she knew. This was a stranger who wanted to manipulate her.

“You’re trying to bully me into keeping my mouth shut.

Well, joke’s on you. I’ve been bullied my whole life. I’m bully-proof.”

She yanked her laces tighter and grumbled under her breath. “Dumb little August doesn’t understand the music industry, so I’ll scare her into letting me off the hook for being a thieving fraud. Then I can shuck and jive for her mama like the good little clown I am.”

“If that’s what you think I’m doing, you don’t—”

“Know you at all?” She straightened to glare at him. “You’re wrong. I know you better than anyone. You’re afraid of me. And you’ll do anything to avoid saying my name on that stage.”

Luke flinched and swallowed hard, as if she’d fed him something scalding. “You’re right.” His eyes roamed over her, taking in all of her at once. “You’re terrifying. But not the way you think.”

She hadn’t noticed how close they were standing. He could reach for her if he wanted, something she’d usually consider inevitable if a different man was eyeing her like he was. Instead, he balled his hands into fists. August opened the door and let in the blistering humid air.

Sweat coated her skin almost instantly. She could hear Luke calling after her, telling her to stop, but lagging behind because of his bare feet.

She headed for his truck. A guitar case was visible in the passenger seat.

That was how she’d end this fight: by dumping it into his hands and saying shut up and sing, or she’d tell the world his dirty secret.

August yanked at the driver’s-side door and was surprised to find it locked.

No one locked their cars in Arcadia. She looked through the window.

There was a rolled-up blanket on the floorboard.

A toothbrush sat in a red Solo cup. Dozens of empty water bottles were in the passenger’s seat, too many for the fast-food bag he’d converted into a trash container.

His duffel bag was propped against the guitar, overflowing with clothes.

She could sense Luke behind her, but he wasn’t yelling anymore. She’d already seen what he was trying to hide. August turned around, but he wouldn’t look at her. He stared at the space above her head, like the clouds were more likely to answer his question. “Why are you so stubborn?”

Luke unzipped his guitar with more care than necessary. He was stalling. August seemed fine with letting him do it, hovering quietly instead of asking questions. What she’d seen told an ugly story, one he’d never wanted her to know.

He should have thrown away those water bottles. She probably thought he was using them to piss in.

“Look at me,” August said, then touched his shoulder, which meant they weren’t fighting anymore.

Touch was how she cared for people. She used to do it without thinking—rub his back, rest her head on his shoulder.

He could never summon adequate words to tell her how it made him feel.

It was an agonizing joy, the kind only someone raised in a violent house could understand.

Luke finally looked at August and immediately regretted it. Her anger was better. Anger was what he deserved. Now anxious fear lined her face, the kind that precipitated her attempts to fix someone’s problems. He used to love that about her, the way her walls would crumble in the face of suffering.

No. Not used to. Still. Maybe always.

“You can’t sleep in a car,” she said. “It’s dangerous.”

“It’s not that hot at night.”

“You could get robbed. Or arrested.”

“Who’s gonna rob me out here? Walt Jenkins?” He thought about the thin man with rheumy eyes who used to trade stolen lawn ornaments for weed. “No way that dude’s still around.”

August sat on the couch. “Please talk to me.”

Her hands were bunched inside the skirt of her sundress.

The thin cotton, with its tiny pink floral pattern, had distracted him since he’d arrived.

When had that started? The girl in his memories lived in T-shirts and jeans.

He wanted to know the exact date and time she’d shed that skin and put on this one.

“I’m broke,” he said, sitting across from her on a barstool.

The choice was purposeful. The lack of a seat back forced him upright, allowing him to face her with squared shoulders instead of letting a chair do the heavy lifting.

“Spent all my extra money coming down here. Haven’t gotten my performance fee, so I can’t afford a hotel room right now. ”

“How? You had a hit song. I still hear it all the time.”

“That’s just your algorithm. It’ll probably pop up if you played something similar or searched for Black country artists.” He hesitated. “Earlier, when I mentioned all that stuff about rights and royalties?”

She nodded, and he watched the memory of their argument cool her expression. Good. Maybe she’d stop looking like she was two seconds from pulling him into her arms.

“They didn’t teach us any of that on Country Star ,” he said.

“It was all voice lessons and branding. How to be a guy who looks good on TV.” He dipped his head and pushed the memory of the stage away, how bright and blinding it was.

That was how they wanted him. Shiny, bright, and blinded.

“I signed everything they put in front of me. Didn’t read a lick of it. ”

“You were only seventeen.”

“Eighteen by the time the show was over,” Luke corrected her.

“Old enough to enter a contract. They could get away with things back then that they can’t now.

” He hadn’t realized how much he’d signed away until Charlotte’s girlfriend broke the news during their first conversation about a divorce settlement.

The record company owned nearly everything.

The rest he’d signed away to his manager.

“Delilah Simmons, a show producer, offered to manage me after I got eliminated. She knew I was desperate to stay.” He glanced at August and quickly added, “It was Ava I was avoiding.”

“This woman took advantage of you?”

Luke wasn’t sure how much he wanted to tell her.

Delilah had been the first person in Nashville to believe in him, which had made him loyal even when she’d lied to his face.

She’d negotiated large fees for herself and flat-out stolen money when he was too drunk to pay attention.

She’d booked him at venues filled with dixie chintz and rebel flags.

There was one time, early on, that she’d dropped him off for drinks with a popular DJ, and Luke spent the entire night keeping the man’s hands off his ass.

Delilah had called him later, furious. “He called you an uppity asshole.”

“Fuck that racist piece of shit,” Luke had said, or slurred more accurately, because he’d kept drinking long after the man had left. “He just wanted to fuck me.”