The Summer He Came Home

Chapter 36



Later that night…

The sun had disappeared over an hour ago, leaving behind the moon and stars. Overhead they shone like a blanket of crystals strewn across the velvet sky. The air was still warm, and anticipation ran rampant.

Maggie hugged Michael as they stood in front of the stage and watched one of the technicians—or road crew, as Cain called them—fiddle with some of the wires. Cain would be on in a few minutes, and she was nervous, which was silly.

The day had been wonderful and awful and amazing and terrifying. Dante was sitting in a jail cell, locked up, and from what she’d been told, his arraignment would be several days away. It had been his bad luck to come after her on a long weekend.

They were pressing charges, and Cain was determined to see him punished. She’d spent a fair bit of time at the station house—there’d been interviews and pictures taken for evidence. They’d missed the football game, but none of that mattered now.

Michael had been spared most of the violence, and though he’d been rather quiet since the morning, he’d slowly come around. Cain had done his best to make her son feel safe, and with his father in jail, there was no immediate threat. They’d promised Michael that his father would never hurt them again.

For the first time in years, Maggie felt free of a past that had brought her nothing but pain. Her chin rested on top of Michael’s head, and she hugged him until he squirmed.

“Mom, you’re hurting me.”

“Sorry,” she murmured.

Someone bumped her from behind, and Maggie stumbled. She glanced to the left and tried not to laugh. Mrs. Lancaster and her husband, Pastor Frank, were unfolding chairs, and everyone gave them a wide berth. No one wanted to be responsible for trampling the head of their church.

It was a strange thing to see at a rock show, but this was Crystal Lake after all. Maggie watched as Pastor Frank settled into his seat and his wife joined him. They whipped out popcorn, drew a blanket across their legs, and then Mrs. Lancaster pulled out two sets of the biggest, baddest headphones Maggie had ever seen. They were bright orange—neon orange, really—and she couldn’t be sure, but it looked like they glowed in the dark.

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Raine slid in beside Maggie, her eyes on the Lancasters.

“What are they exactly?” Maggie asked.

“They’re heavy-duty earplugs, is what they are.”

“Oh. Why bother coming to a show like this, then?”

Raine shrugged. “Cain’s one of this town’s favorite sons. No one is going to miss this concert.”

“I’ve never heard him sing,” Maggie confessed.

“What?” Raine was shocked. “He’s never picked up a guitar and sung for you?”

“No.” She shook her head. “We’ve been busy…”

“Uh-huh, I know. You’ve been busy getting to know each other. Busy doing other things.”

Maggie blushed and nodded. “I guess so.”

“Mom.” Michael tugged on her arm and pointed a few feet away. “Tommy’s over there. Can I stand with him?”

Sharon and Roger waved. “Sure, babe, but stay in front, all right?”

“He seems to have shaken off what happened with his dad,” Raine said quietly as they watched Michael jog over to his friend.

“I hope so. Cain’s been wonderful.”

“So what are your plans?”

Maggie warmed at the thought. “Michael and I are going to spend the rest of the summer at the cottage with Cain, and then I’m not sure. We haven’t really had a chance to talk about it.” She paused and then asked a question that she’d been wondering about since she arrived at the football field with Cain.

“Raine, where did Jake go? He came to say good-bye, and I got the feeling it was a long good-bye. Cain was more than a little upset.”

The brunette’s face fell, and she glanced away for several moments. “Last night…stuff happened, things were said that can’t be taken back, and I think Jake pretty much hates me.”

“Oh Raine, that’s ridiculous. And so far from the truth.”

“Really?” she said bitterly. “What does ‘I can’t stand to f*cking be around you’ mean exactly?”

Maggie bit her lip. It wasn’t her place to speak for Jake. The two of them would work things out eventually. At least she hoped so.

Lauren Black appeared from the dark and immediately enveloped Maggie in a hug. “I’m so happy for you.” The woman’s eyes twinkled, and her face was lit with a grin that went from ear to ear. “Wonderful news.”

Maggie smiled in return, but was a little confused by the woman’s words. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

At that moment the lights went dark. A single spotlight cut through the night and followed a man as he walked to the microphone setup center stage. Cain had changed into jeans, boots, and simple black T-shirt. His hair was longer than when he’d first arrived, but it suited him, and his smile as he gazed out at the crowd was a thousand watts of beauty.

The crowd was going wild, hooting and hollering for one of their favorite sons to play some music.

He strummed a few chords and let the crowd’s excitement build. The entertainment had been ongoing all afternoon, with seven bands performing, and now the crowd was at fever pitch. Nearly five minutes later, he finally had to hold his hands up, and the crowd eventually quieted.

Watching him up there made her heart beat and her stomach roll. He glanced down at her, and Maggie blushed like a schoolgirl.

He had easily slipped out of the skin she’d come to love and stepped back into the part of him she hadn’t experienced yet. It was still the Cain she knew, but up there on the stage with the lights he existed on an entirely different plane. His charisma was unmistakable, and it rushed over the crowd as if following an invisible conduit that originated from inside him.

He started to play a melody, a haunting, evocative piece. His fingers flew along the frets, and he pulled such beauty from it that tears stung the corners of her eyes. Something inside her burst, and Maggie’s throat constricted, full of emotion. She recognized the piece. It was something he hummed to himself when they were alone together.

“It feel’s good to be back home.” Cain’s spoke into the microphone and smiled as the crowd erupted once more. He gazed out at the crowd. “It’s been way too long.”

He continued to play the melody, and behind him the lights slowly came up. Maggie saw Dax off to the side, a huge grin on his face. Gone were the glasses. He looked intense. He winked at her and saluted.

“I hope you’ve all had a great day. I know you’ve heard a lot of great music, and maybe you guys are getting a little tired, but if it’s all right, I just may play all night.” Cain grinned and the roar was deafening. “But before I start, I’ve got something really important to do.”

The crowd fell silent, as if sensing something out of the ordinary was about to occur. Cain looked down at her, and Maggie’s heart swelled to the point that her chest felt too tight. It was almost painful.

“You see, I left home ten years ago to find my future. I thought it was out there somewhere, far away from here.” He shook his head and shrugged. “I thought that Crystal Lake had taught me everything it could, and if I was gonna make something out of my life, I needed to leave.” He took a step back and cleared his throat.

“Turns out I was wrong.”

He looked down at Maggie, and her toes curled at the heat and intensity in his eyes. “I came home for Jesse Edwards’s funeral and ended up finding something I didn’t even know I was missing.”

Cain continued to play for several moments as the crowd cheered and clapped. “I guess you’ve all heard by now that Blake Hartley has left the band.” Cain glanced at Dax, who shrugged and kept moving to the hypnotic beat that fell from his bass guitar. “We wrote a lot of songs together, he and I, shared a lot of things”—Cain snorted—“including my wife. I’d write the melody, and Blake worked his magic with the words. For a while now I’ve been afraid that I couldn’t write the words like Blake did and that maybe BlackRock was over.”

He paused—all music stopped—and the entire football field quieted. “But then I met this girl, and she rocked my world in ways I’d never experienced before, and I realized something.” He chuckled and looked out at the crowd as his fingers drew the melody from his guitar once more. “I realized that BlackRock wasn’t over. I realized I had all this emotion in me, and last night I wrote some words down. If it’s all right, I’d like to sing them for you.”

The crowd was now in a frenzy.

“The song’s called ‘Never Say Good-bye,’ and I’ll sing it, but first…” His eyes never left hers, and he stopped playing his guitar. “I can’t, uh, play another note until Maggie O’Rourke agrees to marry me.”

“Holy crap, get up there!” Raine tugged on her arm.

The crowd went silent, eerily so, and for a second Maggie was frozen. Her feet felt like they were encased in cement.

“Mom! You have to answer him!” Laughter greeted Michael’s shout, and it rippled through the crowd until the silence was replaced with cheering—loud, animated cheering.

Cain looked down at her. “So what’s it going to be, Maggie?”

Raine tugged on her arm. “You need to go to him.”

The crowd stood back and watched as Maggie moved to the side of the stage, where a roadie helped her up.

And then she was there with him in the spotlight, and his arms were around her, his hands in her hair, his mouth on hers. The crowd went wild, and when she pulled away, she mouthed the word yes. It was all she could do. Maggie didn’t think she could speak.

Cain laughed. “I think you’re going to have to do better than that, babe.”

Maggie glanced out at the crowd, looked down into Michael’s shining face, and cleared her throat.

She angled closer to the mike, closed her eyes, and shouted, “Hell, yes, so now sing the damn song!”

The band kicked in, members of Shady Aces and Dax building the rhythm behind Cain’s melody and words. Maggie stood beside him as he sang, and the words that fell from his lips were indeed magical.

They spoke of longing, of love and fate.

Crystal Lake was blessed with a concert like none it had ever seen before. Cain Black kept his promise. He played until his fingers couldn’t move anymore, and not one person left.

Not until long after the last note was played.