chapter Seventeen
Jamie would never have guessed it could be so hard to get on a plane.
He resettled his shoulders against the leather seat and looked out the window. Nothing but sun-baked tarmac and flat, parched fields beyond. Dullsville, USA.
Technically, he was sitting somewhere outside Houston. He’d had no idea what city he was in when he listened to the message from Ellen. Hadn’t even known he was in Texas. He lost track, got used to going where he was taken and not worrying too much about where he was until it was time to say, Hello, Cleveland! to the crowd.
Somewhere out there, somebody was fueling up the jet, performing whatever checks had to be performed to get him off the ground. He didn’t really know how it worked. Just lately, he’d been noticing he didn’t know how much of anything worked.
All he knew was he needed to get to Camelot. Ellen’s message saying Carly and the baby were in trouble had hit him like a mallet to the skull. He’d been an idiot to leave Carly and an even bigger idiot to think he could stay away from her.
It made him frenzied—knowing she might need him while he was so many states away, messing with trying to locate his bag, pack up his stuff, duck security, and get out of the hotel. He’d rushed through the anonymous hallways to the elevator, across the lobby, ignoring the guests elbowing each other and staring, the whispers. Is that Jamie Callahan? Out the main entrance, where he’d hoped to find his driver waiting but hadn’t.
Where did Ryan go when he wasn’t supposed to be driving Jamie somewhere? It had never occurred to him to ask. Further evidence that he was a selfish a*shole.
The evidence had been piling up since he met Carly.
A clean getaway would have been ideal, but security was only a few steps behind him, accompanied by Christina, his manager. “What’s up, Jamie?” she asked as he peered around the side of the building. “Who was on the phone? Where are you going?”
He started walking across the vast parking lot, wanting simply to escape her, to escape this anonymous five-star hotel in—Dallas? Raleigh? It was f*cking hot, wherever it was.
In the end, he’d had to ask Christina how to call Ryan, which should have been no big deal. He asked her to do things for him all day long. But this time, he’d been embarrassed, because what he’d really been asking was How do I go somewhere without your permission?
“Can you close the door?” he asked the flight attendant.
“Of course.”
The temperature climbed inside the plane, so high that sweat began to bead at his temples, but he felt better once he was sealed inside his expensive tin box. Once he knew nobody could stop him from doing what he should have done days ago.
“I’m going to Camelot,” he’d told Christina.
“You can’t do that. You have a show tonight.”
The words had grated on his last nerve. How many times had he heard that in his life, You have a show? First from his mother, who’d trotted it out whenever she didn’t want him to do something any normal kid would have been allowed to do.
No, you can’t go to Roger’s birthday party, you have a show on Sunday.
No, you can’t go to Homecoming, you’ll be tired for your audition.
College is fine for Ellen—she doesn’t have a career to think about. You have so much lost time to make up for! You need to focus, Jamie.
He didn’t blame his mother. He’d wanted all of this once—the fame, the concerts, the fans. The girls.
It was only lately that he’d begun to chafe at what it did to his freedom, the way it turned every opportunity into a Let me check my schedule or I’ll have my assistant get back to you, until he couldn’t even walk out to the car and fly to Ohio to be with the woman he loved—the only woman he’d ever loved, besides his mother and his sister—without being trailed by his manager and reminded, several times, You have a show.
“Cancel the show,” he’d said to Christina, and her eyes had gone so wide, he’d thought they might pop out.
“You can’t do that. They’ve sold all the tickets, and—”
He’d gone off on her then. “I don’t care! Jesus, everybody else cancels when they have a sore throat. I’m thirty years old, and I’ve never canceled a show. I’ve gone onstage with the flu. I went onstage the day after my mom died. I’m not doing it anymore. I don’t care what you tell them. I don’t care what it costs me. I don’t even care if I never sing again. I’m leaving. Cancel the f*cking show.”
Superstar temper tantrum. His first, and he hoped his last. Poor Christina hadn’t deserved the rant, but at least she’d stopped following him.
He’d kept walking, noticing how heavy his bag was and wondering when he last had to carry it for himself. Sweat plastered his shirt to his back, the cars zoomed by on the busy urban road, and eventually he found Ryan’s number in his phone. Christina must have programmed it in. Somebody had.
“Can I get you something to drink, Mr. Callahan?”
“No, thanks.” The flight attendant was new. Younger than him, tall and leggy, wearing a skimpy, retro-style uniform that somebody must have picked out thinking he’d like it. He spent his life surrounded by people who did things the way they thought he’d like them, and all he wanted was Carly, who didn’t give much of a damn what he liked.
Carly, who made him laugh. Who picked on his clothes, thought his albums were crap, and had told him the first time he played the piano for her that a talented guy like him shouldn’t be wasting his time on pop music.
Carly, who wanted to be tough but who purred like a cat when he held her and ran his fingers through her hair. The sort of woman who’d rather face down a horde of Vikings than admit publicly to any sort of vulnerability.
But when they were alone together, she was vulnerable. They both were.
Carly had become his refuge, his haven. He’d fallen for her without even knowing it was happening. He’d been a brat about the press, a spoiled f*cking kid, and when she’d told him to go, he’d walked out without understanding how shamelessly he’d used her.
Carly and the baby. Ellen said they needed him now. He couldn’t imagine what possible use he would be, but whatever he had to offer her, he was going to be there to offer it. Because he needed them.
“Just let me know when we’re about to land,” he said. “I’m good for the flight.”
“Of course, Mr. Callahan.” She smiled, toothy and naive, and sashayed toward the front.
She probably had a demo in her purse, a CD or a flash drive with a song she just knew would be a hit. Unless she wanted to sleep with him. Or both.
Most everybody wanted something—everybody but his sister, who’d only ever wanted him to be a good brother and a better uncle. And Carly, who’d wanted him to be a man.
He’d let her down. She thought he was the kind of guy who didn’t stick—a toy. And she was right. That was the only kind of guy he’d ever been.
The jet’s engines powered up. Frigid air began pouring from the vents, so cold he could see it. According to Ryan, it was 104 degrees out there. Pointlessly hot. Not the hottest place Ryan had ever been, though. Turned out his driver had done two tours in Iraq. He had a wife and a baby back home in Oakland, and he hoped to quit driving and operate his own limo service someday.
Jamie had asked Ryan a lot of questions on the drive out to the airport, and Ryan seemed surprised at first, pleased, as if Jamie were bestowing a favor on him instead of the other way around.
Don’t think that way, Jamie wanted to tell him. I’m nothing special. Barely worth talking to.
But he was going to figure out how to be different. He was going to learn how to stick, how to be who Carly and the baby needed.
His life so far had been a matter of setting and meeting the wrong goals, one right after the next.
Winning Carly back was the first worthy goal he’d ever had.