The next morning, after a night whose utter, perfect harmony and exhaustion had slayed him for any other woman in the universe, Cooper felt a gnawing ache in his gut that was only growing more painful as he watched Shelby eat the pancakes and bacon he’d cooked.
“Aren’t you hungry?” she asked, winking. “I’d really have thought you’d have an appetite this morning.”
He smiled, but the almost imperceptible narrowing of her eyes told him she’d registered that he was forcing it. He wished he was a better actor, but the voice message that had been waiting on his phone this morning had left him wavering between anger, fear, and abject, horrible loneliness.
He had to go back to Boston.
He had to go back to court, damn it all.
But he’d be damned if he was going to drag Shelby with him, figuratively or otherwise.
She took a bite, swallowing carefully, like she wanted to ask what was wrong, but was too afraid there would actually be an answer.
“So what did you really think of my song last night?” She pointed with her fork. “And be honest. You’re not on my payroll, so you’re excused from buttering me up.”
“I loved it.”
“Yeah?” She smiled, and it lit her face from within.
“You had them in the palms of both hands, princess.”
“Best. Feeling. Ever.” She grinned as she took a sip of her orange juice. “This is probably the part where I should thank you for dragging me downtown, right?”
“Yup.”
She laughed. “Thank you.”
“I was right, wasn’t I?”
“You were. It was just—just like the old days. The really old days. With my dad.”
He watched her face fall for a moment, and he could swear he felt her pain in his own chest.
What the hell?
“Hey, Cooper?”
“Yeah, princess?”
“Do you think I’m a sellout?”
“A—what? No. Why would I ever think that?”
She sighed, shrugging slowly. “I don’t know. I mean, I could have followed in Daddy’s footsteps. He could have helped me make it happen. But I got blinded a little bit by my own glitter, you know? All the promises, all the attention, all of the adoration—most of which turned out to be false, in the end.”
She took another drink, her eyes wandering the room aimlessly. “Or maybe it was false the entire time. I don’t even know.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t. You have millions of fans. You don’t get that level of attention falsely.”
“Some people do.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s a machine, Coop. The machine decides who’s going to be the biggest, brightest star. And talent is less a part of that equation than any of them would ever openly admit.”
Cooper leveled her with a look. “If you’re questioning your own talent here, you might get to see my mad side for the first time.”
“I’m not. Not really. It’s just—you know, I didn’t actually hate pop music at first. Those first couple of albums? They were kind of fun. And I embraced the whole tour-goddess thing with the craft tables and the assistants and the costumes and glitter. I was all in.”
“So when did it stop working for you?”
She tipped her head. “I’m not even sure I can pinpoint it. It was a series of little things that just kept getting bigger. Or maybe they didn’t actually get bigger—maybe I just got less patient with it all. The more I grew up, the more I started to realize I was in control of just about nothing in my own life—not my clothes, not my hair, not my makeup, not the food I put into my own body, not my home…nothing. And that’s not even the music I’m talking about.”
“Did you ever try talking to your father about it? He’d been in the business a long time—seems like he might have been able to pull some strings or something.”
“Country music is its own animal, Coop. He had influence in his own music family. He had no influence in mine.”
Cooper pushed his pancakes around his plate, the pit in his stomach growing even bigger. He had to go back to Boston—to an unknown he couldn’t even wrap his head around yet—and here he’d gone and started something with a still-vulnerable, still-grieving woman he’d be leaving behind as he fought for his freedom…again.
He was an ass.
He never, ever should have showed up with spaghetti the first time, let alone last night.
But he hadn’t been able to resist her. He’d fallen hard, and no amount of talking himself out of it had worked. And now? What was he supposed to do? She was nearing the end of her time here at Whisper Creek, and he’d just received his engraved invitation back to a Boston courthouse. What the hell kind of future would he be able to offer her? Ever?
None—that’s what kind.
He closed his eyes, feeling a cold, granite stone lodge in his gut, all sharp edges and puncturing corners as he pictured his attorney’s office, the paparazzi camped out in front of his condo, the blade of fear he’d swallowed every time he’d opened his mailbox for months.
He pictured the old headlines.
He pictured the new ones.
And then he pictured Shelby’s name joining his in those headlines.
Oh, holy hell. What had he done?
“What’s the matter?” She straightened up.
“Nothing.” He took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to say what was far too crystal-frigging-clear to him, because if he waited any longer, he was even more of an ass than he’d already proven to be. “Maybe—something.”
“Okay?” Her eyes took on that scared look she’d sported when they’d first met, but this time, it was his fault.
“You remember what I told you about what happened back East?”
“It’d be a little hard to forget, Coop. Of course I do.” She set down her fork.
“Well, it turns out…it’s not over.”
He watched her swallow hard as she scanned his face. “What do you mean? You were already acquitted. The case was…closed. Wasn’t it?” Her pitch crept higher as she crossed her arms protectively over her stomach. “Cooper?”
“It was.” He closed his eyes, hating every frigging thing about this moment. Hating that he had to go face another trial, hating that he had to leave Montana at all, hating that he had to break Shelby’s heart in order to save her.
Because that’s what he had to do.
And he hated that he was also breaking his own damn heart in the process.
“Was?” Her voice was a whisper now, raw with fear.
“The case is being reopened.”
He felt the words land between them like they weighed more than the table could hold, and her eyes widened.
“What do you mean?”
“New evidence, according to my attorney.” He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “New planted evidence, I’m assuming, but it doesn’t matter. Whether it’s real or fabricated doesn’t change anything.”
“Well, it kind of changes everything, doesn’t it?” She stood up and paced toward the window. “You were acquitted, Cooper! How can they just find new evidence and put you through this again? Isn’t there some sort of statute against that? Double jeopardy or something?”
He sighed. He wished. “I don’t know.”
“So what does this mean?” She fingered the silver necklace around her neck, her fingers shaky. “Do you have to go back to Boston?”
“Yeah.” He closed his eyes in pain. “Yeah, I do.”
“When?” Her voice was so quiet that he barely heard the question, and he’d have given anything to not have to answer it. But he had to be truthful. A part of him had briefly considered leaving at the crack of dawn without telling her, just to save them both from this horrible scene, but he’d discarded it as soon as he’d thought of it. Only the biggest asshole coward would do that to a woman.
And he might be a lot of things, but he’d be damned if anyone called him that.
“Come here.” He put his arms out, dying to fold her against him, but she didn’t move.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “You have to go right now, don’t you?”
“No. Not…immediately.”
“When, Cooper?”
“Tomorrow.” He spit out the word like he hated it, and he watched it hit her like a dagger.
“Tomorrow? But—how—what— Oh, my God.”
He crossed the room in two strides, and before she could push him away, he pulled her to his chest and held her tightly. She was silent and still for a long moment, but then he felt her shoulders shake, and his own chest ached with the hell of it.
He’d agreed to watch over her, he’d promised himself he wouldn’t get involved, and instead, what had he done?
He’d fallen hard and fast for a woman he could never have…one whose life he needed to step clear of right now, before anybody in the universe realized they were anything more than a couple of people thrown together by circumstance. Before anyone realized they meant anything to each other.
Before anybody came digging for more headlines.
She pulled back, her eyes wet with tears. “You’re innocent! How can they do this? How?”
Cooper watched her face grow heated, watched her tiny hands ball into fists, watched her eyes take on a fire he hadn’t seen. And while one piece of him was warmed by her automatic leap to his defense, a bigger piece of him knew he was about to break her heart for real, and it was killing him.
“It’s the way the law works, Shelby. So innocent men don’t rot in jail. It’s a process.”
“But it’s not an innocent man who’s in jail. He’s guilty.”
“I know that. But he’s got a lot of friends pulling strings.”
“Dammit, Cooper. This isn’t fair.” She braced her hands on the back of a chair, and he watched tears crowd the corners of her eyes. “What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know, exactly.” He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I’m waiting for more information. All I know is I have to be on the road tomorrow afternoon, and after that? I just…I don’t know.”
“Why—how—when were you going to tell me?”
He closed his eyes. Never, I’d hoped.
“I had a voicemail from my attorney when I turned on my phone this morning.”
“Oh, God.” She turned around, pacing toward the window again, her arms crossed. “Oh, God, God, God. This can’t be happening. How can this be happening? This isn’t right. This isn’t why we have a legal system. The system’s supposed to protect the innocent, not let the guilty keep playing games and denying their guilt until they exhaust the courts. This isn’t right.”
“I know.”
She stomped, and he almost smiled at the childish gesture she hadn’t been able to help. Her breath was shaky as she crossed her arms.
“I’ll go with you. I’ll help. I can find you an excellent lawyer.”
He stared at her for a long moment, her words sticking to his ribs like peanut butter mixed with glue. Then he pulled her back against his chest, wrapping his arms around her.
“I can’t let you do that, Shelby.”
“Why not?”
He sighed. “For a hundred reasons, sweetheart.” He kissed the top of her head, then backed up and leaned against the counter, crossing his own arms so he wouldn’t reach for her again.
“Name one.” Her chin came up, but it quivered.
“I was accused of drugging underage runaways and selling them for sex, Shelby. And I’m pretty sure half the population of Boston still doesn’t know I didn’t do it. All they saw was the sensationalized media coverage of the early days, before bigger things caught their attention. My name—my family’s name—got dragged through the muck, and even though I’m innocent, that name now carries a weight we’ll never shake off.”
“But…none of it was your fault. And what does it have to do with me coming with you or not?”
“Whether it was my fault just doesn’t matter.” He sighed. “Imagine this for a minute—some reporter gets wind of you and I here together at Whisper Creek, or you and I holing up in my Boston apartment. Some crazy paparazzo snaps a few incriminating pictures.” He snapped his fingers like a camera shutter. “And suddenly, teen sensation Tara Gibson is consorting with the guy at the head of Boston’s most infamous sex-for-drugs scandal.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” He raised his eyebrows. “You’ve been a celebrity long enough to know that the truth falls secondary to the story, many times.”
“But seriously.” She shook her head. “Any reporter worth her salt would dig far enough to see that you weren’t convicted—that you were framed. Don’t even go there.”
“The case is no longer closed, Shelby. And that’s the news she’d report. She’d dig up the pictures, the headlines, the absolute shit-storm that was my life for the past year, and she’d put a whole new spin on it to keep it fresh. There are reporters all over Boston clawing at each other for the best new headline right now, and they’ll get it. You know they will, and I know they will. It’s just a matter of time. Davis’s lawyer’s feeding out just enough tidbits to keep them swarming, and eventually, they’ll find something they can latch onto and use to ruin what’s left of my shredded reputation. That’s how it’s going to go down, whether or not I’m acquitted again in the end.”
Cooper sat down, suddenly unsure that his own legs could hold his weight. Because what was he going back to? A family that had disowned him, an apartment filled with dusty furniture and cobwebs, and one person who’d actually talk to him—his lawyer.
And Phoebe.
God, this was going to kill his sister.
Yeah, the horses and the blue skies and the jagged mountains he’d been filling his head with for the past few months would be fond, vague memories within a week.
And the woman he’d filled his life with for the past few weeks?
There’d be nothing vague about those memories.
“You really think there will be a new trial?” Her arms were like steel bars against her stomach—like she was using them to not fall apart in the middle.
“I don’t know. It depends on the evidence. Depends on a lot of things, I guess. I’ll know more when I get back there.”
“So, worst-case scenario, because somehow I need to know, even though I don’t want to…what if you do have to go to trial again? What if, this time, you don’t win?”
Cooper pulled his eyes away from hers, unable to say the words while he was looking at her. “Then I could go to prison.”
Her hand flew to her mouth, and her eyes darted toward the bathroom like she thought she might throw up.
“No.”
“Yes.” He shook his head, hardly believing he could speak so calmly about it. “That’s the reality of it.”
“So why won’t you let me help? I could still…help. Couldn’t I? Help?” Her voice was soft, like she knew her offer was as useless as the number of times she was repeating the word. Only God and a well-picked jury were going to be enough to get him out of this, at this point.
“No, princess. You can’t. This is a big-ass demon that I need to go back and fight by myself. If anyone even gets a whisper of a clue that we have any connection, I’ll bring you right down with me. I can’t do that, Shelby. I won’t. No one can ever know we even know each other. Or ever did.” He pushed frustrated fingers through his hair. “I never should have—we never—”
“Don’t.” Shelby sat down hard on the couch, pulling up her knees. She was silent for an entire brutal minute before she finally lifted her eyes to his. “What are you saying, Cooper?”
He blew out a breath. “I don’t even know. I’m just—I mean, here you are joking about a contract-breaking headline being your only hope of freeing yourself from LolliPop, and here I am practically handing you one. But this isn’t the headline you want, Shelby. Because you being with me is absolutely not something your record company can spin. No record company could.”
“What does that—what do you…mean? We can figure this out.”
“I don’t—don’t think we can. This is killing me, Shelby, more than you can ever know, but I just—we can’t—this is never going to work. There’s just—there’s no way it can.”
Cooper blew out a tortured breath. Jesus, he couldn’t even string words into comprehensible sentences right now.
She narrowed her eyes. “Are you—are we—is this you breaking up with me?” She shook her head like she was clearing cobwebs. “Which is a stupid thing to say, because we’re grown adults, and maybe—ugh—maybe our days were numbered, anyway, but seriously! I can’t be the only one thinking that maybe this is more than a summer fling. And if I am—well, God. I—wow.”
Her voice shook, and he hated himself more than he’d thought possible as she touched his arm. “I can help you, Cooper! This doesn’t have to be…goodbye.”
In her eyes he saw a mixture of fear and anger, and he knew he had to do whatever he could to make the anger win, so that she could move on without him. Because no matter what—however the next couple of months of his life played out—there was no way Shelby Quinn or Tara Gibson could ever stage a comeback if he was in the picture. Her career had been built with a teen audience. His career had ended with one.
Nobody could ever know they’d been together, or life as she knew it…would be over.
She took a catchy breath that sliced him through the ribs. “I don’t understand, Cooper. We can stay undercover. People do it all the time.”
“It’s not that simple, Shelby. There is a citywide dragnet looking to paste my picture on any front page available. I won’t be able to buy a gallon of milk without somebody knowing about it. They’ll be stationed at my front and back doors twenty-four/seven. I know how this goes. There’s no way we’d be able to make it work, even if I wanted it to.”
Her eyes snapped up at his words, and he almost swore. Dammit. That wasn’t how that was supposed to come out.
“Oh.” She nodded slowly, like she couldn’t quite wrap her head around what he’d said…like she couldn’t quite figure out what response she wanted to give—or which he was hoping to hear.
“That didn’t come out right, Shelby.”
“Oh, I know.” She nodded faster, her words coming out like tiny arrows. “But maybe…maybe it did.”
“Shelby.”
She put up a hand to stop him. “I’m not sure what would be easier right now, Cooper. For you to just say something horrible so I can hate you? Or for you to admit that maybe you feel something—that this is killing you as much as it’s killing me. Because I gotta tell you, this is killing me. How can you just go back there alone? How can you not let me try to help you?”
He hated the way her eyes were going watery, hated that it was his fault. But he’d hate himself forever if he was somehow the cause of a breaking news story with her picture in the frame.
“I can’t do this to you, Shelby. I can’t draw you into something you’ll never be able to shake off. Do I wish it was different? Do I wish every damn thing was different? Hell, yes.” He put his hands on her shoulders, willing her to look at him. “I could go to prison, Shelby. Prison. I could end up spending years behind bars, and where would that leave you? Where would that leave your career? You think you’d wait around? Hoping maybe I’d still be the same person by the time I got out? Because I wouldn’t be. Nobody comes out of that the same as they went in.”
“You won’t go to prison, Cooper. It’s not possible. I can ask Daddy’s manager to front me some of the house-sale money. I can help you hire the best attorney.”
“No.” His voice was firm. “I would never let you do that.”
“This is a really stupid time to let your pride start talking. Just saying.”
“It’s not pride, hon. It’s reality. How long do you think it would take somebody to figure out the paper trail? To figure out Tara Gibson’s financing the legal defense of a teen-killer?”
“God!” She put her hand over her mouth. “Stop talking like that! You’re not that!”
“I know. But a lot of people don’t. And they’re the ones the press will pander to. Those teens overdosed and died, Shelby. They’ll never go home again, and half of Boston still thinks it’s my fault. I appreciate your offer, and I know you’re making it with a pure heart, and I love you for it, but I would never let you risk it.”
Her eyes softened for a brief moment, and he hated himself for dropping the L-word like that, in that context—dammit, in this room, where they’d shared so many moments that would torture him for years to come.
“So.” She took a deep breath, and he could tell she was doing her best not to lose it in front of him. “Where does this leave us? Because if you’re under some delusion that you’re going to fly back to Boston tomorrow and then I’m going to go on my merry way and forget you, you are effing insane.”
His eyes widened at her—admittedly polite-ish—F-bomb drop. “I don’t want you to forget anything, Shelby.” He reached down and pulled her off the couch, pressing her body to his as he cradled her face. “Because these past few weeks with you are going to be seared into my head until I can no longer think in a straight line. Because if the worst happens and I do go down for this, those memories are going to be the only thing that keeps me sane, at the same time they’ll drive me insane.”
“Coop—” Tears ran down her face unchecked now.
“We can’t, Shelby.”
“What about after? What if we just pretend right now that we don’t know each other, and after you’re acquitted again—because that is what’s going to happen—we can see?”
He hated the hope in her eyes, hated that he had to squash it so she didn’t keep a proverbial candle burning…one he couldn’t guarantee wouldn’t blow out in a cold, stiff breeze delivered by a jury of his peers.
“This could go on for months, Shelby. Years, if they work hard enough at it. You barely know me. You certainly don’t know me well enough to even think you could hold out hope for that long. It doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it doesn’t. And that’s why I know I could. I would, Cooper.”
He let his thumbs caress her skin for the last time, his damn heart pounding right through his chest.
“I can’t let you, Shelby. This is the only way. You know it, in your heart. And in a little while, you’ll be glad we did it this way. I know you will.”
She shook her head. “Never.”
“You think that now…”
“I’ll never not think that.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. You’ll never know just how sorry I am.” He leaned down, closing his eyes as he kissed her lips softly. Then he let his hands slide free of her face, using every muscle he had to pull them back to his own body as he turned toward the door.
“I’ll never forget you, Shelby Quinn.”