Page 57 of Me and Mr. Just Right

The hotel door opened, and Bennett and Jules walked in with their food, happily chatting. Until Rosie stood up and approached Jules with a threatening glare. “Jules, a word please?”

Haydn was glad he wasn’t his brother.

The concert was so much more packed than he’d anticipated. They found their seats in the bottom bowl of the arena, about thirty rows back from the stage. The crowd was energized. Haydn didn’t know if the feelings rolling through him were nerves or excitement.

He couldn’t wait to see Lia, even if this was as far as they ever got. He’d listened to her songs nonstop since deciding to come out to Nashville, and he knew them as well as Jules did now. She was brilliant, and the thought of her ex stealing her songs made him even angrier. How could people not hear it? He’d streamed Gwen’s songs one time, just to hear Lia’s lyrics, and he could tell it was Lia’s work with every turn of phrase. She had a way of saying so much with so few words and managed to evoke images and emotion in a tiny space. What he tried to do with his photos, she was already doing with her songs. It was no wonder she was so beloved.

He had been secretly hoping she’d look out in the crowd and notice him before she got on stage, but as he looked at the thousands of people surrounding him, he knew it was a long shot.

More than a long shot. It was never going to happen.

The lights lowered, and brilliant stage lights turned on. Everyone cheered wildly, and he found himself caught up in the energy of the crowd. Soon, he was cheering and whistling just as loud as everyone else as the stage changed colors from blue to purple to pink to orange and then to yellow before finally landing on a dark red, the color of the charity she was singing for tonight.

The first notes of her most popular song, “Unsteady in Love,” started to play, and the crowd went even wilder. When she finally stepped out on stage, Haydn’s heart stopped. He’d still been picturing Lia on the beach—with her hair in two braids, no makeup, her nose a little sunburned and pink, wearing his oversized clothes. Here, on stage, was a Lia that took his breath away. She wore a flowing blue-green gown—the color of the ocean waves on a peaceful day. Her hair had been curled and left to flow around her shoulders. Her lips were a kissable cherry red, and every part of her was Aurelia Halifax.

Was he really going to make a play for Aurelia Halifax?

Yes, he was. Because even though the woman on this stage might never once have looked twice at Haydn Forrester, Lia Hall did. And when she finished singing the song, and the crowd lost themselves in cheering, and she sat on a stool someone had set on the stage to stare out at the crowd, all he could see were Lia’s eyes.

“Hi, everyone! I’m so glad to be here tonight.” She laughed as everyone’s cheers interrupted her. He was immediately transported back to walking along the island trails with her, craving that laugh so deeply. “We’ve got a fun night tonight, and I’m going to play some of my hits for you, but I wondered … who here wants a sneak peak of my new album coming out soon?”

If he thought the crowd had cheered loudly before, he was wrong, so wrong, because this reached the kind of decibel levels that would have his ears ringing for days.

She laughed again, and someone brought out her guitar. He recognized it from the house. She ran her fingers over the strings and started to play chords that sounded familiar. The notes she’d been playing with on their way to the abandoned cabin. “Some of you may know I went to Alaska for a secret getaway—”

More cheers. It had been all over the news for the last week.

She continued to play the guitar while she spoke. “And while I was there, I visited an old cabin that had been owned by a man who pined for his lost family his entire life. It was heartbreaking, but also inspiring. A love like that—it seemed so invaluable. So rare. I wrote this song for him. It’s called ‘The Light.’”

She started to sing then, about love and longing and a man who still searched for his family, and the words hit him to the very core. She’d managed to capture the essence of his favorite story—he could picture the man wandering the island with his fading light shining across the waterway.

Rosie took his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. He looked down and saw that she was crying. His brothers reached out and patted his back and shook his free shoulder. They all knew what this story meant to him, and how it felt to hear Lia honoring it in such a perfect way.

If he hadn’t been in love with her before, he was one hundred percent fully in love with her now. He didn’t care that they’d only known each other a week. Or that they lived two very different lives. Or that he’d messed this up in every way possible. Every reservation he had was laid to rest as he heard her sing this song. All his nerves fled, and in their place was determination.

She finished the song, and there was a beat of silence before everyone started cheering and screaming. Haydn wasn’t going to have a voice at the end of this to declare his love with, if he wasn’t careful.

“Lia!” Rosie screamed. “Haydn’s here! Haydn’s here!”

Haydn shot a quick look over at his sister, who had tears streaming down her cheeks. What in the world was she doing? This wasnotthe plan.

“Haydn’s here!” she kept screaming at the top of her lungs, her hands around her mouth to amplify the sound. The people sitting around them started to turn around and look at him.

Some of them whispered, and then someone leaned forward to say, “Hey, are you that guy she was in Alaska with? Haydn Forrester?”

“Yes, it’s him,” Jules said. He shrugged at Haydn, then started yelling, “Haydn’s here!” as well.

“This is the guy from the fan page comments!” another person yelled. “The Alaska guy.”

Soon the people around them all joined in, and whispers began to spread in the area around them. The chant picked up speed, everyone pointing in his direction as they screamed his name for Lia.

He didn’t know if he should hide his face or climb on his chair so she could see him. “Rosie, I don’t want to ruin her moment.”

“Oh, just go with it, Haydn. Thisisher moment! Look!”

He did, and he realized that Lia had stopped talking. The chants of “Haydn’s here” had grown louder and louder, and she blinked a few times and then took her earpieces out. She looked down at someone near the front row, her expression unsure. Then she looked out at the crowd, in the direction everyone was pointing in.

“Haydn’s here!”

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