Page 15 of August Lane
August was the first person who’d ever seen him at his worst. Meeting her made him realize how lonely he was. There’d been an instantaneous shift—one minute, his body was being twisted and stretched to the brink of cracking, and the next, she was holding his hand. It was the best feeling. A balm over everything. But it was also like putting on a strong pair of glasses after a lifetime of eye strain. You couldn’t know how bad your vision was until someone showed you a clearer world.
August leaving her notebook behind had to be a sign. He’d always believed in things like karma and destiny, so that’s what he told himself as he stuffed it into the bottom of his backpack, that everything happened for a reason.
Her handwriting was neat and elegant, with artistic swoops that reminded him of calligraphy. He’d expected something more like his blotted mess of emotions, but August didn’t have the same problem he did. She knew exactly how to put her feelings into words.
How do you tell a beautiful boy that you’re wasting away in front of him / He could never understand / He could never love a girl who’s always waiting for something better.
She hadn’t written the songs for him. But it didn’t matter. Luke saw his own hunger on the page, and at that moment, he knew he couldn’t keep going on the way he had. And it felt good to accept that, let it settle over him while he read and reread those words until they felt like his.
He thought back to her voice at the fair, the way it had trembled as she’d squeezed his hand. Years later, he’d wonder if that was when it happened. That maybe he fell in love with her that night. Just a little.
CHAPTER THREE
2023
In ten years of marriage, Luke had never argued with Charlotte Turner. She’d never yelled at him, either, not even when he deserved it. He’d once gotten so drunk that he’d broken an angel figurine her mother had bought her a year before she died. Even though it hadn’t been an intentional provocation, he was relieved when Charlotte discovered what he did. Finally, he would see her fury and learn how to manage it. But she hadn’t mentioned the glass angel. She’d lumped that mistake in with the others and locked it away in a mental vault she kept of things about him that didn’t matter.
Today, the tight smile she gave him as they sat across from each other in the living room of her Nashville mansion might as well have been a shout. Charlotte wanted him to speak first. But Luke never spoke first. Ever. Waiting for an angry person to take the first shot was written into his DNA.
“You could have called,” she said finally. “I heard the news from my publicist.”
“Didn’t think we still did that,” Luke said carefully. “Called with news. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t—” She bit her lip and dulled her voice. “Don’t do that. It’s my least favorite thing about you.”
He wasn’t sure what she meant but resisted the urge to apologize again. “How’s Darla?”
Charlotte tensed, then said, “Fine,” while her hand tightened on a folded document he hadn’t noticed until now.
“That what I think it is?” he asked, even though he knew the answer. It was the reason he was there. After David’s warning about avoiding ascandal, he’d texted Charlotte to ask if she’d signed the divorce papers. She’d left him on read for days, as she often did when he broached the subject, and had only reached out when the news about Jojo became public.
“Yes.” She placed the papers on the coffee table next to a pen, stroking them flat like that would give her the courage to pick it up and sign this time. “Darla said you never answered her last email about the revised settlement.”
“Don’t need it,” he said automatically, but it was such a big lie he quickly added, “I don’t want your money, Charlie.”
“Not even for ‘Nice Guy’?” She was going for sarcasm, but that was never her strong suit, so it came out petulant. They’d always pretended that the popular breakup song was an inside joke. But when a woman told the world you were “the worst good time I’ve ever had,” part of you would always take it personally.
Luke met Charlotte when he was nineteen years old and the shine on his career was so bright it felt like it would last forever. She’d just stunned the industry with her debut album, a pop twist on honky-tonk with enough drums and bass to spark the same old debates about what was and wasn’t real country. Her girl-next-door image had fit perfectly with the party bro schtick that had propelled Luke to TV stardom. A joint tour was inevitable. They’d both been lonely and horny enough to blow past friendship and dive straight into each other’s beds.
Sometimes those months on tour felt like the closest he’d ever get to a happy ending. But Luke had been wasted for most of it, so he could never be sure if it was love or the endless supply of weed. Charlotte used to party with him but wasn’t chained to being high like he was. Her ability to handle the strain of touring sober made him jealous. He could only face the pressure while floating on a boozy cloud.
Getting married was more about public relations than romance. Luke’s team thought it would be a good distraction from the nosedive of his career. His debut album had been a disappointment and the second was bad enough to cancel the tour. Charlotte’s team had pitchedBridemagazine profiles that would expand her fan base into a more adult category.
The media attention was so intense that Luke went on a bender the night before their wedding and nearly drunk dialed August to tell her he still loved her. He pressed all the numbers except the last one, hung up, and did it again, over and over, sending an SOS she’d never hear.I’m tired of dreaming, August. You’re the only one who can wake me.
It went on that way for the next two years: Luke would buckle under some pressure and self-medicate to take the edge off. Then he’d wake up somewhere he didn’t recognize after doing things he didn’t remember that were inevitably photographed. He’d feel bad, start drinking again, rinse and repeat. Meanwhile, he and Charlotte saw each other less and less, until he came home one day and walked in on her making out with her attorney.
Luke hadn’t been angry. Sometimes he wondered if that was really what ended their brief marriage—that he didn’t react the way Charlotte wanted after discovering her affair. But Luke had always believed that loving someone meant loving all of them, even the parts that were better off without you. Before she realized he’d walked in on them, Charlotte looked happier than she’d been since they met.
Luke couldn’t give Charlotte the stability she wanted. Still, he could step aside quietly, without filing for divorce, because her fans weren’t ready for their favorite girl next door to be an out-and-proud bisexual woman. So for the last ten years, Luke had played the dutiful husband while Darla pretended to be the celebrity attorney who’d become a devoted friend.
Guilt about the lie usually brought them here, hovering over divorce papers, on the edge of abandoning the entire performance. But today had been prompted by his fear and her anger. And, knowing Charlotte’s stubborn need to pretend they were still close friends, maybe a bit of hurt.
“I hate that song,” Charlotte said. “Even the title is terrible. ‘Nice Guy’?” She shuddered. “But people are obsessed with it. Singing it’s like…”
“Going back in time,” he finished. “Or being stuck there.”
Her face creased with sympathy. He’d confessed to not writing “Another Love Song” during the peak of their relationship, whenhanding over the secret felt like an act of love and not a selfish grab for absolution. But Charlotte wasn’t August. She didn’t take his ugly confession, put it on paper, and transform it into something beautiful. She’d recoiled, avoided his eyes, and told him never to repeat it if he wanted to make it in Nashville.
