I’m the kind of woman who sings with her sisters.
It felt good.
Okay, it also felt weird – but still nice – to be standing on the small stage in the Golden Spike Saloon, looking out over what seemed to be the whole town and then some. How Adele and Nate had managed to pack in so many people was anyone’s guess, but the fire marshal was beaming at the door, so they hadn’t gone over capacity. Yet.
In each corner were lights, and camera-people swung through the room, capturing it all.
Adele was at the mic, driving the action as usual. Thank goodness she didn’t mind having that role. Lana sure as hell didn’t want it.
“Okay!” Adele held up her arms, and her round belly showed clearly under her white T-shirt. “Pipe down! We’ve got a real treat for you up next. Thanks for listening to us play a few oldies but goodies.”
“We love you, Songbirds!” The words were shouted from the very back of the room.
Molly grinned at Lana. Lana had literally forgotten how it felt to have her voice twining with her sisters’, the way they intuitively found the old harmonies and reached for new ones as they went. It had felt a little bit like flying, singing on stage with them.
Adele said, “We love you, too, Darling Bay. Thanks for coming out. Remember that every dime you spend at the bar tonight goes right into Migration, and we’ll be passing around a hat in a little while, too. Please give generously. Now, Molly and I are going to leave the stage in the capable hands of our baby sister, who’s back in town. You might know her as the one who’s fixed up the hotel. She might have checked you in when you got to town. You may have seen her walking a small dog who barks so loudly she cracks crystal. But Lana’s actually the rockstar of the family –”
“Really?” Lana said into her mic. “The rockstar?”
Adele raised an eyebrow. “Are you engaged to be married to a cop?”
Heads swiveled to look at Molly, who blushed.
“No,” said Lana.
“Are you pregnant, by any chance?” Adele touched her belly.
“Hell, no.”
“By default, you have to keep being the rockstar, then.”
Lana tugged at her cowboy hat. “Well,” she said smoothly into the mic. “There are worse things, I think.”
Adele nodded. “So give our baby sister a big, Darling Bay welcome, won’t you?”
Lana tuned her E-string. It wasn’t out of tune, but it gave her something to fiddle with while she ran through the words in her mind. Nerves – she was wound so tight with them. That morning, when she’d woken in Taft’s arms, she’d groaned. Do I have to do this?
It’s going to be televised. It’s an opportunity. But no, darlin’, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.
It wasn’t true. Sometimes you did have to do exactly the last thing you’d ever wanted to.
Sometimes you just had to be brave and run off the cliff, hoping for someone to call a helicopter for you if you got hurt. Lana pressed her thumb into her tattoo and then smiled at Taft, who leaned against the bar.
His grin was huge.
His blue eyes didn’t move from hers. Next to him stood a tall woman who had the same dark-blue eyes. His half-sister, Martha, had desperately wanted to meet him but was apparently as anxious as Taft had been to reach out to her. Taft and Lana had driven to meet her the week before. He and Martha had spoken for an hour, and then for four hours the next day.
They were taking it slow, but Lana had overheard him introducing her as his sister to the mayor, and her heart had just about burst with the sheer outrageous joy of it.
Now, as she stared at him, he winked.
He loved her.
“I’m the luckiest woman alive.” Her voice shook, which ticked her off, so she hurried to continue. “For a while, though, I was the unlucky one. The loner. The one who didn’t fit.”
The crowd grew quieter.
“You might have seen the rumors in the country tabloids, but I’m going to confirm them for you right now. I was raped.” The air left her lungs, and quite clearly, she heard a woman in the back say, Ohhhh.
“I didn’t say those words for a long time, because I didn’t have the language for it. I was assaulted, that’s what I told myself. I put myself in a bad place, and I got too drunk and out of control. I’d asked for it, so I deserved what I got. I was ashamed of every part of myself. I pushed the ones I love most away because of the shame, and because of the angry lies I fed myself to try to cover it up.” Lana couldn’t see them, but she could feel her sisters behind her. Loving her.
In front of her, Taft’s gaze didn’t waver.
“It turns out I didn’t deserve it. Period. And if I can tell just one woman watching that it wasn’t her fault, it makes my story worth telling.” Lana looked away from Taft and into the camera. “If you were too drunk, if you were too young, if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, even if you made every single wrong decision possible, what happened to you when you got hurt was not your fault. It was never your fault.” The words caught in her throat. “That’s why I wrote ‘Blame Me.’ I was trying to heal myself. I didn’t know it then, but I was trying to heal you, too.”
Lana looked down at the guitar. Just a few pieces of wood and metal, but her music had saved her. It wasn’t too much to hope it could help someone else, too.
“Now, I’d like to invite a man up to the stage you may have heard of.” A light laugh rippled through the room. “Taft Hill, you gorgeous beast of a country boy, would you come join me on stage?”
He dipped his head in response. The crowd parted for him.
Then he was next to her. He picked up his guitar and slung the strap around his neck. “Hey, Birdie.” His deep voice raised goosebumps on her arms.
“Hey there.” Lana could fly – she knew she could. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to stay right here. “Will you sing with me?”
“You sure you want some nobody bastard who never knew his father to sing on this stage next to you?”
“Nope.” They hadn’t planned what they’d say. Lana leaned into the not-knowing and just spoke what was in her heart. “I want the man who was raised by a wonderful father named Palmer Hill to sing with me.”
“What if I don’t sound like him?”
She shrugged. “Who could? If you sound like yourself, like the Taft Hill I’m in love with, that’ll be more than enough for me.”
Taft grinned then, and leaned down for a kiss.
A cheer from the crowd rose, and above it, they heard Norma, who was sitting with her tarot cards at the bar. “I see a platinum record in your future! I see it right here!”
Lana didn’t care about a platinum anything, when it came right down to it.
She cared about her sisters.
She cared about the hotel.
And this man – this one right here, with his lips pressed against hers.
I’m the kind of woman who falls in love.
So Lana kissed Taft back.
Thoroughly.