Total pages in book: 36
Estimated words: 32998 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 165(@200wpm)___ 132(@250wpm)___ 110(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 32998 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 165(@200wpm)___ 132(@250wpm)___ 110(@300wpm)
"It's a recording company. Um, Grady Records. My great grandfather started it back in the 1930s, when country music was in its infancy in Nashville. By the 60s, it was one of the biggest companies in Nashville, and it's only grown since," I explain. "We're still growing."
"You're proud of it."
"I am," I whisper. "Back then, there wasn't a place for black artists in a lot of studios. Country music owes a lot to them, but no one wanted to give them a place in the industry. My great grandfather made sure they had a home with our company, and they helped shape the future of country music. Now, we make a place for artists that most studios are too afraid to touch—they're too experimental, too this, too that. There's always someone this industry claims isn't country enough. We prove them wrong."
"You work at the company, pretty baby?"
"Sometimes." I shrug, running my fingers over the blanket he wrapped me in. "I prefer making music to pulling the strings."
"You're a musician?"
"I play piano and sing. Um, I went to Julliard."
"Jesus." He turns wide eyes on me. "That's not a maybe someday type of school, Lena."
I shrug again. "My grandfather hates the idea of me being on stage." I glance down at the blanket. "I'm not sure how I feel about it, either."
"Why the fuck not?"
"I don't know," I whisper. "It's a lot of people, Carver. A lot of pressure. Maybe that's not what I want for my life." I love music and I'm good at it. It's in my blood and always will be. But it's never been my big dream. I hate feeling like that isn't enough—like I'm not enough.
"What do you want, little angel?" he asks, leaning against the counter, watching me with an intensity that makes my stomach quiver.
"Family," I admit, telling him the secret I've never told anyone—that my dream isn't the company or music but something simple. Something I've only had a tiny taste of my entire life. I want to belong—not because my grandfather took me in when there was no one else or because my cousin and I grew up together, two orphans clinging to familiarity, but really belong. In a way I don't feel like I ever have.
I'm extremely grateful for everything I have. I know how lucky I am and how much worse my life could have been. But growing up, everyone had parents and siblings. I've never known what that feels like. I don't remember my parents. I've always been adrift, the odd one out.
I want a family of my own, roots to plant and grow and nourish. I want babies of my own and whole branches of a family tree instead of two spindly little sticks.
I've felt lost my whole life, overwhelmed by the world because I've never felt like I know exactly where I belong. Maybe it's silly to feel that way, but I feel that way anyway.
Carver's eyes soften with understanding. "I've never had a family. I grew up in foster care and joined the military as soon as I aged out of the system," he admits, and I want to cry. He gets it, perhaps better than I do. At least I had my grandfather and Dalton. He had no one. He's been unanchored and unmoored in a way I never have, truly adrift. "The men in my unit became my brothers."
"Are you still close with them?" I ask softly, needing to know more about the man who has become my entire world.
"There's no one left." He meets my gaze across the room, and I see the faintest tremor in his hand. That small sign of humanity, of the depth of his experiences, shatters my heart for him. The ghosts of his past linger in his eyes in the silence, whispering pieces of his story even when I think he'd rather keep them to himself.
"You don't have to tell me," I whisper.
"Lost too many good men over the years," he says abruptly, his voice a low, painful rumble. "But the worst…" He swallows audibly, turning away from me. "This last mission was a fucked-up raid. Should've been routine, but it wasn't. Most of us didn't make it out."
The veneer of strength he always projects, that iron control he maintains over everything, masks so much grief, so much pain. This is why he retired…the bad thing that happened that changed the course of his life. I suspected it was something like this, but this is so much worse than I thought.
"Carver…" I whisper, but he doesn't need words right now. He needs me.
I toss the blanket aside and slip off the couch, scurrying across the room toward him. Without hesitation, I wrap my arms around him from behind, my cheek pressed against the broad expanse of his back. He's a fortress of a man, but in this moment, I'm his sanctuary.