but wonder if I truly was the luckiest bastard alive when she threw her head back and laughed.
We weren’t alone for long. Mason, who’d just started walking, toddled over, his arms wrapping around my leg. With my brows raised, I gazed down at him.
“Bup, bup.” He bounced, arms reaching, green eyes huge and pleading.
Releasing Stevie, I lifted Mason high into the air, then held him as we continued to dance. Albeit with a lot less romance, but plenty of laughter.
Stevie
Four Years Later
The sound of the piano downstairs snuck through the floorboards of the second floor where I was busying myself with cleaning up the kitchen after dinner.
Everett had made chicken stir-fry, my current favorite, and then needed to retreat to his cave to finish one of his latest creations.
He still worked with Jack and some of the artists at Keen Records, especially Orange Apples, being that Hendrix wasn’t one to write more than a few songs before running out of steam.
Which was what he’d called it. Hendrix had yet to have his heart broken, or fall in love, and so that was how he chalked up his inability to write about the subject matter.
Everett didn’t mind, and neither did the rest of the band. If you asked me, I saw through every loaded word of bullshit for what it was.
Hendrix, all of them, still wanted Everett’s input. Not only that, but they also wanted his presence. To spend time with him how they used to. Even so, Everett ran his own business, composing from our large basement for a variety of artists, movies, and even some television shows.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t doing what I loved, too.
Peeking out the shutters of the kitchen window, I watched the last drops of sunlight leak into the sunflower fields beyond the house.
We purchased the farm eighteen months ago when Everett noticed it’d come up for sale. The elderly couple who’d owned it had now moved on to a retirement village near their family.
We weren’t looking to buy a house. In fact, after living in the apartment for a year with Adela while I’d finished school, we’d purchased our first home. It was a beautiful, modern two-story monstrosity, and although I didn’t love it, I was grateful for what it provided. Our own space.
Yet when I remembered how it’d felt to step foot onto Sunny Nights, the name of our farm, before our wedding here, I’d shoved the phone into Everett’s hand, and said, “Make it ours.”
And so he did.
This home held everything our hearts needed to thrive—music, peace, beauty, character, and love.
My soul had never felt more alive or more at peace as it did when I drove down our dirt-packed drive or walked through our back door and took in the outside view, the crisp air sinking into my lungs, my being.
It was hard for darkness to seep in when nothing but light surrounded you. Yet things hadn’t been perfect, and I hadn’t expected them to be. But Everett had kept his promise.
He’d relapsed two years ago after I’d had a miscarriage. It didn’t happen when I would’ve thought it would. He’d been nothing but a solid pillar of support throughout the entire traumatic event, but I should’ve known that even weeks after, he could fall. Yet even when he did, he never left. He started attending meetings and began seeing his old therapist, Ted, again.
Now, he was content to meet with his sponsor should the need arise, and he made sure he saw Ted once a month.
Orange Apples were due to return from their first world tour in two weeks, and we were bursting to hear about their time on the road. They’d made it. They hadn’t been some overnight success, but over the past five years and after releasing three albums, their latest climbing the charts, they’d grown a following that was beginning to engorge their egos, and they were only just getting started.
The phone rang, and I quickly checked on Mason, who’d been coloring in front of the TV after dinner, only to find his crayons deserted, and the door leading downstairs cracked open.
Smiling, I rushed to grab my phone from the countertop, not expecting a business call this late and frowning at the unknown number.
I wouldn’t say business was booming, but I had enough to keep me busy. Still, I called them back, moving into the living room.
I sank into the couch as a breathless, “Hello?” hit my ears.