But now Nolan was back in town.
The truth bobbed around in the outskirts of her awareness, as though testing her for reaction. She wasn’t going to react, plain and simple.
“There is no way in hell I’m going back to that club,” she said now. Despite that declaration, she couldn’t help wondering how long he’d been in Austin, in her neighborhood.
He hadn’t bothered to call. Or stop by.
It wasn’t like he’d have forgotten where she lived. Unless he was a moron as well as a jackass.
He’d known she was a virgin. He’d made a big deal about how much it meant to him that he was her first time. Had made her feel so special. Cherished.
And then...he’d discarded her like she meant nothing at all.
Not even enough to deserve a real phone number. Or name.
She and Carmela had both spent months, on and off, searching the internet for any information on Nolan Forte. All roads led back to one place. His band’s website.
At Carmela’s urging, Lizzie had sent messages to the email listed on the site, with no reply.
“If he’d wanted his kid to have his name, he should have given the real one to her mother.”
“I’m not suggesting that you try to hook up with him, hon.” Carmela’s tone was soft. “Just that this might be the only time you have a chance to tell him about Stella.” She rubbed Lizzie’s arm. “I’m not championing him here,” she said. “You know what I think of him.”
In the very beginning, when Lizzie had first started seeing Nolan, Carmela had warned her against hanging out with a band member. Her boss’s wife, Francesca Whitfield, had been in a relationship with a traveling band member for years—a boy she’d loved since high school—and had caught him cheating on her with a groupie.
Lizzie had thought Nolan was different.
“It’s not because I give a rat’s ass about him,” Carmela started in again. “But you never know what the future’s going to hold, sweetie. What if Stella needs him for some medical reason? A kidney match or something? You might need him to save her life and you’d have no way to find him. Or maybe he has family, a mother even, who’d love Stella, and you, too, for that matter? Chances are if she exists, she has a pretty good idea what a creep her son turned out to be.”
She didn’t need Nolan’s mother to love her. Or anyone associated with him, either. She had Aunt Betty. And Carmela.
And the miracle of Stella.
If anyone had told her how her life would change the instant she held her baby in her arms, she’d never have believed them.
The way that baby filled her heart...made her feel strong and capable...and willing to give up her life at the same time, if it would save Stella’s... It was transforming.
“You might be able to get support out of him,” Carmela said.
“I don’t want his money.” She didn’t want anything more from Nolan Forte. He’d given her enough. “And I don’t want him anywhere near Stella. He’s a liar. A fake. If he’d pull a stunt like he did on me, pretending to be someone he wasn’t, giving me an unusable phone number, who knows what he’d do if she was bugging him? Children believe everything they hear. And they expect their parents to be truthful to them. They don’t need a parent they can’t trust, one who will be constantly disappointing them. Besides, who knows, the guy might be a total creep. Could be the universe was watching out for me, keeping me safe, when it worked out like it did.”
She’d had a lot of months to get herself right with the situation.
“Stella’s going to need to know who he is someday. She’s going to have a mind of her own and she’ll need to know who fathered her.”
“I’ll tell her what I know. It’ll be enough.”
“You don’t know that.”
No. She didn’t. The pang of guilt that hit her was unwelcome. As unwanted in her life as she was in Nolan Forte’s.
He was in town and hadn’t bothered to look her up.
“We’re just going to have to cross that bridge when we come to it,” she said now, standing to clear her plate from the table.
It had been a great night. Two long sets played to a completely full club. Setting his sax down on the stand where he’d leave it long enough to have a beer before packing up for the night, Nolan jumped down from the two-foot-high stage. Glenn would leave his drums set up. The mics would stay. Daly and Branham were already downing a couple of shots of whiskey and talking up the women who’d been flirting with them all night.
An older version of the two women at the bar with his bandmates stood to the side of the stage, talking to Glenn. The way she was smiling, leaning into him, touching his arm, she was doing more than asking about the band’s schedule.
A woman who’d caught Nolan’s eye a couple of times that night—only because he’d been looking over the crowd and she’d been staring at him each time—was lingering not far from the stage. After a couple of years on the road, he knew the probability existed that she was waiting for a chance to talk to him, maybe hang out for a while. And while Nolan Forte wasn’t averse to little weekend flirtations now and then, just plain Nolan needed escape more.
And maybe a trip back to the hotel. He’d had a couple more beers than he should have had last night. Hitting the sack sounded not half-bad.
Now that he’d taken his walk down memory lane and gotten his closure, revisited his decisions and determined they’d been the right ones, concluding he was fully over Lizzie, he’d be out like a log. He’d probably have the best night’s sleep he’d had in...well...a year, maybe.
“Hey.”
The voice called out to him from behind just before he reached a corner of the bar. Swinging around, he felt his throat catch just when he’d begun to breathe easily for the first time all night. The sets were done and there’d been no Lizzie sighting.
He hadn’t expected her to be there. But there’d been a small part of him that had insisted on hanging on to a minute bit of lingering doubt...
“Carmela, Lizzie’s roommate,” the woman said by way of introduction. “Remember me?”
“I didn’t see you out there.” He said the first thing that came to mind. And he forgave himself for not playing it cooler than that, considering the shock he was in seeing Lizzie’s friend—someone who probably knew how she was.
“I timed my arrival for the ending of the last set. I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t see me and bolt.” The last was said with obvious derision.
He wasn’t really getting her attitude. “I don’t bolt.”
“No, you just disappear.”
“Look, I don’t know what Lizzie told you, but we clearly said no strings attached. Her idea. She had very definite plans for her life and a struggling musician from out of town didn’t fit them. We knew going in that it was only for two weeks. I was here for a gig, left when it was over. End of story.” No one, not even Lizzie, knew of his inane and very dangerous struggle with his own wayward inner yearnings ever since.
“Not that I didn’t enjoy my time with her,” he was pushed to add. “I did. Very much. She’s special.”
“You gave her a bogus number.”
The woman wouldn’t quit.
“No, I didn’t,” he said, and then added, “I had to change carriers, and the number didn’t convert.”
True, to a point. He’d changed carriers for Nolan Forte’s private phone, which had been the number he’d given her because he couldn’t