My Butterfly (34 page)

I sang the last line and then let my eyes fall to the wood under my feet. The piano grew silent soon after, and the lights faded again. I listened through the quiet for a moment. Then, suddenly, the crowd’s cheers returned, and they were the loudest they had been all night.

After several moments, I lifted my head, and out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Alex near the back of the crowd, waving his skinny, little arm again. I narrowed my eyes. There were spots still floating around everywhere. But I could see him just enough to notice that he was dramatically lifting and lowering his arm, and he was pointing. I stood up. It looked as if he was pointing toward the parking lot.

“Jules,” I whispered to myself.

In no more than a second, I was off the stool and darting toward the side of the stage.

“Will, where are you going?” Matt asked, grabbing my arm and stopping me fast.

“She’s leaving,” I said.

He loosened his grip on my arm, and I took off again.

“I’ll be back,” I shouted over my shoulder.

I made it to Lou behind the stage, jumped behind the wheel and turned the key. There was a second way out of the field. It was the same way we had gotten the trailer in. I flipped on my brights and stepped on the gas.

After a rough and fast hundred yards, my wheels hit the blacktop, just as a car was pulling out of the parking lot. I sped and caught up to it. Its license plates were from Tennessee. So, unless someone else had come across the state boarder to see this concert, it was a rental, and it was her. I quit tailing her and fell back. There were two places she could be going. She was either on her way back to her new job and her new life in South Carolina or she was going home—either way, I’d follow her.

The sedan slowed when it reached a highway that
led out of town. I tapped my brakes and watched as the car turned and hit the blacktop. Then, I knew for sure; it was Jules, and she was going home.

I slowed up and fell farther behind her. I didn’t want to scare her. And through bends and turns in the path, I stayed just close enough that I could see her as she made her way down the highway and then onto the winding gravel road.

Eventually, she made the last turn before her parents’ house. I watched the sedan kick up a dust trail as it neared the white-graveled drive, and I waited for it to slow down and turn, but it never did. Instead, the car stayed on a straight path.

My foot slowly fell o
ff the gas pedal and hit the brake, causing Lou to come to a stop. Then, I sat back in my seat and let my head fall against the headrest. Moments later, a big smile edged its way across my face, and I glanced out the window and up into the heavens.

“Gonna see some stars tonight, Jules?” I asked out loud.

Then, I set my eyes onto the gravel road again and stepped on the gas.

“It’s a good night for it,” I said to myself, smiling a wide, happy grin.

The Chase

I
made my way across the creek slab and pulled off to the side of the road. There was a black sedan already waiting there. I smiled, reached into my backseat and then climbed out of the truck.

It was dark, but there was still a piece of the moon in the sky, so I could make out her silhouette on the hood of the sedan. She was sitting up, and her face was turned back toward me.

“Hi, Jules,” I said.

She seemed to hesitate before she spoke.

“Hi,” she eventually said.

Her voice was cheerful. She didn’t seem surprised. It made me smile wider, as I walked toward her.

“Mind if I take a seat?” I asked, when I reached the car.

“Not at all; it’s a rental,” she said, patting a spot next to her on the hood.

I nodded my head and chuckled to myself.

“Aah,” I said.

My eyes traveled from her hand to the color in her eyes. Then, I cautiously climbed onto the car’s hood, leaned my back against the windshield and made myself comfortable, all the while, trying my best to conceal the object in my hand.

“Did you know I was here?” she asked.

There was a suspicious air attached to her question. I was quiet for a second but then turned my face toward hers.

“Of course. Where else would you be?” I asked.

I watched her pause in what looked as if it was a thought.

“But how? I never…,” she started.

“Oh, you want to know how I knew you came at all?” I asked.

“That would be a start,” she said, shooting me a coy smile.

“You promised,” I said.

“Wait, you remembered that?” she asked.

“Of course, and from the looks of it, you did too,” I said, gently elbowing her arm.

“A promise is a promise,” she said so softly I almost didn’t hear it.

There was silence for a second then—that perfect kind of silence, when it almost had a hum of its own.

“But seriously, how could you have known?” she asked.

I paused and met her eyes again. She looked puzzled. I missed that puzzled face of hers. I missed all of her faces.

“Did you see the camera guy scanning the crowd?” I asked.

“Umm…yeah, I guess I might have noticed him,” she said, slowing shaking her head.

“Before the show, I gave him a photo and asked him to look for you,” I said.

“You didn’t?” she demanded.

“I did,” I said. “And turns out, he’s got a good eye.”

I gave her a wink, shrugged my shoulders and then sent a wide grin up into the heavens.

I felt her eyes linger on me before, eventually, her head fell softly back onto the windshield.

“You never cease to amaze me, Will Stephens,” she said, laughing softly to herself.

I listened to her soft laughter until it faded. Then, there was silence again—well, except for the crickets and the tree frogs. It had its place, but I wasn’t much for the quiet in this stage of the game.

“Did you hear the last song?” I asked.

She took a moment before she spoke.

“I did,” she eventually whispered.

“I meant every word of it,” I said.

“It’s a beautiful song, Will,” she said, slowly nodding her head as she spoke. “And how does ‘the one’ feel about this song?”

My head shifted to the side, and my eyes darted to her eyes. She looked serious. But it was too late to stop the smile already squeezing past my lips.

“I don’t know, Jules, how do you feel?” I asked, chuckling to myself.

I watched her let out a slow, uneasy breath before she locked her stare onto the moon again.

“You’re the one, Jules, and I should have told you years ago, but I knew it wasn’t the right time. I knew that you weren’t ready yet.”

Her eyes quickly darted toward mine again.

“Ready?” she asked. “Will, what…”

She let her words trail off.

“Jules, you’ve always been the only one for me,” I confessed.

I stopped then. I knew I had to tell her everything now, but I had to start from the beginning. I sucked in a breath and swallowed hard.

“Jules, I know I let life get in the way of us, and I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry. But I didn’t take the record deal in search of some kind of fame or elusive fortune or anything like that. I didn’t take it for me, Jules. It’s been great. You were right; it’s all been great. But you know that I would have been just as happy to spend the rest of my days playing my guitar for my number-one fan.”

I turned onto my side and faced her. Her eyes were still on me.

“But when I realized that I might not even get that dream—my dream of playing for you for the rest of my life—I remembered a promise you had made to me,” I said.

I paused and watched as a word formed on her soft lips.

“Why did you wait so long to tell me this?” she asked. “I had thought that you had moved on. I moved on. I almost got married. You know that.”

Her voice was stern, but I felt the corner of my mouth slowly lifting into a boyish grin despite it.

“Yeah, seeing the ring hurt just a little,” I said.

Her expression didn’t change, and then I knew she wasn’t in the mood for any of my stupid jokes. I lowered my eyes and then took a deep breath and slowly forced it out.

“You know, Jules, I wish I could say that I knew all along that you wouldn’t go through with it—that you wouldn’t marry him—but I didn’t know for sure,” I confessed. “I just prayed like hell that you would realize he wasn’t the one for you.”

I watched a smile fight its way to her pretty face. It was playful but also laced with sarcasm.

“Thanks, Will,” she said. “I’m glad I had your best wishes.”

My eyes fell to a spot on the sedan’s hood before they returned to her.

“I’m so sorry, Jules,” I said. “I hadn’t really realized how fast everything had gone until it was too late. I was so busy trying to find a way to get you back—listening to every piece of advice from every person who would give it—that I kind of got lost along the way.”

I stopped to take a breath.

“And Jules, I knew you had wings—wings like no one I have ever met,” I went on. “You had your dreams, and they were bigger than this town, and they were bigger than me. I knew that, and I knew you. I would have loved to follow you and to be with you when you graduated college or got into law school or passed the bar. I would have loved to be there with you living your dreams. It kills me that I wasn’t.”

My smile faded then, and my eyeli
ds fell over my eyes, as her soft voice hit my ears again.

“Will,” she said, “when it was all said and done, it hurt, and I was hurting. I just needed time to figure things out, but that day—that day we broke up—it was like you had already given up on us.”

I forced my eyes open.

“Jules, I was foolish,” I pleaded. “I shouldn’t have let you walk out of my life. I should have protested. I should have fought for you, but I was young, and I thought you would change your mind in a short while and come back to me. And more than that, I was selfish. I wanted all of you, and I wanted you to want me too. And, believe me, I wanted to tell you. God knows I wanted to tell you so many times, but you see, I had to wait. I loved you too much to lose you twice.”

There was silence again as my last few words fell off my lips and hit the empty space between us.

“Will, I loved you,” she eventually said.

Her words were gentle, but they still managed to sting.

“We were going to get married and grow wrinkly together,” she continued. “But you made me a different person, Will. I was fighting for survival in the last days we were together. You made me never want to hurt like that again.”

I watched her chest rise and then fall. Then, her eyes seemed to get caught on a spot somewhere up in that big sky.

“Jules, I’m so sorry,” I pleaded. “But you’ve got to know that the longer I waited, the more my heart broke.”

She turned to me again, and I caught her stare.

“My ship sank, Jules, and my plan failed, and before I knew it, I was lost without you,” I continued. “Even though I could no longer wrap you up in
to my arms or kiss your pretty forehead, I still saw you.”

I paused for a moment and swallowed hard before I continued. I could feel the lump forming in my throat.

“You haunted my nights and then even my days,” I said. “I lived for sleep at times when you would come to me, and it would be just like you had never left. Dreams would always end with you, and then mornings would steal you away with a cruelty that haunted my days. The start of each new morning, Jules, pained me as I opened my eyes only to face my merciless reality. No matter how hard I tried to push you to the back of my mind, you always found a way back to the forefront. You always won,” I added, gently nudging her arm.

She lowered her head and smiled, as my eyes found the top
s of my boots and locked onto them.

“I eventually learned to live as normally as possible again,” I went on. “I learned to get out of bed and to put on a smile everyday, though even in my laughter, my heart ached. And I learned to hide my hurt when someone asked about you or mentioned your name, which they often did and still do. I mean, Jules, even hearing your name in the grocery store would send me into a crazy, downward spiral that usually ended with Jeff acting as my badly equipped therapist.”

She cocked her head to the side and caught my eyes, but I only nodded my head and sucked in another deep breath, as I tried to smile.

“But I slowly learned to live a quiet existence without you by my side, carrying the heavy burden that was my secret,” I said.

I stopped then for a moment before I continued.

“Then one day, I received an answer to my prayers—in the form of a business card,” I said, starting to laugh. “It sounds crazy, I know, but it was almost as if fate had conspired for us, Jules. It took me a little while to realize it, but once I had, I was on a mission. Jules, I took the offer for you. All of this—the performing, the tours, the songs—is for you. I did it all to bring you back to me.”