Run rose run, p.18
Run, Rose, Run, page 18
But AnnieLee couldn’t help staring at the complicated background and all the equipment necessary to capture it—and her. There were lights, umbrellas, softboxes, cameras, and fans. It almost looked like a movie set. She could feel the adrenaline tingling through her limbs.
“Are you nervous?” Tyson asked. “Don’t be, darling. We’re going to have so much fun.”
“The idea is one of contrast,” Eileen explained. “The dusty honky-tonk with the sparkling new talent. Glamour versus grit.”
“Two-dollar beer versus two-thousand-dollar dress,” AnnieLee said softly. She was thinking about the first time she walked into the dive that was the Cat’s Paw, hungry and desperate and smelling like a Popeyes. What would that AnnieLee think of this one?
She heard a surprised “Whoa” from behind, and she whipped around to see Ethan walking in, holding takeout from the taqueria on the ground floor. He looked her up and down in wonder.
“What do you think?” she asked, smoothing the dress self-consciously.
“You look incredible,” he said. “And…really different.”
Even as he said it, she knew that it wasn’t a good thing. And she realized that she’d known it even before she walked out of hair and makeup. This glittering, made-up princess wasn’t AnnieLee Keyes at all. She still wasn’t exactly sure what story she wanted to tell—she only knew it wasn’t this one.
She looked at Eileen and Tyson. “You’ll have to excuse me for a minute,” she said.
Then she turned and tottered into the dressing room, where she took off the dress and put on her jeans and T-shirt. In the bathroom, she scrubbed off most of her makeup and ran a brush through her shining hair.
When she reappeared in the studio, Eileen gasped in what might have been horror. AnnieLee walked onto the set, picked up the prop guitar, strummed a loud, wildly out-of-tune chord, and grinned. She felt a million times better already.
“You said I ought to love what I’m wearing,” she said. “And now I do. So let’s get this party started.”
Chapter
49
I truly can’t believe you did that,” Sarah Ortega said. The Rolling Stone writer was young, with a black pixie cut, a nose ring, and tattoos of cascading stars across her knuckles. “Maybe that’s my lede: How up-and-comer AnnieLee Keyes blew up a famous photographer’s perfect shoot. Talk about a woman to watch out for!”
“Please, no,” AnnieLee begged. They were sitting at the back of a cozy tea shop on West 3rd Street, and she was still wondering if she’d screwed everything up. Tyson Mitchell had ended up shooting her for two hours, but Eileen was convinced that AnnieLee’s defiance would come back to haunt her.
“I didn’t mean to. I just…” She stopped and took a sip of hibiscus tea. It was as bright red as Kool-Aid, but it sure didn’t taste like it. “I just wanted to feel like myself.”
Sarah placed a recorder on the table between them. “Look, I get it,” she said. “And in a way, it’s not even that surprising. Your songs are kind of defiant, don’t you think? Like when you sing ‘A rough road, we’ll walk it. Never give up, we’ll talk it.’”
“Yeah, there might be some truth to that,” AnnieLee allowed.
“And ‘Driven’ is almost painfully catchy,” Sarah went on. “I belt it out whenever I’m driving to work, which sucks because I can’t sing.”
AnnieLee laughed and then glanced over at Ethan, who was sitting at a nearby table, seemingly reading a newspaper but more likely eavesdropping on their conversation. Eileen was supposed to be here, too, but there’d been an emergency with one of her other clients and she’d been called back to the office to do damage control.
“You’ve had your fun today, AnnieLee,” she’d said as she ducked into an Uber. “So it’s time to be nice and cooperative. Stay on message. Remember, the truth is what you want it to be.”
AnnieLee intended to try. Now the question was only whether or not she could convincingly deliver the autobiography she’d constructed for herself while smiling for Tyson Mitchell’s camera. Lies were dangerous—she knew that. But the truth could be even more so.
Sarah checked her device to make sure it was recording. Then she scooted forward, as friendly and confidential as a girl at a slumber party. “Okay, the big questions. Where’d you come from, and where are you going?”
AnnieLee took a deep breath. She’d rehearsed the story the way she rehearsed her songs. There was a verse of truth, and then a chorus of deceit. Or was it vice versa?
“I’m from Tennessee,” she said. “From a place so small it didn’t even have a real name. Some people called it Little Moon Valley, and some called it Old Mud Creek. My mother used to say that what you called it depended on your outlook.” AnnieLee gave a slightly abashed laugh that she hoped sounded genuine. “To me, it was Little Moon Valley. It’s a nice name, isn’t it? Anyway, we lived off the grid pretty deep in the woods. My dad was a mechanic, but his real talent was music. He could play the banjo as good as Earl Scruggs himself.” She paused then, letting a faraway look creep into her eyes. “My mom sang and played the guitar.”
“Did you guys have a family band?” Sarah asked. “Like the Carters?”
AnnieLee laughed. Yeah, right. “Well, my folks were too busy making ends meet to play music as much as they might’ve liked. It takes a lot of sweat and time to grow your own food.” She paused, and then added, “Or to hunt and kill it.”
“So were you survivalists?” Sarah asked in a fascinated whisper. She said survivalists the way AnnieLee might’ve said aliens. She was clearly a city kid.
“Well, we didn’t exactly use the term, but sometimes it did feel like surviving was just about all we were doing.”
As she went on, talking about the beauty and hardship of growing up in the woods, AnnieLee could see Ethan out of the corner of her eye, sitting with his arms crossed and his brow furrowed. She knew what he was thinking: that she’d never told him anything, even though he’d asked a dozen times, but suddenly here she was, blabbing on to this stranger, answering every question as though she’d been waiting her whole life to be asked it.
How could AnnieLee explain to him that this was just another performance? He wouldn’t get why she had to do it. And she couldn’t ever tell him.
“AnnieLee?” Sarah’s voice called her back to the interview.
“Sorry,” she said, trying to regain her focus. “Okay, well, here’s the depressing part of my story, if you want to hear it. My parents are dead. The fields are full of weeds. The house still stands, but no one’s in it. Unless you count some possum, or maybe a family of raccoons.” As AnnieLee spoke, she could imagine the cozy cabin and the green meadow around it, and for a moment she mourned her happy wilderness childhood as if it had actually existed.
She shook her head, clearing the image. “Anyway. It was a fine place to grow up. But a valley in the middle of nowhere starts to feel small after a while, and I guess I started hoping that music might be my ticket out of there.”
“It seems like it was,” Sarah said. “Can we talk about the inspirations for your songs?”
AnnieLee was prepared for this, too. “They come from my life,” she said. “And so they’re true, but only up to a point. I want to tell stories that everybody can relate to. And I want to wrestle with the big questions, too—you know, ones about love, or about being brave, or about learning how to trust yourself.”
“Maybe you’ll write a song about refusing to wear a gown when you’re told to.”
AnnieLee laughed. “Who knows? I just might.”
They talked for another half an hour or so until Sarah said that she’d gotten great material. They stood up and shook hands, and Sarah thanked AnnieLee for her time, and left.
“Finally,” AnnieLee said, walking over to Ethan’s table. “I’m starving. Let’s go get burgers and milkshakes.”
But Ethan only looked at her searchingly for a moment before shaking his head. “No, but thanks,” he said. “I think I’m going to head back to the hotel. Our flight leaves early in the morning.”
He strode outside, and she gathered up her things and hurried after him, figuring that she could convince him to find an In-N-Out as they rode together in the hired car.
But though the car and driver were waiting for her outside the tea shop, Ethan Blake was nowhere to be seen. And she didn’t lay eyes on him again until they got on the plane to go home.
Chapter
50
When Ethan opened the door to his truck, which he’d left in the Nashville airport’s economy lot, a blast of hot, stale air rolled out. He gritted his teeth and slid onto the scorching vinyl seat. AnnieLee clambered in the passenger side, and a few seconds later, the engine started up with a roar.
“Are you going to talk to me now?” AnnieLee asked as Ethan piloted Gladys out of the lot.
He didn’t say anything until they got onto the freeway. It took a little while for the old truck to come up to speed. “I wasn’t not talking to you,” he said.
She snorted. “Oh, okay, sure. You were just asleep the whole flight home, I guess.”
Of course he’d been faking, leaning back with his eyes closed and a Merle Haggard playlist on his iPhone. He hadn’t expected AnnieLee to fall for it, but he’d needed to be alone with his muddled thoughts and Merle’s hard-living anthems. And she’d played along and let him be.
Now, as the early fall air came rushing in through the window, he wasn’t any closer to figuring out how he felt about the trip, or his role as chaperone, or AnnieLee Keyes herself.
No, scratch that last part. He knew how he felt about AnnieLee; he just wasn’t at all sure that he wanted to feel it.
He thought about the guitar he’d built in his garage workshop, with its dark slender body and its neck polished so smooth it felt like satin. He’d made it for her; he could admit that now. But he didn’t know if it’d ever feel right to give it to her. It would be like handing her his heart.
“Hello?” AnnieLee said. “You’re definitely not asleep now, seeing as how you’re driving, so I don’t know why you still aren’t talking to me.”
He couldn’t help smiling. She was as funny as she was infuriating. “Fine. Tell me what you want me to say.”
“Now that would just defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it? If I told you the words that I wanted to hear?” AnnieLee asked. “But you seem to need help, so here goes. You could tell me what you thought of LA or give me your opinion on the hotel breakfast. Or you could explain why you’ve been ghosting me since the tea shop.”
Ethan flicked on his turn signal, glancing in the rearview mirror. As he moved into the right lane, suddenly there was a black pickup behind him, so close it was practically riding Ethan’s bumper.
“Whoops. Sorry, buddy,” he said reflexively. “Didn’t see you there.”
AnnieLee threw up her hands and stared in obvious annoyance out her window. “Won’t say boo to me, but he’ll talk to the dude behind us who can’t even hear him,” she muttered.
“He has good taste in trucks,” Ethan said. “The new F-150s are slick.” He accelerated a little and looked sideways at AnnieLee. “All right, if you really want to know what I was thinking, I’d say I thought the hotel pancakes were undercooked.”
“You’re so annoying,” AnnieLee said. But a smile flickered at the corner of her mouth.
“You’re one to talk,” he said.
But he didn’t know what to say next, and so they rode in silence for a while.
“I think I know why you’re so quiet,” AnnieLee finally said. “When you saw me in that dress, you were so stunned by my magnificence that it rendered you speechless for eighteen hours.”
“Bingo,” he said.
She was joking, yet in a way she wasn’t wrong. She’d taken his breath away when he saw her in the studio. But her beauty had been so burnished, so glittering and unfamiliar. It was as if, at that moment, he realized how little he really knew AnnieLee Keyes. And despite all the time they spent together, he wasn’t sure she’d ever let him get to know her better.
He turned on the radio, and Tim McGraw’s voice came faintly out of the truck’s old speakers. “Okay,” he finally said, “here’s what I was thinking. We see each other almost every day. We play music together. We’ve written lyrics together. But if I hadn’t been sitting in that café yesterday, I wouldn’t know any of that stuff about your life until I could read about it in a magazine. Don’t you think that’s weird?”
AnnieLee hesitated. “I think a lot of things are weird,” she said, glancing in her side-view mirror. “Like why this jerk in the truck won’t just pass us.”
At first Ethan was annoyed that she seemed to be changing the subject. But then he looked backward and saw the black truck still there, not exactly riding his bumper, but almost, and he knew it wasn’t right. Quickly, acting on instinct, he took the next exit off the highway. The truck followed, keeping a steady distance behind them.
Though Ethan couldn’t see any real reason to worry, the back of his neck began to tingle. Some deep, subconscious part of him sensed the presence of danger. In Afghanistan, where gunmen could be around any corner or roads could suddenly detonate, that part of him had helped keep him alive.
Ethan made a right past the 76 gas station and then took a left on the next road without even seeing what it was called. He slowed, and the black truck slowed, too. He made another left, and then a right. The truck stayed behind them, maybe a little closer now. He squinted into the rearview mirror. It wasn’t one of his friends messing with him, was it?
Whenever Ethan varied his speed, the black truck did, too; the same went for the turns. Whoever was driving certainly wasn’t trying to pretend that he wasn’t following them.
It couldn’t be one of his friends.
Ethan looked over at AnnieLee, pale and now silent. He thought of the night she was mugged, and the night that she was attacked outside the bar. And he understood, suddenly, that these events probably weren’t random after all. They were connected.
AnnieLee kept her eyes straight ahead, as if she knew what was happening but didn’t want to see it. She held tight to the door handle. Her knuckles were white.
“AnnieLee,” he said.
“Hush,” she said curtly. “Just drive.”
They were driving along a narrow road of modest ranch houses, somewhere between the airport and the city. Ethan sped up again, and so did the truck. He cursed under his breath. There was no way Gladys could outrun that thing, and he couldn’t lead whoever this was to AnnieLee’s place.
Ethan’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. There was one thing he knew he could do, one thing the driver would not be expecting.
“Hold on,” he said to AnnieLee. He was about to turn a retreat into an attack.
As they neared a four-way stop, Ethan slowed to give a quick glance in all directions, and then he ran the stop sign. In the middle of the intersection, he swung Gladys all the way around, tires squealing, so he was heading straight toward the black truck. Ethan could almost see the driver’s face, but the man responded quickly, whipping a screeching, tight U-turn. He barely stayed on the road, but then he regained control of the big truck and raced back the way they’d come.
Ethan slammed the gas pedal to the floor. Gladys shuddered and her engine screamed.
“What are you doing?” AnnieLee cried.
“Tactical vehicle intervention,” Ethan said through clenched teeth. They were closing in on the truck, which was now stuck behind a slow-moving combine that took up a lane and a half of road. “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather fight than run.”
He knew how to do it: get right behind the truck, line up his front bumper with its rear one, and give it a gentle tap. If he timed it right, the big black truck would spin out but then come to a safe stop.
AnnieLee was yelling something at him, but all his focus was on driving. He was six feet behind the black truck, now five. Then it started swerving, making it impossible for him to get in position. He dropped back, paused, and accelerated again. Five feet, four—and then AnnieLee was suddenly halfway into his lap, her hands reaching for the wheel. He tried to push her away, but she grabbed the steering wheel and yanked it hard. They went careening off the road and tore into the flat gravel of a construction site.
Ethan slammed on the brakes, and Gladys came to a shuddering stop. He turned to AnnieLee. “What the hell?” he yelled. “Why did you do that?”
AnnieLee’s blue eyes widened, and he watched in shock and confusion as tears welled in them, overflowed, and went spilling down her cheeks.
Chapter
51
AnnieLee threw open the door, flung herself out of the truck, and ran stumbling toward the field on the far side of the gravel. She could hear Ethan shouting behind her.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
Halfway into the tall grass she stopped and turned around. He was fifty yards away, standing with his shoulders hunched and his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. He looked furious.
Well, she was furious, too. Why on God’s green earth had he decided it was a good idea to spin around and try to clip the back bumper of that truck? What kind of crazy cowboy move was that?
“If you don’t come back and talk to me,” he called, “I will leave you here!”
She didn’t doubt him, and in a way, she wouldn’t blame him. She’d nearly gotten them killed.
But none of it would’ve happened if he’d simply kept on driving her home the way he was supposed to, instead of trying to take matters into his own hands.
This wasn’t his fight—it was hers. And she didn’t want him involved.
“AnnieLee?” He squinted at her. “Can you please come here?”
She wiped her eyes and started walking back toward Ethan Blake. The tall grass scratched at her legs, and katydids flung themselves out of her way in huge, flying arcs. When she reached him, he took her shoulders in his big hands. His touch was firm but gentle.
