He Kissed His Muse. I Wrote Every Song. novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Muse Behind the Music
Colt wins Album of the Year with Linnea's words, kisses his manager on live television and calls her the muse, his mother whispers that Linnea was only the babysitter, and Linnea walks out with the twins and calls her grandfather, who says the jet has been fueled since Tuesday.
My husband walked up to the microphone with the Album of the Year trophy in his hand, and the whole arena rose to its feet.
I stayed in my seat in the fourth row.
Our five-year-old twins were holding my hands, and neither of them could see over the people standing in front of us.
We should have been in the second row.
That morning my mother-in-law had rearranged the seating chart and moved herself and Colt's manager up front "for the cameras."
The manager was Sonya Pettigrew.
At breakfast she had knelt down to tie my daughter's shoe, and she had told me, "Colt asked me to make sure you're comfortable tonight."
She had been so kind about it.
I smiled and thanked her.
Eight months before, I had read her messages on Colt's phone.
They were not love letters.
They were short and easy, written by two people who had long since stopped being careful.
"Same room as Tuesday. Don't let Linnea near the after-party."
"Wouldn't dream of it. She'll be home with the kids anyway."
I read them sitting on the bathroom floor at two in the morning, with our five-year-old twins asleep down the hall.
Then I washed my face, made pancakes, and smiled at the school gate while the other mothers told me how proud I must be.
I stayed because of the phone call last week.
Colt's voice had been warm in a way I hadn't heard for years.
"Win or lose, Lin, I want you and the kids in the front row. My family."
I believed him.
That was my mistake, and I knew it as I sat there.
Now he stood under the lights with the trophy gleaming and the room went quiet for his speech.
"This award isn't mine alone," he said, and his voice cracked in just the right place.
"It belongs to the woman who put her whole heart into these songs."
My heart lifted.
For six years I had written every word he sang, at our kitchen table, after bedtime, under a name nobody knew.
Songbird, the industry called me.
Eleven number-one songs, and not one of them had ever carried my face.
For one second I thought he was finally going to say it.
Colt's eyes moved across the front rows and went right past mine.
"Sonya," he said. "Every song was you."
He walked off the stage with the trophy still in his hand.
He passed the cameras and the cheering and his own children, and he took Sonya's face in both hands and kissed her.
It was live, in front of the whole country.
My daughter, Birdie, went stiff beside me.
My son, Gus, leaned against my arm and whispered, "Mommy, why is Daddy kissing that lady?"
I could not answer him.
A cloud of my mother-in-law's perfume reached us before she did.
Her name was Darlene Hargis, and I had called her Mom for six years.
She had come back down the aisle from the second row, and she bent over and patted my shoulder.
"Don't make a scene," she murmured. "Everything in that house is in Colt's name, dear. Even the cribs."
She straightened my collar and smiled for the cameras.
"Pack your bags. You were only ever the babysitter."
Something in me went quiet and still.
It did not break.
It turned over, and for the first time in six years I knew exactly what I was going to do.
So I stood up.
I took Birdie's hand in my left hand and Gus's in my right.
We walked up the center aisle past every camera in the building, and I did not look back once.
Outside, the Los Angeles night was warm and smelled of exhaust.
A driver held a door open for some other family.
My phone was already at my ear.
It rang once.
"Linnea."
My grandfather's voice was dry and slow and exactly as I remembered it.
I had not heard it in seven years.
I had not wanted to.
He was the chairman of Averill Entertainment Group, forty billion dollars of music and film and television, and every dollar of it had my family name on the door.
The company owned Colt's record label, his tour and his streaming deals.
It owned the building where Sonya's office sat.
"Grandfather," I said. "I'm coming home. I need the jet."
"It's been fueled since Tuesday," he said.
I stopped walking.
"Tuesday?"
"A car is already on its way to you."
I looked down at the twins, who were watching me with Colt's blue eyes.
Behind us, the arena doors opened and closed, and the sound of applause rolled out over the pavement.
"One more thing, my dear," Grandfather said, quite gently.
"Don't take a single call from that boy tonight."
"He doesn't own one song he sang."
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