Every Song He Sang Was Mine novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Calla

Calla picked a diner on Gallatin Road at seven in the morning, a place where nobody in Nashville music would be awake.

She sat in the last booth in a gray hoodie, with her hair under a cap and no makeup.

She looked about nineteen.

Abel parked his truck across the street and stayed in it, because she had written, "Only you."

I slid into the booth opposite her.

"Thank you for coming," Calla said. "I wasn't sure you would."

"You smiled at me while you took my room."

"I know."

"You hummed my father's song on the stairs."

She flinched, and her coffee slopped over the rim of the cup.

"I didn't know it was your father's," she said. "Dax gave me a lyric sheet in April and said he wrote it for his dead mother."

"His mother is alive and lives in Tucson."

"I found that out last night."

She pulled her cap lower.

"He wrote the grandfather story for me, too. For the morning show. 'The moon is only paper if you don't believe in it.' He said it would test well."

I put both hands flat on the table.

"That line is my father's. He said it to me when I was nine, over a plate."

"I'm so sorry." Her eyes filled at once. "I read it off a card in the car. I thought it was just something he had in his head."

"You cried on television."

"I cried because I thought it was true!"

A waitress glanced over, and Calla lowered her voice.

"He said he wrote every one of them. He played me the voice and said it was him when he was twenty-eight, before the throat thing. I believed him. Why wouldn't I?"

"Because you couldn't sing it."

"Because I couldn't sing it," she said, and a tear fell on the hoodie. "I've been singing flat on the best song I've ever heard for three weeks. Do you know what that's like?"

← Chapter 15 · All chapters · Chapter 17 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend