“I can guarantee you, you would not be here right now if you’d been there.”
“You underestimate me.”
Abruptly, his expression changed.
Gentle but earnest.
And determined.
“Lyla, cher, love of my life,” he framed my head in his hands and put his face close, “you are not gettin’ me. I’m tellin’ you, what I said at your house holds true. I needed to give you the space to come out from under me and breathe and I needed the space to work all of that out of me and those two did not go together. There was no other way it could be, it had to go like that. And I know, given the choice, you would have stuck by me, and I couldn’t have that because I had to let my life go dark so I could find the light and I’d never let you descend in that darkness with me, so I’d make it so you went away. And when I did, it’d be in a way you wouldn’t come back.”
“Prea—”
“Lyla, baby, I love you and I will for the whole of my life and part of that, an important part, is back then, even if you didn’t wanna do it, didn’t know you were doin’ it, you gave me what I needed.”
My mouth clamped shut.
“At that beach, I walked away from you, and in my head, the same words tumbled over and over, ‘Don’t call my name, don’t call my name, don’t call my name.’ And I got up to that condo and was sick to my stomach. Puked in the sink for what felt like hours. Because you didn’t call my name and I was wrecked. I didn’t know how to be without your love shinin’ its light on me. And I was also so fuckin’ glad you didn’t call my name because if you had, I would have caved in a snap. Then I’d spend the next however long it took wrecking you, truly wrecking you, and I would not have been able to live with myself when I’d done that.”
My head fell forward so my forehead was resting on his line of his nose.
Then he whispered, “She finally gets me.”
“But I…there were…” I swallowed. “You should know…”
“You got a guy,” he stated flatly.
I pulled my head away, but my eyes went anywhere but to him, and I said, “Not exactly.”
“Cher,” he said warningly.
I looked at him. “I lied. Sonia did too so you would…um…”
He started grinning. “So, I’d fuck off.”
“Something like that,” I mumbled.
He kept grinning.
Damn.
All that he’d just said, and he was grinning.
And now I had to say what I had to say.
“I had a thing, with Cat,” I whispered.
The grin disappeared.
But he just said, “Okay.”
“It didn’t—”
“How ’bout, in that, we do what we did before. You knew you weren’t my first. We didn’t talk about that. Now you do the same,” he suggested. “When we were together, it was just you for me, and me for you. And now that we’re back together, we got that back too.”
I totally could do that.
So, I nodded.
Preacher didn’t say anything.
I didn’t either.
Okay.
Now what?
Were we…?
What?
He said “back together” but what did that mean?
Exactly.
“You listen to the CD?” he asked.
“No,” I told him.
“You gotta listen to the CD, baby.”
I now wanted to listen to the CD.
But in that moment, I needed something else.
“Where do we go from here?” I asked.
“Well, in a little bit, I gotta be in Louisiana to start rehearsin’ with the boys. But between then and now, you wanna see my cabin?”
Lyla and McCade:
(Lyla) As much as we could be together in that six weeks, we were together. The cabin was an easy drive from Phoenix, so I went up on the weekends if Preacher was there, and sometimes Preacher stayed at my place in Phoenix as well.
But he had a lot to do in LA with the album about to drop so this wasn’t as much time as we would have liked to have.
While all this was happening, we had no idea that Jesse was facing an onslaught.
(McCade) We shoulda guessed.
[Grins]
Reckon we were in our own world.
(Lyla) We absolutely were in our own world.
But we’d made the decision that this would be just us. We had this little window of time where it would be just us in a way that it never was.
So, we took it and in doing so, kinda forgot the people we loved would be worried about what was happening between us.
[Off tape, directed to Lyla]
Both you and Simms said you were worried about telling McCade that you were pregnant. Obviously, this worked out well. Why was it that you were concerned?
(McCade [visibly stunned, and perhaps annoyed] to Lyla) You were worried?
Yes, honey. (Lyla)
For fuck’s sake, why? (McCade)
Well, we’d just gotten back together. The album was about to drop. The media were beginning to hound. You’re within days of starting rehearsals to do your first show in six years, and then embark on a tour. You’d been through hell. I’d been through hell. It wasn’t a time to start a family. I mean, we weren’t even living together, and with you going off to tour for five months, that wouldn’t happen soon.
And I know you. If you weren’t pissed I was pregnant, and even if you were in the beginning, you’d want me close. You’d want to keep an eye on me. You wouldn’t want to miss anything. And you were off on tour and I had a job. (Lyla)
All right, I hear you.
Though no way in fuck I’d ever be pissed you were havin’ my baby.
But why didn’t you tell me you were worried? (McCade)
Because you weren’t pissed so I didn’t think it factored. (Lyla)
[McCade turns attention to interviewer]
Make it clear I was in no way pissed.
I was over the goddamned moon. (McCade)
He was. He really, really was. (Lyla [smiling slowly])
[Off tape, directed to Lyla]
That day at the beach house, when you reunited, did you listen to the Follow Your Star CD?
[Smiles quickly, openly and brightly]
It took a while.
We had other things we got busy doing.
But after a few hours…
Yes.
[Turns head to look down at her husband, still smiling]
Oh yes.
I did.
Jesse:
They got married up at that cabin.
The day after the tour ended.
Lyla was seven months pregnant, and both times she was pregnant, she hit around six months, she was pregnant.
Big ole belly.
[Chuckles]
She did not care.
She knew how beautiful she was.
Don’t matter anyway.
She was happy.
Shawn’s aunties made her wedding dress, and, outside Natalie, Lyla was the most beautiful bride I’d ever seen.
Left her job in good hands down in Phoenix and started volunteering at an animal shelter up there.
She runs that animal shelter now.
Preacher himself cleared out another patch of their land, little bit farther up the mountain. But it wasn’t only him who built the studio up there.