AN: I'm not cruel enough to post that itty bitty chapter 10 all by itself!
He taught her how to make a snow angel before they went back in the house. Her laugh echoed across the yard when he helped her up so she could turn around and look at it.
"Guess we were in a good position for that," she said.
They held hands as they walked to the house, both of them waving at his father as he pushed the snow blower back up the driveway. He'd shaken his head at them and Avery chuckled. God only knew what he was thinking.
They went inside long enough to warm up and say goodbye to his mother and Cadence, who had been cruising on the living room furniture but dropped to her knees, squealing as she crawled towards them. She pulled up on Juliette's leg, chanting, "Mama" until she was picked up.
"Hi, baby girl." Juliette nuzzled her cheek before settling their daughter on her hip. "Are you having fun with your Nana?"
His mother had been sitting on the floor and she moved to get up, waving him off when he crossed the room to help her. "I tell you what, she's a fast crawler." She brushed her palms against each other. "Might want to get some baby gates while you're here. Depending on how long you'll be staying."
Avery glanced at Juliette and she shrugged.
"Probably is a good idea," he said. "The house isn't exactly baby proofed."
"Hasn't been for many years," his mother said with a laugh.
After several goodbye kisses and cuddles, Juliette handed their baby back to her grandmother and they left. He'd promised her a tour of the city and once that was done they stopped to get the baby gates and restock on diapers.
He waited until they were outside loading the bags into his vehicle before asking, "How long are we staying?" It was her decision and he knew his parents (or at least his mother) wouldn't mind them staying a while, but he wasn't sure how she was feeling. If she wanted, he figured they could leave the following day. There hadn't been as much snowfall as predicted and the roads were already fairly clean.
"Do you need to get back to Nashville soon?" She worn a pair of sunglasses and a scarf inside the store and she fiddled with the end of her scarf. "For work or anything?"
"Work?" He asked, sliding both of the gates into the trunk of the SUV. "No, I - are you talking about Layla's album?" She shrugged, rocking back on her heels. "Do you really think I'd keep working with her after everything she did?" He was tempted to pluck the sunglasses from her face so he could look directly into her eyes. She couldn't really believe that.
"No, but I don't know how much of it was completed. For all I know it could be-"
"It doesn't matter, Juliette," he interrupted. "I wouldn't complete that album for all the money in the world. Not for anything."
"Okay, Avery." She gripped the handle of the cart and wheeled it around. "I'll take this back," she said over her shoulder as she walked away.
He waited by the passenger door until she came back, then opened the door so she could get inside. "I didn't mean to snap at you, baby." He leaned against the car and held the door open with one hand. "I'm sorry. But it makes me sick to my stomach when I think about what she did. I don't even want my name on that album at all if I can help it."
She slid her sunglasses off and set them in her lap. Her eyes were tinged green, an entirely different color than they'd been that morning on the porch. "Emily told me how hard it was for you financially when I was gone." She looked away and stared through the windshield. "I don't want you putting anything else on hold for me."
"I'm not," he said, moved by her concern. "This is what's important to me right now. You and me and Cadence." There was some money from working as band leader and he wouldn't starve this month, but regardless he meant what he said. He needed to talk to Rayna or Bucky, but no matter the consequences, Avery would have absolutely nothing to do with that album or Layla.
"So it's okay if we stay for a while longer?" She glanced at him again. "I'm not ready to go back."
"As long as you need." He reached her for her and squeezed her fingers before closing her door.
Avery took her to his favorite metro park, a place he used to go when he needed to get away from home for whatever reason. He thought the snow might be too deep for them to walk the hiking trail but the tall oak and maple trees had sheltered the ground from a lot of the snow cover. They were able to make it to an overlook where he'd spent hours as a teenager, sitting beneath a tree with his guitar. He'd figured the birds and squirrels might have a better appreciation for his music than his father, who had gotten tired of hearing him playing the same chords over and over again until he'd mastered them. They didn't stay for very long. Juliette hadn't complained about the cold or mentioned the beach again, but he knew she'd probably had enough snow for a while.
He took her to get hot chocolate before returning to his parents'. They chose a booth in the back of a local coffeeshop and when he returned to the table with their drinks, she'd taken off her coat.
"I can't get used to this," she said. "It's freezing outside, but I'm burning up with all these clothes on." She reached for the cup he'd just set on the table. "I don't think anyone will see me way back here."
He sat down across from her and took off his own coat and set it on the seat beside him. She was probably right; the coffeeshop was not brightly lit and she was facing the back wall of the building. He didn't think paparazzi would spring out of the restroom to take pictures of them. But you never know, he thought, bitterly remembering Layla's idiotic attempt to gain stardom. He rolled his eyes and took a sip of hot chocolate.
"Tell me something you've never told me before."
Juliette's question surprised him and he had to think; there wasn't much she didn't already know. He mulled it over, trying to think of a story he'd hadn't told her. "I told you how I used to sneak in my room through the window, right? I was about 16 and JT's cousin knew a guy - JT always had a cousin that knew somebody. Anyway, the cousin got us a gig to front some grunge band in Youngstown, which is about an hour away. I was grounded, which was pretty much a regular thing by then, but no way was I gonna miss our first actual paying job. So after my parents went to bed I snuck out of my window and met JT on the other block. We get out there - way out in the sticks. Nothing but a makeshift stage in the middle of a lot somewhere." He shook his head, thinking back to that night and how terrified and excited he'd been.
Her eyes grew large as she leaned in closer. "Don't tell me something went wrong?"
"No, it was a great night," he laughed. "One of the best nights I remember having before I left home. We played and then stayed and partied and ended up playing again. We were out there most of the night. By the time we were on our way home, all I could think about was how my dad was gonna nail my ass to the wall if he caught me. I got back home, climbed the tree and got in bed and I swear it wasn't five minutes before he opened the door demanding I get up and help him clean the attic. I was exhausted. I spent all day swallowing yawns and taking breaks to drink coffee so he wouldn't start asking why I was so tired."
"He still doesn't know?"
"You met my dad, Juliette. He'd probably want to ground me right now if he found out about that." He took another sip of hot chocolate. "It was a good night though. That was the moment where I just knew that's what I was supposed to be doing."
"That was the night, huh?"
"It was. The rush of adrenaline, the crowd, the music. You know what I mean."
"I do know." She narrowed her eyes at him, staring for a few seconds. "You should do more of that then. Get out of the producer's chair and get back up on stage."
"With you?"
She shrugged. "I'm not opposed to it. You are the best lead guitar I've ever had - and don't ever tell Deacon I said that - but I'm not asking for you to play for me. I'm talking about you performing. You love it. And I love watching you."
A wide smile spread across his face. "Really?"
"Hell yeah. I'm your biggest fangirl."
He laughed then, thinking of her watching him play as she had before at the Bluebird. He finished off his hot chocolate and stared at the empty cup. "I missed this."
"What?"
"Talking to you like this. Used to be so easy to just…talk."
She bit her lip, nodding a little as she fidgeted in her seat. "I miss it too. You were my best friend, Avery. More than that really. I think you were the first truly honest relationship I ever had with a man - maybe with anyone. I could tell you any stupid thing about me and you'd listen."
"I don't think you've ever told me anything that wasn't completely fascinating." He teased, but the next question was serious. "What else do you miss?"
"All of it," she answered immediately. "Everything that was us. She slowly unwound the scarf from her neck and set it in her lap. "I miss the smell of you in bed with me. The way you used to kiss my shoulder every morning when we woke up and your stubble would tickle my neck." Her smile was sad as she moved her eyes away from his. She took a deep breath before continuing. "I even miss all the things that used to annoy me, like how you left your shoes everywhere and sometimes 'forgot' to put the toilet seat back down."
He gasped, pretending to be offended. "Juliette, I always put the toilet seat back down."
"Avery. No, you don't. I fell in a few days before I had Cadence. Remember? I woke up to use it and then I couldn't get up and you had to-"
He burst into laughter, cutting her off mid-sentence. "Yeah, I had to help you up. I remember." He kept chuckling, ignoring the murderous glare she was giving him. "I'm sorry. You're right. That was completely my fault. I don't think I've ever heard you scream that loud."
"Yeah, well. The next time you fall in the toilet in the middle of the night, we'll just see how loud you scream."
"Fair enough. I don't leave my shoes everywhere though." She cocked her head to the side and gave him a look he knew too well. "Do I?" She nodded. "You're such a neat freak, Juliette." He kept talking before she could respond. "And that's one of the things I missed. You nagging me about my shoes or whatever. Squeezing the toothpaste in the wrong spot."
"Why in the world do you squeeze it from the middle? That's just not right, Avery."
He rolled his eyes. "But what I missed the most was your laugh. It always gave me so much joy to hear you laughing, especially when I was the reason behind it."
"Aww," she said. "I didn't know that, Avery."
"Yeah. I know a lot of times, when you're doing interviews and things, it's more for show, but when you're really laughing, it's such a beautiful thing. To be honest…" he hesitated, setting his empty cup aside and running a hand over his beard before continuing. "I was jealous when I saw pictures of you and Noah. I could tell you were really enjoying yourself with him and it - I know I had no right to feel that way, but…"
Juliette sighed and reached across the table for his hand. "I won't lie to you, Avery. Noah was good to me. He made me feel something other than sadness when my heart was broken which wasn't easy. But in the end, he wasn't you. Even though I had let you go, I just wasn't ready to move on the way he wanted and it wasn't fair to him that every time we were together made me miss you more and more."
"At least you were able to be honest with yourself about how you felt."
"What do you mean?"
He sat up, pressing his back against the booth. "You didn't stay in it, hoping you could force yourself to feel something for him."
"Is that what you did?" She asked.
"I told you I've been an idiot. I don't know what I was thinking. I wasn't thinking." He stared at the most beautiful woman he'd ever known. "It was a mistake. The whole thing. You are the love of my life, Juliette. I was fooling myself to think that she - that any woman, could ever mean anything to me."
She came around to his side of the booth and wrapped her arms around his neck. "I don't want to talk about either one of them anymore."
"Agreed." He kissed her forehead. "Tell me something you've never told me."
"You know all my stories, Avery."
"There's gotta be at least one more Juliette Barnes adventure that I don't know about."
She drummed her fingers on the table. "Okay. Lemme think. Did I ever tell you about my first apartment?" He shook his head. "Glenn helped me get it. It was a teeny little one-bedroom with a kitchenette and the bedroom window faced a brick wall and it had really terrible water pressure. He said it was temporary and when I actually signed with a label I could move into something bigger. I got the keys and went inside and shut the door and just ran around in circles, jumping up and down and crying and laughing." She giggled. "Probably looked like a stone fool but I didn't have to worry about who had come home with Mama or if there was gonna be food in the fridge because I knew." She finished off the rest of the hot chocolate in her cup. "I don't think I ever turned the stove on in that apartment."
"That I believe."
She bumped his shoulder. "I had a microwave and a coffeemaker that got a workout though."
"Don't doubt it."
"I didn't mind being alone then," she said quietly. "I can't stand it now."
Avery put an arm over her shoulder. "Then it's a good thing you've got a family that loves you. You'll never be alone again." He touched her chin, turning her face so he could look into her eyes. "That's a promise."