Love, Diamonds, and Spades (Cactus Creek #2)(38)

Rylan cringed, but then chuckled. “The rumors are true. I bought ten huge jars of it.”

She grinned. “I heard you were quite the eager bidder, too. Word is, the bidding went from a starting bid of a dollar, to crickets chirping, and finally one very reluctant fifty-cent bid, which you outbid by two hundred forty nine dollars and fifty cents.”

“You can’t really put a price on that chutney, but I figured twenty five dollars a jar sounded about right.”

“You made Mr. Gunderson really happy.”

“It’s a win-win. I’ve been experimenting with new organic insecticide recipes. From the jar I opened and caught a whiff of, I’m thinking I might have found the next big thing.”

“And Xoey just about peed her pants when she heard you volunteered to be in charge of washing the one-hundred tie dye shirts at next month’s family fair.”

“No one else wanted to mess up their washing machines. So, after I promised them that you’d be helping me, they wrote my name down.”

Thinking about doing laundry with him a month from now shouldn’t have felt so incredibly special, so right. But it did.

She took a deep breath. “Rylan—”

“Quinn,” he began at the same exact moment.

She shook her head with a smile. “You go first.” It was a wussy move on her part, but as long as the outcome is the same…

“Look, there’s no easy way to say this so I’m just going to say it. That song you love so much, Believe in Believing, I didn’t write that for Cooper.”

Quinn felt her mouth fall open in shock.

His confession hung there like thick, heavy fog in the room. But no matter how many times the awful words echoed in her head, she couldn’t bring herself to believe it.

“What do you mean you didn’t write that song? Did you get help on it?”

Please let that be the case.

“No. The guys and I arranged the music for it, but the lyrics were written by someone else. I just never said anything until now.”

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “But I’ve heard people ask you about it and you’ve told them you wrote it for Cooper. You told me you wrote it for Cooper.”

“I lied.”

Her eyes narrowed, if there was a lie involved, it was happening right now. She was sure of it. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I can’t keep taking credit for another man’s song. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if this song were responsible for some drama or backlash for you and Cooper.”

She listened to his carefully measured words and called bullshit. “What’s going on here Rylan? Tell me the truth, right now. You know I hate being handled, just as much as I hate being lied to.”

“I’m not handling you. I just…didn’t write the song.”

Convenient how he didn’t assert that he wasn’t lying. “Fine, so then who wrote it?”

His jaw clenched. Another damning tell. How the man won so much in poker was beyond her.

“Brody. Your ex Brody was the one who wrote it.”

Never, in a million years, did she ever expect that name to tumble out of Rylan’s mouth.

And especially not in that context.

Now she wasn’t just pissed, she was outright livid. Hands fisted, steam practically shooting out of her ears, she stared down Rylan, and demanded, “What the hell did that jackass do? Is he blackmailing you? Threatening you? That’s totally the bastard’s MO. I’ll kill him.”

A small smile lifted the corners of his mouth, but it was gone a moment later. “He’s not threatening me, Quinn. He really did write it. He contacted me weeks ago when you first found out about Cooper’s surgery. I guess the surgery came out as during some follow-up story after the chocolate and beer throwdown. He wrote the song, sent it to me, and begged me not to tell you or give him credit.”

She wasn’t buying a single word. But she kept letting the amazing, utterly misguided fool keep digging his grave deeper.

“But I couldn’t let this song go on the fundraising CD with my name as the lyric writer. So I told him I was going to give him credit.”

After staring at him in silence for a long minute, she pulled her phone out of her purse. “Do you know how many times a day I listen to Believe in Believing? How many times I listen to these words and hear how much you love my son?”

He stood there mutely, the stubborn man, refusing to tell her the truth.

“Dozens and dozens of times a day, Rylan. And each time I fall in love with it even more, each time I fall in love with you even more. The person who wrote that song is the man that in my heart, I’d want to be Cooper’s dad. And now you’re standing there telling me that man is Brody.”

Shock, anger, regret, denial, frustration and a hundred other emotions raced across his face, but he kept his silence.

Quinn felt sick to her stomach. Even the thought of attaching Brody’s name to that song made her crazy. “So now you’re saying that by some musicians code of honor, you want everyone to hear this song, and think of Brody as the man who loves Cooper as much as the song portrays.” She glared at him. “You want me to basically tell everyone who hears this song that Brody isn’t the complete loser who abandoned me and his child without a single dime, without even a damn phone call throughout any of Cooper’s surgeries or hospital scares.”