It Isn't Over

It Isn't OverJamie Bennett Copyright © 2023 Jamie BennettAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author, except as used in a book review. Please contact the author at [email protected] is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or ex-isting locations, the names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.Book cover by Angela Haddon Book Cover Designs. Who would have thought that one song would change everything?Cassidy Archer can’t keep going like this. Since she lost her husband, Bo, she has been stuck in an endless cycle of sadness, regret, and blame. It’s not just that he’s gone, it’s how he died, and—no. There’s no point in reliving it (not that she’s actually living). She needs something different. She needs a change.But Jack Calder? He’s definitely something different, and some-thing that she never expected. She never could have dreamed that that her life would become entwined with a country music star in the making! Especially one so…well, he’s good enough to eat. He’s not just handsome, but also talented and funny, good-hearted and good with kids.He's practically perfect and the big question is, why hasn’t some other woman already snapped this guy up? Not that Cassidy is looking to snap up Jack or anyone else. She’s still in love with the husband she lost. For her, it isn’t over, and it never will be.But somehow, her life keeps going and it’s going in a whole new direction now. Glamorous parties in gowns and tuxes, family festivities with baseball and red-hot dip, penthouse apartments, crumbling houses—Cassidy and Jack suddenly have a connection that neither of them wants to sever. They’re friends, business partners, room-mates, and…more? Can Jack give her what her husband never could, or never would?Can a song—just a song—change their lives forever? PrologueNovemberFor people who were supposed to be so miserable, they looked pretty darn cheerful.I frowned as I watched them sip coffee from paper cups or swallow from the water bottles they carried. One woman finished what looked like a muffin and stuffed its crumpled wrapper into her purse. Then she wiped a crumb from her lip and smiled at something another woman had said to her. They shook off raincoats and folded umbrellas and talked about when the weather would clear and about an accident on Broad Street that was causing a backup. They all looked comfortable, at ease.What was wrong with them?“Let’s go ahead and get started,” a man with an iron-grey beard said. Most of the people here seemed to be closer to his age than mine. They were old enough to have seen a few things, like they might have traveled outside of Tennessee or even outside of the United States. They’d probably put in years at their jobs so they were secure in their employment and didn’t have to worry about paying their mortgages. They could have children at home, I thought. Children who loved them. My hand clutched into a fist over my stomach.They all chose places in the circle of folding chairs and I did, too. The seating arrangement made it hard not to look at everyone else—which was the point, of course. I fixed my eyes on the stained-glass window high in the wall. That way, I didn’t have to stare at the guy directly across from me, the only other person who looked like he might have been under the age of thirty. But it was hard to tell. He wore sunglasses on this cloudy day and an orange Tennessee Volunteers hat, even though this meeting was inside a church. On a Thursday afternoon, but still.And then the man with the beard said hello and welcome, and he got someone talking. It was the woman with the muffin, and she told the worst story I’d ever heard. It was about losing her daughter and about waking every day into a fresh nightmare. The woman next to her offered a tissue box and more of those came out as other people in our circle shared their own pitiful, pathetic stories. They talked about the greyness of life, the hollowness. How they’d lost their parent, or best friend, wife, child, and how they didn’t know if they could go on. The tissue boxes emptied.It was my turn. The eyes swiveled in my direction. “I’m Cassidy,” I announced, and they waited. Ok, I could say it: “I lost my husband, Bo.”There were murmurs of sympathy like there always were, but I waved those away with my hand. “I don’t need that,” I said. Had I spoken too loudly? My voice seemed to echo in the quiet of the nave.“Do you want to share any more?” the bearded man asked gently, and I didn’t need his gentleness, either.“Why? What does it matter?” I asked him in return. I’d come here to make my mother happy, or at least to get her to worry less about me. That was the reason I’d sat and listened to these terrible things that would have made another woman’s heart break. But I hadn’t needed a single tissue from those boxes. I didn’t need anything.The man was waiting. It seemed like they all were. “He died,” I said. “He’s gone.” I went on without meaning to, like the words tumbled out before I could prevent them. “But what everyone else has been saying, it’s not like that for me.”“How, Cassidy?” the man asked. “Can you tell us?”“It’s all the same.” I shook my head, frustrated with myself for speaking out and then for not being able to explain it well. So I tried again. “Nothing has changed,” I announced.The other people on the plastic chairs looked puzzled. Didn’t they feel that, too?“I keep buying milk for him. I don’t drink it,” I said. “I