Hero on the Road

  SOUTHERN HEROES

  BOOK FOUR

  QUINN MARLOWE

  Copyright © 2023 by Spitfire Press

  All rights reserved.

  Spitfire Press and colophon are property of Glass House Press, LLC, and may not be reproduced.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any names of characters, business, places, events, or incidents are fictitious or have been used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

  Cover: JS designs

  I almost never do dedications, but this one is for everyone who’s ever had to admit that it’s okay to let go and fall in love. It’s not always convenient.

  Sometimes you have to fight a bear (literally).

  But in the end, love is worth it.

  Contents

  Note from the Author

  1. Olivia

  2. Connor

  3. Olivia

  4. Connor

  5. Olivia

  6. Connor

  7. Olivia

  8. Olivia

  9. Connor

  10. Olivia

  11. Connor

  12. Olivia

  13. Olivia

  14. Connor

  15. Olivia

  16. Colin

  17. Olivia

  18. Connor

  19. Colin

  20. Olivia

  21. Connor

  22. Olivia

  23. Colin

  24. Olivia

  25. Olivia

  26. Colin

  27. Connor

  28. Connor

  29. Olivia

  30. Olivia

  31. Connor

  Epilogue 1

  Epilogue 2

  Playlist

  About the Author

  Also by Quinn Marlowe

  Note from the Author

  Heeeeeeeeey gang, welcome to the official last book of the Southern Heroes trilogy! I can’t believe it’s over. I’ve been thinking about this series—and this book—for so long, and now that it’s all done I feel…

  Sort of sad.

  I guess it’s a good thing there’s more to come in this world, then, right? Because things aren’t over. Not by a long shot. I have a new series starting in the fall—The Perfect Five—which revisits the small towns of North Carolina and some of our favorite Southern Heroes characters. I have another new series starting this summer—Rockstars & Cowboys—which is going to feature rockstars and cowboys you’re going to meet in this very book! And for those who love sweet romance, I MAY have some characters from Southern Heroes crossing over into an all new world in the Seven Brothers series, which starts this Christmas with Country Wish. There are about a trillion things happening around here and none of them includes me having a vacation, but if you want to get in touch with me and gossip about them, find me on Instagram or in my FB group, where I’m always dishing out the tea!

  If you’d rather join my newsletter for all the secrets—plus exclusive cover reveals, sneak peeks, and free books—you can find it here. There’s also a link to it on my website, as well as links to join the street and ARC teams.

  I know that’s a lot of newsy stuff so I’ll stop talking your ear off now. Enjoy Olivia and Connor’s story! I can’t believe they finally got a full book! I’ll see everyone on the road!

  -Q

  CHAPTER 1

  Olivia

  This house, I thought, was way too lonely when I was living here by myself.

  I mean yeah, in theory I should have been beyond excited about having the whole place to myself. A big old Victorian with three full bedrooms and just as many bathrooms and I was the only one living there. Sounds like a dream, right? All that space to myself? And after growing up hating that I had to share a bedroom with my little sister, you would have thought I’d be all about it.

  Except that I wasn’t. I’d moved to Nashville with my best friend in the world and made another best friend once we got here, all of us thrown together under the heading of ‘newbies to the industry’ and being taken care of by Drive In Records. And the thing about best friends was that once they were in your life, it became impossible to imagine your reality without them.

  Avery Dawson and Parker Pelton had been my partners in crime from the moment we teamed up, and without them, life just...

  “Sucks,” I muttered to myself. I threw my bag of shopping on the floor and stalked into the kitchen, wondering what the hell I was going to do with myself tonight. What I was going to cook for my lonely dinner and how I was going to spend my lonely night.

  Look, I wasn’t bitter. Avery had married Jackson, the guy she fell in love with while overstaying her welcome at his house, and Parker was in the midst of setting up her dude-ranch-slash-bed-and-breakfast with the love of her life, Dev Hawthorne, back in Arberry. And I loved that they were both so happy and had found their places in life. I loved that they’d found men who loved them nearly as much as I did.

  Seriously.

  I just didn’t love that it had taken them away from me. It was hard for a girl who’d always found herself at the center of attention to suddenly find herself on her own.

  And bored.

  I mean it wasn’t like I didn’t have any friends here in Nashville other than Avery and Parker. My agent and I’d been spending more time together than apart lately, and I loved her to death. It was just...

  She was no Avery, and she definitely wasn’t anything like Parker.

  I missed my girls. And I needed their advice right now.

  I looked down at the list in my hand—the one I’d found in the mailbox when I got home—and sighed. The list was from Taylor, my agent, and though it should have made me feel more excited than anything else, it just made me feel stuck. What was it, you ask? Why, a list of the local clubs and bars I’d be playing in the coming months. A show every other night, more or less, with expectations of new music being recorded at the same time.

  I was getting tired just looking at it, honestly, and not only because it was an insane schedule. It was more what it represented. I’d been home at Christmas to recover from a breakup and had accidentally-on-purpose found myself involved in the annual music contest that happened in town every year. The contest itself: Come up with a brand new song and perform it in front of the biggest crowd Arberry could put together. The prize: A record contract with whatever studio was sponsoring the contest that year.

  I hadn’t really gone home with the intent of taking part, but rather to hide from my jackass ex-boyfriend who’d been trying to ruin my reputation and steal the record contract I already had. When he succeeded in stealing that contract though, and I found myself in Arberry right in time for the contest...

  Well, it had been a no-brainer.

  The thing that hadn’t been a no-brainer: Getting Connor Wheating, the guy I’d had a crush on all through high school, to loan me his recording studio for some good old-fashioned song writing. And that had gone sideways right from the start, the way I should have known it would. Connor and I had made a great team, but only until he decided to start ignoring me again. Sure, he’d had his reasons—his dad was dying from cancer and he was only home to help save the family farm—but that hadn’t excused his behavior.

  Namely, starting to ignore me halfway through the week we had to get a song ready.

  Of course he’d hurt himself just as bad, and hadn’t managed to come up with anything for the contest aside from the song we wrote together. And when he’d tried to perform it by himself, I’d come to the rescue and helped him win the contract.

  And in the process, I’d won a contract myself. And slept with Connor. Then left without saying goodbye.

  I pulled myself off the wall and shoved that thought back into the closet where I generally kept it. No good ever came of thinking about it. I’d cared for Connor too much in high school and evidently growing up hadn’t made me any smarter. So yeah, I’d fallen for him. And he’d turned his back on me and then slept with me anyhow.

  The minute Taylor had texted me and said that Atomic Records wanted to give me a contract if I got my butt back to Nashville and started hustling, I’d done exactly that. Because Connor had his contract and he was good. He needed to go be a big rock star and make his career. He didn’t need me for that.

  As far as I was concerned, I was free to go.

  Which all led to me being back in Nashville, Atomic still dangling that contract in front of my nose and telling me that if I played enough shows, if I wrote enough new music, they’d be ready for me.

  I wanted that contract. I’d wanted it for as long as I could remember, from when I first picked up a guitar and started to figure out how to put chords together to make music. I’d been dreaming of making that career and getting myself out of Arberry from the moment I met Parker and realized that I needed to get her out of town even worse than I needed to get myself out. We’d run for Nashville as soon as we graduated, away from Parker’s dad and her ex and the fists they used too freely, and away from the small-town corner I’d always found myself in.

  Honestly, I didn’t feel like I’d come that far since then. Parker was a successful music manager—mine, actually—and Avery had a multi-record deal and was the new pop princess of country music. They both
had men who would sell their souls to make them happy and homes to call their own.

  And I was still in this rental in Nashville, hustling my butt off and trying to win my contract.

  I’d never been a look-on-the-bright-side sort of girl, and I was starting to think this wasn’t going to work the way I wanted it to. Because with Parker and her ability to strong-arm any exec she came across out of town, I wasn’t sure how much more I could do.

  I was just about to dig into the freezer and get my emergency carton of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream out when my phone started ringing. I grabbed for it, shocked at all the noise, and glanced at the screen to see who was calling.

  Taylor James, not-so-secret witch, the caller ID read.

  I smirked, the same way I always did. Taylor was one of the most serious people I’d ever met, and would never ever consider doing anything like witchcraft in real life. But she was such a miracle worker that I’d started asking her what sort of spells she was casting and she’d fallen right into it like she was already in on the joke.

  I hoped she was calling me to tell me about her latest and greatest spell crafting, because I needed some good news.

  “Tell me you’ve performed some miracles,” I said, instead of using the tried-and-true greeting of ‘hello.’

  She snorted. “Girl, you only wish you could do spells like me.”

  “That’s actually true,” I said. “I’d love to be able to perform magic. I’d start with casting a spell on the execs at Atomic. What do you have, Taylor?”

  “A miracle. Are you sitting down?”

  “Why do people always ask that? Will sitting down make it any easier to take? I don’t think so.”

  I dropped into a chair anyhow, and waited.

  “It’s more like sitting down will support you when your knees go all weak,” she said, and I could hear her grinning right through the phone. “Because Atomic wants a meeting.”

  All the air rushed out of the house, leaving a vacuum so strong that I couldn’t get a breath into my lungs. Atomic wanted a meeting. I’d been waiting months to hear those words.

  Years, even.

  “Does that mean I get my contract?” I asked, my voice barely more than a whisper.

  “I think it just might. But there’s a catch. The meeting isn’t only with us.”

  I cocked my head, confused. “What, they need lawyers there as well? Another manager? Because Parker’s not in town.”

  “Nothing that tame, unfortunately.”

  Okay, now I was starting to worry. “What the hell does that mean? They’re going to bring wild tigers in and make me handle them to win the contract they already promised me?”

  There was a pause, and then: “Nothing that easy.”

  “Taylor,” I snapped. “Stop beating around the bush and just say it. What do they want? Who else are they bringing in?”

  “Right. Okay. They know you worked with a partner before. They’ve heard plenty about how good you are with someone else singing right next to you, and that’s what they want. They want to give you a contract, Liv, but they want to put you with someone else. They want you in a duo.”

  My heart shrank three sizes. A duo. Of course they wanted me in a duo. I’d been in one before—with the ex who then stole my contract—and they’d seen me perform as part of a duo at that Christmas festival. Sure, they’d heard me alone about a billion times since I got back to Nashville, but evidently they’d decided they liked me better with someone else.

  I still wasn’t going to get to stand on my own.

  And if they’d already decided they liked my voice accompanied by someone else’s, I was guessing they had someone in mind. If I thought as a business person—maybe a music exec—there were two obvious choices.

  Dean Summers, the ex.

  And Connor Wheating.

  CHAPTER 2

  Connor

  It was a dream, and some small part of my mind knew that it must be. That small part remembered that I wasn’t in Arberry anymore. I was in Nashville, sleeping in a hotel that didn’t have enough towels or very good sheets. I was working my butt off trying to get the contract I’d been awarded by Atomic Records. And I was lonelier than I’d ever been.

  But this right here, this soft lighting and the glorious sheets and warm, curvy body laying next to me...

  It might be a dream, but it was a lot better than reality, and I let myself fall right into it.

  Before I could turn to that body and trail my fingers across the velvet of her skin, though, remembering how she felt and the small sounds she made as she slept, the dream shifted and jerked me to another scene.

  And now we were onstage, playing our hearts out up there in front of the crowd in the bar, our voices raised in the most perfect harmony I’d ever experienced as we sang the song we’d written together only days earlier. It wasn’t a song I ever would have written on my own. It was all highest of highs and lowest of lows, chords I’d never even dreamt of and harmonies that made me want to either scream with joy or sob.

  It was the best thing I’d ever written, and singing it with her, knowing that she felt the same way about it, was...

  Maybe this was Heaven, I thought, changing my point of view. Because standing up there and singing on the stage with her again was something I’d been wanting to do since we stepped off the stage months ago. That song had flowed out of us like water when we were writing it, everything coming together so perfectly that no one would have been able to guess that we’d never written together before. And getting up and singing it with her, the notes coming out just right, our voice blending like we’d been born for it...

  It had been so natural. So beautiful. Better than sex. Better than love.

  Okay, maybe those last two were exaggerations. But still.

  I woke up gently, rising to the surface and opening my eyes the moment we stepped off the stage like the dream had finished with me. That hadn’t been the end of the night, though. She’d run off as quickly as she could but I’d caught up to her. I’d left the people from Atomic with Parker, asking her to take care of all the details of the contract, and run after her.

  I hadn’t wanted the night to be over.

  I hadn’t wanted the thing we’d built together to finish.

  And when I caught her, I dragged her upstairs and showed her all the things I’d been feeling and hadn’t been able to say. Things I’d been feeling since high school and evidently hadn’t grown out of. It had been the best night of my life. A record contract and having the girl of my dreams in my arms. Finally.

  Finally.

  And then I’d woken up to find her missing. Gone like a thief in the night, without any sign that she’d ever been there.

  She didn’t even leave a note.

  And I hadn’t heard from her since.

  The sad thing was, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’d always known what she thought of me. We’d been in school together practically since we were born, because that was what happened when you were from the same small town. I’d seen her go from a cute kid to a drop-dead gorgeous teenager. I’d even stepped in to help her when the opportunity presented itself. Not that it had mattered. She’d spent our entire childhood acting like I didn’t even exist. Then she came home for Christmas and needed a music studio for writing music and practicing, and had looked to me with hope in her eyes.

  And like an idiot, I’d said yes. I’d welcomed her into my home and let her under my skin, and then gone right ahead and fallen for her.