He wasn’t going to stop us from going onstage tonight.

  I turned to Connor, who looked like he was coming to some of the same conclusions. “You ready?” he asked, turning his eyes on me.

  “What, to go out there, figure out whether they have equipment we can borrow, then do a sound check on our own and get ready to go onstage with almost no rehearsal?” I asked. “Of course. I do that sort of thing all the time.”

  His face, which had been registering concern, broke into a grin. “Me too. Let’s get it, partner.”

  He held out his hand and I took it. Yeah, I knew what that sort of gesture could mean and how he might take it, but right now, when it was just the two of us against the world, I needed some support.

  And if he was going to offer it, I wasn’t going to say no.

  “Ready?” Connor whispered into my ear.

  I glanced out at the crowd in front of the small stage and nodded. This was actually a great venue. The stage was small enough for the two of us to dominate it and the park had, in fact, had sound equipment for us. It wasn’t terrific equipment but it would do for a small acoustic show. The crowd wasn’t huge—maybe twenty or thirty people, max—but it was respectable.

  I wouldn’t have drawn this many people by myself back in Nashville. This was the label’s doing. And Connor’s.

  And we were ready.

  I thought.

  “As ready as I’m going to get,” I said, looking up at him.

  To my surprise, he was standing there with an armful of lilies.

  “What are those?” I asked, shocked. “And where did they come from?” I hadn’t exactly explored the park—we’d been too busy trying to get ready—but I knew what I’d seen coming in, and there hadn’t exactly been fields of lilies just laying around the joint.

  And those flowers in Connor’s hand were fresh cut. They hadn’t come from a florist.

  He shrugged, blushing. “There were a bunch of them in a booth on the other side of the square. They said they grow wild around here so people pick them and bring them out to sell them. I saw them laying there and they were so beautiful that I figured...”

  I reached a hesitant hand out to run a finger along the petal of one of the flowers. “You figured you’d bring me flowers before our first show?”

  He gave me the dimpled grin and tucked one of the lilies behind my ear. “Exactly.”

  My finger found the lily and stroked it again, my brain turning this over again and again. Connor had just brought me flowers. To make me feel better.

  I couldn’t remember anyone ever having brought me flowers before in my life.

  “You ready?” he asked again.

  I felt a soft smile touch my mouth. “Yeah.”

  He reached down and took my hand. “Then let’s get it, partner.”

  “Let’s get it,” I said, nodding.

  We stepped out onto the stage together, holding hands like we were little kids on the first day of school, and for just a moment, my stomach dropped.

  Then the crowd started cheering and my guitar was in my hands and Connor was grinning at me and everything fell right into place.

  CHAPTER 11

  Connor

  I watched her stare out over the crowd, her shoulders stiff and nervous, and wanted to go to her. I wanted to touch her cheek and tell her it was going to be fine and that we could do this in our sleep at this point. Wanted to remind her that she’d been on stage at least a million times and that from what I’d seen—and heard—the crowd always responded to her. The girl was a natural with music. Her lyrics were otherworldly, and when she sang them she put her whole heart into the song, drawing the crowd right into her world and sharing her heart with them.

  At least that was what I’d heard.

  And seen. Because yeah, okay, since we’d both moved back to Nashville I’d been to one or two of her shows.

  Maybe five or six.

  Maybe ten.

  And they were always the same. She always stepped out on the stage looking like a dear in the headlights and stared at the crowd like she didn’t know what to do with them. I’d never seen her come out looking comfortable or ready. It was like every time was her first time. Every time was another opportunity for her to mess it up or for people to decide that they didn’t like her.

  The moment she started playing, she calmed down. I didn’t know what that looked like inside her head, but I knew it from having seen it so many times.

  Which was how I knew she’d be okay as soon as we started playing.

  I grabbed the cord to the speaker that would be attached to the microphone in front of her guitar and walked it over to her, plugging it in. “You’ve got this,” I whispered in her ear, pausing to inhale the scent of the lily in her hair. It was perfect on her, the way I’d known it would be. The color set off the flames of her hair and made her face glow.

  She was beautiful.

  And that was precisely none of my business. She’d made that clear back in Arberry, at Christmas.

  I turned back to the sound equipment and found my microphone’s cord, trying to put Christmas out of my head. It had taken me weeks to stop looking at my phone, hoping for a text from her, and I wasn’t going to put myself through that again. That emotion—that emptiness—had no place on the stage with us right now.

  I plugged in my microphone and sat on the bar stool the park had provided, running my fingers quickly over my string to make sure they were warm and ready. We’d tuned and re-tuned the guitars during our soundcheck, and my strings responded with a perfect strum.

  In front of us, the crowd had gone silent, their faces expectant in the fairy lights strung up in the trees.

  This was it. Our first show on our first tour. Me and Olivia together. Just us and our guitars.

  “Hi there,” Olivia said, her words echoing through the dusk. “Thanks for coming out! I don’t know if you know who we are—”

  “Of course we do!” someone in the crowd shouted.

  Olivia chuckled. “Okay, so you do. Well for those who don’t, I’m Olivia Johns and this here is Connor Wheating. We’re from a little town called Arberry in North Carolina—” More whoops sounded out. “—And we’re here to play you folks some Nashville-style country.”

  The crowd cheered at that and Olivia shot me a quick smile. This might not be a big tour and the crowd might have gotten in for free, but so far they were responding exactly the way we would have wanted.

  “Right,” I said quickly. “Enough talking, Liv. Let’s play.”

  And I broke into the first song—one of the ones we’d just written—and grinned at her. We were ready. I knew it. When her fingers started picking the strings of her own guitar, adding the harmony in, I laughed.

  I couldn’t believe we were up here together on stage, playing one of our songs for an actual crowd. This was going to be brilliant.

  The moment for the lyrics arrived almost before I was ready and suddenly we were singing, our voices blending together the way they always hand, dancing along with the sound of the guitars and threading out into the night like we’d done this a million times. We sang our hearts out, just us up there on that stage, and before long the crowd was joining us on the chorus, shouting out the parts they’d already figured out. And when the song ended, the music finishing abruptly on the last note, the twenty people watching us went crazy, jumping up and down and shouting.

  Olivia immediately launched into the next song, laughing as she started singing, and a moment later we were up off the bar stools, dancing with each other as we played and jigging behind the microphones as we sang. Barry raced out onto the stage to adjust the microphones so we could stand—actually doing his job—and we spent the rest of the show on our feet, dancing with members of the audience when they found their way closer to the stage. Our music played just as well as I’d known it would and the crowd loved every song, though I was keeping notes in my head about which songs seemed to be more popular.

  By the time we got to the last song, I was breathless and tired and elated—and ready for more. I didn’t want to be done already. I didn’t want to leave this stage or stop playing our music, and I could have watched Olivia laughing and joking with the crowd all night.

  Maybe Atomic had known what they were doing when they matched us up for this tour. I couldn’t imagine having to carry this on my own. Being up here with Olivia felt so right it was almost scary.

  “Okay, folks, this is the last song,” Olivia called out. “We’ve already stayed longer than we were supposed to and I’m pretty sure we’re going to be getting a bill tomorrow for using more power than we were allowed.”

  There was laughter from the crowd, who were eating right out of her hand, and I laughed right along with them.

  “We want an encore!” someone shouted.

  Olivia giggled. “And we’d give it to you, even if we had to pay extra for the power!” she told the guy. “But I’m afraid we’re out of songs. This is literally the last song we have. I guess you’ll have to come back and see us again next year when we have new songs to play.”

  “That’s a date!” he shouted.

  God, the girl was good. She was already booking our next tour and getting people to agree to come to it. She shot me a cocky look, asking without words whether I was up for it, and I gave her a quick nod.

  If there was going to be another tour, I’d be there. She didn’t even have to ask.

  She launched us into the last song and I jumped to match her, my heart soaring. We’d thought it was a good idea to end the show with one of the first songs we wrote together—right after we got into the studio—and that had been the right choice. It was our fastest song and the one most likely to make people dance.

  And dance they did. They spun across the grass in front of us, cheering and dancing and telling us exactly how good we were together. And by the time the last note fell away and we left the stage, I felt like $5 million bucks.

  And I couldn’t wait for our next show.

  CHAPTER 12

  Olivia

  “That. Was. Awesome,” I said, leaning up against Connor for support as we walked back toward the parking lot where we’d left the bus. We’d spent an hour cleaning up after the show, shuffling the sound equipment back to the shed where the park kept it and making sure the crowd hadn’t left any trash in the park itself.

  We’d even signed some autographs, putting our names to the handouts the park had pinned up advertising the show that night.

  It had been a terrific night. The show was perfect and the venue was the right size for us, and I’d had to admit to myself halfway through the night that Atomic might actually be good at their jobs. I hadn’t wanted to come out without my band or crew, but now that we were here, it felt right. The show had been so intimate, like we were at a party with our friends rather than on tour, and it fit our music. It fit us.

  I was going to be really mad if I had to go back and admit to those Suits that they’d done a good job, after everything they’d put us through. They hadn’t even given us a bus, I reminded myself bitterly.

  And speaking of which...

  The bus in question should be parked right there, up against the building that housed the bathroom.

  And it wasn’t.

  I stopped and stared, trying to make sense of that, then looked quickly to the right and left. Did Barry just move the bus? Maybe he’d gotten in trouble for parking it where he’d parked it and moved it so it was out of the way.

  A quick glance around the parking lot told me that it wasn’t anywhere else, though, and I started to feel nervous.

  “Is it me or should our bus be right there?” Connor asked, having stopped right next to me.

  “It should,” I agreed. I started walking again, my steps faster than they had been before. “Unless he moved it to get it out of the way.”

  Connor’s strides matched mine and then took him right past me and into the parking lot, his head on a swivel. “That bus is too big to be out of the way,” he said. “And it’s too big to hide.”

  His tone, increasingly nervous, told me that he didn’t see it either, and that told me a whole lot. Connor was taller than me by about a foot and if he couldn’t see it...

  We both took off at a run toward the parking lot, our guitars bouncing against our backs and my backpack banging against my leg as we raced through the parking lot, looking for the tour bus we hadn’t even thought we were going to have until Avery and Parker surprised us. We looked through the main parking lot and then raced over to the secondary lot on the other side of the bathrooms, but we found no bus. When we hit the street we looked back and forth, hoping to see it out there.

  Nothing.

  “Maybe he said something to the people at guest services,” Connor said.

  Right. I didn’t know if those people would even still be there, but if they were, they were probably our best bet. We turned and raced back toward that booth, neither of us saying anything.

  I thought we probably both knew that this wasn’t going to end well.

  That didn’t make it any easier when the girl at the booth looked up at us with big eyes, shook her head, and told us Barry had left in the middle of the show.

  “I thought you two must know about it,” she said. “After all, your pictures are all over that bus. I figured he was moving it somewhere for you to meet him after the show.”

  “Yeah. Would have been nice if he’d told us where that might be,” Connor said, running his hands through his hair.

  I stared at the girl, too shocked to answer, and then turned my eyes to Connor. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening. Two hours ago we’d had a bus and a roadie.

  And now they were just... gone?

  “Do you have his number?” I asked, belatedly realizing that I hadn’t bothered to get it.

  Connor snapped his fingers. “Actually, I do. I got it earlier. Hold on.” He took his phone out of his pocket, scrolled through his contacts, and hit a button. He put the phone on speaker and held it out between us as it rang.

  And rang.

  And rang.

  Then it went to voicemail. “Hey, it’s Barry. You know what to do.”

  Connor’s eyes met mine and narrowed slightly. “Hey Barry, it’s Connor. You seem to have gone somewhere with our bus, and we’re through with the show, so we need it back. Can you call me and let me know where you are?”

  He hung up and called again, and it went straight to voicemail. When he redialed, the same thing happened.

  When he looked up again, his eyes were torn between furious and shocked. “Olivia, I think we’ve just been deserted,” he said simply.

  My knees gave out and I dropped down on the curb, too surprised to keep standing.

  And yet not surprised at all.

  Because I’d remembered where I recognized Barry from. He’d been a roadie on a show that Dean had been playing on his own. He and Dean had become friends and Barry had thought Dean could walk on water. I’d thought it was ridiculous, but when I’d said something Dean had told me to mind my own business.

  I couldn’t believe it had taken me this long to remember who he was.

  But I could absolutely believe that Barry had recognized me, remembered whatever Dean had said, and decided to teach me a lesson. Hell, maybe he’d been sent by Dean himself, just to screw with me.

  None of that would do Connor any good, though, and I wasn’t going to tell him.

  “I guess we should have seen that coming,” I said. “I mean look at how this tour has been going so far.” This tour was a mess. Of course the one roadie we got would turn out to be a crook.

  Connor sat next to me and shook his head. “My clothes were on that bus.”

  That made me laugh, though there was no joy in it. “Mine, too. Though I guess at least we have our guitars.”

  Connor huffed. “True. This thing cost more than all the clothes in that suitcase. Still...”

  Still. What the hell were we supposed to do now? We had two guitars and the one small amp we’d managed to get into our luggage in Nashville. That wasn’t enough to play any show bigger than the one we’d just done, unless the venue itself had equipment we could use. But how would we even get to other shows? We lacked that most basic ingredient for a tour: transportation.

  I yanked my phone out of my pocket and called the one person who might be able to solve this.

  “Parker?” I breathed when she picked up. “I need you.” I went quickly through what had happened—some of which she already knew, as my manager. She’d known that the tour was a mess and that Atomic had restricted anyone else from coming with us. Hell, she’d pitched in for the bus because Atomic hadn’t provided one.

  “He just left you?” I could hear the anger building in her voice and smiled grimly. Parker was a businesswoman through and through, and she did not take kindly to someone not doing their job.

  Barry was going to have hell to pay when she got a hold of him.

  “And he took the bus. Which means he has our clothes.”

  “That no-good piece of dirt,” she breathed. “I’m going to skin him alive.”

  “It gets worse. Since he was the roadie, we put him in charge of the budget. He has the credit cards the label sent with us. And most of my cash was on that bus.”

  The silence told me exactly how stupid we’d been to trust Barry with the money. But this was our first time on tour. We hadn’t known that it would be a problem. That was the guy Avery and Parker had sent us!

  “Right,” she finally said. “Sit tight. I’ll call Atomic and get this worked out.”

  I glanced down at my watch. “Park, it’s 9 at night. In Montana.”

  “I don’t care. They’ll answer my call or I’ll send someone to their front door to bug them in person. Sit tight.”

  I hung up and stared at my phone, caught between wanting to laugh and wanting to cry. If anyone could get things done it was Parker. But I wasn’t sure how much the record label was going to budge on that one.