by D. L. Roan
He wasn’t intimately familiar with the Grunion family, but he knew Ford Youngblood was Dirk’s nephew and quickly thereafter recognized the mangled truck.
Not long after they arrived, Ford was pulled from the wreckage and loaded into the first of two waiting ambulances. Carson fell apart in their fathers’ arms when the paramedics covered Charlotte’s body, lying in the grass beside what had looked like part of a tire. Connor had turned away, unable to look at what he’d already known was Charlotte’s fate.
He and Carson had sobered instantly when they heard their mother’s pained groan in the distance. When he’d scanned the scene, he saw the paramedics loading her onto a stretcher, Grey at her side and moving with them towards the second ambulance. That had been three hours ago, and still they hadn’t seen their mom.
“Car?”
At the sound of his sister’s voice, Connor looked up to see their dad, Matt, walking down the hallway with Dani in his arms. Relief flooded his veins and loosened a few of the knots in his stomach. Dani reached out for Carson and his twin took their baby sister into his arms.
“Oh, thank God you’re okay,” Carson said, hugging her little body as tight as he could.
They might fight like cats and dogs, but when it came down to it, their family was tight. Connor didn’t know what they would have done if they’d lost their only sister. The very idea was inconceivable.
“My arm hurts,” she sniffled, pulling back to show Carson her bright pink cast.
Connor chuckled, feeling tears of relief prick his eyes as Dani reached out for him. “I bet it does, boo.” He pulled her into his arms and inspected her cast. “I was a little younger than you the first time I broke my arm.”
“You did?” she asked.
“Sure did.” Connor nodded. “I followed Car up an old dead tree one day and daddy Mason climbed up after us. A limb broke and we all fell. Daddy Mason landed on top of me and my arm broke right here.” He pointed to the spot on his arm that had snapped in half, sparing her the scary details of being shot at by Preston Dawes or the frightening details of what happened to their mother in the days that followed.
“I remember more than one of us telling you and your brother to stay out of that tree, too,” Matt said with a tired grin. “It’ll get better, Dani, I promise.” Matt leaned in and kissed her forehead. “Can you stay with your brothers while I go upstairs and check on your mom?”
“How is she?” Carson asked, his incessant pacing coming to an abrupt halt.
Matt took a ragged breath. “So far nothing major, the last I heard. The doctors were still waiting on some test results, but the nurse caught me texting while they were casting Dani’s arm, and I had to turn off my phone. She was going in for another scan of some kind to make sure.”
Their dad’s gaze darted to Dani. Both Connor and Carson saw the unspoken worry in his eyes. Worry he clearly didn’t want Dani clued in to. He placed a hand on Connor’s shoulder and then Carson’s, the emotion in his voice barely restrained. “I’m sorry about Charlotte,” he said, his blue eyes squeezing shut to stop the flow of tears. “I’m so sorry.”
Dani buried her face against Connor’s shoulder, a tiny sob preceding the tears he felt trickle down his neck.
“I hate that fucking family!” Carson said with a bitter scowl.
“Don’t, Car,” Matt warned.
“Don’t?” Carson threw off the hand Matt rested on his shoulder. “Don’t what? Tell the truth?”
“Carson,” Matt warned again.
“How can you defend that loser? The whole Grunion lot is nothing but a bunch of white trash fuck-ups!”
“Carson!” Their dad fisted his brother’s shirt in both hands, pushing him against the wall behind them. “Shut-your-mouth,” Matt whispered harshly through clenched teeth, giving Carson a subtle nod towards the far end of the hall.
Confusion warred with the anger in Carson’s expression. His brother looked down the hall to see Breezy Youngblood standing a few feet away, a broken and lost look in her red, puffy eyes.
Carson jerked free of Matt’s hold and stalked towards Breezy. Everything happened so fast, he couldn’t do more than watch as his twin turned on the shy neighbor girl.
“You did this!”
What little color was left in Breezy’s face drain from her delicate features.
“You saw us with Charlotte and you ran to that piece of shit brother of yours and told him everything, didn’t you?” Carson continued. Connor saw the jerky shake of her head and watched her lips move with her denial, but he couldn’t hear the words she spoke over the roar of his brother’s angry shouts. “That’s why you came over every Sunday! So you could tell your brother all about us and Charlotte. You’re nothing but a little white trash Grunion spy!”
Connor’s soul felt empty and wounded as he held Dani in his arms and watched the innocent girl in front of them fade away before his very eyes. Breezy’s shoulders sagged, her lips bowed into a desolate frown, the life in her eyes dulled to a listless and unfocused stare as Carson continued to berate and blame her for Charlotte’s death.
“He couldn’t have her, so he killed her, and almost killed our mom and sister! And you helped him!” he shouted, eyeing Breezy with unrestrained disdain.
Connor’d never seen any of his fathers strike anyone, let alone one of his brothers. When Carson wouldn’t stop, Matt shoved him away from the broken girl and pinned his forearm against his throat. “Shut your fucking mouth or I swear to God, Car, I’ll shut it for you. That girl just lost everything!”
Connor blinked, his gaze darting from his twin to Breezy. The empty expression he saw on her face as his father’s words reached her ears would haunt him for the rest of his life. He saw the moment the words hit her, the moment she realized her life would never be the same.
Breezy’s throat constricted in a determined swallow. Her eyes drifted closed. When they opened again, the Breezy he knew was gone. The shy, innocent girl was nowhere to be found. A stranger in an empty shell looked straight through him as a nurse ushered her past them, down the hall and out of their lives.
Chapter Seven
Nine years later.
“Ohmigod! There they are!”
“Carson! Connor! Over here!”
Connor locked step behind his twin as they shouldered their way through the crush of waiting fans and photographers panting for them to throw them a bone: a smile, an autograph. Connor suppressed the urge to throw them the finger and kept his head down.
They’d been lucky the past couple of tour stops, managing to avoid the more aggressive crotch-grabbing and lip-sucking that usually came with this kind of close-up meet and greet. After playing their last venue, he’d nearly required surgery to free himself from an epic wedgie after a lunatic fan grabbed for his boxers. He, and his balls, had demanded a break from the crowds for a while.
With no offstage appearances at the last three gigs, and only four cities left on the schedule, the fans were getting pouty and their manager was becoming unbearably cranky, insisting on at least re-opening the backstage tours.
After performing full-tilt on stage for three hours under spotlights as hot as hell itself, in leather trimmed denim no less, the last thing Connor felt like doing was playing nice to a bunch of screaming groupies trying to snag a selfie to share with a bunch of online friends they’d never met.
“Connor, I love you!”
Connor kept walking. Had the girl said she loved his songs or his music she might have caught his attention.
“Carson, baby, I’ll be the shimmy to your shake!” A sickeningly sweet voice shouted the lyrics of their latest chart-topper over the roar of the crowd. He hated that song.
Written as a joke during one of Carson’s drunken jam sessions, he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how it ended up on their last album, much less in the Country Music Count Down’s top ten.
He glanced up through his reflective sunglasses at the woman hailing his brother’s attention from behind t
he velvet rope, rolling his eyes as Carson veered off in her direction. She was an empty-headed, carbon copy of the chick his brother snag-n-shagged in Houston...and Phoenix...and Tampa.
“Fuck-it,” he mumbled under his breath and kept walking until he was beyond the screams and grabby hands, meeting up with his security detail, Marcus, at the end of the gauntlet. Or was his name Darius? It didn’t matter. There’d be a new guy at the next stop. Their security manager always rotated the team, never using the same guys in the same positions. Carson and their manager would probably give him an earful for not stopping to give autographs and take a few pictures as they’d planned, but Connor honestly didn’t care. What were they going to do? Fire him?
The throbbing inside his head preceded the pounding on his dressing room door by about a half second, his only warning before their manager, Rod—the connection god—Stapleton, broke his promise to stop barging in on him, and barged in on him. “What in living hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I thought we had an agreement,” Connor reminded him. “You’re supposed to knock and then go away when I don’t answer.”
“And you’re supposed to actually meet and greet people at a backstage meet and greet. You know, maybe sign a few autographs or something.
“So,” he shrugged. “I chose the ‘or something’.
“Those people didn’t pay hundreds of dollars to be ignored, Con. They can stand outside in the rain with the other poor blokes and be ignored for free!”
Was it raining? It seemed like a lifetime since he’d last smelled the scent of fresh rain on anything but the blacktop road that roared beneath their tour bus wheels between cities.
He’d give a thousand autographs to be able to stand in the middle of his family’s fields and let the cool Montana rain wash away all the layers of grime he’d picked up over the years; grime that had muddied up his insides and fought continually to change who he was.
He replaced the cap on the expensive bottle of whiskey, deposited it back inside the mini fridge that always traveled with them—which was sort of odd now that he thought about it—then picked up the fine crystal glass and took a satisfying gulp.
Not one to pay much attention to Rod’s rants, he studied the glass in his hand as their manager rattled off a list of his latest transgressions. The light from the dozen or so bulbs surrounding the mirror behind him reflected off the different angles of what looked like a hand-cut design.
“Who do you suppose made this glass?” he asked Rod, holding it up to see if by any chance there was a sticker or a name of some sort etched into the bottom. “I’d like to send my mother a nice set of crystal. Something no one else has. And not for her birthday or anything, just because.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Rod asked from his position at the door.
Connor chuckled. “Why, because I’d like to send my mom a nice gift?”
When Rod didn’t answer, Connor let out a long-suffering sigh and took another sip, this one slower and less deliberate as the effects of the first swallow settled in.
“Taking a much needed drink and no, to answer both your questions in the order in which they were asked,” he said, collapsing onto the buttery-soft sofa beside his wardrobe rack. Rod continued to stare at him without biting at either of his attempts to derail the man’s ass-chewing agenda. Connor gave up and waved him over to join him on the sofa.
Rod was a good man. Their dads had been right. There was a constant stream of crooks, scammers and otherwise shady characters claiming to be agents and managers who’d lined up in hopes of taking advantage of two green-as-virgin-leather musicians with more talent than experience. He and Carson fought them on a lot of things in the beginning, but he couldn’t thank their parents and grandparents enough now.
When they’d gone platinum and began touring, it was all too much for their prior manager to handle on his own, so he’d brought in Rod. More days than not, especially lately, Rod had been his closest friend and confidant. He couldn’t imagine where they’d be without him.
“Those people—”
“Are your fans,” Rod reminded him, seizing the glass of whiskey from his hand and gulping down the last sip before taking a seat at the other end of the couch.
“I know-I know,” Connor conceded. He didn’t hate their fans. He hated what they represented. “I just...” Can’t do this anymore. When they’d won their ‘Big Break’ eight years ago, he’d pictured his life exactly like this, except...different. “Uhhh!”
He shoved to his feet. He couldn’t think sitting down. The sold out venues, the tours, even the screaming, grabby fans were all a part of the deal. He knew all of that going in and, like Carson, he’d loved every single minute. Until he didn’t.
He’d had a familiar uneasiness settle into his bones over the last few months. A restlessness that pulled at his concentration, stifled his creativity and brought new life to memories he’d just as soon lay dormant inside the little box he’d managed to stuff them into years ago.
“This isn’t a good time to lose it, Con.” Rod swiped a hand through his already ruffled hair before standing and pacing to the door. “We’ve got three back-to-back stops before the wrap in New York.”
“I know,” Connor said. “I just...”
“Listen.” Rod paced back to stand in front of him, clapping his hands on his shoulders. “I need you to push through whatever funk you’re in, man. You can, I don’t know...build a mud hut on a mountainside, buy a goat, whatever it is you Montana boys do to wind down after we play the Garden.”
“Wh-what?” Connor chuckled. Buy a goat?
Rod was a genius when it came to public relations and other tour stuff. Despite being in the country music business, however, he was a total metrosexual, suit-wearing urban dweller completely clueless about country life. Pigeonholing him and Carson into hysterical and inventive stereotypes had become some sort of personal challenge for him.
“Whatever,” Rod shook his head. “Just pull it together, okay?”
“Yeah,” Connor said, releasing another long sigh. “I’m hearing you.” He did hear him, deafeningly loud and clear. He just needed to find a way to get through the next month. Maybe he could talk Carson into going home for a while once the tour was over. There was nothing about their apartment in L.A. or the house in Nashville that he found remotely inviting at the moment.
Rod’s radio crackled to life, the head of Carson’s security team confirming they were heavy one person and in route to Carson’s dressing room. Meaning Connor would be wearing his earbuds to bed again. He couldn’t listen to his brother bang another glitter licker.
“Go,” he said, shooing Rod through the door. “I’m good. I’ll be good. Promise.” Rod took him at his word and rushed off to do whatever it was he did to close a stadium and get an entire band to their next gig in one piece.
~*~*~*~*~*~
A week later Connor stood at the picture window in his hotel suite staring out at the Denver skyline, the heavy feeling in his gut almost unbearable. The sun was high in the sky, illuminating the snowcapped mountain peaks.
Climbing had become a favorite pastime for him and Carson in their off season. The summit of Mount Evans was one he knew well. The easy climb taunted him from across the miles, making him wish for the days when they were no one special.
“Are you ready?”
He turned from the window, caught off guard by his brother’s question. “Ready for what?” he asked, wondering why Carson was dressed in a tuxedo. “What am I missing?”
Carson paused, his annoyance evident in his expression and the agitated way he shoved his hands into his front pockets. “The Dunes Foundation Gala?”
“That’s tonight?” Whatever motivation he’d managed to conjure over the last week, fled the moment he heard the word gala.
They gave tens of thousands, ungrudgingly, to the Dunes Foundation in particular, and he wholeheartedly loved the annual visit to the children’s cancer center. Being able to spend time with t
he kids, one on one, with no cameras and no reporters there to cheapen the moment was one of Connor’s favorite things in the world. He’d even taken their younger siblings, Jonah and Dani with them once when they first began donating and they’d all had the most profound, life-changing day.
The foundation galas, however, were nothing but hours of lies piled upon lies. A bunch of people who didn’t know or care anything about each other, flitted from camera to camera wearing fake smiles and pretending to be elite, upstanding members of the entertainment community. All the while the pampered and married cougars played grab-ass with him and Carson, and every other twenty-something, up-and-coming attending artist, while their husbands pretended not to notice because they would soon excuse themselves to join their mistresses for the night. Playing old-money games was exhausting.
“Let’s skip it,” Connor suggested with fresh exuberance, turning to point at the summit-laced skyline. “Let’s rent a car and some climbing gear and hit the trail like we used to!” He checked his watch. “It’s late, but if we leave now we can camp out and start for the peak at sunrise.”
Carson’s brows rose in disbelief. “You’re serious?”
“I’m completely serious.”
“You can’t skip the Dunes Foundation Gala, bro. We have to perform for the sponsors.”
“I’m sick of performing,” Connor said. “We did our time on the circuit! We sang when we were told to sing. We danced when we were told to dance! It wasn’t supposed to be like this after our contract with the show ended!”
“Be like what?” Carson asked. “What are you complaining about, man? We’re at the top of our game! We’re country music gods and you’re going to fuck it all up if you don’t pull it together and get with the program.”
“I’m going to fuck it up?” Where the hell did he get off? “You’re the one fucking anything that chews gum and keeping us buried in the gossip pages of every cheap tabloid on the planet! No one is ever going to take us seriously with you on the cover of Pop Nation, stoned out of your mind with your dick shoved down some random groupie’s throat!”
