* * *
Two Months Ago,Georgia
Ellery didn’t move.Her phone buzzed but she couldn’t reach it.She didn’t want to reach it.Tyler, long ago Tyler, wannabe famous Tyler, wouldn’t stop calling.
She should have listened to Dante in the first place and never hooked up with him.She was twenty-two; she should be forgiven for such youthful indiscretions.Just her shitty luck that Logan had signed him as a client too.
She closed her eyes and leaned against the window of the tour bus.Everything here was hot and sticky, and the air buzzed with insects to the point it sounded alive.
Maybe the air was alive.Maybe everything was alive, except for her.
In the background, Abe and Selene and Lorraine moved around the bus, the buzzing drowning out their noise.
A few more weeks.A few more stops.Then she could rest.She could go back to the little bungalow she had bought with the money from the damn album release, pull the covers over her head, and wallow.
If only she could write.Logan kept pestering her to “put her feelings on the page.”But how?Inspiration wasn’t a light switch she could flick.
The bus sped along the highway, farmlands, dim in the faint light from the moon, barely visible.But they were out there, stretching to the horizon.When she had been a child, her parents had driven her and Samara down to visit Rock City and Ruby Falls and Chattanooga.Her sister had always been scared of the dark and had clung so tightly to her hand on a cavern tour, Ellery thought she’d broken her fingers.
But they weren’t broken.
She opened her eyes and traced a design in the halo left by her breath on the bus window.Her fingers weren’t broken, but her family was.She was.
She had lost her inspiration and didn’t know how to find it anymore.She was washed up before she was even thirty.She had made compromise after compromise and what had it gotten her?Criticism.
Her phone buzzed again, then once more.It would only be Logan.
She swiped to Accept and held the phone to her ear.
“How did Atlanta go?”he asked, brusque.He could pile on the compassion when he needed to, but apparently this didn’t warrant it.
“Fine.”She leaned her head against the rest of her seat.Jasper sat beside her, staring at her accusatorially.Why don’t you write?Why don’t you sing?he whispered.
She covered him up with her jacket.
“I’m getting in more tour reviews.People are loving it.How are you coming on the new songs?”
“Great.”If great meant she couldn’t write a single word.
Maybe she should take up drinking.It had worked for countless artists before her.On second thought, perhaps not as they had intended.
“Good, good.We need them if we want to capitalize on this momentum.”He paused and she heard a muffled command, like he was giving orders to an underling.When he returned, his voice lowered.“What happened with Chris?”
“What do you mean?”She picked at a piece of lint on her sweatpants.She let Maria truss her up like a prize pig onstage, but the minute she had access to her own things, she headed straight back into cozy sweats and hoodies.
“He says you won’t return his calls.”
“There’s no need for me to return his calls.We’re not a couple.”
Logan sighed dramatically.“Look, it’s a business gig.If you’re in a relationship, you appear more desirable.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Yes, it is, but that’s the business.He’s not a bad guy.”
“He’s not.But he’s also not my guy.”Chris’s idea of a good date was to get smoothies and sit on the back porch, running his lines until she knew them better than he did.He was perfectly nice, but there was no spark.He certainly wasn’t— “I don’t think he even listens to music.Not stuff he can’t work out to.”
“You’re gatekeeping.But fine.Fine.Plenty of fish in the sea.Tell me the kind of person you want, and I’ll set it up.A celebrity romance keeps your name out there.”
