The Strip glows through the windows, but the suite is quiet in the right ways. I lean against the bar, not crowding. Lou stands, then sits on the arm of the couch, as if she’s not ready to commit to the whole seat. The dress Knox arranged looks like it chose her, not the other way around. No glitter, no fight with the fabric. She fits it, it fits her. Her hair is loose now, and the copper streaks catch the hotel light.
I stir my soda with a straw and take a sip. “How’d you meet Troy?”
She makes a face at the glass, not at me. “Backstage pass thing. His breakout solo tour last year. I went with a friend. She lost interest halfway through the set. I didn’t. Somebody in a lanyard asked if we wanted to meet the band. Troy thought my friend was pretty, and my friend thought he was loud, so she shoved me in front of him. We clicked. He was funny that night.”
“He has a good sense of humor. Or, he used to.”
She taps the stem, a tiny rhythm. “I didn’t know he was such a big jackass—” She stops herself and looks up. “Sorry. I shouldn’t talk about your brother like that.”
“He’s a jackass.” I take the sting out with a shrug. “I didn’t want to see it. Knox and Salem kept telling me we had a problem. I kept giving him chances.”
She waits. Not pushing. Not letting me off the hook.
“When he was in the band, he always tried to soak up the light. Most solos, most screen time, most press. If a camera panned left, he went left, even if the part didn’t call for him. To him, it didn’t matter that we were a bandandbrothers. The spotlight was the job.” I sigh. “That’s not how this works.”
Her fingers stop tapping.
“And then money started going missing.” I keep it simple. “Band accounts. Shared expenses. Tour float fund. It took me too long to call it what it was. He called itborrowing. But it’s not borrowing if you never pay it back. Eventually, he started bucking for top billing and trying to con our financial manager into giving him a bigger cut. We had to put a stop to it.”
She takes a long drink and sets the glass down. “Why didn’t you go public with that? People would want to know what he did.”
I tilt my head, let the question sit one beat. “You don’t have siblings, do you?”
Her mouth pulls into a flat line. “No.” She pauses. “Maybe.”
I nod. I’m not sure what she means, but I’m not going to pry if she doesn’t want to say it.
She looks down at her hands, then reaches for the chain at her neck. The silver catches and slides. She brings out a small locket and lays it in her palm.
“I’m an orphan.” She says it plain. “Aged out of foster care. I don’t know much about my family. This was with me when I was surrendered into a safe haven baby box at a hospital.”
She opens the locket. Two tiny faces stare back. A pretty woman. A handsome man. The photos are old, the kind where every highlight goes to white. She looks at them the way people look at landmarks they’ve never visited and still know by heart.
“I think they might be my parents. I’ll never know.” She flips the locket. “The back says ‘Navarro.’ That’s how I got my last name.” A small breath. “One of the nurses at the hospital liked Louisa May Alcott. So I got Louisa May.”
The little click when the locket closes hits harder than I expect. I’m fine with noise. This quiet doesn’t sit right with me. Not after that sad story. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m used to it.”
People get used to standing in the rain too. Doesn’t mean it’s right.
“My brothers and I don’t know who our fathers are.” I lean back on the bar, keep my voice even. “Our mother had a busy social life when she was touring. She named us for the cities she thinks she conceived us in.”
She snorts at that. “Really?”
I nod and smile. “We laugh about it because it’s easier than thinking too hard about how her life was back then. She got pregnant with Knox when she was nineteen. I can’t imagine howhard that was for her. She kept going, met my bio-dad, and a few years later, Salem’s. Whoever they were.” I sigh. “Three kids, boom, boom, boom, when she was barely an adult herself. That’s why she settled into studio work. To raise us with a steady paycheck and a stable home.”
“That’s a good mom.”
I grin. “Yeah, she is. We’re close with her. If I didn’t have my family, I’d be lost.”
Lou turns the locket over with her thumb. “Your mom named you Houston because…”
“Houston, Texas.”
“Knox?”
“Knoxville.”
