He loved being in that band. Writing those songs. Sixty thousand screaming fans shouting his name, wanting to touch him, worship him, adore him. Number-one albums, world tours, platinum discs. All from lyrics he wrote with Ethan, lyrics he sang, melodies played by his brothers. It was magic. He would give anything to have that back.Anything.
That was the problem: he’d reached the pinnacle of life at sixteen.
How could anything ever live up to that?
Who was he without it? Who did hewantto be without it?
The questions and the thoughts kept coming, rippling through him like the waves. He saw his dad when they left, turning his back as they packed into the old truck, Logan at the wheel. Their decrepit labrador, Duke, at his heels. He remembered the bubbling freedom inside himself, the bursting of sheer joy to be leaving, to be on the journey toward his dream, so strong that it made his fingers tingle. His notebook of songs, snippets on his phone, ideas just coming at him as plentiful as rainfall. So young, so free. It felt as if chains were literally falling from him as they turned out the Silver Sky Ranch gates. He had sat back,turned his head to see the mountains retreat in the distance, and seen the reflection in the window of his own beaming smile.
Lying on his surfboard in the ocean, came a cascade of memories he simply couldn’t hold back, Brodie’s muscles twitched with the urge to move, to flee, to turn around paddle back to shore.
I believe in you.
He forced himself to feel it, to let it roll over him. All that excitement, that hope, that fun. Best darn days of his life. Then it had vanished, quick as that. And there was nothing, just an empty void beneath him, the dream shattered. All that regret and frustration. He’d wake up in the night sweating, lie staring up in the darkness trying to find who he was. His sense of self. His purpose. His pride. His brothers. Jack. Ethan.
Brodie shut his eyes and rested his face down on the board. He could taste the salt water on his lips and wondered if he was crying again.
The waves lapped gently around him like soothing hands where his skin touched the water, the sun beat down on his back. He couldn’t say how long he lay there but it felt like he’d seen his whole life before his eyes, every painful memory, every delicious one. Everything. Unfettered. Shameful, exhilarating, terrifying, loving. A cacophony of experiences held back as he raced forward.
He propped his chin on his hands and gazed at the swathes of blue.I believe in you.He smiled.
It was then that he heard a whistle. Sharp and quick, like summoning a dog.
Brodie narrowed his eyes, felt like there was something familiar in that whistle.
Then it came again. Louder this time.
He sat up, straddling the board, and glanced over his shoulder to see where it was coming from. Looking across the water to the beach, he saw two incongruous figures standing side by side, one with his hands in his pockets, the other with his finger and thumb in his mouth ready to whistle again.
Logan and Noah.
Brodie laughed out loud.
Logan raised a hand when he saw that Brodie’d noticed them.
Brodie shook his head in disbelief, then he turned his board around and started paddling, smooth long strokes, back in to shore.
“What the heck are you two doing here?” he called when he was knee-deep, scooping his board up under his arm and striding through the shallows.
“What the heck do you think we’re doing here?” Logan lobbed him his beach towel.
Noah answered for him, “Come to find you, you idiot!”
ChapterForty-Three
Brodie took his brothers to a bar up the beach from his house that played reggae music and served cold beer. They sat at a round table, the sun streaking in lines across them through a wooden-slatted awning, the ocean behind them, almost turquoise in the late-afternoon sunlight.
Brodie traced his thumb down the condensation on his glass. “I think Ren’s right,” he said, looking up to meet both pairs of enquiring eyes. “I’m just running. I don’t know who I am anymore. Who I want to be.” He sat up and stretched his arms above his head, let them flop in his lap. He’d stopped off at his house long enough to have a shower and change, now he sat in dry board-shorts and a T-shirt. “I feel like my best version of me was in the band. When I was up on stage. Everything since then, well—” he shrugged, hated to admit it “—it’s nothing.”
Neither Logan nor Noah said anything, just waited. No one bothered trying to deny it.
Brodie drank his beer, glanced away from them out to the water, wished for a second that he was still back out there on his board. He hung his head for a moment, then turned back to the table. “When I go back to the ranch, it makes me feel like I’m nothing. Like no time has passed. I’m back to being that kid who doesn’t know what he wants to do.” He paused, watched the bubbles in his drink rising to the surface. “I just remember liking writing songs and knowing there was no real place for that there.”
Logan leaned forward, rested his chin on his knuckles as he listened.
“I guess it’s kinda terrifying to wonder what my life is if it’s not that. If it’s not the band, if it’s not making music.” Brodie lifted his drink half-heartedly. “I guess maybe I don’t want to know.”
Noah batted a wasp out the way of his glass. “Okay, so let’s say you could have anything, what is it that you want?”
