Mom asks.
I know she means well, and her heart is in the right place, but I’m dreading the headlines tomorrow.
Ex-Boy Bander’s Mom to the Rescue.
“I’ll give you two guesses, but you really only need one. What has changed in the last few days? I guarantee word got out about Harley Valentine and Blake Monroe being here—no doubt when they came into town to get food.”
“I’m so sorry, honey.”
“Yeah. Me too. I’m going to have to lie low for a while.”
“Or …” Mom looks at me like I should come to her conclusion on my own.
“Or what?
“Or you could maybe go back to LA and face them. Why were your old friends here? You never said.”
I shake my head. “They want to get Eleven back together. I’m not interested.”
“Why not? You were never happier than when you were performing with them.”
Ugh, I can’t go through this again. “I’m just not, okay? They’re not even my friends. They’re ex-work colleagues. At least, that’s how they’ve treated me since we split, so fuck each and every one of them.”
“You don’t really mean that, do you? Denver loves you. He was practically part of the family once upon a time.”
I scoff. “Denver’s the worst of them all.”
“Oh. Oh, dear. What happened between you two?”
I still don’t know why he avoided me. Not entirely.
“Did you fight over a girl?”
“Hardly.” I wish it were that simple.
“I still think you should consider it. You’re miserable at home, and don’t lie and say you’re not. You miss that life. You miss performing.”
I grit my teeth. “It’s not going to happen.”
“We’ll see.”
“No, we won’t see. It’s not happening, end of story.”
Apparently, it is happening.
Go to LA, she said. Try to get back your old life.
Motherfucker. What am I doing here?
As I stare at Denver’s Malibu home, I curse my mother and the millions of paparazzi swarming Big Sky.
Denver’s house is still the same as it was. It’s not your typical Hollywood celebrity home where the house is hidden by trees or a long driveway with a locked gate out front. There is a gate, but the front door is visible from here. The gate is closed and locked, but it’s late, so he might be inside, or he might not. I’m just trying to build the courage to hit the intercom button.
With one extremely unflattering photo published of me, the media turned up in droves to try to get a photo of, and I quote, “The Train Wreck That Used to Be Mason Nash.”
Yeah, the headlines were worse than I was expecting.
Speculation about my weight gain has started. Apparently, according to one source, I have a rare blood disease and the medication for it makes me appear bloated.
That’s good to know.
Someone in town who knows where our property is must have a big mouth, because reporters and paps were camping outside my damn house along the fence line.
Mom’s solution? Get the hell out of Dodge.
Coming here, though, I might have made a mistake. This thing with Denver … I don’t think I’m ready to put all of that behind me.
I was prepared to come out here and hide in a hotel suite for as long as it took for the world to realize I’d left Montana, but money is tight. I still have some royalties coming in from the Eleven days, but I have no savings. My gut twists when I acknowledge that I’m basically broke. Well, not technically, because the millions of dollars I earned from Eleven went to building my house and bailing out my family on the failed tree farm. The land in Montana is technically all mine, but I’m not going to divide it and sell off blocks to support a hideaway location for me. I had the perfect hideaway, and then Harley fucked that up by showing his face in my town.
Now I’m here, after a sixteen-hour drive, regretting the choice to pick Denver to turn to. Not that I had many other options. Ryder has his daughter, Blake’s on location I think, and Harley … Yeah, no, I don’t want to have to make a deal where I say yes to a reunion so I have somewhere to sleep for a while.
Both Harley and Denver owe me—Denver for our past and Harley for the current predicament I’m in—but I went with the lesser of two evils. Not that Harley’s evil. He’s just intense. Especially when it comes to work, and especially when he gets an idea in his head. He almost always gets