but not without a lecture about the dangers of quad-bike riding. He now lay in a single bed in a quiet room, waiting to be picked up.
That had been the kicker. When the discharge nurse asked who she should call to pick him up, he’d had to give the name of the only person he knew in the area: Natasha Trigg. The nurse had cast him a suspicious glance when he couldn’t give her Tash’s number but said she’d look it up when she got back to the nurse’s station.
Tears of frustration burned his eyes and he blinked them away. Tears were for sissies, he’d been told many times growing up. They served no purpose other than to make a person look weak.
But right now, with the guilt of those concertgoers’ deaths on his hands, the fear he may never sing again, the revelation he had a daughter, and a broken ankle that hurt like the devil, he didn’t care about weakness.
He felt like bawling.
CHAPTER
11
Tash had been reluctant to drop Isla off at a friend’s place after the big discussion they’d had earlier in the afternoon, but her daughter had been insistent. Tash understood; Isla needed some space, more time to process, and Tash didn’t want to hover. She’d always been a bit of a helicopter parent when Isla had been younger, for the simple fact she only had one child and couldn’t foresee having any more. Not that she was closed off to dating, per se, but the availability of single guys in Brockenridge was low. Those who moved away tended to meet women and marry elsewhere, whereas the few who remained tended to be hard-working farmers perpetually under the pump who rarely had time for a relationship.
While she had no intention of hanging out with Kody for however long he was in town, it was kind of sweet Isla had thought to invite him over because she didn’t have a boyfriend. It looked like her daughter had been borrowing one too many young adult romances from the library.
‘Can I get another beer, love?’
Tash nodded at Bazza, the octogenarian farmer who popped in to The Watering Hole for a late lunch once a month. ‘Sure thing, but you know two’s your limit.’
‘You sound like the old ball and chain,’ he muttered, along with something that sounded suspiciously like ‘nag’.
Tash bit back a grin as she slipped behind the bar to pull him a beer. Bazza and Shirl had been married for sixty years and bickered whenever they came to the roadhouse. Considering her longest relationship—with Kody—had only lasted a few months, she couldn’t imagine living with someone and tolerating their foibles that long.
‘Here you go.’ She placed the beer in front of him. ‘Go easy on that one, it’s your last.’
‘Yep, you could be Shirl’s double.’ Bazza glared at her, before tempering it with a wink. ‘Remind me to find another place to whet my whistle.’
‘Come on, Baz, ’fess up, you’d miss my nagging.’
‘Women,’ he muttered with a roll of his eyes, before grinning at her and taking a giant draught.
She’d done the right thing by popping in to work. An hour or two of an extra shift was guaranteed to take her mind off things. But with Bazza savouring his beer and no other customers, her mind inevitably wandered to Kody and what had brought him to Brockenridge. She grabbed her mobile and slipped into a quiet corner near the bar. It had been many years since she’d typed ‘Kody Lansdowne’ or ‘Rock Hard Place’ into a search engine and it felt plain weird doing it now. Yet she needed to know what she was dealing with when it came to Kody’s mental state, so she could protect Isla if necessary. There was no way the tough guy she’d known would have walked away from his band and his career over an accident.
The concert accident popped up as the third item in a long list of hits. The report didn’t tell her anything more than what Kody had: seven people at a Rock Hard Place concert in Wellington, New Zealand, had been killed and another twenty-three injured in a stampede when patrons had been spooked by a fireworks malfunction and the resultant fire. Sorrow for those poor people who’d lost their lives and their families squeezed her chest. It must’ve been horrific for all involved, including the band. Had Kody witnessed some of the carnage? Is that why he was hiding out? She assumed the band would’ve been