Second Chance Lane (Brockenridge #2) - Nicola Marsh Page 0,4
some backwater town on the border and had insisted he use it for however long he wanted. Right now, Kody had no idea how long that would be. One month? Two? He didn’t care. Time was irrelevant, considering he could barely function these days.
Causing the deaths of seven innocent people did that to a guy.
The silence of the car interior made his fingers itch to turn on the radio but he hadn’t been able to listen to music since the accident. It had been a long four hours alone with his self-flagellating thoughts skipping like a stuck LP. He’d never been to this part of Victoria before, with its rolling hills and barren paddocks interspersed with sparsely populated towns. Not that he cared about the scenery. Everything he needed was packed in the car boot: two crates of bourbon, a suitcase of clothes and a box of groceries so he could lay low for at least a week without heading into town. Last thing he needed was locals recognising him and leaking to the press where he was. That’s why he really hoped the supermarket did home delivery, but when he’d asked Yanni, his drummer had laughed. Apparently Yanni holidayed in Brockenridge whenever he came home and no one had ever recognised him. Exactly why Kody had jumped at the chance to hide out there.
A sign indicated he had another twenty kilometres to go as he cruised past a roadhouse, labelled THE WATERING HOLE in bright neon light. He’d seen similar places in the USA in the early days when the band’s coach would cruise from Alabama to Utah, California to Nevada, Texas to Georgia, keen to play as many gigs as humanly possible to lift their profile.
It had worked too, the slow burn of Rock Hard Place exploding into a furore of fame when they’d landed the prized gig of opening act for America’s number one rock band. His dream had come true. Fame. Fortune. Adoration.
Yet here he was, turning his back on it all because he couldn’t sing a note anymore. His vocal cords had seized the moment he’d heard about those poor people dying because of him. He’d had to walk away from the love of his life, music.
That had been a month ago and his manager, along with his band, had insisted he find somewhere to get his head straightened out after he’d spent the last four weeks holed up in a Wellington hotel, drinking himself into a stupor or dosed up on tranquilisers. Roger, Yanni, Blue and Daz were the closest thing he had to family and when they’d ambushed him with an intervention-style dressing down, he’d finally admitted the truth: he was a mess. He needed to get away, somewhere off the grid, somewhere he could work through his issues.
They expected him to come back to Melbourne some time in the not too distant future to work out the band’s next tour, with the hope Rock Hard Place would be bigger and better than ever. He hadn’t had the heart to tell them his music career was over. They’d find out soon enough.
He hit the outskirts of town, not surprised to see the main street flanked by pubs in typical Aussie fashion. There was the requisite bakery, a small supermarket, op shop, cafés and Chinese restaurant, a surprisingly upmarket medical centre and a town square. Yanni was right, the place had an understated charm. Not that it mattered. Kody wouldn’t be spending any time here. He’d be holed away drinking himself into oblivion.
Yanni’s house sat on a small hillside at the highest point of a dead-end road, Wattle Lane. He should’ve known his mate’s version of ‘shack’ resembled a sprawling homestead that looked straight out of an architectural digest. The entire place gleamed, with its sandstone façade, gunmetal steel roof and wrap-around veranda in contrasting sienna.
He parked the car around the back and stepped out, wincing as his knee buckled slightly. That’d teach him for doing one too many leaps into mosh pits in his early days. Those heady, crazy days when he’d known he’d had the talent to make it big but needed a break. Those exciting days filled with dreams and promise—and Tash.
Crap, where had that come from? He hadn’t thought of her in a long while. That’s all he needed when he was already feeling lower than low. The way she’d callously dumped him and announced he had no say in whether he wanted a child or not … he’d been