Country Heat

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Cash

“ C ash, they’re waiting for you!” my manager Bret shouts as he bangs on my door. I can hear all one hundred thousand of them out there, roaring like an ocean as I roll my eyes and slowly get up. “Cash! Get the fuck out here! CASH!! ”

I take one last swig from my bottle and one last haul from my cigarette before crushing the butt into the ashtray.

“Don’t fucking do this to me again,” Bret shouts in between pounds on the door. “Or you can find yourself a new goddamn manager!”

I open the door to his red puffy face. “You’ve been saying that for the past twenty years.”

“Yeah,” he says as he turns around with a grunt. “So, you can imagine how fucking fed up I am with your bullshit.”

The crowd is going nuts. They’re screaming out there, waiting for me. Fucking idiots.

“What is this shit again?” I ask as I follow Bret to the stage. We’re not going the same speed at all, so he has to double back.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” He clenches his jaw and grabs a fistful of his hair, looking like he’s going to rip it out. The poor fuck. It hasn’t been easy being my manager for the past two decades. I should fire him to put him out of his misery. It would be the humane thing to do. He’s definitely made enough money off me over the years to retire in luxury. Maybe he’s a masochist who loves the pain. Maybe he’s afraid he’ll get bored roaming around his mansion with no one to scream at. Or maybe he’s just addicted to me.

“This is the goddamn Tennessee Country Festival,” he says, staring at me like I’m a total moron.

“We’re in Tennessee?” Shit. I thought we were in Texas.

“Yes, we’re in Tennessee!” he shouts, throwing his hands in the air. “The biggest country festival in the world! Three days! Over fifty artists performing! Over one hundred thousand people in attendance. Hello?!?”

“We need Cash on stage now ,” a severe-looking woman says as she comes running over. “He was supposed to be on seven minutes ago and it’s throwing everything off!”

“He’s going on now,” Bret says, trying to calm her down. “Sorry about that.”

A member of my crew hands me my guitar and I throw it over my shoulder like it’s a part of me. After all of these years, it feels like an extension of my body. Like another limb.

I walk up the steel steps and get a glimpse of the crowd. So many of them. They look so happy. So excited. I can’t remember the last time I felt like that.

Bret grabs my black shirt just before I’m about to step on stage. “You have the setlist?”

“Shit, no.”

My band is already on stage. The bass guitarist is looking at me like ‘What the fuck?’

“Here,” Bret says as he hands me a cue card with the songs on it. I take one glance at it and want to throw up.

The same fourteen songs. Over and over and over and over and fucking over again.

I hate these songs. I fucking loathe them.

Sometimes I wish I would go deaf so I wouldn’t have to hear them ever again, but I know that’s not true. Every single note is burned into my brain and they’ll still be playing on repeat until the wonderful day that I die.

Until then, it’s Up Shit’s Creek and Hometown Hunny on repeat for me.

I sigh as I turn back to the stage.

“Cash!” Bret calls out. I turn to him. “A little enthusiasm this time. Please.”

I grunt and then shuffle onto the stage.

The crowd is deafening. Over one hundred thousand morons screaming at me.

Shut the fuck up , I want to scream. All of you.

I stand in front of the mic and they get even louder. I hope those rain clouds in the distance come this way and drench them all. Now that would be a show.

I clear my throat into the mic and they holler like chimps.

“Hello, Tennessee,” I say. More screaming. “I’m Cash Edwards and this is Broken Rancher .”

The drummer, Mike or Mark or whatever the fuck the new guy’s name is, starts playing and a tsunami of screams from the ocean of idiots comes surging at us.

I grin, wondering what would happen if instead of singing I start railing into them. Telling them exactly what I think of them. These fans are a curse. They’ve ruined my life. I can’t even get a pack of cigarettes without getting mobbed by a dozen recording phones shoved into my face. I’m a fucking prisoner. My life is a joke.

I got no one. I got nothing. Yeah, I have cars and houses and far too many fucking watches for someone with only two wrists. Why are people always giving me watches? I can’t even go into a business meeting without coming out with a goddamn new shiny gold watch. I don’t even wear watches.

These fucking people… They’re all looking up at me with wide eyes and big smiles. Most of them want to be me. They’d change places with me if they could. What they don’t know is that I would change places with them in a second. Even that weirdo with the pink hair and white sunglasses on.

See, they get to go home with their friends and be with their families while I get to go to another lonely hotel room all by myself. Unable even to get ice for my drink because a bunch of annoying fans are waiting in the hall to snap a picture of me.

They get to have a normal life. I get this . People screaming at me. Shoving phones in my face. They don’t know a thing about me and they don’t care. They wouldn’t be cheering if they knew the real me. They’d be leaving for the parking lot.

I spent my career singing songs about broken hearts and lost loves, but I haven’t had either. I’ve never had any of the feelings I sing about. It’s all bullshit. It’s all fake. It’s all pandering to the crowd so they’ll open their wallets. I’m a con artist who sings about love, but all I have is apathy. All I have is numbness.

My part comes and I start singing out of habit. I’m not even paying attention to the bullshit words. I’m just going through the motions. Phoning in another lackluster performance.

“She took my heart in the county fair,

Crushed it to pieces like she didn’t care.”

The crowd is dancing and singing along. It’s a huge party but it feels like I’m the only one who wasn’t invited.

I keep singing as I scan the crowd. A girl lifts up her shirt and shows me her tits. Like I give a fuck. I’ve seen so many tits at so many shows that they’re as exciting to me as seeing a seagull in a parking lot. Put your shirt down, lady. I don’t fucking care.

“Feelings coming in like an avalanche,

I’m falling to pieces on my daddy’s ranch.”

They all cheer when I hit the chorus.

I’m not even paying attention. I just want to get through this so I can lay in bed at the hotel, open a bottle of Jack, and binge-watch some shitty show on Netflix until I pass out.

The song finishes with a pounding of the drums and the crowd erupts.

Ah fuck, what’s the next song?

I pull out the cue card from my back pocket and… oh, mother fucker! Of all the shit songs in my shit catalog, Busted and Bruised must be my most hated.

I wrote this in my early twenties back when the creativity was flowing like a river, instead of the dried-up dusty desert it is now. I wrote it in twenty minutes. It came to me fully formed like a dream while I was mowing my mom’s lawn. I ran into the garage before I lost it and scribbled it onto an instruction manual for my dad’s chainsaw. He was so pissed.

Once I got it recorded and put it out into the world, it was the number one country hit for thirty-six weeks straight.

I’m forty-two and I now realize that it was no dream that came to me that day. It was a fucking nightmare. A curse. That song was what made me blow up and my horrible life has never been the same since.

“Anyone here ever feel busted and bruised up?”

The crowd ignites in a fit of moronic cheering.

I sigh as the bass guitar starts.

One more time for the idiots…

Fucking hell…

“Thank you, Tennessee,” I say with a wave of my hand.

I look out at the crowd. They’re all cheering and hollering, screaming and bellowing until their faces turn red.

It occurs to me that they think I want this. That they think I’m flattered by this. That they’re making me feel good.

All I really want is to have a conversation. An actual, down-to-earth, legitimate conversation. Not a Hollywood reporter asking me the same dumb questions over and over again while the camera records over her shoulder. Not dozens of fans pushing and elbowing each other as they try to get my autograph or a selfie with me. Not a business meeting where everyone is kissing my ass.

Just a conversation. At a table with coffee. A beer in front of a campfire. Anything. Just a real human connection for once, instead of this… monstrosity. Whatever this unnatural thing is.

I wave one last time and shuffle off the stage.

Bret is there, looking relieved. I didn’t give him the enthusiasm he requested, but at least I didn’t smoke on stage and swear at the audience. He’s counting this as a win.

“I told you I didn’t want to play Busted and Bruised anymore,” I growl at him.

“I know,” he says with his voice racing. “But it’s your biggest hit! You have to play it. The audience is expecting it, all one hundred thousand of them. Don’t be selfish, Cash.”

“Selfish?!” I say, about to rail into him. Nothing about my life is selfish. Everything I do, I do for other people. For him, for the record company, for the producers, the band, the fans. If I was brave enough to do something for me, my lips would be wrapped around the barrel of a revolver.

“I told you, I don’t want to play?—”

The words disappear from my mouth when I see what must be an illusion walking by in the distance. My heart stops as I stare at her until she disappears into a room surrounded by half a dozen people.

“Cash?” Bret says as I stare open-mouthed at the closing door. “Cash, are you okay?”

I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t… stop… staring…

There’s no way she was real. She was a hallucination. A fantasy.

All those drugs and all that alcohol over the years is starting to catch up to me. It must be rotting my brain out.

But then a bodyguard opens the door to go in and I catch another glimpse of her.

She’s sitting on the couch, smooth legs pressed together under her white jean skirt. Her hands are clasped in her lap as she does a vocal warm-up with what must be her mom. I can’t stop staring. Her long blonde curly hair, bright green eyes, and young exuberant attitude. She’s a dream. A muse. A fantasy come to life.

She’s what angels must look like. I can feel her youth and excitement and it’s contagious.

“Are you… smiling? ” Bret asks, staring at me in shock.

“No,” I snap, frowning. “It’s just… Who is that?”

The door closes right after he gets a peek.

“That’s Lola Lively,” he says. “The hot new thing. She’s got the number two country track in the country.”

I swallow hard as I stare at the closed door. “Who has the number one track?”

“You do, Cash,” he says with an eye roll.

“I want to meet her,” I say as my feet start moving.

“She’s going on now,” he says. “Where are you going? Cash!”

The door bursts open and she comes out surrounded by her crew. I step back and stare at her in awe as she makes her way to the stage.

My heart is pounding so hard it feels like it’s going to tear my chest apart.

I feel myself leaning in, desperate to get close to her, to smell her, to watch her, to touch her, to be engulfed by her beauty and innocence. I need her. Like I’ve never needed anything.

My heart aches as I watch her stop at the edge of the stage. She’s talking to herself, hyping herself up.

This girl is not phoning it in. She’s preparing herself so she can give the fans a real show.

It feels like I’m witnessing something private, something intimate, but I can’t look away. I just stare at her while jagged cuts tear through my hardened insides, ripping me apart like an earthquake. The old dried up and broken Cash crumbles to pieces, falling to the ground as a new awake and aware Cash emerges from the wreckage.

I’m trembling all over as she bounces onto the stage, looking buoyant and full of life. The crowd adores her. They cheer and holler, ready for a great show.

She says a few happy words into the mic that I can’t quite hear over the vicious pounding of my heart in my ears.

Something is happening to me. I feel something taking over as I watch her sing.

I feel different. I feel… revived.

It’s her.

I feel like everything is changing with every second my eyes are on her. I’m being reborn as I watch her play.

The old way of doing things is over.

It’s time to give a fuck again.

It’s time to care.

And it’s time to get that girl and make her mine.