6. Brooks
6
brOOKS
Sneaking out of some random girl’s apartment hadn’t been on Brooks’s list of activities for the day, but here he was, doing it anyway.
Even though the last time he’d done this, he’d been a lot younger, and it had been after a much better night, damn if the guilt wasn’t similar.
Maddie seemed nice enough—hell, she’d let him stay asleep on her couch—but waking up here had startled the shit out of him. He wanted to be at least a few miles away before this sleepy town woke up and anyone else discovered him here.
He found his way out of the apartment through that hallway in the back of the store, grabbed the guitar and duffel bag he’d taken out of his car before it’d been towed, and then went out a back door that let him out into a small parking lot.
After checking that the door locked shut behind him, he reached into his pocket for his sunglasses. Not the best way to remain incognito, but it was better than nothing. All he needed was to find a pocket of cell service, call Cormac to pick him up, and he’d be fine.
Except I’m out of a car and my life feels in shambles.
He’d come here to get away from the mess he’d created in Baltimore, but the truth was the mess had started long before that.
Heavy pressure enclosed his chest, like a belt wrapped too tight, and he started forward. It didn’t take long for him to find the street. Draped in blue-toned early morning light, the collection of brick and stone shops on Main Street was strangely bleak. Flyers on the window fronts spoke of community events—including a charity festival—all so small-town stereotypical and saccharine that he rolled his eyes.
People in places like this were all the same. Busybodies, cliquish, insufferable. They’d smile at outsiders and then turn right around and gossip about them as soon as they walked out the door. People who weren’t born here never truly broke into the so-called community.
He’d seen it all before in his hometown of Fountain Springs in North Carolina.
He saw the way they’d pretended to rally around his family.
Nothing but a bunch of fakery.
Hands stuffed into his pockets, he tore his gaze away from the buildings, dripping with their attempts at charm. Just like that Depot he’d crashed into. It had more cinnamon-scented, plaid-toned knickknacks than a Cracker Barrel Country Store.
He’d walked for what had to be at least a couple of miles when he gave up on the concept of cell service getting any better. At the sound of a car approaching, he turned to the road and threw his thumb in the air. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d hitchhiked—maybe as a teenager—but this seemed as good a time as any.
An old man in a truck slowed and rolled the window down. “Don’t think I’ve seen a hitchhiker round here in twenty years.” He laughed, his blue eyes twinkling. “Where you heading?”
Thank God the man was old. Old people didn’t tend to recognize or give a rat’s ass who he was.
“I’m trying to get to”—he searched for, then rattled off the address Cormac had texted him—“but my car broke down. Any chance you know where that is?”
The man nodded. “Sure do. Want a ride? I was heading into town, but I can take you over there if you’d like. Short drive from here.”
“Sure you don’t mind?” Brooks didn’t mention how much he minded getting in the passenger seat of any vehicle, but he had to accept his situation.
He smiled again, his face pleasant. “Would I have stopped if I minded?”
Fair enough. Brooks set his bags in the bed of the truck and climbed into the passenger seat. The man shifted a hand-tied bouquet of what appeared to be wildflowers from the seat into the back. “Sorry. I just picked these for my wife.”
Brooks raised a brow. “You serious?”
The man pulled back onto the road. “Absolutely. She loves flowers. Always has. And I love to see her smile.”
It was almost enough to make his cynical heart thaw slightly. Almost.
But not really.
The man was clearly a kook.
“You’re not from around here, obviously,” the man said, his eyes focused on the road. “Just passing through or staying for a while?”
“Passing through for a few days.” His palms started sweating as he jerked his eyes from the steering wheel. He didn’t want the man to think he was studying his every movement on the wheel intently—even though he was.
He hated, hated not being in control of a car.
“Where’re you coming from?”
“LA.” How hadn’t he gotten the clue that he didn’t want to talk yet? “I’m not staying in town, though.”
“That’s too bad. The lake is nice, but the town is better.” The old man reached over into the side pocket of his door and pulled out a can of Pringles. “Want one?”
“I’m good, thanks.” He couldn’t think of anything less appetizing.
The man winked, then popped one in his mouth. “The wife thinks I eat too much salt. So I have to sneak them in the car.” He gave an obvious glance at Brooks’s left hand. “You married?”
Of all the people who had to pull over, it had to be someone chatty. “Nope.”
He put another chip in his mouth and chewed slowly. “Let me guess. You don’t have a good woman in your life, either.”
Brooks snorted. “Come again?”
The man grinned. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you wear that look on your brow . . . of a man who’s spent too long having to take care of himself without a soft place to land. A good woman gives you that.”
Ridiculous bullshit.
“You mean you think I look miserable?”
“Well, yes, but that’s not what I meant.”
“I’ve seen plenty of marriages that make men—and women—miserable.” Brooks checked his phone and started scrolling through his apps. Maybe the man would take the hint and quit the chatter.
“That’s because they didn’t marry a good person.” The old man shifted in his seat. “Believe me, I know. People have always told me their stories and secrets. What troubled them. Whether or not I wanted them to. That’s what you get when you tend bar for forty years. My wife says I have a gift for listening.”
Right now, the only gift this old geezer seemed to have was a gift for talking. “Huh,” Brooks muttered, keeping his gaze down.
“While you’re here, think of heading into town sometime. You never know. You might find a good woman there.”
This good woman talk was getting old fast. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Brooks cleared his throat.
“I’m Peter, by the way.” He gave Brooks another glance. “Happy to take you fishing while you’re up at the lake, if you want. No problem that a few early morning hours in a fishing boat can’t solve.”
Brooks couldn’t keep the sardonic chuckle out of his throat this time. “I doubt that.”
“I’m serious.” Peter had a kind smile, even if he was clearly a dimwit.
Brooks crossed his arms. “So you’re telling me that if I spend two hours fishing, my massive career problems will magically disappear, my niece’s deadbeat dad will stop trying to use her existence for more money, and my car will fix itself?”
A few beats of silence followed, and Brooks almost bit his own damn tongue. How did this guy get me to spill all that?
Maybe he did have a gift for getting people to tell him their secrets.
Peter eyed him thoughtfully. “I didn’t say fix. I said solve.”
“Same difference.”
“No, that’s not true. Language has nuance.”
Brooks didn’t respond. He of all people should know the latter part, though. He was a lyricist. Maybe not with his last release, but even a few years back, he’d been considered the best at his game. No one dared argue with his sense of musicality, his compositions, or his lyrics.
A lump formed in his throat, and he took the break in conversation gratefully. The brief nap on Maddie’s couch had kept the beginnings of a migraine at bay, but his tiredness was overwhelming.
For his part, Peter didn’t say much more. He’d clearly gotten the hint, and he hummed to himself as he drove, the occasional crunch of a chip punctuating the silence, a slight smell of grease in the air each time he popped the can open.
The car slowed, and Brooks frowned as Peter put on his hazard lights and stopped. They were in the middle of the woods on a two-lane road.
His shoulders grew taut, his senses alert. “Are we almost there?”
“Almost.”
Was this the part where the kindly old man turned out to be a murderous psycho?
Peter opened his door and slipped out onto the road. Brooks watched as the man limped toward a blackish lump in the middle of the road, then bent over and lifted it. He carried it to the other side of the road, then wiped his hands on his jeans, smiling down as he said something Brooks couldn’t hear.
When he returned to the car, Peter settled into his seat. “Box turtle. The road’s not the best place for him to be.” He chuckled, his eyes lit with amusement. “Guess they like life in the fast lane sometimes. Damn things think a hard shell’s all they need to protect them.”
Oh.
Brooks said nothing as Peter started driving again.
After a few minutes, they turned into a gravel driveway, and Peter stopped in front of a small cabin in the woods. “This is it,” he said with a nod. “The Doyles’ fishing cabin.”
Brooks tilted his chin at Peter. The man really did know this town inside and out, didn’t he? That was probably how it was with locals around here—especially old men like Peter. He opened the door. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Not a problem. I was on my way to my granddaughter. She’ll probably be glad I didn’t wake her up.” Peter smiled, then reached into his seat console and pulled out a pad of paper. Taking a pen from his pocket, he wrote a phone number and held it out to Brooks. “If you change your mind about going fishing, give me a call. And get some cream of crab soup from Bunny’s Café if you go to town. I know the owner. She’s a gem.”
Thanks, but no thanks.
The man had given him a ride, though, so he couldn’t be a complete asshole to him. Brooks took the paper and folded it, then slipped it into his pocket. He nodded a goodbye, then closed the passenger door and grabbed his stuff.
The truck turned slowly in the driveway, and Brooks watched as the lights faded. He rarely had genuine interactions with people these days, especially people who clearly had no clue who he was. Once upon a time, he would have found it refreshing, but the one thing he’d learned about having a bad reputation was that it kept people at arm’s length.
He’d even seen that wariness on Maddie Yardley’s face this morning. That hesitation to even consider granting him the favor of privacy. Distrust.
Brooks went to the front door and did a cursory search for a doorbell. None. He knocked instead.
A minute of silence passed, then Brooks knocked again, more loudly this time.
Silence.
Maybe Cormac was still sleeping?
He squinted at the driveway. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen a car in the driveway.
He knocked one more time.
What if he’s not here?
Yet why wouldn’t he be? It was just past seven in the morning, and Cormac had said he was coming here.
Brooks double-checked his text messages from Cormac against the address on the metal mailbox beside the door. He couldn’t be 100 percent certain that the street was the same, but the house number seemed to be.
With a sigh of frustration, Brooks went around the side of the small cabin to the patio. He set his hands on either side of his face, trying to peer inside the sliding glass door.
The inside was dark . . . and a mess.
The furniture appeared to be piled, the ceiling drooped, and insulation poked through the rafters.
What the hell?
Cormac had mentioned it was a rustic place, but surely, he couldn’t have meant this?
Brooks sat with his back against the sliding door and stretched his legs in front of him. Taking out his phone, he checked for service once again.
What type of fucking town was this? How was his ability to communicate with the outside world suddenly so truncated? He had no car, was now in the middle of nowhere, and couldn’t get a phone call in or out.
The urge wasn’t so much to feel sorry for himself as it was to throw something, which he nearly did—the useless cell phone in his hands. He caught himself at the last second, cooling his brewing temper.
One . . . two . . . three . . .
Deep breaths.
Focus.
The soft, dappled light hitting the rime of the forest floor around him sparkled. Enough to distract him, to settle the pressure on his chest somewhat and let his fingers uncurl.
The sort of thing he should have done when Mike threw that goddamn punch yesterday.
Kayla.
His heart tugged at the memory of his sister finding him with tears in her eyes. She always drove anytime he was performing within a couple of hours of Alexandria, Virginia, where she’d settled after Audrey had been born. He’d wanted her to come live with him in Los Angeles, but Kayla hadn’t wanted to tear Audrey away from Constance, who lived in Virginia.
Crazy to think that a piece of shit like Mike could come from someone as kind as Constance Valders. She’d been like a mother to Kayla after Audrey’s birth, taking the role that their own mother would have happily filled if she’d been alive. She watched Audrey when Kayla needed childcare and brought Kayla diapers and formula despite her fixed income. Protected both Kayla and Audrey from Mike, too.
And Audrey loved her Mom-mom. Kayla couldn’t tear her daughter away from the only other family Audrey had besides Brooks. Especially when Brooks did so much traveling.
“Mike is suing for custody.”
The words still made a shiver go through him.
Brooks had fired off an angry text, and Mike had responded by showing up at the concert venue, then snuck back before the band went on. Got mouthy and confrontational.
And the rest was history.
Except this time, Brooks’s temper had cost him more than ever.
He needed to call Kayla as soon as he could. Apologize to her, too, because this wouldn’t help Kayla in a courtroom. Mike would spin it to his advantage—about how Kayla was using her celebrity brother to bully him and “keep him from his daughter.”
Kayla had been there when it went down, begging Brooks to cool it.
Drawing one knee up, Brooks rested his elbow against it, then covered his face with his cut and bruised hand.
Dammit.
This time, his problems felt unfixable.
He sucked in another deep breath.
He hadn’t gotten to where he was in life by crumbling and giving up when things got rocky. Maybe Cormac hadn’t been able to get in touch with him, but this was ridiculous. Plenty of houses had dotted the side of the road on the way over here—if phone service was so unreliable around here, then people probably had landlines. He’d just have to walk.
He stood and wiped his hands on his jeans. The thought of lugging his expensive guitar along as he searched for help didn’t appeal, so he tucked it and his duffel bag under a tarp covering a pile of firewood.
Then he started back down toward the road.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been out in the woods like this. Much as he’d claimed he’d loved the abundance of trails near him when he’d moved to LA, he rarely went into nature. Work beckoned him to cities, both here in the States and all over the world.
He went the opposite direction from where he’d come in. The old man who’d brought him here seemed to have taken some backroads, and that wasn’t what he needed right now. Main roads were more useful to his search.
He had only been walking for about ten minutes when a barrage of notifications chimed in his phone. Standing off to the side of the road, he scrolled through them. Several texts from Kayla, Cormac—who was wondering where the hell he was and who said he was, supposedly, at the cabin—and even Darren.
Also, a message from the president of his label—Ava Peterson.
Ava : Call me immediately.
Shit. Maybe it had been better to have his phone out of service.
He groaned and dialed Ava’s number.
“Where are you?” Ava answered without bothering to say hello.
“At a friend’s place.”
“You need to come back to LA immediately. We need to have some serious discussions about cleaning up your image. Our phones have been ringing off the hook with this mess you created.”
Brooks rubbed his eyelids. “What, so you can send me to sex therapy and rehab? Darren already floated his crap-tastic idea to me, and I fired him. The charges against me are for assault, Ava, not sexual assault. And the charges aren’t going to stick. I punched the guy, not beat him up with a baseball bat.”
“What difference does it make? You think people won’t start pulling all sorts of stories about you out of the woodwork? If you have any better ideas, then please, enlighten me. Because you’re costing us a lot of money right?—”
“Surely not more money than I’ve made for you, Ava. Let’s get that straight.”
“No, you get this straight. Your new contract says you can’t go anywhere else for three years. You know it, and I know it. We pull the plug on you, and three years from now, you’ll be even more irrelevant than you’re already becoming. Any move you make, you’ll be slapped so hard with a lawsuit your eyes will be permanently stuck to the back of your skull. We own you, Brooks.”
Brooks clenched his jaw, resisting the urge to tell her to fuck off.
“I’m not coming to LA right now,” he said at last in a voice that sounded much calmer than he felt. “Or following Darren’s ridiculous idea. I’ll get my new assistant to send you a PR plan by the end of the week. Until then, I’ll be lying low.”
“One week is too long.”
“Tough. I need time to come up with a solid plan.”
He hung up, his head pounding.
Ava wouldn’t call back right away. Despite her no-nonsense, hard-ass approach, they’d had a good working relationship for years. He’d only signed on with the label again recently because of that. But he didn’t want to think about Ava or the label right now.
He had no idea what the hell he was going to do.
First things first, find Cormac.
He headed back to the cabin. Cormac hadn’t mentioned in his texts that he was leaving the cabin, so maybe he’d just gone out?
That didn’t explain the state of the cabin, but who was he to judge?
This time when he got to the cabin, rather than going to the front door, he banged on a few windows on the way to the back again.
A click, followed by a soft metallic sliding whoosh sounded as Brooks approached the back door.
Cormac stepped out onto the patio, a look of bewilderment on his face. “What the hell are you doing out here?”
Thank God.
“I knocked a few times on the door.” He scrambled up from the ground. “But you didn’t seem to hear me.”
Cormac blinked at him. “Sorry, the place is an absolute wreck. I ended up having to rough it in an old sleeping bag I found in the closet and was curled up inside it. You must have been out here for hours. Why didn’t you call?”
“No service.” He didn’t bother correcting Cormac’s ideas about how long he’d been here because that would mean an explanation about the accident and lots more he didn’t feel like getting into. “Where’s your car?”
“Shed.” Cormac grimaced, his dark brown eyes lively. “Yeah, I should have warned you about service and the smallness of things around here. Why do you think I wanted to get the hell out of this town as a kid?”
“I’m seeing that.”
“So it turns out that my parents had some issues with carpenter bees this past summer, and no one told me about it—but I don’t think we can stay here. I slept here so you wouldn’t show up and think I’d bailed on you, but we may need to find another place. Unless you really feel like roughing it.”
As Brooks squinted at him, some early morning sun poked through the treetops and hit him square in the eye. At least someone still tolerates me. Understands me.
But, no, he didn’t feel like roughing it.
After the night he’d had and Ava’s phone call, the sound of a sleeping bag and a wrecked cabin was the last thing he wanted. Hell, he’d worked too hard in life to deal with that anymore. He’d never really been the type to throw his money around, but maybe it was time for him to start living the way people thought he did.
Embrace the asshole persona everyone had boxed him into.
He grinned, a carefree feeling curling through him. “Actually, I have another idea.”