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CHAPTER 1
QUINN
When I was growing up, Belmont Springs seemed like paradise. Definitely not for its oozing charm,being that it was on the edge of town, no one had bothered to fix up. The houses were squat boxes originally built in neat rows, but somehow they’d gotten scraggly over the years. The HOA had gotten weak in the late 2000s when the market crashed. Back then, people were more worried about keeping food on the table than whether their neighbor’s fence was stained Light Oak or Pecan, so our neighbors stopped bothering to get approval for their additions and changes. My own parents built a treehouse in the back corner of our yard that was so big it could have served as the neighborhood watch tower. It had a bridge of planks set too far apart to be safe that crossed over into my best friend Renee’s yard and connected to her own tree house.
My friends and I practically grew up in those tree houses. If we weren’t there, we were running wild through each other’s houses and yards, and when we were old enough, the woods that hovered at the edge of the neighborhood. We started ourfirst band in Renee’s garage. I lost my virginity in David Elijah’s basement. I learned to drive in the cul-de-sac at the end of Joanne’s street, and I nearly lost all my hair letting Mia flat iron it in her kitchen. The neighborhood was as much a part of me as my skin and bones and organs.
But I was afraid that when I went back, it wouldn’t be the same.
“It hasn’t beenthatlong,” Renee said when she picked me up from the bus stop–the last way I thought I’d ever come back into town. And I definitely hadn’t thought I’d return with just the clothes on my back, my guitar, and a hastily packed backpack on my back.
“It’s been seven years.”
I always thought I’d stick around. Not permanently, of course. But I figured it would be my home base. The place I returned to between tours. Where I came to nurse my broken hearts. To recover from show business life in general. But then my parents had gotten divorced and sold the house, and my career had taken off in a way I never imagined. It had exploded like a rocket ship, and I’d just been hanging on, letting it drag me to and fro for the last seven years.
Now I was finally back. Not because I was between tours–although I was–or because my heart was particularly broken–I’d never met anyone worth crying over. No, I was back because I was being chased. Jason Cain’s face flashed through my mind, making my whole body tense up.
Don’t think about him now. Not yet.
“I still can’t believe you bought your parents’ house,” I said, trying to distract myself from thoughts of my manager. I turned my head and watched the trees skate past my window. We werestill on the highway, but soon we’d be getting off at our exit and I’d be able to see whether anything was still familiar.
“I still can’t believe Callum managed to talk them into selling it.” Renee’s voice was loaded with disgust. She hooked her wild, wavy hair behind her ear, and I caught a glimpse of the tattoo on her index finger. An elaborate B that curled from the joint knuckle to the distal joint. I had the same one. Our band was calledThe Belles, after Belmont Springs. We liked the irony of it. The name called forth images of demure girls in long white dresses with elegant manners. The contrast of us with our wild hair and in-your-face attitude appealed to us at the time. Hell, it still did.
I made a noncommittal noise. Unlike Renee, I wasn’t surprised at all when I heard that Renee’s older brother had moved his parents over to Waterford Village, the rich side of town where he owned a five-bedroom, seven-bathroom mini-mansion whose shadow stretched beyond his property line at sunset. He’d never seemed to like Belmont Springs. He didn’t want tree houses and freedom. He preferred country clubs and uniformly cut lawns.
“Callum’s got that older son syndrome,” I said, looking down at my own index finger now. We’d gotten these at sixteen with Mia and Joanne. We’d begged Callum to take us to the tattoo parlor and pretend to be our guardian, but he’d refused. We’d had to let David Elijah’s cousin do it with his contraband tattoo gun and solemn vow that he could handle it.
“He’s got asshole syndrome.”
The ten-year age difference between Callum and Renee hadn’t stopped them from squabbling like siblings who had grown up together. I’m sure there were a few good years when Renee was too little to get on his nerves and he was too old to irritate theshit out of her, but around the time she became a teenager and he became a college graduate, they’d started fighting. It looked like they were still at it.
“It’s a nice place though, right?” I was trying to be fair. Maybe when we pulled into Belmont, I wouldn’t think it was so great anymore either. Maybe I too had been spoiled by luxury.
“Immaculate.” Renee spit out the word like it was a bad thing. “Marbleeverything.”
“Even the mattresses?”
“No, those are granite.” Renee cracked a smile. “Which explains why everyone from Waterford walks around like they’ve got a stick up their ass.”
I grinned, wondering what she’d think if she saw the mansion in LA I had briefly lived in. It wasn’t mine–I made good money but notthatgood. It had belonged to an actor I’d dated for way too long.
Again, Jason Cain’s face flashed before my eyes, and my smile shriveled up at the edges. It took me a minute for my muscles to remember we weren’t in front of the press. This wasn’t an awards ceremony or a talk show. It was okay for the smile to die completely. As the corners of my lips relaxed, my shoulders did, too. I blew out my breath and wondered how long it would take for eight years of training to leave my body.
It was humiliating now to realize how well Jason had trained me. He was the reason I hadn’t broken up with the actor the first time I caught him in a lie. Somehow, with his great and terrible way of convincing me to do nearly anything, he’d persuaded me to wait. Now wasn’t a good time. Did I want the press to covermy breakup or my album? It wasn’t until I’d actually caught the actor in bed with someone else that I finally left.
And Jason had been pissed.
“Thanks for letting me stay with you,” I said to Renee, turning to look out the window again. Trying to forget Jason again. We’d gotten off the highway, and we were on the main drag that separated the new part of town from the old part. If we turned right at the McDonalds, the roads would get wider and nicer. There would be curated medians with fruit trees growing in even intervals. The entrances to neighborhoods would be marked with grand brick entrances. Some would even have fountains.
When we turned left, the streets got scrubbier as nature got wilder. Instead of turn offs into neighborhoods, there were small gravel parking lots where people could park and hike one of the dozens of marked trails. We’d always preferred the unmarked ones ourselves. Then we turned into Belmont Springs, and tension I didn’t even know I was holding was released. It was so visceral I felt tears spring into my eyes.
“Same old Belmont,” I said happily, my voice thick.
Renee sent me a sideways glance. She’d thought for a minute I was overacting, trying to prove that seven years in LA hadn’t changed me. She must have seen that I was serious though, because she grinned. “The old tree houses are even still standing.”
I was glad. They’d withstood a dozen attacks by the reinvigorated homeowner’s association. When Renee’s parents decided to sell, the HOA thought they’d finally have their chance. Surely the new owners wouldn’t be as accommodating as the people who had bought my parents’ house. Surelytheywould say, “Hey, we can’t have this tree house village on our property. Tear this down!”
Then Renee had bought it, dashing their hopes.
