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  “Right. See you in Nashville. Good show, Anson. I like the new haircut, by the way.”

  I laughed and took my cowboy hat off, running my fingers through my damp hair. “You can’t even see it under the hat, asshole!”

  He laughed and walked backward as he said, “You took it off when you kissed that younger girl on the cheek because it was her birthday.”

  I frowned. “That’s creepy as fuck that you pay that much attention to my hair, Rob!”

  He shot me the finger and kept walking. I couldn’t help but smile. Robert had been there for me through it all. In a way, he had been like a father figure to me the last six years. Especially considering my own father hadn’t spoken to me since I left for Nashville.

  Lanny sighed and then walked alongside me and Zeus. “Anson, Lori Miller is waiting in your dressing room to do an interview.”

  With an internal groan, I slowed my pace. Lori was the last person I wanted to see, and I knew for a fact that the last thing on her mind was an interview with me. She wanted to fuck. And the last time we did that was...yeah, over six months ago.

  “We weren’t scheduled for an interview, Lanny.”

  Lanny, who was the best damn assistant in the world, looked at me with a smirk. She knew the history there with Lori. “She wouldn’t take no for an answer. I tried to tell her you wouldn’t do one, but she insisted you would, once you knew it was her. Said it was time or some nonsense like that.”

  I rolled my eyes. What was it going to take to get this woman to realize I wasn’t interested?

  All of my meet-and-greets were done before the show, so I had no real reason to go back to the dressing room. Everything personal of mine was on the tour bus, exactly where I liked it.

  I turned and walked down the hall that led to the back of the auditorium, where my tour bus was parked.

  Lanny grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop. “Anson, the crowds. Your bus isn’t pulled underground here. It’s out in the open.”

  With a smile, I leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “It’s fine. They won’t be expecting me to leave this early, and you know it’s roped off and security is back there. You go break the news to Lori that there isn’t going to be an interview, and I’ll meet you back at the hotel.”

  “Okay,” Lanny said, and turned to walk in the opposite direction.

  “Hey, Lanny?”

  She turned back to face me.

  “Be sure to accidentally drop a hotel name to Lori that’s not the one we’re staying at. Ideally, one that’s on the other side of Atlanta, if possible.”

  With a sudden wicked gleam in her eyes, Lanny nodded. “Will do, Boss!”

  Lanny’s love for Lori was non-existent, and once Lori found out I’d left, she would be pissed. That would make Lanny’s night.

  Lori worked for a top country music magazine. Two and a half years ago, when she interviewed me for the first time, we hit it off. She asked me out to dinner, and I said yes. The next thing I knew, we were fucking in the back of the limo she had picked me up in. It wasn’t something I did often, but that same day, I had happened to stumble on the news that Bristol, my ex-girlfriend from back home, was now dating my ex-best friend from high school. So yeah, when Lanny started to rub up on me, I went with it.

  After that first night together, she popped up for a show, here and there, asking for a personal interview, which always ended with more sex than talking. Those times had been fun. Something to take my mind off of how fucking lonely and miserable I really was. Lori also helped me briefly forget how badly I missed Bristol. Six years had done nothing to take the edge off of that heartache.

  Rumors flew all across the tabloids about me and my supposedly hot flings with most of the single women in country music. Not a single rumor was true. I did have one or two close female friends who were country artists that I had done duets with, but nothing romantic ever happened with them. Not one thing.

  As I walked toward the back door, the two security guards, who were stationed there, jumped up.

  “Mr. Meyer, we weren’t expecting you so soon.”

  I smiled. “Trying to sneak out of here when they least expect me to. Gotta keep them on their toes when I can.”

  The one smiled. “I understand. The crowds haven’t gathered yet—just the groupies who always show up early and wait.”

  I slapped him on the upper arm and motioned for Zeus to follow me to the tour bus.

  The security guard opened the back door. Sitting right in front of me was the tour bus. The area was roped off, and it didn’t sound like a lot of people were there, thankfully.

  Quickly, I stepped out of the door and walked directly to the bus.

  “Oh my God! There he is! Anson! Anson! Look this way! Please!”

  When I turned to my left, I saw the crowd of fans and smiled. It wasn’t as small as I thought it would be but wasn’t as large as it has been in other cities. I lifted my hand and waved. Zeus barked, which was his attempt at saying hi, or maybe he was telling them to back off. It could have gone either way.

  The crowd went wild, and the moment Charlie opened the bus door, Zeus bolted in with me on his heels.

  “Lanny?” Charlie asked.

  “She’ll ride with the band, let’s get out of here.”

  He nodded, and we were underway by the time I got to the back and sat down on the bed. Zeus jumped up and promptly laid down. Bus life was a normal thing for my dog. He’d been on one pretty much since he was six weeks old.

  I dropped back and stared up at the bus ceiling. It was moments like this, winding down from the energy of the concert, trying to settle my mind, all alone with my thoughts, that I closed my eyes and I couldn’t help but think of her.

  Bristol.

  It was no wonder I thought of her after every concert. Hell, most of the songs were about her. What was she doing? Who was she with? I knew she had broken up with Josh. Had she posted anything today?

  Every single day when I woke up, I swore to myself I wouldn’t check her Instagram. And every single day I broke that promise, at least twice.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. Pulling up Instagram, I said the same prayer as always. “Please don’t be dating anyone.”

  I typed her name into the search box.

  Bristol Overmann.

  Her profile came up and my chest tightened. I quickly scrolled the last few photos and let out a sigh of relief.

  Three years ago, when I found out that Bristol was one of those social influencers, I had let my curiosity get the better of me and started to check her profile nearly every day. Then, six months later, I saw the photo of her and Josh Eckert standing together. My eyes landed on his arm around her as she laughed and held a baby goat. Then they went to the word boyfriend. That stuck out like a sore fucking thumb.

  “The boyfriend bought me a goat. How sweet is that? Yes, I know…but I guess sometimes friends turn into boyfriends. How cute is he? The goat, but the boyfriend is too!”

  Bristol, my first love, my only love, was dating one of my best friends from high school. She’d posted pictures of them together before but had always said they were friends. And Mindy, Bristol’s best friend, or Drake, Bristol’s brother, had always been in the pictures along with Josh.

  The betrayal—or at least that was how I had seen it at the time—caused me to spiral into a two-day drunken spell. I wasn’t sure if it was the news of Bristol and Josh, or the fact that I had sex with Lori the day I found out about Bristol. Robert pulled me out of it and told me to get my shit together.

  I’d known Bristol had moved on after me and dated some. I’d heard it from friends I had kept in touch with, at first, and my mother or Grams would let it slip about what was going on with her. I mean, I knew it wasn’t like she had been sitting around waiting for me to return to Comfort. But to see it right in front of me, to see that smile on her face and the way Josh looked at her, literally caused me to throw up. Then I grabbed a bottle of Jack, and it was all over f
rom there.

  After I left Comfort, I didn’t set foot in my old hometown for the first few years. My schedule wouldn’t allow it, and, honestly, I was a coward. It was too painful, and I was scared I’d run into Bri. I’d flown my mother and grandparents out to Nashville numerous times to visit, though. I extended the offer to my father, but he always turned it down—through my mother, of course. It wasn’t until a year or so ago that I stepped foot back in Comfort. My grandparents refused to fly to see me anymore; they were getting up there in age and traveling like that was too much for them. So I resorted to sneaking back to Comfort to see Grams, Granddad, and my mother. Every now and then, I would rent a car, put a baseball cap on, and drive around Comfort. I wanted to be a normal person, something that I rarely got to experience anymore. It also wasn’t a secret that I had made a lot of folks mad in my hometown. Not only had I broken Bristol’s heart, I had walked away from the family ranch.

  It didn’t help that I wrote a damn song about never going back home. I’d made it damn clear I wasn’t heading back to Comfort—at least that was what an angry 22-year-old had said when he stupidly penned a song because he was pissed off and butt hurt, and then sang it for a record company that turned around and said it needed to be recorded within the week. I was signed to a recording deal within forty-eight hours of arriving in Nashville. That shit was unheard of, the luck of a stupid bastard with a nice body and a pretty face who happened to write a classic breakup song in a matter of minutes. Now, the whole damn world knew how I felt about leaving Comfort. The whole world, including Bristol and every citizen of my hometown.

  The words in the song pretty much sealed my fate with Bristol. It had taken her two months to finally answer my calls after I left that night without talking to her. Then it was another month of texting and talking to each other before she agreed to come to Nashville to visit. I was over the moon, and she was excited as well. We were getting along great. She had even made plans to come and stay a few months. But then “Let It Burn” was released early, and the record executives failed to tell me or Robert, they had decided to push up the release date. I had wanted to tell Bristol about the song in person, when she got to Nashville. Explain the emotions I had been going through. All hopes of making up went up in flames after she heard the song. My mother said people asked Bristol for weeks what she thought about me writing a song like that about her. She simply sent me a text that said she would never forgive me, then she canceled her trip to Nashville. From that moment on, I hated the song. Hated every single word in it. Hated that it caused me to be an overnight success in a business where that only happened in the make-believe world of the movies. Hated that it ripped Bristol away from me.

  I pushed all the memories of the past away and scrolled through Bristol’s photos. One was a picture of a table that had been set up in her tea shop, Farmhouse Tea, that she had opened a year ago. It had been one of her dreams to open her own place, and I was proud as hell she’d done it.

  The next photo was of a cup of tea in a clear mug that was shaped like a heart. Her caption was, “Who needs a hug in a mug this morning? This girl does.”

  I smiled. She hadn’t mentioned a boyfriend in over a year. Especially not that asshole Josh. She was pretty open with her nearly six-hundred-thousand followers, so when she broke up with Josh, she shared it with them. She hadn’t seemed sad in her live video, though. She almost looked relieved. He hadn’t been the one, but they remained close friends. One of her followers had commented about how she hoped it was a friends-with-benefits arrangement, because Josh was hot as hell. Her words, not mine.

  The next photo showed Bristol dressed in overalls that had sunflowers on them. Her hair was pulled up into a messy bun on her head, and she held a chicken.

  Ten Reasons Why You Should Raise Your Own Chickens.

  She was absolutely stunning.

  Another smile moved across my face as I closed my eyes. I drifted off into a dream, and like always, Bristol Overmann was the featured star, instead of me.

  “Anson?”

  “Anson.”

  Someone hit my leg, and I jerked up. Lanny stood there, staring at me.

  I was frowning when I realized we had stopped, and Lanny had come onto the bus. “How long has Charles been here at the hotel?”

  “An hour. He called for you, but when you didn’t answer, he figured you had fallen asleep, and he didn’t want to wake you up.”

  With a nod, I stood and stretched. Zeus did the same.

  “You’re all checked in. They’ve got you in the presidential suite; even though I told them you were fine with a regular suite, they insisted. I dismissed the butler that came along with the room and assured the hotel that you didn’t need one.”

  “Jesus, a butler for a damn hotel room?” I asked as we walked into the exclusive entrance that was used for patrons who required privacy, such as myself.

  “Not everyone is a simple country boy like you, Anson. Never mind the fact that you could probably buy this hotel,” Lanny stated as she hit the button for the top floor. “It’s got a nice view.”

  “I’m too tired to look at it. I’m headed right back to bed,” I said.

  “Alright. Bus leaves early—do you want to get up and run?”

  I nodded as the elevator doors opened to the suite.

  “You can stay here, you know,” I said. “It’s so big we probably wouldn’t even see each other.”

  She laughed. “Sure, let’s add to the rumor mill, why don’t we?”

  I winked. “Like you don’t like being known as my secret lover.”

  Lanny rolled her eyes, hit the button to go down, and said, “You wish, Meyers.”

  A roar of laughter escaped from me as the doors closed. The moment they shut completely, my smile slowly disappeared, and the loneliness crept back in.

  With a deep sigh, I walked over to the wall of windows and looked out over downtown Atlanta. Maybe I should have met with Lori. It would have at least been a temporary relief from the pain in my chest and my cock.

  Zeus barked, and I looked at the small bag of food that Lanny had put on the counter.

  “Fine. Dinner, a short walk, then it’s bed, mister.”

  Bristol

  “WAIT, LET ME position this to the side,” I said as I moved the vase I had just stuck the fresh flowers in.

  “There, that’s perfect, and the light will work nicely for the photo.” Mindy held out her hands and made a frame with them. “I think you should move the book to the left, though.”

  I contemplated her suggestion for a few moments, then moved it to the right side of the vase.

  “Or the right side,” Mindy mumbled.

  “That’s it. That is the shot!”

  I stood back, lined up my camera, and snapped a few photos. This would get posted Sunday as my weekly read. I posted a book I was reading every Sunday and captioned it as “Share it Sunday,” where I encouraged my followers to share what book they were reading for the upcoming week.

  “How do you find time to read, Bristol?” Mindy asked.

  With a laugh that held no humor in it at all, I replied, “You know I don’t have a boyfriend, so my nights are consumed with the make-believe kind.”

  She laughed, for real. “Speaking of, did you happen to listen to the countdown yesterday?”

  “What countdown?” I nonchalantly asked, throwing in a half shrug to emphasize my confusion. Of course, we both knew it was a ruse. But Mindy humored me.

  I knew what countdown she was talking about because even though I shouldn’t give two shits, I still followed Anson’s career. Compulsively. His latest single, “Missing You,” had made it to the number one spot. Of course, if you believed the rag papers, the song was about Lindsey Ashton. The reigning princess of country music. The two of them had released a duet together a few months back and had been photographed a number of times together. I didn’t want to admit how much I hated seeing them together. It was rare to see Anson photographed with a woman, so when
he was, it was all over the papers. But then Lindsey announced her engagement to some songwriter, and if you believed one iota of the tabloids, poor Anson was left brokenhearted. Hence, “Missing You” was born. I wanted to gag, just thinking about any part of that being true.

  “Well, for what it’s worth, I don’t think the song is about Lindsey.”

  I frowned and walked over to reposition the book once more. Did I say her name out loud or something?

  “And I could not care less if it was,” I retorted. Even I could hear the snarky and full-of-shit tone in my voice.

  I did care. And I hated that I cared. Hated that I had even opened my phone and looked up everything I could about Lindsey. She didn’t seem like Anson’s type. Then again, I hadn’t spoken to him in almost six years, so I really had no clue what his type was anymore. Obviously, his type had moved on from me.

  “Have you listened to the song, Bristol?”

  “Nope.”

  After Anson’s lovely “Let It Burn” debut, I refused to listen to any of his other songs. Another lie, but whatever, I was on a roll today. I wouldn’t listen to a whole song on any of his albums. If one song happened to come on the radio, which was nearly every damn hour, I changed the song. Even Ida, Anson’s grandmother, finally stopped trying to get me to listen to his music. She had it in her head, as well, that they were all written for me, infused with some secret message that was meant for only me to understand. Pffttt. Hardly. I knew it was childish that I didn’t listen to them, but if Anson truly wanted to talk to me, he had my number. It hadn’t changed in the last six years. He most certainly didn’t have to send a message to me in musical Morse code or anything.

  Good God. I sound so bitter…even in my own head.

  “There’s this line in the song…” Mindy went on.

  “I don’t care!” I sang as I snapped a few more pictures, even though I didn’t need them.

  “Where he sings, ‘Sittin’ on the flat rock, that night we fell so in love. She is the only woman in my heart, the one I still pray for to the man up above.’ How romantic is that? And so, so familiar, almost like I’ve heard a story about a crazy-in-love couple…and a flat rock…the night they fell in love.”