Page 18 of Ever With Me

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.”

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