Page 2 of Hero Next Door
By the time I’d climbed the three million steps to my front door (not really, but you try climbing any number of steps with three full suitcases bouncing along behind you and tell me howyoufeel about it), I had changed that estimate.
I didn’t want to sleep for a month. I wanted to sleep for a year. Turn my phone off, shut every computer in the house down, and rest. The last year had been exhausting. We’d been late getting to the tour courtesy of a storm that landed us in Arberry for a week, and then we’d been going a million miles an hour for a year. We’d hit so many cities that I’d lost track of where we were in about April, and I didn’t know if I could ever listen to any of Avery’s music again without smelling the popcorn and beer and corn dogs that everyone seemed to order at her concerts.
I had to grin at the thought, though. When I first moved to Nashville with my childhood best friend, determined to force my way into the music industry come hell or high water, I’d never imagined that things would happen so quickly. I’d managed to find a position with a big label and they’d put me and Olivia Johns—the best friend—up in a house with another newcomer.
A girl who’d been plucked out of her hometown and awarded a record deal courtesy of a music contest she won.
A girl they were sending to every bar and back-alley venue they could sign, as they tried to determine whether she had what they called ‘real commercial appeal.’
A girl named Avery Dawson.
I’d been named her manager and Olivia… Well, Olivia had just been along for the ride, honestly. We’d all been wide-eyed and naive and incredibly starstruck at the idea that Avery had a record deal, and we must have had ‘newcomers’ painted all over our faces.
We’d never thought, in a million years, that within a few years we’d be out on tour, Avery winning everyone over with that blinding smile and those blond curls. Not a one of us would have guessed that the end of that tour would see her already signed to further albums—or that I would still be her manager, there by her side at every appearance.
It had been a whirlwind. A hurricane of epic proportions.
And it was amazing. But I was still very, very tired.
I reached out and unlocked the door, my mind stumbling ahead of me to that bath, and finally yanked the door open.
An envelope fell out of the door jam and right onto my feet.
“What the…?” I ducked down and grabbed it, my stomach sinking. We had a mailbox at the end of the driveway that I’d very specifically not checked yet.
Normal people put mail in the mailbox.
Envelopes pinned to your door were never good news.
I flipped it over and saw my name written—by hand—on the front of the envelope. No address. Another glance told me that the return address was that of a lawyer’s office here in Nashville.
Jesus Christ in a stroller, what was this? I rolled quickly through my memories, but none of them included anything that should have involved a lawyer. I hadn’t gotten into any trouble—lately—and I couldn’t think of any other reason for a lawyer to be contacting me.
With an envelope someone had delivered by hand.
I slipped a finger under the flap and slid it to the side, heart frozen in my chest with fear. I didn’t hate lawyers, necessarily, but I knew that they very rarely meant good things.
God, were we getting evicted or something?Why?
I jerked a single sheet of paper out of the envelope and read it as quickly as I could, my eyes slipping over the text and barely taking it in with the speed. When I got to the end of the letter, I paused, frowning, and then started again.
Because it hadn’t made sense the first time.
Then I looked up at the door in front of me, my eyes unseeing and my brain just as frozen as my heart had been.
We weren’t getting evicted. We weren’t going to lose this house. The opposite, actually.
Someone had given meanotherhouse.
CHAPTER2
Parker
Ileft the suitcases on the front step of our tiny house and stumbled through the door, the envelope and its contents still clutched in my hands.
Then I fell into the first chair I could find, having completely forgotten about not only the hot chocolate, but also the bath and the year full of sleep.
Because some things were so big that not even hot chocolate and a bath could replace them.
