Page 8 of Hero on the Road
With Olivia Johns.
This was a disaster waiting to happen. She and I had too much history, and very little of it was good. I had too many feelings flooding my body in regard to the girl that was going to be my singing partner. My co-writer. The Sundance Kid to my Butch Cassidy.
But we were both counting on this. We both wanted contracts. And I wasn’t going to let either of us down.
CHAPTER5
Olivia
Ihit the chord I wanted on my guitar and loved it so much that I extended it a bit, letting my fingers dance over the strings and find their way through the progression like it had been written that way, and then lifted my voice for the chorus.
Connor’s voice joined me a moment later and we sang together, our voices melting in and out of one another like they were two different parts of the same creature, the sound echoing through the the small room where we were practicing like we were the only two people in the world, our song the only sound on an empty earth. We spun higher and higher, our fingers working more quickly at our guitar strings as we reached the apex of the song, and my eyes sought his without my permission, looking for something to ground me as we soared.
When my gaze met his bright blue one I grinned, too elated by the feeling of the song to think too much about who I was singing with or what it might mean. Connor grinned back at me, pausing for the moment he had off from the song and then launching back in, his voice strong and true and so very clear.
God, he was good. I’d always known it but he’d gotten even better in the last few months. More confident in his craft, like he’d finally found his footing. And we were good together. I hated to admit that because it made the record label right, but in moments like this when we were caught up in the song and flying together...
It was awfully hard to deny.
We hit the end of the song and stopped playing, the echoes dying away around us as we stared at each other, breathing hard and trying to remember how to live without the music flowing through our veins.
“That was...” he started.
“Good,” I whispered. “I think it might be the best thing I’ve ever written.”
“Co-written,” he corrected with a tip of his head.
“Co-written,” I said, allowing the correction.
I mean, it was the truth. We’d been in this small studio for a week now, working through our own catalogues and figuring out what we could use as a duo. When we found that we didn’t have as much as we wanted, we started writing together. Building songs that could support—thatneeded—two people.
It hadn’t been smooth at first. We’d both been very protective of our own music and how it was written, and neither of us had wanted to expand on the pieces to make room for another person in them. We’d both been saving those songs, I thought, for a time when we could perform them on our own rather than with a partner who’d been forced on us by the studio.
I broke my eye contact with him at the thought and glanced around the space, shaking my head at the studio’s actions. They’d not only saddled me with Connor but also put us into a studio that was little more than a closet. This place was tiny enough that there was barely room for us to sit knee-to-knee without banging into each other. Our guitars were constantly at risk and he could probably see right down my throat when I sang.
It wasn’t exactly my idea of a good time.
It was, in fact, a lot like having written with him in that tiny studio in his basement back at his mom and dad’s ranch. Which was no longer his mom and dad’s, I realized. Dev Hawthorne had bought it, and though Mr. and Mrs. Wheating still lived there—in the guest wing—he’d been making some changes to the house itself.
I wondered if the studio was still in the corner of the basement.
The thought of it being demolished or even deserted made me sad in ways I didn’t want to look at.
“Think we’ll be ready?” Connor asked suddenly.
I pulled my attention back to him and saw him looking down at the set list we’d been keeping. Half of it was music we’d already had. The other half was brand new stuff. Songs we didn’t know like the back of our hands yet, though they were designed for our voices. Regardless of that, they were new to us and our muscles and voices hadn’t yet settled into the soft spot of being able to play them without much thought.
“No,” I replied, giving him my honest opinion. “But it’s not like we have much choice.”
We only had one more week of recording and writing time. One more week to make sure we had a full catalogue for the tour and knew it all by heart.
He looked up and gave me a crooked grin that had me remembering a time when that grin had been in response to something revealing I’d said. I shivered at the memory and shifted in my seat, which brought my knees into close contact with his.
Connor’s eyebrow twitched and the smile turned naughty. “You trying to get even closer to me? I’m not sure that’s possible, but I’m game if you are.”
I stuck my tongue out at him. “Grow up, Connor.”
He laughed in that easy, boyish way of his, like none of this mattered to him, and I wondered if it even did. He’d been furious when he walked into the conference room and saw me there, but his face had smoothed over so quickly that I thought I might have imagined the first shock of seeing me. He’d flat-out refused to do what the record label was asking him...
