I was the jackass who had grown up on the outskirts of Turnbull, New York, snow capital of the northeast, and had escaped to sunny LA only to return.
Voluntarily.
No one had held a gun to my head or shackled my wrists. Nope, I’d strapped my surfboard to the roof of my SUV and made the trek home to buy property on the very edge of town. Outside of town, truth be told. Because the icy tundra in the city proper—ha ha—wasn’t enough for me. Might as well build a damn shack with my own two hands and surround it with pine trees and solitude.
So much freaking solitude.
True, it was just my vacation home. Cue more laughter. My place to escape from the rigors of being a famous rockstar.
At least the rockstar part was right. In my head if nowhere else. The famous? Working on that. Wilder Mind’s first single was due to drop just after the holidays, and our manager, Lila Crandall, was prepping us for the big time. A lot of that was smoke and mirrors designed to build us up into being the showmen we weren’t quite yet, but under her bluster, there was a kernel of truth.
Wilder Mind was poised to take on the world.
Me? I was poised to chop some wood so I could hole up in my cabin and spend New Year’s Eve soaking up the silence.
No other company. No other voices. Especially no incessant interview questions or even the shrill scream of fans. Not that we’d dealt with much of that yet. Only a taste. A hint of things to come if we were lucky enough to make it big.
In the meantime, it would be just me and my old Taylor acoustic, a roaring fire, and a case of Coors.
Hey, I never said I had highbrow tastes. So sue me.
Blowing out a breath, I heaved the ax through the chilly air, savoring the pleasant burn in my muscles. I was chopping way more wood than I’d need for a weekend at the cabin. If I was lucky, I’d make it back to Turnbull a few times over the winter. With the single dropping, we’d be branching out. Spreading out to do shows some distance from LA, which meant all the press that went with that. I’d be talking myself hoarse before I was expected to go up and bleed out onstage for the price of a ticket.
That was my role. My new role. The one I’d craved since I was a kid with a cheap thrift store guitar, a joint in my back pocket, and the requisite amount of teenage angst that made me think I could be a great songwriter.
Now I was getting my shot, and the battered composition notebook I’d been lugging around for years—first in backpacks, then in briefcases during my brief stint working at Ripper Records—was definitely getting a workout.
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sp; Just like my arms. I slammed the axe into the snowpack and threw back my head. Shit. The chill seared my lungs, yanking out my breath in icy puffs. And I still wasn’t smart enough to go inside.
Nope, I kept splitting logs, continuing on until the overcast afternoon turned into dusk. The foggy dark hung in ribbons of mist around my forest, and I didn’t stop until the distant cry of a lonely coyote made me think maybe it was time for that fire.
We didn’t get a lot of coyotes out this way, but we had some. In this much dense forestation, you got quite the range of creatures. Even the occasional black bear. My mom had told stories about one coming up to the back door and rattling the knob of her folks’ old ramshackle place, but I had to think that was bullshit.
Maybe I just hoped it. If a frigging bear couldn’t just break down a door, fuck the rest of us who rued being so goddamn polite all the time.
Still, much as I lobbied for the rights of bears and coyotes, I wasn’t stupid enough to be whaling on logs after dark. Not when I had a twelve-pack and a hot shower waiting for my sore ass.
“Getting soft,” I muttered after stowing the axe and piling up the wood to haul inside.
I grunted as I made my way around the side of the cabin in the knee-deep snow, part of a cord of wood in my arms. Obviously, I needed to hit the gym harder before Wilder Mind went out on tour. My body freaking hurt. I was covered in sweat. Probably looked like a frigging maniac with snow sticking to my beardy face.
I jumped around night after night onstage in closet-sized clubs and bars, but I wasn’t as hardy as when I’d lived in good old Turnbull full-time. Back when I’d worked on cars and picked up odd construction jobs to get by.
It had been blind luck and a dose of small town friendliness that had even gotten my ass out to LA. Lila’s mom and pop ran the local orchard, and my mom had gotten to talking to Lila’s mother one day about how I didn’t want to be stuck working construction for the rest of my life. One thing led to another and under six months later, I’d been on a place out to LA to meet with Donovan Lewis, the head of the record label Lila worked for. We hit it off and though I didn’t know shit about selling anything that didn’t come in a bucket or wrapped in cellophane, I’d ended up as an account rep.
Representing artists. Me. The guy who’d barely graduated high school but could schmooze a quart a milk out of a cow. Or so my mom had claimed to Lila’s mother.
Because a way with cows surely meant a way with egotistical, often drugged out musicians. Right.
Somehow it had worked though. Lila said I had a knack. Donovan had given me raises. A bunch of them, in short succession. The mogul some jokingly referred to as Lord Lewis didn’t shortchange his talent, and he’d seen something in me. I owed him and Lila a shit-ton of gratitude. First, for hiring me to represent some of their musical acts, and then for trusting me to front a band.
The band part I had more familiarity with. I’d been stroking an acoustic long before I’d stroked my first girl. Let’s just say I’d done my share of touching both, and leave it at that.
One more thing about Turnbull? They had some damn fine women, but it was hard to see them clearly under all the layers of outerwear when it snowed for what felt like half the freaking year. I preferred California women anyway. They seemed more good-natured as a rule. Maybe all the sunshine and hot temperatures put them in a better mood.
And goddammit, I loved me a woman in a bikini.