Hideaway Heart (Cherry Tree Harbor Book 2)
Hideaway Heart: Chapter 2

TWO WEEKS TO MYSELF.

Two weeks of peace and freedom and reflection.

Two weeks of being plain old Kelly Jo Sullivan, rather than country music sensation Pixie Hart.

I could get up early or sleep ’til noon. I could spend my days hiking in the sun or reading in the shade. I could sip wine as I watched the moon rise and play my guitar beneath the stars.

I could listen to music or enjoy the silence. I could meditate or masturbate. I could ponder and plan what should come next for me without any other voices in my head.

I wouldn’t have to wear sequins, put rollers in my hair, or sit through two hours of makeup. I wouldn’t have to attend meetings with the suits at PMG Records who didn’t like the lyrics I’d written, the haircut I’d gotten, or the five pounds I’d gained. I wouldn’t have to tell anyone my plans.

If I wanted to go get a cup of coffee, I’d drive myself. If I felt like cupcakes, I’d make them. If I wanted to leave my hair unwashed for a week, no paparazzi was going to catch it on camera.

Don’t get me wrong—I thanked my lucky stars every single day for Pixie Hart’s career, but after the last few months, I needed a little break from her. From everybody.

That’s why I’d fired the security guard my brother had hired. I just wanted to feel normal for two weeks, and normal did not include an ex-Navy SEAL lummox following me around, watching every move I made.

I sat on my suitcase to get it closed, pumping a fist with triumph when I finally got it zipped. Rising to my feet, I dragged the suitcase into the hall and somehow managed to get it down the wide, curving staircase of my new Nashville home. At barely seven a.m., no one was up—my mom was a late sleeper, especially when my father was around—but I winced at the banging noise my bag made as it thumped on every marble step. I wanted to sneak out of here undetected.

After deactivating the house alarm, I opened the front door and slipped out into the damp heat of a late August morning. In the circular drive was the minivan my assistant, Jess, had rented for me in her name. It was a couple years old, gray and nondescript, with a dent in the bumper and a scratch on the driver’s side door. It looked like a vehicle for a harried soccer mom with three young kids rather than a country music star, which was exactly what I wanted.

I rolled my suitcase down the porch steps—thunk, thunk, thunk—and popped the van’s tailgate, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not lift the damn thing into the back. I was debating transferring some stuff to a second bag when a Chevy truck came careening around the curve of the driveway and screeched to a halt. The door opened, and a middle-aged guy wearing jeans and an ancient Willie Nelson tour T-shirt jumped out. My manager, Rick Wagstaff, or Wags, as everyone called him.

“I got your text.” Wags shook his phone in my direction as he strode toward me. “What do you mean, you fired the bodyguard?”

I sighed. “I shouldn’t have even told you.”

“Kelly Jo, come on. You need security, even up there.”

“I don’t want a stranger with me on my vacation, Wags. And after everything I went through with Duke and then the leaks to the paparazzi on the tour, I’m in a serious no-trust zone right now.”

“I don’t blame you for that.” He tucked his phone into his back pocket. “But this is someone your brother chose.”

“I don’t care.” I paused. “You fix that thing with the disgruntled security guard threatening to sue me?”

“I’m working on it. I don’t think he’ll actually sue. He’s sniffing around for a payout. Claims he was wrongly terminated.”

“Is it possible he wasn’t involved? Do I need to feel bad we fired an innocent guy?”

“Look, the photographer who came to me said it was absolutely happening and the entire team knew.”

“Then I don’t feel bad. Fuck him.” I pointed at my giant, overpacked suitcase. “Can you help me with this?”

He folded his arms over his chest. “I will not aid and abet.”

Rolling my eyes, I left the suitcase on the ground and went back into the house for my guitar.

Wags trailed me into the living room. “What about taking your mom with you?”

Grabbing my guitar case from next to the piano, I faced him. “You can’t be serious. My mother’s idea of relaxation is mani-pedis and massages, not hikes in the woods. I’d lose my mind, and so would she.”

My manager exhaled and rubbed the back of his neck. “I wish your brother was around.”

“Me too,” I said, heading outside again. Kevin was the only person on earth I wouldn’t mind being cooped up with for two weeks. No matter how tough things had been when we were kids, growing up had been tolerable because we’d had each other. He was two years older than me, and I’d never cried harder than the day he left for boot camp. “But he’s not.”

Wags stood by while I opened the sliding door on the van’s passenger side and placed my guitar on the floor between the seats. “You need someone there with you,” he insisted. “Can’t you take Jess?”

“She’s going to Colorado with her family while I’m gone.” I went back into the house with Wags at my heels. In the kitchen’s roomy pantry, I scooped up one of the brown paper grocery sacks I’d packed last night and handed it to him. “Here. Make yourself useful.”

Wags followed me out to the van again. “I want it on record, I did not okay this.”

I placed my sack of groceries in the back. “Wags, I have done everything you guys have told me to do over the past five years. I recorded the songs the PMG execs said to record, worked with every chauvinistic male producer in Nashville, did back-to-back tours with no breaks and no complaints, did all the publicity the label requested, and kept my nose out of trouble, even when the haters on the internet made me want to burn shit down. I have been a good girl.”

“You have.”

“So I need this break, Wags, or I’m going to snap.”

He placed his bag next to mine. “I’m not saying you don’t deserve time off, Kelly Jo. You do. But if anything happened to you . . . I’d never forgive myself.”

His words softened the edges of my mood. Wags wasn’t my father—a devilishly handsome, charming alcoholic with a weakness for women and gambling who’d been in and out of our lives since I was six—but he’d been my manager since before I won Nashville Next, and he was unfailingly loyal. “Nothing will happen to me. I’ll be perfectly safe.”

“Kevin doesn’t think so.”

“Well, he’s an overprotective big brother who still sees me as a kid.” I went around to the back of the van and tried again to lift my suitcase, but no matter how much I struggled, I couldn’t get it into the cargo space. “Wags, can you please help me with this?”

His lips pursed beneath his bushy brown mustache. “If I do, will you say yes to security?”

I bent over and attempted to pick up the suitcase by the wheels, groaning with the effort.

“For god’s sake, stop. You’re going to hurt yourself.” Wags gently pushed me aside, then heaved the suitcase into the van. “What the hell is in there that’s making it so heavy?”

“Clothes,” I said. “Hair products. Books.”

And a few toys that vibrated, but he didn’t need to know that.

He slammed the tailgate and walked me to the driver’s side, opening the door. “Does this thing have a full tank? You’re better off not stopping until you get way outside Nashville. Chances of you being spotted might decrease the farther you get out of town. Do you even know how to pump your own gas?”

“No,” I deadpanned. “But I’m sure there will be someone there I can blow to pump it for me.” I poked his chest and hopped behind the wheel. “Yes, I know how to pump gas! Lord almighty, I need to get out of here. Goodbye, Wags. I’ll call you when I get there. Tell my mom I said bye and not to worry about me!”

Reaching into my purse, I pulled out oversized sunglasses and slipped them on. Then I grabbed the baseball cap on the passenger seat and placed it on my head, hiding all my red hair beneath it. After starting the engine, I rolled down the window and smiled at my manager, who still stood on the driveway with his arms crossed, looking unhappy. “See? You can’t even recognize me.”

He shook his head. “This is a bad idea.”

“I’ll take all the blame,” I said as I put the window up.

Then I put my old gray minivan in gear and headed for freedom.

I was about an hour into the drive when my mother called me. I really wanted to let it go to voicemail, but I knew she would probably just keep calling, and I didn’t want her to panic and call the highway patrol. The last thing I needed was photos hitting the internet of Pixie Hart being pulled over by a state trooper.

“Hello?”

“Kelly Jo Sullivan! How could you?”

“Morning, Mama. How was your night?”

“Don’t change the subject. You snuck out of the house just like you used to do when you were sixteen.”

“Yeah, but back then I was sneaking out to clubs. This time I’m just going on vacation.”

“Wags says you fired the bodyguard.”

Dammit, Wags. “I don’t need him.”

“Well, don’t come crying to me when you’re attacked by a black bear. I told you about the premonition I had, didn’t I?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes.”

“Do I need to tell you again?”

“No.”

“Because you know I have the sight, just like Great Aunt Sissy.”

“Yes.”

“And this vision was very clear—there was this giant black bear just towering over you, looking like he wanted to tear you apart and eat the pieces. He wasn’t even going to leave a crumb!”

“Mama, I promise you, if I see a bear, I will run the other way.”

“No! That’s the exact wrong thing to do! I looked it up, and you should just quietly back off. If you can’t, you have to make yourself look big, make loud noises, and clap your hands.”

“Make myself look big?” I was five-foot-two on my best big-hair days. “Not sure that’s possible.”

She sighed. “Your brother’s going to be furious, you know.”

“I’ll deal with him when he gets back.”

“I’ve got a mind to come up there and paddle your backside for making me fret like this. I can feel the wrinkles forming! And your father is beside himself with concern.”

Since when? I thought.

“He says he needs to talk to you. I’ll put him on.”

“No, don’t! I have to—”

“Kelly Jo? That you, peanut?”

I grit my teeth. “It’s me, Daddy.”

“I was just making breakfast and thinking about how you and I used to get up early and make waffles for your mama and Kevin. What a mess we’d make.” He laughed, and the sound took me back to our tiny yellow kitchen in the house where I’d grown up. Batter spilled on the counter. Syrup on my fingers. Comfort. Security. Love. Before.

“I remember.”

“You sign that new PMG deal yet, peanut?”

“Not yet. I’m still thinking it over.”

“It’s a good deal. A lot of money. What’s to think about?”

“I’d like more creative control. I want to work with some different producers, more women. I want to record my own songs.”

“But the label knows best, peanut. They’ve got all the experience. You should do what they say.”

Something dark in me wondered if the label had offered my father money if he could get me to agree to their terms. “I need to concentrate on the road, Daddy. I’ll see you in two weeks.” If you stick around.

Without waiting for him to argue, I hung up and put my phone on Do Not Disturb.

The trip took me almost twelve hours, but it was still light out when I arrived at my new home for the next couple weeks—an A-frame chalet nestled deep in the woods without a single neighbor visible in any direction.

Elated with the privacy, the mild temperature, and fourteen days of freedom, I tossed my hat aside, shook out my hair, and jumped out of the van. I was giddy with excitement—I’d stopped once for gas, once for a sandwich at a drive-thru, and once for a few fresh vegetables at a roadside farm stand, and I hadn’t been recognized a single time. Twirling in a circle, I breathed deeply, taking it all in.

The air smelled like wet dirt and dead leaves and something tangy and herbal—like the dandelions you picked when you were a kid and thought were beautiful. I used to pluck tons of them from the vacant lot near our house and give them to my mom as a “bouquet.” Poor Mama would dutifully put them in a mason jar with some water every time.

The A-frame was small, its façade painted moss green and its roof—which extended all the way to the ground—was a deep orange. A wooden porch ran the width of the front, with two rocking chairs to one side of the door and a large potted plant on the other.

Glancing to the left, I noted a fire pit surrounded by four red Adirondack chairs. I wondered if I could figure out how to build a fire without accidentally burning down the house.

I approached the front door and quickly checked my email to replace the code the rental company had provided to Jess, which she’d then forwarded to me. Punching in the numbers, the lock released and I opened the door.

Unlike my home in Nashville, which had been newly decorated in soothing whites and pale grays when I bought it, this place offered only comfy shades of brown. Knotty pine walls, coffee-colored couch, russet brick hearth, carpet the color of sand. I sniffed—it smelled slightly musty. Since the place had a screen door, I left the wooden front door open and cranked open the casement windows on either side of it to air out the room.

Straight ahead was a galley kitchen that would have fit within the breakfast nook of my Nashville home—just a dishwasher, a stainless sink, and a brown electric range that looked like it predated me. A butcher-block-topped peninsula jutted out from the wall, and two stools were tucked beneath it.

I wandered down the hall and found the bathroom on one side and the bedroom on the other. The white and yellow bathroom wasn’t fancy, but it was bright and clean, and the towels folded on the vanity looked thick and fluffy. The bedroom was small, and the steep pitch of the knotty pine wall opposite the door made it seem even more confined, like a cross between a treehouse and a teepee.

The queen-sized bed had no headboard, but it was covered with puffy white bedding and plenty of pillows. The window above it looked out into the woods. Kneeling on the mattress, I cranked it open, smiling when I felt the fresh, cool air come through the screen and caress my face.

It wasn’t the Ritz Carlton, but I didn’t care.

I didn’t need an ocean view or overpriced minibar or room service to relax. Happy with my cozy little hideaway, I hummed a tune as I headed outside to bring in my bags. (It took me a couple tries to get that damn suitcase out of the van, but I managed.)

After unpacking groceries, clothing, and toiletries, I stuck one vibrator under the bed and the other one in the shower, and traded my denim cutoffs, white T-shirt, and boots for running shorts, a sports bra, and Nikes. In the bathroom, I tightened my ponytail and smeared a little sunscreen on my face and arms. I was just about to stick my earbuds in and head out for a run when I realized I hadn’t let anyone know I’d arrived safely.

I picked up my phone and noticed I’d gotten several text messages while I was on the road. One from Jess, one from Wags, and three from my mother, all wanting to know how the drive was. There was one from my stylist, Kayla, asking me to put a few fittings on the calendar. And I had two voicemails—one from Duke (which I deleted without listening to), and one from my dad. I wanted so badly to be able to delete that one too, but I couldn’t. It was like no matter how old I got or how many times he disappointed me, there was a little girl inside me who held out hope every single time that he’d somehow magically become the daddy I wanted.

I took a breath and played it.

“Hi, peanut. I know you don’t want to be bothered on your trip, so I won’t keep you, but I didn’t get a chance when we were on the phone earlier to remind you about that loan. I’ve got this new thing going that’s gonna be huge, and I’m getting in on the ground floor. I won’t bore you with all the details, but if you could just send me a check for, oh, twenty thousand—maybe make it twenty-five—that should be good. Thanks, peanut. You’re my best girl.”

I kept listening for a few seconds, almost like I expected something more, but of course, there was nothing else. He just wanted money, same as always.

I deleted the message. Took a deep breath. Counted to ten.

After I replied to my stylist, saying I’d add the fittings to my schedule and reminding her I was on vacation for two weeks, I sent a note to Jess.

I made it! Got in about half an hour ago, and all is well.

Yay! Place okay? I know it’s definitely not the five-star hotels you’re used to but you said you wanted something rustic where no one would replace you!

You did a great job! It’s perfect. Small, hidden away, definitely rustic, but clean and cozy. I love it.

Good. Enjoy your time off!

You too!

Next, I texted Wags and my mom together.

I’m here. I’m fine. I’m happy. No sign of bears or even humans nearby.

I’m keeping my phone on Do Not Disturb so I can commune with nature, but I’ll call you tomorrow. Don’t worry about me.

Immediately, Wags liked my initial message and typed one back.

I’ll worry anyway, but thanks for letting me know, and keep in touch.

My mother replied with this:

What about wolves? Google says Michigan has wolves. And something called a gray rat snake.

I shuddered. Gray rat snake?

I did not like the sound of that one little bit. Should I Google it just so I’d know what I was up against? I nearly typed the words into my phone, then I decided against it—better not to know.

I pushed open the door and stepped out onto the front porch, gingerly looking this way and that for any sign of slithering, and shrieking when a small brown bird landed in front of me. The bird flew away, and I laughed at myself. Taking a moment to snap a bunch of selfies, I chose the one I liked best and posted it for my nearly four million followers. Grateful for the sun on my face, I wrote.

Hopping off the porch, I spied a trail leading through the trees and followed it at an easy pace. In my ears was my favorite playlist, a mix of current and vintage country music stars, all women, all iconic, all badasses. As I worked up a sweat, I tried to channel some of their confidence and positive energy.

The truth was, the criticism of me and my music bothered me more than I let on. I hated being called a reality show hack, a sellout, pop-country window dressing. I hated that I’d let people tell me my real name was boring. I hated that in order to get ahead in this industry, you had to be a brand, not just a musician. I hated that I was starting to feel entirely manufactured.

I wanted to feel like my younger self again—the girl who stayed up late writing songs with a flashlight under the covers when she was supposed to be asleep. Those songs had meant something to me. Those songs were where I buried my deepest hurt, expressed my greatest joy, and dreamed my wildest dreams.

I wanted that girl’s voice to be heard.

The trail ended at some kind of river or creek, and even though I was hot and sweaty, the water looked sort of green and scary. With visions of a slimy gray rat snake in my mind, I decided not to risk a swim and turned for home again. It was while I was on my way back that a song idea came to me—not fully formed or anything, just a few scraps of lyrics, a three-quarter time signature, and some chord changes I hadn’t played with before.

I was so excited, I didn’t even stop to wipe off the sweat, I just grabbed my guitar and a piece of paper. After scribbling down some notes, I recorded myself messing around with the chords and rhythm. It wasn’t perfect, but when I played it back for myself I was happy. It was a good start.

My stomach growled as I stripped off my running clothes, and I realized I hadn’t eaten in nearly eight hours. Between what I’d brought from home and my stop at the farm stand, I had enough on hand to make a nice little pasta dinner for myself. I’d even packed a bottle of wine. Tomorrow, I’d drive into town and stock up.

While I was in the shower, I kept trying out different lyrics, and while I was rinsing the conditioner from my hair, the perfect lines came to me. Frantic to write them down, I jumped out of the shower and bolted from the bathroom naked.

That’s when I discovered the bearded lummox in my living room.