Burning Tracks (Book Two: Spotlight Series) Read online

  “Listen. I’m pissed at you, so let’s just put that out there. A heads up, maybe? I thought we were semi-acquaintances who mostly tolerated each other, Spencer. You don’t just throw that away. I’m hurt.” She kicks the front bumper and switches the phone to her other ear. “But this isn’t about that. I was hoping you could help me find Grady. He’s... upset about something. I can’t find him. Just call me back, I guess?” As she gets into her car, she asks herself: Did Grady go to Nico’s apartment? Probably not.

  “Oh, and by the way,” she adds before cranking up the engine and ending the call, “I was just about to teach you how the Industrial Revolution was a total game-changer for fashion, and about the complex feminist history of corsets, so I hope you feel bad about missing out. Because you are.”

  She’s on the highway, just a few exits from the center of downtown, when she gets a text, interrupting The Lunachicks blasting from her sound system.

  Spencer: Try Ray’s in Edgefield

  Ray’s in Edgefield is a rough-looking, gray cinderblock dive bar in an even rougher-looking part of town. Half the windows are covered with plywood, and Gwen makes her way through a pothole-riddled dirt parking lot and along a cracked, weed-lined sidewalk. A neon sign reads OPEN, and under that, handwriting on a scrap of cardboard adds CASH ONLY. Inside, it’s dark. The floors are brown-stained cement. There is no stage, no music, just one TV loudly playing Sportscenter. It reeks of cigarettes and sour beer and is the sort of place Nico would call “charming” with pursed lips.

  Yet, with his back turned to the door, hunched at the bar with a sweating clear glass set in front of him, Grady doesn’t look out of place. It’s as if he spent a lot of time in places just like this once, before he was famous, before he was rich, before he met Nico. The bartender is like the leader of a biker gang: big, bald, bearded, and tattooed.

  “What do you think would happen if I ordered a Cosmopolitan?”

  Grady turns to face her as she sits on a stool, her legs dangling high off the floor. His face is still drawn and sad, but less angry now. Resigned.

  “Can’t be worse than trying to drown your sorrows in a club soda.” He picks up the glass and shakes it, ice cubes tinkling and condensation dripping on the scuffed surface of the bar.

  He’s not drinking alcohol. Gwen’s shoulders relax a little. The bartender comes by, and she orders a club soda with lime in solidarity and because she never has a great grasp on how to deal with the minefield of recovery and sobriety and addiction. Gwen sips her drink and looks around.

  The bar is fairly empty; it’s still early afternoon on a weekday. A guy drinking at a table is around their age, late twenties or early thirties or so; a group of college-age women play pool at the one warped pool table; and a man in his seventies, possibly younger plus decades of hard living, keeps unsuccessfully hitting on the girls.

  Gwen sends a look of disgust his way—he could be their grandfather, for fuck’s sake—before turning back to Grady.

  “For what it’s worth, I do think he intended to tell you.”

  Grady spins his glass in damp circles. “You know what they say about good intentions.”

  “Wait, I know this one. It’s something related to penis size, right?” She watches Grady bite down on a smile and knocks his knee with her own. “I may be mixing up my idioms.”

  The joke seems to work the way she’d hoped; Grady’s protective posture opens a little, the crease disappears from between his eyebrows, and he sits up higher. “You know, I never really understood that one. I mean, if the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then where do bad intentions lead you?”

  Gwen takes a sip of her club soda and jerks her head in the direction of the creepy old guy openly leering at girls who are barely of legal age.

  Grady glances over, scowls, and says, “True.” He takes one last swallow of his drink, then pushes it away. “This place is too depressing sober; let’s go.”

  As they leave, Gwen slows, worried about the young women. She’s sure they’re smart and capable and perfectly fine, but this weird nurturing instinct takes over and she can’t help it. She just wants them out of there and safe. So she detours to the pool table, leans close to the girl with shoulder-length brown hair, and takes a chance. “Hey, do you want to meet Grady Dawson?”

  The girl just looks at her blankly, and okay, not everyone knows Grady, not even in Nashville, and that’s likely the anonymity Grady was hoping for here. But then the tall one with curly black hair smacks the short one with long brown hair and hisses, “I told you that was him!”

  By the time Grady is finished chatting and charming and taking pictures in the parking lot, the creep is gone, and all three girls head home safe and swooning. Gwen is pleased enough with herself to indulge in saccharine pop radio in her car; then Grady leans into her open window and asks, “Have you ever ridden a dirt bike?”

  She has never ridden a dirt bike and after a dozen attempts and a dozen graceless tumbles into the dirt, she apparently never will. Grady is a good sport about it, helping her up and only teasing her a little every time she falls, but his attention shifts constantly to the riders zooming past, and his body language is tight and impatient. Gwen gives up and sits on the bleachers to watch so Grady can blow off some steam. It’s too bad; the biking gear and constant roar of engines appeal to her inner Evel Knievel. She could also create some interesting looks with the brightly colored leather and heavy black padding.

  Among the other riders, Grady is indistinguishable, taking the steep cliffs and sharp turns at increasingly breakneck speeds. When he nearly wipes out after flying off the highest hill, Gwen decides to call for backup. She’s out of her depth with Grady here; they’re friendly, they have a solid working relationship, but Grady came into her life via Nico, and that’s how she thinks of him, mostly: one half of Grady and Nico.

  Gwen takes a short video and sends it to Clementine with a message, Should I be concerned about this? She doesn’t hear back until Grady has blasted around the course three more times, so recklessly that it may be time to give in and call Nico. It’s not worth giving Grady space from Nico if he’s going to break his neck in the process. Clementine gets there first.

  Clementine: Maybe. Where did you find him? I got the 411 during fitting

  Gwen texts back, a bar, and the reply is immediate.

  Clementine: I’ll be there just as soon as I’m done with this meeting.

  6

  “Hey, G. Would you mind stopping by the store for a loaf of bread. Something crusty, you know the kind.”

  Gwen hesitates. “Well, I can.”

  Flora’s frustrated puff of air crackles through the phone. “Are you not coming home for dinner? Because I made a huge pot of stew and I hate when you don’t tell me in advance—”

  “No,” Gwen interrupts, before she can get too upset. “I just...” She turns away from the back corner and toward the folding chair where Grady is being treated for some scrapes after an epic wipeout. Clementine is hovering over him, fussing about the gash next to his eye.

  “Your face, Grady. Of all places.”

  Just outside the closet-sized first aid-slash-concession stand-slash-gear shop stands Clementine’s enormous bodyguard, Kevin. Inside it smells like motor oil, popcorn, and antiseptic. And yet this is not the weirdest client situation in which Gwen has found herself. Close, but not quite.

  Grady is more than a client, though, or he should be, and not just to Nico.

  Gwen turns back to the corner. “How do you feel about having Grady over for dinner?” She just can’t shake the feeling that Grady shouldn’t be alone, even though he claims to be fine and is clearly annoyed at Clementine’s worried fluttering about. She tried to get him to call Nico, but no dice, so she feels a little guilty about contacting him, but if she were Nico—

  Gwen: Found him. Thought you would want to know. He’s okay.

&nb
sp; Nico: Thanks, Gwen. Where are you now?

  She glances back when the metal folding chair squeaks and scrapes across the floor as Grady stands and brushes a cascade of dirt from his racing jersey and pants.

  Gwen: Dirt bike track.

  Nico: Thought he might be there. Or out in the woods.

  Gwen: Come to my place. 45 mins?

  Grady’s truck, Clementine’s Town Car and the black security SUV follow Gwen to the store and park in a circle around her tiny car as if they’re all participating in a spooky celebrity séance ritual. Only Gwen goes inside, fidgeting in front of the bakery counter with her phone ringing and ringing in her ear with unanswered calls. She doesn’t know what kind of crusty bread Flora wants. And will she care if Clementine tags along? And Nico shows up later? And does Clementine’s bodyguard even sit down to eat? Is he a cyborg, as Gwen suspects?

  Flora doesn’t pick up any of Gwen’s calls. She must have left her phone somewhere after their first conversation, so surprise asiago cheese bread and extra guests it is.

  “Do you want to fill me in here?” Flora asks when they all arrive, taking the bread and glancing toward the unexpected guests in the dining room.

  Gwen stretches up on her tiptoes to get out five bowls and five plates, and says in a quiet rush before Grady or Clementine come into the kitchen, “Nico didn’t sell the apartment, but told Grady that he did, and Grady was at a bar, but not drinking, and then at a dirt bike track which is potentially worrisome? And then he crashed and looked like an injured sad puppy, like look at him, and Clementine—”

  She snaps her mouth closed when Clementine glides into the kitchen and gushes, “This place is just darling!”

  Flora ladles out a serving of stew, rich and steaming and mouthwatering. “Thank you.” She smiles at Clementine, then gives Gwen a wide-eyed, this is seriously strange look.

  “And look at you two, in your precious little kitchen.” She claps her hands. “Oh, I just adore it.”

  Gwen wonders when superstar Clementine Campbell was last in a regular home with a regular kitchen. Judging by the way she’s exploring the photographs of Flora’s nieces Nyla and Evie on the fridge, the whiteboard with reminders about vet appointments, bills due and the number for a plumber as if she were an anthropologist discovering an unknown primitive society, probably a long time.

  “Uh. Let’s eat,” Flora says, after filling the bowls and slicing the bread. “Should we wait for—” She glances down the hallway, where Grady is sitting slumped at the table, and mouths, “Nico?”

  “He’s tied up with a designer right now; it’s fine.” Gwen turns her face up for a kiss. “This smells amazing, Flor. Thank you.” She’s laying it on thick to make up for the celebrity guests, and they both know it, but Flora indulges her with a smile and a kiss, and then instructs her to get everyone something to drink.

  The minutes tick by slowly, with a few brief conversations, but mostly in silence. Flora is characteristically quiet, Grady is uncharacteristically quiet, Clementine is still enchanted by the house, and Gwen can only natter on about nothing to herself for so long.

  “So, how did y’all meet?”

  Grady is still quiet, polite and sweet, but mostly tearing off chunks of bread and swirling them around the thick gravy in his bowl. Clementine switches her wide-eyed fascination from their home to them, wanting to know what Flora does, then talking excitedly about her favorite teachers, the ones she had before her first hit single at fifteen. After that she had favorite private tutors.

  “In college.” Flora says.

  “At a party in college, the week before I flunked out,” Gwen adds. “One of those dorm room gatherings where you just sit around getting high as a kite.” She winces. “Sorry, Grady.”

  Grady swirls his bread and sits with his cheek smushed on his fist. “I’ve been high as a kite plenty of times. Don’t bother me.”

  “Anyway. At a party...” Clementine says.

  Gwen takes the prompt. She squashes a carrot into mush with her fork. “I couldn’t stop staring at her. I mean, can you blame me?”

  Flora scoffs at that, shakes her head, and stares at her bowl. Grady pipes up with, “She’s right. You’re an incredibly beautiful woman, Flora,” in that gravelly purr of his. Flora’s cheeks glow a deep red.

  “But,” Gwen continues, giving Flora time to recover, “she had a girlfriend. So I didn’t talk to her at all. Stared at her like a creep instead. We had some friends in common, though, so I’d keep seeing her at gatherings, at bars, at parties. Always with the girlfriend. What was her name, Flor?”

  “Imani.”

  “Imani, that’s right. She was this brilliant, dreadlocked goddess, double majoring in—”

  “Philosophy and poetry.”

  “And here I was. A college dropout who looked like I’d just busted out of eighth grade detention—”

  “She had blue hair and a tongue ring,” Flora says with a soft smile meant only for Gwen. “I noticed her. So when Imani and I broke up and I ran into Gwen, I was intrigued.”

  “Yeah, by the tongue stud.” Gwen gives her a smirk. She had some good times with that tongue piercing. “I chipped a tooth with it right after we started dating, so it had to go.”

  “And I stayed.”

  “And then they lived happily ever after.” Gwen tucks a lock of hair, loose from her braid, behind Flora’s ear.

  “Aww.” Clementine’s cooing breaks Gwen from a spell; she’d almost forgotten other people were in the room with them. She’ll never forget that night, when shy, quiet Flora approached her, when she first really looked at Gwen with those huge dark eyes. Flora’s hair was a curtain of black around her face; a summery blue dress hugged every gorgeous, thick curve of her body. And when she haltingly and breathlessly asked if Gwen wanted to hang out alone, Gwen went dizzy with rushing blood.

  “She was way out of my league,” Gwen says. They’re fast approaching a decade together, and Flora still makes Gwen tilt-a-whirl woozy. “She still is.”

  Flora frowns and shakes her head, and Clementine says, “Hey, don’t sell yourself short. You’re hot. Like a hot little pixie.”

  Before Gwen can even begin to process that, there’s a knock on the door, and Nico’s voice calls, “Can I come in?”

  At her other side, Grady goes stiff. Clementine hops up to kiss both of Nico’s cheeks, and Flora stands, picks up the only bowl still full of food and makes for the kitchen. “I’ll heat this up for you.”

  “Grady, I—” Nico stops, halfway into the chair on Grady’s right side, then grabs Grady’s chin and frowns. “Your face.”

  “That’s what I said,” Clementine tells him.

  “He wiped out.” Gwen makes a dramatic wipeout motion with both hands.

  Grady jerks his chin away. “It wasn’t that bad.”

  It looked that bad; he hit the ground after flying off a hill so hard his helmet popped off and he went skidding like a rag doll across the dirt. Her instinct bubbling up, sudden and urgent, Gwen didn’t remember standing but was at his side in a flash. Not even Clementine got there as fast as she had.

  The dining room is silent and tense. Flora is taking her sweet time heating up the pot roast, and the rest of them are finished with their food, floundering for something, anything, to say. Gwen shifts uncomfortably in her chair; Clementine glances, unfocused, around the room; Grady scowls at the floor; and Nico frowns at Grady’s scowling.

  The microwave beeps, and Clementine’s phone chirps with a reminder. “Shoot, I’m sorry, y’all. I have a phone interview soon. I forgot.”

  “No problem.” Gwen hops up, relieved at the excuse to scurry from the room and walk Clementine to the door. Behind them, Nico and Grady talk in terse whispers.

  “Keep an eye on him for me, okay? And tell Flora I apologize for eating and running and thank you both for the dinner. My place next time?�
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  “Sure.” She’ll find some way to cope with eating a professionally catered dinner at Clementine’s mansion. Somehow.

  Clementine, her body slim and rounded with pert, toned curves, hugs her. She always smells so good, too; like honeysuckle. Looks like a lingerie model, sings like an angel, smells like a flower, nibbles pot roast like a hummingbird.

  They say goodnight, and then Kevin the bodyguard appears to walk Clementine to her waiting Town Car. The door clicks closed, and the conversation in dining room is steadily increasing in volume.

  “... has nothing to do with wanting to be with other people, Grady,” Nico is saying. “As if you’re the one who should be worried about cheating.”

  “The hell is that supposed to mean?” Grady says, his voice verging on a shout.

  She doesn’t want to hear this, she doesn’t, she—there’s no escape; her back is pressed to the closed front door as if she’s hoping to fuse with it. The open floor plan they loved so much when they bought the place means there is no way to get anywhere unnoticed. Maybe she could creep along the far wall and dash up the stairs. They’re so creaky, though. Why does this house have to be so old and open and creaky?

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” Nico says, backpedaling. “You know I—the bi thing doesn’t bother me, you know that.”

  Grady gives a humorless laugh. “The bi thing.”

  Nico groans in frustration. “I mean that I, I am here, for you. I left my family and I left my career in L.A. I moved to your house in the middle of fucking nowhere, Grady, in a town where I’m afraid to stand too close to you in the grocery store because this godforsaken state has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-first fucking century, for you. I came here for you. I am sorry that I didn’t tell you about the apartment. I just didn’t think it was that big of a deal.”

  There’s a long beat of silence, and maybe it’s okay, maybe they’re hugging or kissing or gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes, or making out on the table; at this point she’ll be happy with any of those. She breathes out and pushes off the door. Then Grady speaks again.