Missing Dixie

Текст добавлен: 12 октября 2016, 01:16

Текст книги "Missing Dixie"

Автор книги: Caisey Quinn

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Epilogue | Liam

“DUDE. SERIOUSLY. YOU have the coolest parents.” Malcolm Hastings fist-bumps me as we take our spots backstage next to my cousin Denver and his grandma.

“Yeah, they’re okay. I guess.”

His already large eyes bulge behind the lenses of his glasses. “They’re okay? We’re backstage at the biggest musical festival of the year. This is freaking amazing!”

I laugh at him, no, no, with him. Definitely with him, because he’s laughing along at how laid-back I am about the whole famous-musicians-for-parents thing. Malcolm is a unique individual and a lot of people laugh at him because they don’t see the world the way he does. He actually does get laughed at a lot and he doesn’t like it. I take special care never to laugh at him.

We’re an odd pair. I’m a little on the stockier side in my typically solid black attire and Malcolm is tall but skinny with his suspenders and colorful bow ties. The bow ties belonged to his granddad and he gets really mad and kind of sad when people make fun of them.

He’s a good guy, the kind of guy who will wake you up at a sleepover if you’re having an embarrassing nightmare and will listen without laughing when you tell him what it’s about. He’s the kind of guy who keeps stuff to himself and my mom says it’s important to have friends you can trust. Even if they wear really strange bow ties.

He’s also supersmart, like, skipped two grades smart. So he’s smaller than most of us in eighth grade, which is where I come in.

I’m the muscle.

After a sleepover incident in sixth grade, I decided Malcolm was my friend for life. So when some of the guys on the football team decided to duct-tape Malcolm to a toilet seat naked in the locker room, I decided I didn’t like the idea too much and used my fists to express my dislike of this plan before Malcolm lost too much body hair to a roll of Kentucky Chrome.

My mom wasn’t thrilled.

I was grounded for two weeks, which actually kind of sucked.

But my dad . . . he kind of got it. My dad says loyalty is important and that I get this from my mom. He said sometimes, when you learn about the world a certain way, like me and him did, you sort of learn how to deal with your problems and emotions a certain way. Doesn’t mean it’s the best way, just means your instincts might not always be in line with the kind of behavior that is okay with like teachers and cops and stuff. He taught me about counting my heartbeats to calm down so I can think about the possible consequences of my decisions before I act.

I count my heartbeats a lot.

Sometimes I still make mistakes, but both my parents and my aunt Robyn and uncle Dallas say this is okay.

It used to not be okay. My biological dad didn’t think mistakes were okay. He punished me for them, even some that I didn’t make. The dad I have now, the one who taught me to play the drums, he says sometimes grown-ups make mistakes too and that the things my biological dad did were mistakes. He’s paying for them in prison, which is how I learned about consequences. And I guess how he did, too.

It took a long time for me to be okay with mistakes. Learning to play the violin with my mom and the drums with my dad taught me that sometimes something really kind of, well, beautiful and awesome can come from mistakes.

“Some of the best songs were written by accident,” my mom always says. “Or from something sad or really painful.”

Learning to find the good in all the bad and control yourself even when you can’t—my parents say that’s how you grow up and how you learn to make good decisions.

I’m working on it.

But at thirteen, I’m the only linebacker who plays violin and my best friend wears bow ties so I get a lot of practice trying to make good decisions.

It’s easier said than done, that’s for sure.

The music begins onstage and my heart beats in time with the drums. My dad is a pretty talented drummer and he’s on a lot of magazine covers. I grin back at Malcolm, because yeah, okay, so my parents are kind of cool. For parents, I guess. They look different than some parents because they have tattoos and stuff, but most of my friends seem to think that just makes them cooler.

Tonight’s concert is to benefit an organization my mom started called Over the Rainbow. She wanted to give kids like me, well, like I used to be, a chance to learn to channel stuff, which I think means deal with stuff, through playing music.

After she and my dad adopted me, some people found out and wrote an article about us and how we met. Then all these other musicians started calling and asking how they could help out. Now it’s a really big deal, which makes my parents really happy.

My mom says I’m her pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, which makes me feel kind of special. I am pretty thankful that she met me and loved me and wanted to adopt me. I am also thankful she doesn’t say the pot of gold thing in front of the guys. Only at night before bed.

I’m pretty lucky I guess. Not only do I have a cool mom but my dad understands how I am sometimes—even when I don’t understand it myself. Through some of the events for Over the Rainbow, I’ve met some other kids like me, kids who had not-so-great parents or for one reason or another didn’t get to know their parents. It’s kind of nice not to feel alone in the world. There’s this girl, Abby, she lives near me and had kind of a tough time before Over the Rainbow and she’s okay. For a girl I guess.

Mom says that’s what music does. It connects us, makes even the loneliest person a part of something special. It helps us to feel and to heal, she says. She’s right. She usually is, but my dad says not to tell her that too much or she’ll get a big head about it.

Last week at school I turned in my essay on why I wanted to be a drummer when I grow up, a professional one like my dad. My teacher, Mrs. Kingston, said music was a hobby, not a career, and that I should rewrite it.

My mom came to school and had a very long discussion with her about this. I don’t know what happened during their talk because I had to sit out in the hall, but after it was over Mrs. Kingston said she’d made a mistake and gave me a hug and an A on my essay.

“Why do you want to be a drummer, Liam?” my mom asked me in the car on the way home. “Is it because you really love playing or because you want to be like your dad?”

I had to think about it for a while. “Both, I guess. And because on Career Day they said you should do what makes you feel good and what makes a difference in the world.”

She smiled at me and I smiled back because she’s got a really nice smile that makes it hard not to. Even if you don’t want to at first, like I didn’t when we first met, she will keep smiling at you until you do. “Music has sure made a difference in our world, hasn’t it?”

I nodded.

When I was younger, I used to wander around town. I found my mom because I heard the music coming from her house where she gave piano and violin lessons. I don’t like to think about what might’ve happened if she hadn’t been there, if she’d been on the road with the band or away at college or at any of the other places she could’ve been, if she hadn’t played the kind of music that brings you back again and again—the kind that makes you feel safe . . . connected. I shook off the weird feeling remembering those days before knowing her gave me and told her about how Teddy Gleason said music doesn’t make a difference, that doctors did because doctors saved lives and music was “unnecessary.” She rolled her eyes and said Teddy was going to grow up to live a very dull life like his dad and not to worry about it.

The song my parents wrote for me the year they didn’t think they were going to be able to adopt me begins to play and I watch my parents and my uncle onstage for a few minutes. It’s called “Losing Liam” and it launched their career, according to my mom. It also makes people cry, yet it was number one for like a ton of weeks. I guess some people like to cry.

It doesn’t make me cry. It makes me feel . . . I don’t know . . . happy, I guess, that they wanted me that much. My mom says it’s important to find happiness and that not everybody’s happy ending looks the same, and that’s okay.

Watching them, listening to the words they wrote about me and how much they love me and how badly they wanted to be my parents, I realize that Teddy really was wrong.

Music does save lives.

It saved mine.

MISSING DIXIE PLAYLIST

“Goodbye,” Who Is Fancy?

“Lonely Eyes,” Chris Young

“Turning Tables,” Adele

“Games,” Luke Bryan

“Better Than You Left Me,” Mickey Guyton

“Marry Me,” Train

“She Don’t Love You,” Eric Paslay

“Sippin’ on Fire,” Florida Georgia Line

“Not in That Way,” Sam Smith

“Burning House,” Cam

“I Know You,” Skylar Grey

“Love You Like That,” Canaan Smith

“Just a Kiss,” Lady Antebellum

“I’m to Blame,” Kip Moore

“Life Support,” Sam Smith

“Devil’s Backbone,” The Civil Wars

“I Believe,” Christina Perri

“Take It Out on Me,” Florida Georgia Line

“Not on Drugs,” Tove Lo

“Playing with Fire,” Katie Armiger

“I’m Coming Over,” Chris Young

“Ride,” Chase Rice

“Lead Me,” Kip Moore

“Fly,” Maddie and Tae

Acknowledgments

WHEN I LOOK back on the year it took to write this series, it feels like a blur. A beautiful, bright, neon lit blur.

I have to confess that I didn’t know exactly how the Neon Dreams series would end when I began writing it. I knew the band would finally make it big. I knew that they would never want to share their backstory but that it would be a story worth telling. What I didn’t know was how real their hearts and souls would become to me. While Liam may not be Dixie and Gavin’s biological son, I did learn this year that family truly does come in the form of people who love and support you in both the best and worst of times and that it’s not always comprised of people who are related by blood or marriage. Liam was born from that discovery.

When Dallas went on the road and Dixie stayed behind, some people were outright angry. I was. At both of them. I was confused about why this felt right. I didn’t know Liam existed yet. I didn’t know he was going to be wandering by an old house in the backside of Amarillo alone and afraid. I didn’t realize that Dixie had to be there giving piano lessons to other kiddos so that Liam would hear and be drawn to her.

Everyone was exactly where they needed to be—even when I hadn’t yet realized it.

So my first big thank you is for you, for those of you who read this series and allowed me to figure it out as I went. For each of you who leaves a review somewhere—anywhere—and tells a friend to read it, thank you times two. Times ten. Times infinity, as my daughter says.

My second thank you is to my editor, Amanda, who didn’t tell me to take a hike when Liam entered the picture and it meant a rewrite of the second half of the book and that I wouldn’t make my initial deadline. I love you. I thank God for you, for your always having my back and for allowing me to write the story I believed in, the way that I needed to write it.

Thank you to my agent, Kevan, for also not dropping the crazy lady who said “So . . . my life is a mess and I need this book to go a different way and I am going to hunker down in the bat cave until I get it right.” Promise not to do that again . . . at least not on purpose.

To the members of CQ’s Road Crew and the Backwoods Belles, you ladies have been my family this year. You have been my light in the darkness, pulling me out of one of the toughest and most devastating situations I’ve ever been in. I literally don’t know if I could do my job without your unconditional love and support. Scratch that. I couldn’t. I know I couldn’t. Same goes for the bloggers who share, review, post, and rant and rave about all the book things. I love y’all. To the moon and back and around again.

To the amazing authors I am blessed to call colleagues and friends, thank you. I don’t know what I did to deserve you, to even get to know you much less read your work and have my books read and loved on by you, but I’m glad I did it—whatever it was!

Lastly, to anyone who supports music and musicians in general, thank you for existing. Music matters. The epilogue from Liam is very much nonfiction in my world, and I have someone I love dearly that I believe was saved by music. You know that feeling you get when you hear that song—that one that causes you to step off the treadmill or pull the car over or freeze in place and hold your breath and strain to hear because it reaches that deep, dark, hidden place where your secrets dwell—it’s a real, tangible thing, that feeling. It connects us—especially when we are positive no one else in the entire world could possibly understand what we’re going through. And let’s face it, life is better with a soundtrack.

Thank you to every single person who had a hand in helping this series about a small-town ragtag band become more than I ever dreamed it could be.

Thank you for making my dreams come true.

Don’t miss any of Caisey Quinn’s addicting

Neon Dreams series! Check out where it all began with Leaving Amarillo and Loving Dallas!

LEAVING AMARILLO

Music is my everything.

After my parents died when I was a kid, moving into my grandparents’ ramshackle house on a dirt road in Amarillo seemed like a nightmare. Until I stumbled upon my grandfather’s shed full of instruments. My soul lives between the strings of Oz, my secondhand fiddle, and it soars when I play.

In Houston, I’m a typical college student on my way to becoming a classically trained violinist headed straight for the orchestra pit. But on the road with my band, Leaving Amarillo, I’m free.

We have one shot to make it, and I have one shot to live the life I was meant to. Leaving Amarillo got into Austin MusicFest, and everything is riding on this next week. This is our moment.

There’s only one problem. I have a secret . . . one that could destroy everyone I care about.

His name is Gavin Garrison and he’s our drummer. He’s also my brother’s best friend, the one who promised he’d never lay a hand on me. He’s the one person I can’t have, and yet he’s the only one I want.

One week. One hotel room. I don’t know if I can do this.

I just know that I have to.

LOVING DALLAS

Every dream comes with a price. . .

Dallas.

Sacrifice. I’m familiar with it.

I’ve had to leave behind everyone I cared about—my sister, my best friend, my band, and my high school sweetheart—in order to chase my dream of making it in Nashville.

But when Robyn Breeland walks back into my life, it’s as if the universe has decided to give me a second chance. I’m just not sure it’s one I’m willing to take.

Robyn.

Heartbreak. I practically majored in it.

Dallas Lark was the first boy I ever loved and the one who’d shattered my heart into pieces. But I’ve moved on. Working in promotions at Midnight Bay Bourbon, I’m too busy to sit around moping over my ex. But when my company decides to sponsor his tour, I’ll have to face him whether I’m ready to or not. Dallas is determined to drive me to distraction, and my body begs me to let him.

Trouble is, my heart can’t tell the difference between a second chance and making the same mistake twice.

About the Author

CAISEY QUINN lives in Birmingham, Alabama. She is the bestselling author of the Kylie Ryans series as well as several New Adult and Contemporary Romance novels featuring southern girls finding love in unexpected places. You can find her online at www.caiseyquinnwrites.com.

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Credits

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

MISSING DIXIE. Copyright © 2015 by Caisey Quinn. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-0-06-236686-3

EPub Edition OCTOBER 2015 ISBN: 9780062366870

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