Missing Dixie (Neon Dreams #3)(80)

“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.