Full Tilt (Full Tilt #1)(65)

“Um, yeah, how about ‘Talk Me Down’?”

Kacey smiled thinly but kept her eyes on her guitar. “I don’t play that one anymore.”

I was nervous as hell for some reason. Aside from some loud—but intricate—electric guitar riffs on the radio, I’d never heard Kacey play. Or sing. My stupid heart pounded like I was the one in the spotlight, and my palms were so sweaty I had to wipe them on the front of my jeans.

“How about old school?” Dena said. “Tom Petty?”

Kacey nodded as she strummed a few notes. Then her fingers hit the five opening chords of “Free Fallin’.”

“Nice,” Dena murmured.

The chords repeated, then Kacey began to sing.

After two lines, I closed my eyes, blocking out everything except her voice. Pure and sweet, but a little gravelly too. Tough as hell tinged with vulnerable. She sang about a good girl who loved her mama, and a bad boy who broke her heart. Kacey’s hand strummed the strings harder as the verse ended, and she hit that chorus high note clear and hard, with a tapered edge at the end.

Before the next verse, Kacey smiled at Dena, murmuring, “Don’t leave me hanging…” Dena joined in, then we all did. Through the rest of “Free Fallin’” and into “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz, “Brass in Pocket” by the Pretenders, and “Wonderwall” by Oasis.

Last, Kacey sang Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars” alone, her voice filling up the night. I leaned back in my chair, only the side of her face visible to me, lit up gold with firelight as her sweet, scratchy voice asked someone to lie with her and just forget the world.

The ache in my heart rose to my throat, and I felt something change in me. A shift. A reckless, selfish hope that maybe, if Kacey were still willing, I could lie with her this night and every night thereafter, for however many I had left to me.

The song ended. Followed by silence.

Holly sniffed and wiped her eyes. “You have a beautiful voice.”

Kacey smiled as the others murmured agreement. With a snap of his head, Theo came out of his reverie like a man who’d been under hypnosis. All of his walls shot back up. His face hardened, his brow furrowed and he took a long pull from his beer bottle.

Kacey’s eyes found mine, soft and serene in the firelight.

“All right, kiddies,” Oscar said, taking up a pitcher of water to douse the fire. “Time for bed.”





Goodnights were said, and we retreated into our tents. Kacey and I took turns waiting outside while the other changed into sleeping clothes. She put on leggings and an old men’s blue button down. The temperature had dropped to sixty degrees or so, and she shivered as she snuggled down into her sleeping bag.

I changed into flannel pants and a T-shirt, and slid into my bag. We lay in silence staring at the tent roof, a shard of silver starlight our only illumination.

“Holly was right,” I said. “Your voice is beautiful. You could have a solo career if you wanted it.”

She rolled on her side toward me. “If I wanted it…”

“Do you?”

“I don’t know. Just this morning I tried to finish a song I started several years ago. About Chett. I’d written it on the road. All the pain of his ditching me. I squeezed the words from my heart and onto the page. God, the pain had felt so real back then. But when I read them today…they felt empty. Silly, even.” She heaved a sigh. “I guess Chett’s not worth even a song. Ironic, since that’s why I came back to Vegas. To write about him.” She shifted in her bag. “I guess it’s time to find some new material.”

I nodded, struggled for something more to say.

Kacey flopped onto her back. “This tent is the worst.”

“Sorry?”

“This is the worst tent ever,” she said, pointing at the angled nylon roof over our heads. “Look at it. What the hell is the point of sleeping out in nature if you can’t see it?”

“To protect you from the elements,” I said. “Only a thin strip of nylon separates you from rain, wind…sasquatches.”

“Shut up.”

“The worst Mother Nature has to offer.”

“And the best,” she said. “I mean, there’s not even a window to see the stars. Don’t tents usually have a screen or something?”

“Some do,” I said. “This one doesn’t.”

Kacey climbed out of her bag and rolled it up into a sloppy bundle she tucked under her arm.

“Where are you going?”

“I want the stars.” She stopped at the tent flap and looked over her shoulder at me, a question in her eyes.

Are you coming?

She didn’t wait for an answer, but stepped out. To where I had no idea, but if I didn’t follow her, she might get lost in the dark of the forest. At least, that’s what I told myself, as I gathered up my own bag and followed her out.





The ground was cold and hard under my bare feet as I followed the beacon of Kacey’s pale hair through the woods, away from the clearing of dark tents where my friends slept. She followed the creek and I thought I knew where she was going. The only place she knew to go; the clearing near the edge of the valley, about a hundred yards away from the campsite.

Only a few trees edged the clearing, towering columns in the dark. Below, the valley spread out in rolling hills of deep green that looked almost black in the night, and a canopy of stars wheeled overhead like diamonds. The moon was huge and full, and cast silvery light over everything.