“In the music industry, blah blah. Spare me your keeping-it-about-the-music bullshit, Juno. Bottom line is money, and talent alone won’t get you very far. Look at Linda Lewis. She can’t sing a note that isn’t autotuned, and her songs are selling by the ton—”
“Because she wears short skirts and no panties on stage—”
“Find me one of those!”
“Manny! No!”
“You were hired to schmooze who we tell you to schmooze. Sign the Beateaters, and we’ll talk about giving you a project band.”
“A project band?” Real talent shouldn’t be called a “project band.” Juno wanted to reach through the phone and strangle him. She’d worked for years at this soul-sucking job for a chance to sign someone who actually fucking deserved to be signed. She stomped faster past another baggage claim area.
“Juno, you know as well as anyone in the industry, you were hired because of your father. You have to work your way up, just like everyone else.”
“Are you serious right now?” she whisper-screamed into the phone as she weaved her way through the busy airport. “You’re really throwing who my dad is in my face? I got this job without him even knowing. I’ve never used his name to build myself up. I hide who I am as much as possible! You degrade the work I’ve done by saying shit like that to me.”
“You have to pay your dues and do the chores that you don’t want to before you get your break. Look at what Mark brings us?”
“Mark is a trained monkey!”
“A well-trained monkey who you should take lessons from. He doesn’t give me shit every time I send him out on a job. He just gets it done.”
“Right, sign Nudist Barbie with three brain cells in her head and be exactly like Mark-the-womanizer-who-sleeps-with-hookers-in-every-town-you-fly-him-to!”
“Juno…sign the Beateaters. I don’t care how you do it. They’re who the label wants. Do your job and get that band for us.”
The phone line went dead, and Juno strangled it while making a screeching sound. A woman looking concerned pulled her toddler closer to her legs, but hang it all, Juno was about thirty seconds away from texting Manny I QUIT and calling her career good.
The thing that stopped her? The crinkle of the eviction notice for her condo in her back pocket. She’d read it on the plane after putting it off for the last two weeks. She was upside down on everything. Freaking LA and the ridiculous cost of living.
Her life had turned out so different than she’d planned.
And right now, only one thing in the world could take the sting off her stress level.
And that was one freckle-faced, grinning bestie leaning up against a black F-150 right outside the airport doors. The color of the truck matched Remington Novak’s newly dyed hair.
Juno let off a sigh and blinked back tears as she ran for Remi. It had been way too long since she’d seen her. “Oh my goooosh,” she squealed, landing tits-first into her hug.
Juno held her at arms’ length just to get a better look at her. Remi’s cheeks were rosy, and she hadn’t covered her freckles with makeup like she’d done with her ex-boyfriend, Asshole Kagan, as Juno had liked to call him. She’d dyed her hair back to her natural color, and her smile was easy and huge. Her green bear shifter eyes looked even brighter and more animated than she’d seen in years, if she ignored the tears rimming them. “Stop!” she exclaimed. “You know you can’t cry alone with me around, and I’m barely holding it together. God, Remi, you look so different. You look…happy.”
Remi swallowed hard and cupped Juno’s cheeks, studying her face. “You don’t.”
“Oh, stop,” Juno said, angling her face away. “I’m just tired. The flight was long. There was a crying baby.”
“You know I can still hear a lie, right?”
“I’m hungry, and I Googled where your new Crew is. It said something about a cheese factory?”
Remi laughed and threw Juno’s suitcase into the back of the truck. She gestured for her to get in. “Let’s go, the boys are making you food. We’ll have to tackle the cheese factory tomorrow.”
“Weeeell, I wanted to talk to you about that,” Juno said as she stuffed herself into the passenger’s side. “I have to fly out tomorrow afternoon.”
“One day?” Remi yelled as she climbed behind the steering wheel. “No, that’s not enough. You just got here. Call your boss and tell him to fuck off.”
“I tried. The label is going to fire me if I don’t sign this band. But bright side, one day together is better than no days, so let’s just have as much fun as possible and not talk about work.”
“Okay,” Remi murmured, pulling out into airport traffic. “No work talk. Only fun.” Remi looked over at her with the happiest smile Juno had ever seen on her face. This place had been good for her best friend.
Beaston had told Juno that his daughter could find sanctuary here, and Juno had trusted him. She’d encouraged Remi to come out to these mountains and fulfill some vision Beaston had seen for her. And it had worked.
It was terrifying, because that meant the vision Beaston had had for Juno just might come true, too.
She was going to die soon.
Chapter Three
“Juno,” Remi said.
“Mmm?” she answered distractedly as she typed out an email to the administrative assistant of Halfstone Records.
“You’re missing it.”
“Just a sec…” Juno speed-typed, but made two typos and had to go back and fix them.
“Juno, seriously, you’re missing it.”
“Missing what?” she asked, looking up at the piney woods blurring by.
“Life,” Remi murmured.
Juno sighed. “It’s not that simple, Remi. Not for me, not anymore. I have bills to pay.”
“It’s your day off.”
“I don’t really get days off. I just have to move those hours somewhere else in my schedule.”
The disappointment in Remi’s face made Juno’s stomach hurt, so she dragged her attention away from her work and stared out the window. “It’s really beautiful here. Reminds me of back home in Damon’s Mountains.”
“How long has it been since you were back?”
“The last time you saw me there. Christmas last year.”
“I think you’ll like it here,” she said softly. “It’s really different from city life.”
“Do you miss Sacramento?” Juno asked carefully.
“You mean do I miss Kagan, feeling lost, the honking horns and crowded streets, having to worry about where I’ll Change, and feeling like a number? No. Not even for a second. I feel at peace here.” She cast Juno a quick smile. “I can’t wait for you to meet Kamp.”
Juno’s heart was happy just seeing the joy written into her friend’s features. She wouldn’t live long enough to find a mate, that much was clear from Beaston’s vision. Her end of days was coming up too quickly. But at least she could go knowing Remi had found her place in the world, with the right man who made her glow from the inside out instead of dimming her.
“Why do you look sad?” Remi asked with a little frown furrowing her dark eyebrows.
“I’m not.”
“Liar. Since when do you keep secrets?”
Juno shrugged up one shoulder and traded one secret for another to distract Remi. “I totally got another eviction notice on my condo.”
“Well, that is the least surprising thing ever. You have to pay like a million dollars for a one bedroom. I don’t know how you keep up with the cost of living there.”
Juno snorted and checked the email that just came in. “I don’t keep up, apparently. My landlord is going to kick me out this time. He ain’t bluffin’.”
“Maybe that’s what’s supposed to happen,” Remi said so low Juno almost missed it.
“No, that’s definitely not what’s supposed to happen. I’m not supposed to fail at the one thing I’ve poured my entire life into.”
“Juno, look at your life. You are a puppeteer. An organizer. You got me to these mountains and sent a bunch of strippers to my apartment to get me moving again. You organized for all of my stuff to be brought to Tillamook, Oregon from Sacramento with like…no preparation. And you still kept up with your work. And you probably are doing the same stuff for Ashlynn. Am I right?”