1

“BIRD,” DYLAN WHISPERS in awe, his eyes going wide as we board the tour bus. It’s his first glimpse of our living arrangements for the next nine months, and it’s obvious that he’s as shocked as I was the first time I saw it. After the brutal writer’s block I had while trying to create a worthy follow-up album to Wildflower, watching The Road to You skyrocket to the top of the charts made all the stress and long days worth it. Thanks to the best fans in the world, I’m now headlining for the first time ever, bringing the Shine Our Light Tour to forty-nine cities across North America. We opened tonight and it was the highlight of my life, playing to a full arena and hearing the Memphis crowd sing my songs along with me. Having my big brother in tow was just the cherry on top.

Now, as we step up into the lounge area, he lets out a low whistle. “It’s… it’s…”

“Pretty awesome, right?” I finish for him, setting my fiddle case down on the plush gray carpet.

“Awesome?” he echoes as we take in the white leather furniture, stainless-steel appliances, and flat-screen TV. “This is insane.”

“When Dan Silver promises the best…” I say, trailing off as I allow myself once again to be blown away by the luxury. My label president wasn’t lying when he said he’d make my time on the road as comfortable as possible. It feels like I’m in an upscale condo, not a motor home.

I follow Dylan past the spacious bathroom and the three bunk beds with curtains for privacy, and into the master bedroom, where he just stops and stares. This is a level of opulence neither of us could have imagined.

“I’m assuming this is mine?” Dylan asks as he tosses his duffel bag onto the queen-sized bed. He lies down and folds his arms behind his head. “Not bad.”

“Very funny,” I say, flopping down beside him. We hear the other musicians outside boarding the band bus next to ours, but we don’t move. Instead, we lie in silence for a minute and relive the night’s performance. This was the first time we had performed live together in a while, but the way we connected onstage felt natural and easy, just like our days growing up in the Barrett Family Band. I know exactly what he’s doing right now—going over every song we played tonight and thinking of times he messed up or ways he can improve as the tour continues. And he knows what I’m doing—coming down from the postshow high of my first official tour date.

For months I labored tirelessly with the whole Open Highway team to put together a show that brings my songs to life. I was given unlimited creative input on everything from set to wardrobe, lighting to schedule, and seeing it all come together tonight was indescribably rewarding. When I popped out of the trapdoor in the floor, I could feel the excitement in the arena. They loved the pyrotechnics and video feeds. And the eleven costume changes? Totally worth it.

My manager, Troy Becker, had a brilliant idea. At the beginning of the concert, fans are shown hashtags on the big screen that they can use to tag me and their seat number so I can find them in the crowd. They send me questions through Twitter, and I answer live, right from the stage.

“That guy you posed with in the crowd is going to be the most popular kid in school when he goes back,” Dylan says with a grin.

“Like I always was,” I reply.

“Bird, we were homeschooled.”

I look over at him. “Yeah, but Mom and Jacob clearly liked me best.”

Dylan rolls his eyes and screws up his face, with his features so much like my own, and I chuckle. Then I nudge him affectionately. “Kind of feels like the old days again, huh?”

He nods. “Yeah, when we used to tour the country with a massive mural of your big old face on the side of the RV. Like déjà vu, really.”

I punch him in the arm.

Okay, so it’s not at all like the old days. We aren’t scraping by, living payout-to-payout, playing dives and bars hoping to sell a few CDs. Over a hundred and fifty people have jobs because of this tour. It’s massive, and if I let myself think about the risk involved, it causes me major anxiety. A lot of people are counting on me. Leave it to Dylan to remind me of all that.

“I wish Jacob could’ve come,” I say with a sigh. “He’s the brother I like.”

Dylan laughs. “Yeah, he’s the brother everyone likes. Get this: Adam told me that before Jacob started dating Ashlynn, he was a total player at UCLA.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“No, what’s disgusting is”—he stops and bats his eyelashes—“infinity.”

I groan. “Oh man, if I’d heard him say ‘infinity’ on the phone to that girl one more time this summer, I swear I was going to murder him.”

“How much do you love me?” Dylan asks in a high-pitched voice.

“Oh, Ashy-poo, to infinity!”

“Infinity?” Dylan continues. “Is that long enough?”

“No, double infinity,” I say. “Triple infinity!”

We both crack up.

“I’m just mad she stole my bass player!”

“Aw, take heart,” Dylan says. “You’ve got me. And because you’ve got me, you don’t have Mom and Dad.”

“And because you’ve got me—” Stella says from out of nowhere. She flops onto the bed on my other side. “You don’t have to be alone with him.”

“Thank God,” I say, and we all laugh.

But it’s true. With Dylan taking off a year from college and me turning eighteen in a few weeks, my folks decided to take a break from the road, after a stern conversation about responsibility, of course. They’ll check in from time to time and meet me somewhere every other week or so, but my granddad broke his hip a few days ago and they want to stay in Tennessee while he recovers. I personally think it’s killing them—at least my dad—not to be along for the ride, but my granddad’s on his own and he needs the help.

“Remind me again why you hired her?” Dylan asks me, while looking pointedly over at Stella.

“Because I am a gifted designer with a natural eye for fashion and Bird’s stylist needed an assistant,” Stella answers for me. “The talent wanted everybody from her dancers to her band members flinging their clothes off backstage.”

“Ha-ha,” I say dryly, although the show is quite a spectacle.

“I thought it was because your grades tanked,” Dylan goes on, trying to get under her skin.

Stella shrugs. “That too. I suck at math… and English… and apparently Design Fundamentals.” She gives me a big grin. “Aren’t ya glad you hired me?”

“Oh, please,” I say.

“But enough about my fabulous college crash ’n’ burn. Why’d she hire you?” she asks Dylan.

“Because she’s a platinum-selling recording artist who needed someone up to her level to play guitar in her band,” Dylan answers.

“Oh, not because you’re her brother?”

Dylan scoffs. These two have been volleying jabs back and forth like this ever since the first dress rehearsal. “No, Bird wisely plucked me from the many talented Nashville up-and-comers before another megastar caught wind of my potential.”

“Huh,” Stella says. “I thought maybe it was because of all the jailbait.”

“Jailbait?”

“Yeah, Anita has been going on and on about what a draw you are for Bird’s young fans. You have that bewitching… boy-band look,” she says with a gleam in her eye.

Dylan sits up, clearly offended. “‘Boy band’?”

“Yeah, that look,” she goes on. “You, Harry Styles, Nick Jonas, the Biebs. If we put you in skinny jeans and got you a signature ’do, you’d all be the same person basically.”

Dylan is utterly and completely speechless as the back of his neck gets red. His mouth hangs open in shock, and Stella cracks up next to me. I just stare at the ceiling and grin, still flying on the high of tonight’s show and so happy to be back on the road.