Page 1 of Reality With You (Arden Beach #1)

L ennon Young moved like a ghost through the current of strangers, her mind stuck replaying the meeting she’d left minutes ago in a Manhattan high-rise.

“It isn’t working for us,” the Goldrush Records executive said, hands folded over a polished mahogany desk. She’d noticed how weak they looked—like they’d never experienced labor or made anything besides deals he was willing to break. “The label wants to go in a different direction.”

“So … you want me to rework the music? Again?”

They’d been down this road a few times. The sound’s not right. The album needs more sex appeal. The songs need to be catchier—more commercial, more viral.

Months of rewriting and re-recording, tirelessly trying to satisfy them.

His mouth flattened in a line. He tapped his index fingers together. “This partnership is no longer working.”

The morning sky was drained of color, raindrops painting dark splotches on the concrete as petrichor mixed with petrol fumes.

Pedestrians popped open umbrellas, ducked under awnings, and held newspapers over their heads, but Lennon barely felt the drizzle on her skin or the shoulders bumping against her.

A rod of grief shot through her chest. Lennon sucked in a sharp breath, tamping it down.

No way in hell she was going to sob in the middle of Fifth Avenue.

Her twelve-hour serving shift started in less than an hour and red, swollen eyes and a stuffy nose wouldn’t earn her generous tips from the high-end restaurant’s clientele.

Besides some occasional gigs at banquets and events, tips were her sole income now.

The rain picked up to a steady downpour.

Lennon wrapped her oversized denim jacket around her torso to protect her white button-up shirt tucked into a black skirt for work.

Black combat boots sloshed through puddles in a crosswalk and squeaked down the subway steps as Lennon hugged her messenger bag carrying her work shoes to her chest. She rushed to the platform and slipped through the doors of her train seconds before they screeched shut behind her.

The car was gloriously empty thanks to the morning rush having passed.

Damp flyaways from her low, dark bun clung to her cheeks and the soaked denim jacket hung heavy on her body as she dropped into one of the faded orange seats.

Lennon expelled a sigh, relieved to finally be at rest, at least for a few minutes.

Her lack of sleep intensified all points of discomfort—the fluorescent overhead lights, the hard plastic seats, the moisture and underground chill.

But at least she was sitting. Alone.

Wait—no, that was worse. As the train jostled forward, grief bubbled up in the silence, stinging her eyes, demanding to be felt.

Not here . Not now.

Lennon pulled her phone from her bag and opened her Favorite Contacts list where her best friend’s name sat.

She hesitated. Erin was probably already at work.

As the assistant physical therapist for a major league baseball team, Erin’s day always started early, and Lennon wasn’t sure what time zone the Arden Beach Tidebreakers were currently in since they were on the road.

Hell, even Erin’s days off started before the sun rose because she was a chronic early bird.

Meanwhile, Lennon was practically a walking corpse for having to make it to a 9:00 a.m. meeting on the opposite side of the city.

All for the executive to end up being thirty minutes late.

The idea of burdening anyone with her problems sent a wave of shame through her.

It’s what first inspired her to write music as a kid.

In doing so, she’d discovered her most reliable outlet for whatever she felt.

It was a place to bare her soul without bothering another human.

She’d become a pro at bottling up her feelings until it was only her, a piece of paper, and a guitar. Her sanctuary.

Erin never gave her a reason to feel like a burden—that credit belonged to Lennon’s mother—and if she knew Lennon was hesitating to reach out to her, she’d give her a verbal lashing. With love.

Her thumb still hovered over Erin’s name. The sensation of her chest splintering made her suck in a breath, attempting to hold the cracks together.

Once she told Erin, it would be real.

Tears pooled as she pressed her eyes shut. Exhaling, Lennon glanced down and through the blurry haze she double-tapped Erin’s name, then put the phone to her ear.

It rang a few times before the line clicked.

“Lennon?”

Her entire body froze at the familiar male voice.

A voice that felt like an old, favorite song. A voice she’d recognize anywhere.

The sound sobered her like a gush of ice water. She stared at the curved metal ceiling, wide-eyed and white-knuckling her phone. The train’s steady rumble and the occasional clattering on the tracks filled the silence around her.

“Hello?” he said, speaking louder over a mix of other voices in the background. His voice still had the low, easy rasp that had always given her butterflies. “Are you there?”

“I … I was trying to call Erin,” Lennon finally answered, her voice pitched slightly higher than she would’ve liked. She cleared her tight throat. “Are you, uh, with her?”

“No, you called me.” A soft chuckle tickled her ear.

Her brow furrowed as she looked down at her phone. The screen read Dylan in bright white, accusatory letters.

Dylan, whose last name was Strickland and sat directly above his fraternal twin sister’s name, Erin, in the list.

Her ex-husband, whom she hadn’t spoken to since she left Florida six years ago.

“You … are … correct. I sure did,” Lennon confirmed, flinching with embarrassment. She never removed him from her damn Favorites. “It was an accident. Sorry to bother you.”

“It’s OK, you didn’t,” Dylan assured her, a little breathless. The background voices receded before vanishing like he’d moved to another room. “I’m … are you OK? You sound a little off.”

Dylan’s intuitive assessment rattled her. It was too familiar, too comforting, too much like things used to be before he’d thrown a grenade at their life together. “How would you know what I sound like when I’m anything anymore?”

Judging by the silence on the other end, she was pretty certain she’d successfully landed a gut punch. The satisfaction was minor and fleeting. Shame swiftly replaced it. She winced as she tucked her chin. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” he quickly said. “I deserved it.”

Did he, though? Erin told her about Dylan’s desire to make amends.

While recovering from his accident earlier that year, he’d written Lennon a letter she’d kept tucked in a drawer with an unbroken seal.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to smooth things over between them; she just …

hadn’t been able to make herself go there. To reopen that wound.

It was easier to ignore it, like she did with everything that wasn’t her music career.

This wasn’t how she’d imagined their first conversation going since their divorce.

“I’m having a really bad day,” Lennon said. “My record label dropped me.” She’d intended it to come out as an apology—an explanation for snapping at him. Instead, her voice hollowed out.

“What? No way,” Dylan said, as if the idea were absurd. A beat passed without her responding. “Are you serious?”

Lennon readied a sarcastic comment, but a fresh wave of tears strangled it. She choked down the sob trying to claw its way up her throat. “As a fuckin’ heart attack.”

His low, sorrowful sigh hummed against her ear. “Shit. Lynx.”

Her heart twinged at the nickname he and Erin had called her since they were kids.

In the space of a second, she heard him yelling to her up in the bleachers from the field during his youth league practice.

Wishing her a happy birthday in her ear during her sweet sixteen party.

Telling her that he loved her for the first time after a game.

His voice was a bit deeper than she’d remembered but still painfully familiar.

“I’m … so sorry.”

“Me too. I’m a broke waitress with a failed record deal.” Lennon laughed humorlessly at herself as she wiped the corners of her eyes, carefully avoiding her mascara, though it had probably already melted from the rain.

“Well, I’m a suspended baseball player trying to clean up a PR disaster, so you’re doing better than me if that’s any consolation.”

“That does make me feel a little better actually. Thank you.” She sniffled. “I’ll cry about it later over wine and pizza like Olivia Pope or …” She racked her overladen brain for another example.

“ The Golden Girls ?”

“That was pie.”

“I think they drank wine, too,” Dylan said.

Lennon pictured the little crease between his dark-brown eyes as he shuffled through his memory, trying to convince himself he was right. A flutter rose up her sternum. “I don’t think so. I mean, maybe sometimes, but not like, as a regular thing. ”

“Wasn’t there an episode with them stomping grapes in a barrel?”

“That was I Love Lucy , Dylan. Get your TV shows straight. You should binge-watch them since you have more time on your hands now.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she cringed.

The stress and exhaustion made her loose with her words, slipping into their old way of joking as if they weren’t basically strangers now. “Shit, sorry. That was insensitive—”

Dylan laughed like he always had at her sarcasm, and she relaxed at the sound—boyish and uninhibited—as the train pulled into a station.

The doors slid open. “No, you’re right. That was a gross mistake on my part.

But if it was wine, they probably wouldn’t be a good influence,” he noted.

“I could end up in more trouble, and then it’d be your fault. ”