Page 2 of Nashville Lights

She thinks I’m exaggerating when I say there’s nowhere I’d rather be, but it’s true. Sugar Mountain Farm has always felt like my second home. It’s not really a mountain. It’s more of a series of sloping hills and picturesque farmland—and the closest thing to a real home that I’ve got.

The Nashville warehouse and the various apartments my brothers have bought for me don’t really count. I have plenty of money to buy my own houses, but they keep buying buildings or compounds with lots of living spaces. Which they insist I live in. To keep an eye on me, they say.

My brothers are my home, in a sense, especially since we spend so much time together. And also because our parents died young and they’ve always felt responsible for me. But on the back end of a tour as intense as this one was, we all need some space.

I’ve spent every summer from the moment I was born, right up until I left to work with my brothers, visiting my Aunt Louise and Uncle Earl. Uncle Earl is my father’s brother, even though it’s safe to say the two men couldn’t have more different personalities. Earl is a cheerful teddy bear of a man. My father was much more complicated, and those dark complications ended up cutting both his and my mother’s lives short—something I don’t want to revisit in my thoughts right now. I’m too happy.

So I let my memories drift back to Aunt Lou and Uncle Earl. They never had children of their own, but Aunt Lou’s second cousin and lifelong best friend Betty-Ann, her husband Gus, and their five children live right next door. Sugar Mountain Farm is theirs. And it was their house that was literally bursting at the seams with love and laughter and all the best things about family and home.

The smells of apple pie and fresh-baked bread.

The sounds of laughter and good-hearted bickering.

Pots clanging with the promise of our next home-cooked meal.

They welcomed my brothers and me with open arms right into the middle of all that, from before my memorieseven begin. They became our family in the truest sense of the word.

The two houses sit side by side, with a joined driveway. Aunt Lou and Uncle Earl’s farm and house are smaller, the house always neater because they didn’t have five children running wild. Aunt Lou always made up beds for the four of us, but we hardly ever spent a night in them. We were having too much fun having sleepovers with the Boones, camping in tents, building blanket forts to sleep in and generally living our best lives.

So it’s the Boones’ house I remember most fondly. Half the memories of my life are in that house—and all the best ones.

I know every inch of this road. And with each landmark—the old red barn where I learned to dance, the Country Store where we used to go for triple-scoop ice cream cones that would drip over our fingers in the summer heat, and the familiar road signs that mean I’m getting closer—I feel another layer of the tour-hardened manager I’ve become peel back, and I’m ten again, bursting with the fizzy excitement of summer.

It’s the one place I can guarantee will make me feel like myself again. The blinding stage lights are suddenly a million miles away, and I’m surrounded by nothing but cornfields and the warm Tennessee sun.

“What are your brothers up to this weekend?” Dakota asks. “Don’t they all fall to pieces when you’re not there?”

“Pretty much.”

Most of the time, I’m cursing the fact that three grown men rely on me as much as they do, but I know I’d miss the buzz of excitement that surrounds them if I wasn’t doing this job. Not to mention the fact I don’t trust anyone else to have their best interests at heart, especially now that they’ve gone stratospheric.

I sort of stumbled into being their manager by default. They weren’t getting along with their former manager and, since I’ve taken care of the three of them my whole life anyway, I stepped up and started organizing their schedules and making their phone calls. One thing led to another and when Vaughn fired their former manager out of the blue after an argument, it made sense for me to take on the role. I’ve been doing it ever since, learning on the job and mostly loving every minute of it.

All three of my brothers are insufferable at times but, even so, I couldn’t love them more if I tried.

“You know I saw Kade when he came to see Nate, not too long ago,” Dakota says, “but I haven’t seen Travis or Vaughn in ages. They haven’t been back here since before they became superstars.”

“Well, they’re no longer the ragtag Tucker boys you grew up with, that’s for sure.” I’m not sure she’d be able to reconcile those ragamuffin kids she remembers with the rockstars who now have the world at their feet—and every possible temptation thrown at them on a daily basis.

“Anyway,” I say, “I’m only going to be gone for a few days. Even the Tucker brothers can survive that. Andbesides, Travis and Vaughn are so loved-up with their new girlfriends, they won’t even notice I’m gone. One thing about my brothers, once they fall, they fallhard.”

“I think my brothers will be the same. I’m not sure why I say that since none of them are in steady relationships right now, but they’re all secretly romantics at heart.”

“Maybe it’s something in the Sugar Mountain water,” I laugh. “Anyway, all four of us need a break. You know how it is working with family.”

“Oh, trust me, I get it.” Dakota has four brothers and they all still live and—mostly, at least—work on Sugar Mountain. “Luke and Leo still spend half their time bickering and fighting like they’re still eight years old. They drive me crazy.”

I picture the twins wrestling with each other non-stop when they were kids. Those nights when we all camped out under the stars or slept in a row on the big front porch, they were always rolling around like two little hell-raisers.

It feels strange to imagine my brothers back here now that their lives are so vastly different. Once upon a time we were sun-kissed kids running wild. We didn’t care about our skinned knees or our thrift store clothes. We loved the simplicity and the contentedness of the country life, which felt so charmed to us. It was a welcome respite from the rougher edges of our “real” life in the city, where our parents’ lives were slowly but surely imploding.

“So, when’s the wedding?” Dakota asks. “I can’t believe Travis is engaged.”

It was big news when Travis proposed to Ruby on stage on the last night of the tour. The internet blew up with replays of the big event and Dakota called me immediately after it happened.

“They haven’t set a date yet. But I don’t think Travis will want to wait too long. He’s absolutely besotted. So’s Vaughn. And that’s something I never saw coming: Vaughn in love. But I must say it makes both of them a lot easier to keep in line. All I have to do is threaten to tell their girlfriends how obnoxious they’re being and immediately they’re all contrite. Works like a charm.”

I’m mostly joking, but there’s an edge to it I hope Dakota doesn’t hear. I’m thrilled that Vaughn has found love with a nice girl. Gigi is a country bumpkin and a sweetheart. I’ve gotten to know her a little and I’m really not sure if she’s ever had a mean-spirited thought in her life. She has a purity of spirit that’s almost saintly. For Vaughn to fall for someone like that is a wild relief. He’s a changed man, and for the better. I no longer have to sweep groupies out of his dressing room every morning or stop strangers slipping pills into his pockets. For Gigi, Vaughn is willing to do literallyanything.Even reform.

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