singer, but he was also nice to look at. He was still nice to look at, but nowadays, she was more of a Brantley Gilbert girl. How could she resist a male country singer with a bad boy look?
On the other side of the room were lots of pictures tacked to the wall, most of them of her and Royce. The two of them after one of his big rodeo wins, the time she’d sung at open mic night in a club in Casper, prom, posed together in their graduation robes. Each moment had been frozen in time, and now they served as a reminder of all the things that had gone wrong. She should’ve taken them down last time she was here, but she’d been depressed over how she’d almost signed a contract with a record label only for the band to break up. That was the first time her singing dreams had slipped through her fingers.
Sadie pushed her suitcase aside, sat on the floral, pillow-topped mattress stripped of its bedding, and flopped back on it. She wondered why Mom had never taken down the pictures and done something else with the room. It had been easy enough to avoid, since they’d often meet up for Christmases in Casper, where they’d get a nice hotel room and Sadie could spend the holidays with both her mom and grandparents and her dad and stepmom, who lived there. Somehow her parents had actually managed to have a civil divorce and were one of those broken-up couples who could still be in the same room as each other and be fine. Mom always said they’d just been too young. It was why she’d ingrained in Sadie career first, everything else could wait.
After seeing firsthand how hard Mom had to work to get through school while juggling a job, as well as being a single parent, Sadie understood why she felt so strongly about it. After all, Mom had done some modeling when she was younger and had even been offered a contract with an agency—a contract she’d given up to stay in Wyoming and get married. Now she worked long hours for little pay.
Sadie had sworn she wouldn’t squander any opportunity that came her way—that she’d follow her singing dreams and make enough money doing what she loved so her mom wouldn’t have to work anymore. Obviously that hadn’t happened. Yet. Until it did, she refused to be a financial strain on her family. Especially since she knew it was hard enough for them to keep up on all the bills as it was, and that was before Grandma’s trip to the hospital and all the extra medications she had to take now.
Sadie sat up, resolve filling her. The job hunt would start first thing tomorrow, no taking time to wallow. She wasn’t even sure where to start looking for a job, but at this point, she was desperate enough she’d pretty much take anything.
Chapter Three
Sadie took her mug of coffee out the back door and headed to the corral that attached to the small barn. Grandpa used to run horses on a big spread of land—one hundred and twenty acres that had now been separated into plots and sold off one at a time, all but the twenty closest to the house. He’d sold most of the horses, too, but he’d kept two. Apollo, the dun, and Casanova, the black stallion. People still paid Grandpa to have their horses breed with Casanova, because he produced good foals.
Casanova came trotting over, and Sadie set down her coffee and threw over a few flakes of hay. “You get with any hot ladies lately?” she asked as she ran her hand down the horse’s nose.
He leaned into her hand, and she scratched his cheek the way he liked.
“I hate to break it to you, but you’re looking kind of old.” Since she remembered when he was born, that made her feel a little old as well. Twenty-five was far from getting up there, but lately she’d been very aware of how many years had passed since she’d set out to become a singer. Being in a short-lived music group with two girls who were barely twenty had only made her more aware of her age. Their inexperience was probably why they cared more about fighting and the spotlight than