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start loving somebody else? That’s what happened with Bianca and Daddy.”
    “Okay, that’s enough, Charlotte.”
    But Charlotte stared right back at her nanny and said, “I’m just trying to get to know you.” And with that, she marched down the aisle and plopped herself in Smitty’s lap. Smitty startled awake, but then let Charlotte rest her head against his shoulder. Ryan couldn’t believe that, until last night, she’d thought he was just a roadie, when in fact he was this amazing guitarist who had been with Marcus his entire career, and even co-written a couple of his smash hits. Smitty was such a good guy, and Ryan felt thankful that his kindly presence translated into some downtime for her.
    She didn’t know what it was like to be a child of divorce. Her own parents had had a pretty great marriage—maybe not the most exciting marriage in the history of the world, but a stable and loving one, at least—so she had no idea what it would have been like to be exposed so early to a relationship that had withered and died. It made her sad that Charlotte knew about such things as “loving somebody else” at her age. Ryan herself had known that a relationship could end painfully, that loss and betrayal existed as concepts, for some time. But she’d never really known the pain of being abandoned, thrown away like yesterday’s newspaper, until Nick and Natalie had hooked up, destroying her two closest relationships in the process.
    Ryan still couldn’t believe they’d done that to her. She’d been with Nick for almost a year, and it had been—or so she’d thought—the best year of her life. She and Nick were so alike. They loved all the Montana stuff: hiking, canoeing, kayaking, and running, sometimes fitting in three sports activities in a day. It drove their friends crazy, how active they were, and the couple was often teased for their well-scrubbed, all-American obsession with fitness. But Ryan never felt more alive than when she was outside, taking in the natural beauty of her home state, those endorphins pulsing through her and making her feel strong and almost giddy. And when she’d found someone to share that with, well, she’d felt like she’d found the first true companion of her life.
    So when she’d innocently picked up Nick’s phone one day and seen an insanely racy sext message from Natalie, her best friend since middle school, it cut her deeply. She confronted Nick right away, shocking the hell out of him, and getting straight answers before he could make up lies. He’d been fooling around with Nat on the side for more than a month, during which he’d told Ryan he loved her probably a gazillion times. Bald-faced dishonesty like that? To Ryan, it was disgusting.
    After the breakup, Nick had left with his buddy Jack on a summer-long road trip to God knows where. She didn’t know if she’d ever see him again. She did know that it would be a good, long time—years, maybe—before she’d be in a relationship again. Being single was a little lonely at times, sure, but it beat being so depressed she couldn’t even get out of bed.
    Ryan’s phone buzzed. For a minute, she thought she might have conjured Nick just by thinking negative thoughts about him, but it was just a text from Em.
    Hey you , it read. Just a heads up. Guess who popped up on my Internet today? You! You’re famous!
    Em had posted a link, which Ryan clicked on right away. It took her to a website she had never heard of called CelebriBites. After clicking on a headline that read, “Troy Tour Takes Off,” she found a slide show with captions. Most of the photos, of course, were of Marcus, talking and laughing and being his charming self while a drenched Serena held his umbrella for him, though there were also a few of Jacey and her band entering the hotel at God knew what hour of the morning.
    But there was, just as Em had said, a single photo of her. It showed a vexed-looking Ryan covering Charlotte’s and Miles’s