by LJ Evans
This book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing people and locations, the events, names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
MY LIFE AS A COUNTRY ALBUM Copyright © 2014 by LJ Evans
MY LIFE AS A POP ALBUM Copyright © 2017 by LJ Evans
MY LIFE AS A ROCK ALBUM Copyright © 2017 by LJ Evans
MY LIFE AS A MIXTAPE Copyright © 2018 by LJ Evans
THIS LIFE WITH CAM Copyright © 2020 by LJ Evans
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored, in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.
Published by LJ Evans Books
www.ljevansbooks.com
Cover Design © Designed with Grace
Cover Images © Deposit Photos | FS-Stock & Andrew Lozovyi; © iStock | Iris Productions & Alexey Rumyantsev; © Adobe Stock | Mikalai Bachkou; © Dreamstime | Galina Kovalenko ; and © Shutterstock | Elena Efimova
Developmental & Line Editing: Ally I. Evans Editing
Copy Editing: Jenn Lockwood Editing
Publishers’ Cataloging-in-Publications
Evans, L. J., 1970- author.
LJ Evans Books, [2014] | Series: My life as an album series ; v. I. II. III.
LCC: PS3605.V3684 M913 2014 | DDC: 813/.6--dc23
My Life as an Album Series Box Set
ASIN: B085N43SZ3
Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
Box Set Table of Contents
Message from the Author
My Life as a Country Album
My Life as a Pop Album
My Life as a Rock Album
My Life as a Mixtape
This Life with Cam
Bonus Epilogue
My Life as a Holiday Album
Guarded Dreams
Second Message from the Author
About the Book
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Books by LJ
Thank you for taking the time to download the Album series box set. These books were inspired by music and love, so I hope that you are inspired by those same things as you read the words. In all my books, my characters learn how to live their lives resiliently. They find a way to get through life’s challenges with grace, humility, strength, and—most importantly—LOVE.
A lot of authors at this point will give you a long list of their social media sites, places to leave reviews, and a laundry list of their other books, but the truth is, I don’t want to give you those things… not yet.
I’d rather you get to reading. I’d rather you fall in love with my characters, their worlds, and the love, laughter, and family that is held within these “pages.”
I’ll touch base with you again AFTER you’ve read the story…
Happy Reading!
LJ EVANS
♫ where music & stories collide ♫
Sigh…okay. Some of you want all that information now, so if you do, please feel free to click here for the Second Message from the Author.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Playlist
Dedication
Prologue: Out of the Woods
Chapter One: Mary’s Song
Chapter Two: I’m Only Me When I’m with You
Chapter Three: Stay Beautiful
Chapter Four: A Perfectly Good Heart
Chapter Five: Better than Revenge
Chapter Six: You Belong with Me
Chapter Seven: Mean
Chapter Eight: White Horse
Chapter Nine: The Way I Loved You
Chapter Ten: Change
Chapter Eleven: Tim McGraw
Chapter Twelve: Our Song
Chapter Thirteen: Superman
Chapter Fourteen: The Moment I Knew
Chapter Fifteen: Dear John
Chapter Sixteen: I Knew You Were Trouble
Chapter Seventeen: Ours
Chapter Eighteen: Stay Stay Stay
Chapter Nineteen: Treacherous
Chapter Twenty: Sad Beautiful Tragic
Chapter Twenty-one: Red
Chapter Twenty-two: A Place in This World
Chapter Twenty-three: Begin Again
Chapter Twenty-four: State of Grace
Playlist available at:
http://bit.ly/mlaacaspoti
To my family who has supported my writing from the crazy fan fiction of my childhood to the hopes and dreams of adulthood. I could not have done this without all of you: my loving husband, creative daughter, determined sister, and supportive parents.
Out of the Woods
“Are we out of the woods yet
Are we in the clear yet
Good!”
- Swift & Antonoff
It happened when we were out and about looking at apartments that we couldn’t afford. It was a failed attempt to reclaim some of our Polaroid moments of color and passion that had disappeared months ago with your kidneys. The sun streamed through a set of picture windows and highlighted you in a halo of light that captured my breath. In that moment, caught in the shimmery white, you almost looked like the football god you once were and not the weaker version of yourself you’d become. You gave me your slow, heart-melting smile as you grabbed my hand and twirled me around in the empty space until I was held tight against your chest, feeling like the only girl in your world. You swayed me back and forth, slow and sensual, and for a second, we forgot it all. We forgot the realtor, the year of doubt, and the harsh reality of the future. I let out a breath into your neck and thought maybe, just maybe, we were in the clear. We’d held onto each other through it all. You tipped my chin up, and I was caught, as I’d always been, in the sparkle of your beautiful, green and gold mosaic eyes. The only eyes that ever made me feel alive.
You kissed me, reaching down to the depths of my heart where you’d forever claimed every last tile on the walls of my soul. The realtor cleared his throat, but we just ignored him like we’d ignored everyone for that picture-perfect six months we’d been away at college. You smiled against my lips, and I couldn’t help but smile back. You whirled me out of your arms and then dragged me up the stairs at a jog.
I was smiling, still caught in that precious moment, when you turned to me again and whispered, “Cami,” and I listened because I always listened when you said my name that way and not the short version, Cam, that we both preferred. And this time, my heart melted for a totally different reason when your mosaic eyes turned to me with an indescribable look. It was like a switch had been thrown from that brief second of life below until now. Then you said something that would tear at me for the rest of my life. You said, “I love you, Camdyn,” before you crumpled to the floor.
An ambulance ride later, we were at the hospital. Again. How many times had we been there this year? It didn’t actually matter because I already knew. I already knew that this time it was going to be different.
You see, it was the only time in our entire life you’d called me Camdyn.
The Beginning: Mary’s Song
(oh my, my, my)
“And our daddies used to joke about the two of us
Growi
ng up and falling in love and our mamas smiled
And rolled their eyes.”
- Swift, Rose, Maher
People who don’t know us, people like the therapist I saw not long ago, they always ask me the most ridiculous question. They ask me how you and I met. And I know, it is only ridiculous to us because we obviously know the story, but my tolerance for stupidity and my quick mouth running ahead of my brain, always has me replying with an equally ridiculous answer. I respond with a cryptic, “’Mary’s Song’!” And when they look at me puzzled, I just wave a disgusted hand and say, “Just listen to that song, and then you’ll know.”
You’d be grinning and laughing that deep, skin-tingling, Jake laugh of yours if you ever heard me say that. You’d tousle my plain, brown hair and say something smart-ass about me comparing our life to a country song. Not that you minded country music. We live in Tennessee after all and have a great many country artists on our playlists. You’d just find it humorous that I was comparing us to any song. Especially knowing me; knowing that I’m not really a girly girl who gets all romantic and mushy expecting you to sing to me like Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing.
But I still can’t help it because it’s the only response I know to that moronic question. When I think of our beginning, those lyrics are the first thing that pops into my head. It has two kids who are a couple years apart living next to each other and playing in their tree house, inseparable. It has them growing up with stolen kisses and tangled hands in truck rides out to the creek… or the lake in our case. And you know it’s true that the essence of that song is the inexplicable connection between the two kids. And that definitely was us. Will always be us.
I think THE moment your parents remember most as cementing our childhood connection is the “tree house incident.” I’m almost certain that you’d agree. Do you remember the hushed tone they’d take when speaking about it, as if some alien spaceship had landed in the middle of Tennessee? It really wasn’t the beginning of us… but it was the moment that made your parents scratch their heads and wonder about the nature of the universe and God and what things were meant to be.
I know I shouldn’t remember it as clear as I do, seeing as I was only four while you were seven, but I guess the “tree house incident” isn’t something you forget, even if you are only four. If I close my eyes, I can almost relive it moment by moment in my head. I remember it was my nap time, and I hated nap time just like I pretty much hated anything that kept me from your side. So, what did I do? I sneaked out of my house and went searching for you in “our” backyard. And of course, people who don’t know us look at me puzzled again, because we didn’t live together in the same house, but we did share a backyard. That’s because it’s really two yards, but our daddies tore down the fence that separated them before we were ever born, so we’ve always had this one big rectangle of suburbia that our families share like we pretty much share everything.
Focus, Cam. That’s what you’d tell me. Because it’s one of my worst traits, the way my thoughts and actions lead me down a completely different path than the one I start on. I could claim a disability I’m sure, but my family isn’t really a making-excuses-for-your-actions kind of family. Anywho, that day—the day of the “incident”—there was a ladder propped up against the aging oak tree where our daddies had begun building a tree house for us. And like always, my body had clambered halfway up the ladder before my brain caught up. And when my brain did catch up, it was because my body was soaring through the sky. There was nothing holding me but the thick Southern summer air. And then… Then what? Then I was in your arms, all smiles.
Everyone thought I should have been frightened, falling from a ladder like that at four. But I wasn’t. That moment of free falling filled my little body with electric energy as if I was a baby bird spiraling from its nest for the first time. What did scare me, however, was the look you gave me as I beamed up at you. It was the first time I remember you being angry with me. Definitely not the last. But the first. Your eyes turned this deep, deep lake green, and you yelled at me as much as you could with your seven-year-old voice and your adorable, dark, shaggy hair shaking about you.
“You could’ve been killed!” And even though you were furious and only a little kid yourself, you pulled me into a hug. At that point, I didn’t know better, so I squirmed away from your surprisingly strong arms just like I would my mama’s a minute later.
So? People would say. So, you caught me from falling. What’s so crazy about it that our parents call it the “tree house incident” in whispers? Well, it’s really about how you came to be in our yard, standing by that tree ready to catch me that gets everyone going.
Your mama, Marina, was two seconds behind you, and she hauled me to my house shaking like a kitten in a bath. She was babbling to my mama in that rapid-fire way of hers, “Jake and I were just eating lunch at the counter as always, when all of a sudden, he got this awful look on his face like he might throw up. He ran out the back door quick as a June bug, and I followed. And what do I see? Cami flying off of the ladder, and Jake catching her.”
“Oh my lord!” my mama exclaimed, pulling me and then you against her, to which, of course, we both objected and yanked ourselves away. “How on Earth did he know?”
Your mama and mine regarded us as if we were La Chupacabra itself because, as you well know, the golden granite bar in your kitchen has no view of our tree house. None at all. So, the question became: how on Earth had you known that I was out there? That I was climbing that ladder? That I needed saving? At that time, we didn’t care for the wild look in our mamas’ eyes, so we really did take off as quick as a couple of June bugs. And where did we go? Right back up the tree. To the place that became our little haven many times later in life.
People don’t believe me when I tell them that story. They don’t believe that I can remember it in such vivid detail when I was only four. They don’t believe that you took off from your house to save me without seeing me on the ladder. They think I made some kind of noise or something that you heard. Maybe. Maybe I did. All I know is that it wasn’t the last time we saved each other in crazy, unknown ways, was it? People can believe it or not. But it’s true. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a hundred needles in my eye.
That’s another thing, isn’t it? I never had to tell you I was telling the truth. You just knew. Just like I knew when you were telling the truth. It was the same whether we lied over stupid things like who ate the last MoonPie or more serious things like wounded hearts. No matter what, we just knew. I think that’s why you chose not to talk to me about some things later. So you wouldn’t have to pretend to lie, and I wouldn’t have to pretend not to know.
♫ ♫ ♫
The “tree house incident” is your parents’ favorite story about “us” from our childhood, but it’s not my mama’s. Did you know that? My mama’s story always starts before I was even born. Before you were even born. When I was little, she used to tell it to me daily over our breakfast cereal because I’d plead with her until she caved. I’d say, “Tell me how Jake made me,” and she’d grin.
Mama would say, “Well, Marina and I met in college. We were roommates and best of friends. That’s how it all really started.”
And I’d roll my eyes and say, “Mama, not that part.”
And she’d say, “Cami, the good things in life all have roots that start somewhere else.”
You know how hard it was for me to sit still when I was little. Even now, it still is. But I’d try my best because I knew the good part was coming. The part with you in it. I’d sit with my spoon waggling around and my foot going crazy kicking the table leg while Mama got all dreamy in her story-telling mode.
Mama would say, “When Marina and I met Jake and your daddies, it could have all gone south, but it didn’t. We all got along so well that it was just meant to be.” I didn’t get that when I was little, but I guess it could truly have gone haywire right then because sometimes couples ju
st don’t get along, right? We certainly haven’t liked all of each other’s boyfriends and girlfriends. So, I guess it was meant to be that our daddies were as keen on each other as our mamas.
“Mama, tell me the part about Jake making me!” I’d demand, squirming in my seat, torn between wanting to hear the rest of the story and wanting to be done so that I could go find you. Mama would just smile her knowing smile at me.
“We were really lucky when we went to buy our first houses that there were these two beautiful places sitting right next to each other,” she’d start again.
“Because now Jake and I get to play together in one big yard,” I’d roll my eyes at her again, but she’d just smile. Making me be patient. That’s Mama. She never gave in to me. Still doesn’t.
“And it was just the kind of town we wanted to raise our children in. Enough country left to be part of Tennessee, but big enough for your daddies to make a living selling cars.” And I guess we were lucky that they’d put down roots in a place that allowed us to run wild in the country mud and then visit a mall all within the same fifteen minutes.
“As the first child to come along, Jake was a big deal, you know. Marina and Scott named him Jake Carter Phillips with the Carter being after your daddy.”
“Mama!” I’d kick the table leg harder and more incessantly.
“Sweet tea and stories both take time, Camdyn.”
In the home movies from that time, you were the hit of both families. You were this dark-haired beauty with kaleidoscope hazel eyes that were always more green than brown. I know, you’d razz me again for calling you a beauty, but you were. Even then. Like some gift that the gods laid down on Earth to torture us mere mortals with. You wouldn’t disagree with that, would you? You’d called yourself a god more than once in our life. Your mama even punished you once for it… focus, Cam. Save that story for later.