by Piper Lawson
“We have one,” I interrupt.
“One track isn’t an album.”
“Then I suggest we get to work,” Todd says smoothly.
I grit my teeth. “Derek?”
“An LP will make more of an impact,” he says without looking at me.
Disbelief and betrayal compete in the back of my mind as Todd spreads his hands.
“So it’s settled. Welcome back, Jax.”
Todd grabs his files and stalks out, followed by Derek.
I shut my eyes. The sound of slow clapping has me opening them again.
Serena is already chatting up Kyle on the other side of the room. Mace and Brick are talking too.
I want to bury my head somewhere, but I force myself to meet Jax’s cold gaze.
“This place has gotten real entertaining. You guys plan this good cop, bad cop shit?”
“It’s a misunderstanding,” I say as I round the table to Jax.
“Tell me something.” The voice that has whispered all manner of sweet and dirty things in my ear cools more. “Who’s producing this ten-track marvel? Todd? Because if that prick’s in my studio—”
“The production team will be more than satisfactory. You have my word on that.” No matter what’s happened between me and Jax, he’s an artist. I’d never ask him to do work I thought would compromise that.
His mouth turns up in a smirk. He’s never been the tallest guy in a room, but he has the most presence. Some he built from being on stage, but some was always him.
I step closer, carried by bravado that’s unfounded when I realize I can smell his masculine scent. I fight the shiver that works through me. “I get it, Jax. You don’t want to be here. But to get this album done, we need a track list. If there’s anything Wicked can do to help, let me know.”
I meant it as a platitude, but Jax tilts his head. “How about some inspiration?”
His gaze drops to my mouth and I suck in a shaky breath. He’s all physicality, all masculinity, and even though he’s being an asshole I can’t pretend to be unaffected.
“Those red lips could do a lot to inspire me, babysitter,” he murmurs.
My stomach clenches.
In revulsion, because it can’t be anything else.
I know he’s screwing with me, because now I’m thinking of his cock. We did a lot of things together, but we didn’t get to that.
In this moment, I feel every day of the more than two years we’ve been apart, because each one of them contributes to the strength I need when I respond.
“Derek’s assistant will be in touch to book studio time,” I say coolly. “I trust Annie was able to get into school. I took the liberty of having her books arranged. And I pulled some strings to ensure her teachers understand her situation and that they’ll look out for her.”
His startled expression gives me the tiniest hit of satisfaction before I walk out the door.
5
“You coming or what?”
I turn back to Mace. “Huh?”
“We’re going down to Monk’s for lunch and to talk about the album.”
I tug on the collar of my shirt. He smirks but says nothing as we start down the hall.
Haley’s talking with the woman who used to be Cross’s assistant and Derek. She glances at us for the briefest moment, emotionless, before turning back.
“What’d you say to her?” Mace asks under his breath.
“Nothing worth repeating.”
Hell, it wasn’t worth saying the first time.
I should know better, but something came over me. I went into that meeting prepared to play it cool. To get the upper hand and keep it. But since I walked in to find her, back turned, putting that lipstick on in her reflection from the window…
That dress doing mind-numbing voodoo with my brain…
The damn shoes making her legs even longer?
The plan degraded faster than my kid’s good mood when she realizes we’re out of Snickers ice cream.
Haley’s always been pretty. Not the flashy kind that would break your neck from a distance. The kind you had to get up close to notice.
She didn’t care about turning heads. She was always so absorbed in whatever problem she was working on—sometimes that problem was me—that it would be easy to pass her by.
But now, it’s impossible to overlook her. She’s got this confidence you can see in her straight back. The way her eyes survey a room. The sound of her voice.
She looks exactly the same and completely different. But my thoughts aren’t only about how different she looks.
I’m wondering if her new haircut—razor sharp with the edges grazing her collarbone—leaves enough length to wrap around my hand.
I shake off the haze of lust, because that’s getting me nowhere fast, and we take the elevator down to the parking lot.
A Toyota Highlander sits in the lot, and Kyle rounds to the driver’s door.
“What?” I drawl. “You got two golden retrievers and a house in the suburbs too?”
“Jump on in, boys,” Kyle offers.
I shift into the back seat with Mace, and Brick slides in the front.
“How long have you assholes been planning this little reunion?” I ask.
“Not our plan. We just went along with it.”
We drive downtown, and the atmosphere in the car is giddy. Monk’s is an old favorite with mussels—a clincher for Mace—and the best beer selection in town. It’s dark and wood and doesn’t try to be anything it’s not.
We claim a table, and Brick and Kyle go up to the bar to order.
Mace’s phone beeps.
“That your girlfriend?” I ask.
“Notification from class. I’m taking art history online.” I stifle the laugh, but he doesn’t smile. “I’m serious. It’s interesting, and I like learning between gigs.”
I consider that. “You haven’t been around in a while.”
“You haven’t been free in a while.” He stares at me. “I know you have a kid. And I know that getting her was a rough year. But you’re doing douchey promo shit and not playing any music.” Mace folds his arms. “Annie still use my LEGO?”
“She’s thirteen.”
Mace cocks his head. “What’re you saying?”
Brick and Kyle return, setting four frothing beers on the table.
“So this album,” Kyle says, grunting as he drops into his seat. “What’ve we got?”
“You seriously want to do this.” I look around the three faces.
“Well, yeah,” Mace replies. “We’re on contract, but more than that, we’ve got a studio and rehearsal time. Wicked’s underwriting the album. One last push.”
“I don’t get why they’re doing it,” Brick says. “There’s no money in albums. And the contract wasn’t for a tour.”
“Could just be they need a front-runner,” Mace pipes in. “Someone they can hook up-and-comers’ names to.”
“Or they have some other cash cows. Lifestyle advertising. Product placement. Music’s just a way to get in the door,” Kyle adds.
“Kyle’s got a blog,” Brick notes. “And I’ve been doing voice work for Titan Games,” he says with pride.
Mace snickers. “They pay you in games?”
“I get real money, asshole.”
I’m still wrestling with the reason we’re here.
I don’t know what happened in that meeting between Haley and the production guy, but something told me she hadn’t planned it.
Still, the guys are genuinely enthusiastic about this, and I have to give Haley props. Using my band against me was a smart fucking move.
Looks like she got more from Cross than his company after all.
“So what’ve we got, Mozart?” Mace prods. “You know. For the rest of the album.”
I drop back in my seat, tipping the beer to my lips. The woodsy taste of hops finds its way down my throat. “Haven’t written anything.”
“Haley says there’s a song we can start with.”
Kyle shifts forward.
I raise my brows. “Really? What else does Haley say?”
Brick narrows his gaze, and Kyle smirks. Mace licks his lips as a plate of mussels is delivered and he descends on them. Three burgers come, and I reach for ketchup to douse my fries.
God damn, french fries are good. I’m going to be swimming an extra twenty laps to make up for it, but it’s this or take it out on the band.
“So you and Haley,” Kyle goes on. “Now that you’re back, are you picking up where you left off? You know, necking like Romeo and fucking Juliet?”
“It’s not going to happen,” Brick notes.
Kyle frowns. “Why not?”
Shit, they could have this whole conversation without me.
“The other man.” That has me straightening. “I think his name’s Carter.”
I nearly choke on a fry and wash it back with beer. The stein thuds on the table. “Carter?”
He shrugs. “I heard from Neen. I don’t know the guy.”
The bitter taste in my mouth isn’t from the beer.
The dude she was on a date with was Carter. The pretty boy computer genius who screwed her over two years ago—who used her and tossed her aside.
Perfect.
Just because we’re not friends anymore doesn’t mean I want her with that asshole.
If I’m going to stick around this place for more than a few days, I need to know what the hell is going on.
“You’re around a lot,” I say to Brick. “At Wicked.”
“Yeah. I’m not much for the politics, but after Cross?” He shrugs. “Derek was always good with numbers but rumor is he doesn’t have the old man’s baser instincts.”
Which raises another question that’s been lurking in the back of my mind. “Why’d she sell?”
Brick exchanges a look with Mace. “I don’t know, man.”
“Find out.” I force down a few bites of my hamburger, but it’s wasted effort. I’m not hungry anymore. I’m torn between wanting to demonize Haley and morbid curiosity.
It doesn’t matter what happened since we were together. She went her way and you went yours.
I grab my beer and shove her from my mind.
Annie’s new school gets out before the one in Dallas.
Unfortunately, I don’t realize it until too late.
On my way back to the hotel, I try her phone. No answer.
Inside our suite, I call her name.
I head down the elevator, and fear settles in my gut as I swoop out the doors to the main floor. “Rodney. You seen my kid?”
He nods toward the security guy, who points at the screen. I round to take a look. She’s in the pool, swimming laps. I heave a sigh of relief.
“She arrived home less than an hour ago,” Rodney says.
“How’d she seem?”
“Like someone who’d finished her first day of school. Overwhelmed.” He hesitates. “The pool’s been closed for deck renovations, but I suggested she might like to try it.”
His kindness gets to me. “You have teenagers, Rodney?”
“Not anymore.”
“They survived, then.”
“They did.” He smiles. “The groceries you ordered have been delivered.”
I thank him before making my way upstairs.
On impulse, I change out of the button-down, strip off my socks and tug on a T-shirt.
I want a shower, but I don’t want to miss Annie coming back, so I cook.
It’s another thing I never used to do. But in the past few years, I’ve gotten into it.
Though we have a chef back home who prepares most of our meals on the weekend, I’ve learned to make some staples, including all of Annie’s favorites.
When the door clicks open, I glance up to find her slinking in.
Her hair’s soaking wet from the pool, and somewhere along the line she changed out of her bathing suit and into shorts and a sweatshirt. My kid’s always hot and cold at the same time.
“Hi, squirt. How was your first day?”
She looks taken aback. “Bolognese?”
“With”—I check the package—“soy curds.”
My girl’s a sucker for Italian, and it’s easier than apologizing for dragging her across state lines with five days’ notice. Something I hadn’t thought about until Haley’s comments.
I’ve never had to enrol my kid in school. I don’t know if it’s easy or hard. I know there’s a shit-ton of email and paperwork to transfer over, because after the custody battle finished, my manager and lawyer handled it all when I had my hands full with Annie.
“Plus Caesar salad.” It’s my trump card, and her expression says she knows it too. “You need a shower?”
She shakes her head, sending her wet hair bouncing. “I did it down there.”
With a moment’s hesitation, she drops her swim bag and school bag by the door and approaches the kitchen. She pulls out cutlery and sets it on the coffee table in front of the TV.
“You have homework tonight?”
“There’s a lot of reading. History and social studies mostly. I’m going to be behind.”
Normally I’d tell her to get on it first thing. I didn’t do enough homework as a kid, and I regret it.
“Tell you what. Why don’t we hang out for a bit first?”
Her eyes brighten with interest. “Really?”
I grate parmesan on top of our dinner and carry the plates over to the coffee table. “Yeah. They can’t expect you to be caught up on day one. We’ll watch Netflix and chill.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Don’t ever say that again.”
6
Being back in rehearsal is familiar and awkward at once. Like driving your favorite car with the seat in the wrong position.
We move around one another like ghosts, our gazes connecting and passing unspoken signals as we tune the track over and over.
“This doesn’t suck,” Mace declares Thursday as we finish running through the song I gave to Haley years ago. “I think it’s there.”
I lift the guitar off my neck and set it down before reaching for the full bottle of water next to the two I’ve emptied since lunch. “Let’s do the bridge again.”
“Seriously? We’ve been running this all week. I gotta meet Neen,” Brick complains.
“I still can’t believe you’re tapping Nina,” Kyle says.
“I can’t believe it took so damned long,” Mace weighs in.
“Ours is a forbidden love.” Brick’s grin is undercut by the wistful edge in his voice. “But seriously. Now that she’s still running tours and I’m off ’em, it’s all good.”
I only half hear my friend’s comments.
Part of me still can’t believe Haley distributed the song to the band as an enticement to get them to come back. I always knew she had balls. But this is another level.
I hate it.
And admire it.
Three days here has me falling into a routine. Every morning, I wait until Annie goes to school before I head to the studio.
Every afternoon, I go back to the hotel, swim a punishing number of laps, then return to my suite and stare at the song I started as if I expect it to spontaneously multiply.
Because even though I told the guys I’m not making an album, they want to try. And though I haven’t committed to anything, I find myself asking whether I even can.
More than once, I’ve caught myself thinking of Haley. Not what she’s doing on the phone when I pass her in the hall, our gazes meeting for the briefest second. Or what she and Serena are laughing about in the kitchen when I go with Mace on a caffeine run.
I think of her with Carter.
What they do together.
Whether he knows what she likes.
When I’m not rehearsing, I talk some info out of the staff. She doesn’t take a salary from Wicked, though she spends as much time here as she does at home. She lives in the old man’s big Victorian house. She never finished her degree.
The
last one bugs me.
A noise at the door has us looking up.
And dammit, it’s the girl—woman, actually—I can’t kick out of my head.
She’s wearing them again.
Heels.
I miss the Converse, and it has zero to do with nostalgia.
These shoes are the same color as her legs and make them look as if they go on forever. It’s not that they’re porn star heels either. They’re only a couple of inches. But they’re fucking fascinating because I’ve never seen her in them.
Instead of a skirt, she’s wearing jeans. But ones that hug her hips, her legs. Her sleeveless top is black and dips in the front—fluttering fabric that skims her breasts and her waist. That has me remembering what it’s like to touch each of those curves in turn, and the sounds I can coax from her when I do.
Her hair’s raked back from her face and braided over one shoulder. Not in the way parents braid kids’ hair. This has pieces falling out around her face, the ends spiky, as though she’s already been doing something that messed with it.
No red lipstick. Her mouth is sheer and a little shiny.
I swallow the arousal.
“Howdy, Hales.”
Since when does Kyle call her that? My glare goes unnoticed because mine aren’t the only eyes on her.
“Guys,” she says in that full voice that drags down my spine like a promise. “How’s rehearsal?”
Everyone turns to me, including her. Our gazes meet, and it’s the longest we’ve looked at one another all week. Since we came face to face in the conference room.
“What’ve you got?” she asks, lifting her chin.
It’s Mace who clears his throat. “Jax?”
I shift the guitar over my head once more, adjust the strap around my neck, and start our intro. We play the song again, and though I avoid her stare, I’m aware she’s here.
That she’s never heard the song.
That I wrote it for her.
I step up to the mic—not because I need it to carry my voice—out of habit, more than anything.
Playing the song is different than the times before, because she’s here and even though I hate it, I can’t help that part of me wants to know what she thinks.