by Piper Lawson
“I can’t wait,” I murmur, my fingers digging into his arms. My head falls back against the wall, and his lips cover my jaw.
“We’ve waited enough.” His satisfied murmur against the shell of my ear combined with his touch breaks me.
I go stiff against him, trembling with the impact. He holds me up as I gasp and pant my way through it.
I don’t know how I survived without this. Without him.
When I come down, he’s tugging at my dress. “I need to see you.”
With wobbly limbs, I help him get it off. Or maybe I make it harder. Who the hell knows?
Jax gets the damn dress off and hitches me up on the desk. His jeans get shoved down by impatient hands, then his shorts too. My hand wraps around his cock, and Jax hisses out a breath.
He lowers me onto the desk. I can’t get enough of him. The hard lines of his body are the same. The muscles of his arms, his pecs. The light trail of hair down his stomach.
I play with it, making him curse.
“It’s a miracle I can even get it up after what you did to me last week,” he groans.
Chess pieces dig into my back and side, but I grin anyway.
He pulls back, his expression tight with need and something else as he traces a finger down my breast, along my side.
My throat turns to desert before I hear the rip of foil against the backdrop of our panting breaths.
Anticipation grips me. He’s standing over me, wanting me as much as I want him.
He’s between my thighs. Brushing. Nudging.
Jax lifts off me far enough to look in my eyes.
Then he sinks into me.
All.
The.
Way.
I’m underwater. Drowning in sensation. Gasping for air.
I adjust to him as he watches. His face is a mirror of mine. Disbelief. Memory clashing with reality. Past and present.
It’s like listening to him play a song. There’s the familiarity of every time before, competing with wanting to experience it for the first time.
Until the past falls away and all there is is now.
He shows me with his hands, his body. Shallow strokes flattening out to deeper ones. Jax’s hands find mine, our fingers lacing as he presses my hands overhead. My knuckles bump the cool, lacquered wood of the desk.
All I can do is thrust my hips up to meet his. The futility of it is soothed by the fire in his eyes.
I feel as if he’s keeping me there. As though he’s afraid I’ll leave and he’s using every ounce of his intention, his body, to make sure I never do. With that thought, the need takes over and has me crashing into him again as I cry out.
He shakes on top of me as his sweat-slicked body crushes mine.
13
My body feels like I just swam a hundred laps.
Then ran a marathon.
The kicker is, the second I meet her gaze, I’m ready to go again.
“I always thought this was creepy,” Haley murmurs, trailing her fingers through the thick fur rug on the floor.
I manage a half laugh. “Me too.”
I take in her body—flushed, naked. I could stare at her all night.
Somehow she’s even more beautiful than I remember. Every inch of skin begging for my hands, my mouth. She’s like a forgotten language, and I want to learn her all over again.
I swallow the impulse.
“The custodian’ll have a field day if they find a condom in my garbage,” Haley says under her breath.
“I don’t give a shit if people talk. But you do.” I realize as I say it it’s true.
Haley’s expression clouds as she pushes a hand through her hair. “My relationship with Derek and the other executives is complicated now that I’m not a majority owner. Finding out about our history wouldn’t help.”
I roll onto my side to face her. “Then they won’t find out we fucked each other’s brains out in your dad’s old office,” I decide.
Her mouth tugs up at the corner as if she thinks I’m sweet or cute or some other totally inappropriate thing given the circumstances.
I clear my throat as I cast my gaze around the office. “Speaking of. That was unexpected.”
“Yeah.” She wraps her arms over her chest, which only drags my eyes down. “When you said that thing, about how you loved me… I guess I got caught up.”
“Me too.” I rub a hand over my jaw, and Haley’s gaze follows the movement. Interest stirs in my groin again because attraction’s never been our issue. “It’s been eating me up inside how we left things, Hales. I keep thinking how much I fucked up our ending.”
The green flecks in her eyes dance. “You didn’t fuck it up. I made a choice, and you made one too. I’m not broken, Jax.”
“I know. You were always strong. Even when I met you on tour.”
Her mouth curves. “We had some good times.”
Just like that, she has me remembering those times. The bowling alley. Making out on my bus. The night she sang on stage next to me. That first day, sitting in the back of my limo. Me tossing her a bottle of water out of my bus.
My heart squeezes.
“It’s in the past.”
“Mostly.” My fingers strokes down her arm and she lets out a little sigh.
“Mostly.”
A noise in the hall has us both freezing.
“Tell me Tyler’s gone for sure.”
She snorts. “He is.”
“Good.” I stare up at the ceiling, counting the pot lights there. “Listen. I’m tired of regretting. What if we had another chance.”
Her hesitation nearly kills me. “With each other?”
“At an ending.” I turn toward her again, and those chocolate eyes deepen with the need to understand. Something I’ve always loved about her. “It’s like a three-minute song. The first half’s full of possibility because you’re just getting started. The second half’s building to the end. You know it’s coming, but you don’t have to dread it. You can enjoy the third chorus, the bridge, because it’s all part of it.”
“Okay,” she says slowly.
“So maybe doing this album together is a second chance at a first ending.”
“The second chance at a first ending,” she repeats, and her hesitation nearly kills me. “I like that. Deal.”
For two years, I’ve been sure the chapter of my life with music, with Wicked, was over.
Now I know that’s not true.
I wrote four songs this week. With a little work, they’ll be damned good.
More than that, I feel alive. Like I’m part of something again.
Whatever battle Todd wants to have, I’m all in.
Because this album is me. My truth, for the first time in a long time.
It’s a different truth than before, because I’ve lived ten lives in the decade since I wrote that first album.
Not all pain or joy can be experienced by a teenager. When you’re grown, it has more shades, more nuance. All of it’s in those songs.
As far as I’m concerned, Haley and I have unfinished business too. Whatever time we’re not working on the album, I’ll use to prove to her our last ending wasn’t the right one. I won’t leave her that way.
What if don’t want to leave her at all?
The disturbing though lingers in the corner of my mind.
I’m heading over to the studio the next day when I get the call that the principal wants to see me about Annie.
I park outside of the expensive private school and find my kid. She walks with me to the office.
“You seriously don’t know what she’s going to say?” I ask.
Annie shakes her head, looking nervous. “No.” Annie starts to wait in the hall, but I motion her in with me. Her brows rise. “You want me to come?”
“Yeah. You might as well hear what they’re saying about you.”
She swallows her surprise, sticking to my side.
“Mr. Jamieson.”
The principal, a sixtyish wo
man who looks like a poster for Newport living, welcomes us in. We take our seats across a cherry desk which I now know from my construction projects would cost a lot of textbooks.
Desks. That’s what the tuition money goes to in these places.
The woman clears her throat. “Anne has put some inappropriate material in her locker.”
“What kind of inappropriate material?”
She shifts. “Photos. Of men.” My back straightens. “The other girls’ fathers. Most of them are shirtless. I think she found them on social media feeds.”
I turn to Annie, who’s looking at me with big eyes.
“I don’t know what kind of lifestyle you support, Mr. Jamieson,” the principal goes on stiffly, “but I’m concerned this is unhealthy. We are very particular about the environment we put our children in.”
My instinct is to lose my shit but some impulse has me holding it at bay. “Annie, whose father is it?”
“I forget. I put a few of them up.”
She’s being vague, but the expression on her face is strange. Like she knows the answer but doesn’t want to say.
She’s not afraid. More like…embarrassed.
This isn’t adding up. “Do you…” I clear my throat. “Are you having feelings for other kids’ fathers?”
Annie scrunches up her face. “Of course not. They’re old. That’s weird.”
Now I’m more confused. “So why would you do it?”
A light bulb goes on and I swallow the groan.
“Annie,” I start, shifting back in my chair, “do any of the other girls have dad photos in their lockers?”
“Yes.”
“Whose dad?”
“Mine. And they remind me of it every damned day,” she mutters.
“I see.”
I nod to the principal, who’s looking perplexed.
“Are you punishing the other girls?” I ask.
“But—that’s different, Mr. Jamieson.”
“How so? Just because I’m in entertainment and the other kids’ dads are investment bankers makes it okay for them to tease my kid about me?”
Her mouth tightens. “We do aim to ensure positive and healthy social relationships. But we also have discretion to assign punishment for behavior that doesn’t fit our school’s values. As a result, Anne will do four weeks’ community service filing books at the library every day after school.”
Normally I’m all for teachers keeping kids in line, because I think they have too much latitude to get into trouble.
But she picked the wrong day and the wrong kid.
I shift in my seat and I swear her gaze flicks down my body. Over my T-shirt. Hell, maybe it even reaches the jeans but I’m looking at her face.
“Maybe you know how difficult it is to be a single parent, but if you don’t, let me help you.” I lean across the desk I probably paid for, keeping my voice deliberately measured. “It’s really fucking hard. I’ve traveled to sixty countries. But nothing about selling out stadiums or managing media prepares you for the day your kid glues tampons to someone’s books. Or comes home with some teenaged Smurf. Or asks you if you think she’s a lesbian.” I think I hear Annie snort beside me. “But you know what? We do okay.
“Now let me get this straight. You’re telling me my honor is threatened and my daughter’s crime was defending herself, and me, from a bunch of hormonal teenagers with a thing for thirty-year-old abs. If you try to punish her for that, I will not only put a stop on her tuition checks and take her to the second best school in the city, but I will buy her a pony, an ice cream cake, a damned locker full of tampons and dad pictures and anything else she wants along the way. Do we understand one another?”
The principal stares at me in shock for the better part of a minute before recovering. “Given the gray area of the circumstances, I think we can let this go.” She turns to Annie. “But you will stay out of trouble the remainder of the semester.”
Annie nods dutifully.
We walk out of the office together and get six steps down the hall before I lean back against the wall, my head hitting the plaster as I shut my eyes.
“Are you okay?” Annie asks tentatively.
My shoulders rock. “You got them back by posting picture of their dads?”
“Yeah. Some pretty nasty shirtless ones from trips to the Hamptons. They haven’t talked about you all week. But I guess they tattled on me.” She swipes at her eyes. “You were amazing in there.”
My chest tightens until it’s hard to breathe. It’s the best moment I can remember, and it doesn’t have to do with money or lawyers or regret or our past. It’s just…
Now.
She glances down at her phone.
“Who’s that?”
“Tyler.”
Which reminds me. “Haley said you could go to Wicked and play with other kids.”
Her eyes light up. “Really?”
“Yeah. No pressure—”
“I’m so there.”
14
Haley
I’m pretty sure heaven is a recording studio rigged up with the best sound mixing software money can buy, plus a little help from DRE when we get stuck.
Oh yeah. And Riot Act, including the one and only Jax Jamieson, on the other side of the glass.
I could live a thousand lifetimes and never get the kind of satisfaction I get from being part of this process. Because now that Jax is in it, he’s all in.
It’s incredible to watch. The way he writes and rewrites, how his mind turns things over.
I see why Cross didn’t want to record without Jax, because he’s the spark, the catalyst. He sticks together Kyle’s crazy ideas, Brick’s bass line, Mace’s long quiet periods punctuated with moments of excitement when he jumps on a new idea, spins it out, makes it bigger than before.
I tried to replicate this chemistry in computer programs. Now I see why I can’t.
Computers can unpack our logic and build it up better than we ever could. They can beat us at chess, at investing, at planning.
But they can’t out-create us. They can’t out-feel us.
No one can out-feel Jax when he’s like this.
“Come out with me,” Jax says at the end of the day Friday on our way to the meeting with Todd. “Annie’ll be there too. She killed a test this week, so she gets to pick the restaurant. But she’s dying to see you. Since she learned about your program, you’re pretty much her hero.”
“I heard Mace was her hero.”
“Don’t tell him he’s been replaced.” Jax grins. He’s so high he’s practically flying, and I can’t resist smiling. “But seriously. I haven’t seen you all week.”
“You’ve seen me every day,” I counter.
“Yeah. But that’s you and Jerry. Team Jaley. Wait, that could be us. Team Herry.” He makes a face. “And even if I get you alone for two seconds, we’re surrounded by three other dudes.”
“And you need to get me alone because…?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” His grin melts me to my core. “I want to do wicked things to you, Wicked girl.”
So truth time. Since we hooked up in my office earlier this week, I’ve been doing my best to act professional. Channel the best parts of my father, the record executive, and bring them to the studio.
But Shannon Cross never had to deal with Jax Jamieson looking at him the way he’s looking at me right now.
“I thought we had an ending.”
“An ending has multiple parts. This entire album is an ending to my career. It has multiple tracks, multiple verses…” his mouth is hot on my ear. “We could have multiple lots of things.”
Shit.
The problem isn’t the physical. At least, it isn’t only the physical.
It’s that I’ve never been able to hold back with Jax. He’s like a storm, tearing through me, leaving me in pieces even when he doesn’t mean to.
He can’t help it. It’s his nature.
But we have other problems.
I shove the personal ones from my mind as we file into the conference room where Todd is already sitting, holding a copy of the file I emailed him not an hour ago.
“What the hell is this?” he asks.
“It’s the track listing for the album,” I reply, dropping into a seat as Jax takes the next one over.
Todd holds up the sheet. “It’s four tracks.”
“Right. We’re making an EP called Now. Have you listened to the tracks? The first two are clear singles. We can release them in a matter of weeks. We’ve worked up a marketing plan to support this.”
“Tell me you’re fucking with me. This is what you’ve been working on for the past month?” He lifts the paper. “We’re doing an LP.” He turns to Jax, dismissing me as if I’m there to bring them coffee.
Jax opens his mouth to issue a stinging retort, but I lift a hand.
He drops back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest. This is my fight, and I’m grateful he’s letting me take it.
“If you read his contract,” I start, “it doesn’t specify an LP. Now, maybe our lawyers didn’t do their job. Or maybe my father, like me, thought it would make sense to make the right album at the right time. Which,” I can’t help adding, “is an EP.”
“What are you now, his lawyer?”
“I’m an owner of this company. And someone who gives a shit how this album turns out.” Todd goes red but I don’t stop. “Now. Do you want me to tell Derek you’re stuck on this idea of making an LP? Because you’ll be making it without Jax.”
Todd’s gaze flicks back to Jax, who looks up from where he’s inspecting his nails. He slings an arm over the back of his chair, appearing every bit the artist who’d rather be anywhere but in this meeting, though I’m sure he’s smirking on the inside. “She’s right. We gotta get back. My kid’s got swim camp this summer.”
I could hug him.
When Todd shoves out of his chair and stalks out the door, I do.
“He always have that much of a stick up his ass?” Jax asks as we walk back from the conference room side by side.
I hide a smile. “Some days it’s higher.”
“I dunno what Derek saw in him.”