by L A Cotton
But the self-loathing I felt was almost as bad.
“Okay,” Letty pulled off her skull and bones scarf and draped it over a chair. “So this is what I was thinking. What about if we take the song Levi played at Damon’s party, Drown, and develop it into a power ballad?”
“No.”
No fucking way.
Drown was my song. It was personal. Sure, I’d sung it at Damon’s birthday party a couple of weeks back, but there had been a good reason for that.
“Do you have a better suggestion?” Letty scowled at me.
“We write something new. I’m sure Eva has plenty of ideas.”
“We don’t have time to write something new,” Letty interjected. “We have the studios for the next three days. We need to nail this. You need to nail this.” She let out an exasperated breath, flicking a concerned brow toward Alistair. His cell began ringing and he held up a finger, checking the screen.
“I need to take this. You need to figure this out and fast. If we don’t get the tour back on track ASAP, I don’t need to tell you there will be no more studio time.”
A tremor rippled through the room. Hudson looked at Damon, who looked at Rafe, who looked at me.
“What?” I shrugged.
“You’re a real fucking asshole sometimes,” Hudson sneered. “It’s just a song.”
But it wasn’t just any song.
“This is the plan.” Letty rolled her shoulders back and I knew she meant business. She’d been with us since the beginning. Our rise to fame and fortune didn’t intimidate her. To her we were nothing more than her responsibility... her job. Sometimes, we were also her friends.
But right now, she was our boss, and we were going to fall in line whether we liked it or not.
“How much of the song is written?”
“Knowing Levi, it’s a whole goddamn album.” Hudson snorted and I flipped him off.
“Everyone just take a breath.” Damon stepped forward. “Maybe we should hear Levi out. If the song is personal to him—”
“It can’t be that personal, he sang it for you in front of half of the crew.”
“Hud,” Rafe warned, glancing at me with concerned eyes.
“You really don’t want to use it?” Letty asked. “Because we all heard you that night. It was something special, Levi. I think we can really make something of it, especially with Eva on the track.”
“I don’t want to upset anyone,” Eva said. “Maybe this isn’t the best—”
“We’ll use it,” I said with a defeated breath.
“Yeah?” Relief washed over Letty. “I wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn’t think—”
“Yeah, yeah, Panem, save the dramatics.” I got up and headed for the door.
“Levi, where are you going?” she asked.
“What?” I glanced back. “I can’t take a piss now without everyone needing to know?”
No one else said a word as I slipped out of the room. Truth was, I didn’t need a piss, I needed a second.
Drown was my song. Something I’d been working on the last few weeks. Yeah, I’d sang a couple of verses at Damon’s party, but I never wrote it for public consumption. They owned enough of me already. Now Letty wanted to have the guys and Eva come in on it.
I hated the fucking idea.
Storming into the bathroom, I went straight to the basins and braced my hands on the counter. Beads of sweat rolled down my back as I tried to regulate my breathing and focus on anything but the constant scratch under my skin. The scratch that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t quite itch.
My skin was sallow, my cheekbones hollow. I looked like shit, felt like it too. But I knew I was on a shaky ledge. One wrong step, and I would be back in rehab. And I couldn’t go back there.
Not again.
For someone like myself, who fought his demons day in day out, rehab was the worst kind of hell. Even if it had saved my life on more than one occasion.
Turning on the faucet, I splashed some water on my face before rubbing my hands to the back of my neck. The blast of cold helped me focus.
Six months ago, I would have told Letty to go fuck herself. I was Levi fucking Hunter. I did what I wanted, when I wanted, with little regard to the consequences. But things were different now. Eva was on the tour, she was one of us, and we had the endorsement from Masterpiece. I couldn’t just walk out on them, no matter how much I wanted to.
This time, I had to suck it up and go along with the plan.
This time, I had to fall in line.
This time, I had to try to be better.
Eva sang the lyrics again, her soft, sultry voice filling the recording booth. I could just make out Letty standing over the sound engineer, a guy called Brad. We’d been at it for hours. First, Eva had to learn the lyrics and then we had to figure out the arrangement. Once we had that nailed, we’d bring in the guys.
“It’s good,” Letty came over the speaker. “But something is missing.”
She wasn’t wrong.
There was no doubt our voices blended together effortlessly, but it lacked energy and emotion, and I was pretty sure I knew why.
“She’s right.” Eva tore off her headphones and took a deep breath, hitting the microphone button so that no one else could hear us. “Maybe it would help if you told me the meaning behind the lyrics.”
My brow quirked up. “Nice try, Angel. But never gonna happen.”
“Levi, come on. You can trust me. It’s such an amazing song but it’s your song.”
“You cover songs all the time.” They were a staple of her set on the tour.
“Yeah, but that’s different. I’m trying to sing your words, and I know you well enough to know everything you write means something.”
Eva was special. Kind and gentle and so damn intuitive. It wasn’t any wonder her light had burrowed its way into the darkest part of my soul. For a second, I’d wanted her to be mine. I’d wanted to revel in her purity and let it wash away my sins.
But I always knew she was Rafe’s.
Just as I always knew a girl like Eva was too good for a guy like me. I tainted everything I touched, and left to my own devices, I would have tainted her. I would have sucked dry her overflowing well of goodness and turned her soul into nothing more than a black abyss.
Because that’s who I was.
Levi Hunter: stealer of hearts, reaper of souls.
Therapists liked to tell me that I couldn’t expect anyone to love me until I learned to love myself.
So I was shit out of luck… because loving myself?
Yeah, never going to happen.
Phoebe
“You’re late,” my father rose from his chair, a scowl of disapproval etched in the harsh lines of his face.
“Sorry, the traffic was a nightmare.”
“Yes, well, you should have left early enough to account for that.”
My teeth ground together.
Peter Halstead was a hard man to please. Shrewd and cold with little time for pleasantries. Great for the movie industry; not so great for me, his only daughter.
After an awkward kiss, we both sat down.
“This is great, Dad,” I said, pretending to take in the restaurant. The truth was, I hated these places. Rich. Ostentatious. Full of fake conversation and even faker clientele.
He signaled a server and ordered our usual, a bottle of Perrier for me with ice and lemon, and a glass of Jameson eighteen-year-old reserve. “How is at the label?”
“It’s... uh, good.” I swallowed. My dad had gotten me the internship through a friend of a friend.
“I think this could be a good thing for you, Phoebe. After Zephyr, you need to keep busy.”
“Got it, Dad.” My lips pursed.
“You haven’t spoken to him?”
“I promised I wouldn’t.”
“Good.” He gave me a stiff nod. “That man needs help, sweetheart. Professional help.”
“Hmm-mm,” I murmured, too choked to reply.
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Thankfully, the server chose that moment to bring our drinks over. I grabbed my bottle of water and added it to the glass, wishing it was something stronger.
“If he does try to contact you, I want you to inform me immediately.”
Zephyr wouldn’t try to contact me. That ship had long sailed. No, it had run aground in after a tumultuous storm.
Ignoring his comment, I mumbled, “And here I thought this was supposed to be lunch with my father because he wanted to actually see me.”
“Oh, save me the dramatics, Phoebe.” He sipped his whisky. “All I’m trying to say is, you can’t save everyone. You need to move on from—”
“Already moved on, Dad. Zephyr who?” My lips twisted into a saccharine smile.
He rolled his eyes. “I see you haven’t lost your sense of sarcasm. You know, it’s the lowest form of wit. It isn’t very becoming of a young woman such as yourself, with so much untapped potential.”
I wanted to disappear. I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole, if it meant avoiding this conversation.
When I’d gotten the call from my father’s assistant that he was on business in Memphis and wanted to have lunch, I’d contemplated making an excuse. But Peter Halstead was not the kind of man you turned down. Besides, if I wanted to keep him off my back, I needed to play nice.
He picked up the menu and began scanning it. “So, tell me about Razorsharp. I hope they’ve got you doing something a little more useful than making coffee and filing paperwork?”
“I’m the intern, Dad, that’s kind of par for the course.” The lies rolled off my tongue with ease. I’d spent the better part of the last five years lying to him.
I hadn’t grown up living with my father. He and my mom had separated not long after I turned four. He travelled a lot for work, and she didn’t like being second best to his job. It wasn’t until she died when I was fifteen, that he finally stepped up to the plate. He took me in, and for those first few months, I’d been the center of his world. Mom’s death had hit me hard, and I spiraled into depression. Dad took some time out of work to help me through it all. But the second I was better, he returned to his job, and I was left to fend for myself.
I was at a new school with no friends and a whole heap of grief. It was hardly any surprise when I fell in with the wrong crowd. I was desperate for attention, craving intimacy and comfort. I was a teenager in pain, and it wasn’t long before I found my cure.
Zephyr Marek.
Tortured bad boy with a penchant for broken girls.
Our love story was a whirlwind. Reckless and chaotic, we fell hard and fast. He was a couple years older than me, but it didn’t matter. I was infatuated, swept away with stolen kisses and secret touches.
Until it was too late.
Until I was hooked on him and he was hooked on anything that gave him a high.
I gently shook the thoughts out of my head, watching my father as he ordered his meal.
“Phoebe?” he said.
“I’ll have the seared chicken breast with greens please.” I folded the leather-bound menu and handed it to the server.
“I’m proud of you, sweetheart. I know I don’t say it often, but I am. It took a while for you to come to your senses where Zephyr was concerned, but you got there in the end, and that’s all that matters. You’re still young. You have your whole life ahead of you.” He sipped his whisky again. “You could always give college another try—”
“I think I’m done with that, Dad.” I forced the bitter memories down.
“Never say never, Phoebe. You’re only twenty-one.”
Sometimes I felt about thirty. Like I’d lived too much life for a young woman of my age.
“I’m in a good place at the label, Dad,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t read too much into it.
I knew he’d find out about the band eventually. He’d call his friend at the label and it would come out, but I wasn’t about to give him the ammunition he needed to ruin things for me.
If he got wind that I was working with Black Hearts, he’d pitch a fit. Everyone knew the hype surrounding the band.
Around Levi.
Just thinking about him made my heart flutter. He was everything I needed to avoid, and yet, like the foolish girl I was, I’d allowed myself to get close.
My father got a lot of things wrong—he was aloof and hardly present—but he wasn’t wrong about not being able to save everyone.
Love didn’t fix people. It only masked some of the cracks. I knew that better than anyone.
Our food came and the conversation turned from me to my father. He talked about the latest A-list celebrities he’d been rubbing shoulders with, and the most recent secrets and scandals. He told me all about Jan, the agent he was dating. He talked and talked and talked until his voice became white noise and my smiles and nods of agreement became robotic.
Then, after we were done, he dabbed his mouth before requesting the check. “This was nice,” he said. “We should do it again soon.”
And like that, I was dismissed. My father had fulfilled his parental duties enough for the month until the next time his assistant reminded him we were due to do lunch.
It was that he didn’t care, I knew that.
He just didn’t care enough.
When I got back the hotel, I was exhausted. It had been six-hour round trip to Memphis, but of course, my father hadn’t thought twice about expecting me to make the journey to see him.
I slipped into the suite, expecting to find it empty, but Letty and Eva were curled up on the sectional sipping hot chocolate.
“Hey,” I said, making my way over to them.
“How was it?” Letty asked.
“Oh, you know. He berated me for my poor life choices, we ate lunch, and then I listened to him drone on for an hour about his work. The usual.”
Eva frowned, and I let out a weary sigh. “Sorry, my dad.” I sank into one of the armchairs. “That’s where I was today.”
“He sounds... charming.”
“Peter Halstead, charming?” I snorted. “Now there’s a joke if ever I heard one. How’d it go at the studio?”
I was bummed to miss their first session, but I figured it might make things easier all round. From the looks on both their faces, I realized I might have assumed wrong.
“That bad, huh?”
“It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t quite right either. Eva tried to get Levi to open up about the song, but you know what he’s like.”
“If anyone can get him to talk, it’s you,” I said, hating how the words made my stomach sink.
“Phoebe, that isn’t—”
“Can we not do this.” I sighed. “What happened between me and Levi was... a mistake.”
Eva blanched. “This thing with Riley, she set him up.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But she didn’t force him to snort that coke. And we all know it didn’t end there.” I hadn’t watched the rest of the video circulating the internet. I didn’t want to see him with another woman.
I couldn’t.
“I hate her for this,” She snarled. My eyes widened, surprised at the venom in her voice. She was usually so meek and quiet.
“Yeah, Riley is a real class act,” Letty sneered. “But legal will shut her up soon enough. Then we can try and focus on the tour.”
“Is there any talk of when the label wants the band back on the road?” They had already postponed five shows.
“If everything goes to plan, we’ll head for New Orleans on Thursday. It gives us enough time to produce the track and get it out there.
“If we ever finish the song.” Eva tipped her head to the ceiling, letting out a heavy sigh. “I’m worried about him, he was in a better place.” Her eyes slowly lowered to mine. “And now he’s lost again.”
“He’s survived worse,” I said, trying to ignore the plea in her gaze.
I couldn’t fix this. Not without sacrificing part of myself, and I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do that again.
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“We still have time,” Letty said. “He might be a mess, but Levi has always managed to pull it out of the bag when it counts.”
“I really thought he’d lose it,” Eva added. “Something this huge, I thought he’d spiral out of control.”
“Just because he seems okay doesn’t mean he isn’t one second away from relapsing.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.
Letty and Eva both looked at me. Sympathy shone in my mentor’s eyes. She knew my story... well, some of it.
“I had an ex,” I said for Eva’s benefit. “He was an addict. It ended badly.” I inhaled a shuddering breath.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I should have walked away long before I did.” But love was a funny thing. Once it had its claws in you, it dragged you under deeper and deeper.
“It makes sense now.”
“What does?” I asked her.
“How you are with him.”
My cheeks heated. I didn’t want to think about Levi, about the innate need I felt to protect and shield him from not only himself but the world who would so happily chew him up and spit him out.
“I overstepped and I shouldn’t have.” I stood, too overwhelmed by the conversation. “I’m going to get an early night. See you both tomorrow.”
“Phoebe, you don’t have—”
Eva’s voice melted away as I shut my bedroom door. I kicked off my pumps and lay on the bed, scrolling my social media apps. Part of my day-to-day responsibilities was to help manage the band’s website and official fan pages. Since the video leaked, the Die Hearts—the die-hard Black Hearts fans—had positioned themselves as one-hundred percent supportive of Levi. They provided a wealth of commentary on articles and social media about their favorite tortured bad boy of rock. But the younger fans, the ones whose parents cared a little more about what music their kids were listening to, didn’t want to see their favorite rock star snorting coke off a woman’s stomach.
Before I knew it, I’d been sucked into a black hole of social media uproar over Levi Hunter and his sinful ungodly ways. I didn’t realize what I was looking at until it was too late. The label’s PR team had done an excellent job of removing the video from all viable sources. But screenshots were forever.