“Hmm?” My mind is on Lucas. I hadn’t seen him since that night, except on TV. They’d made it through to another round, which didn’t surprise me, or him.
“Hailey, where’s your head?”
“What?” I look at Vanessa.
“Cloud nine.”
“Huh?”
She grins. “You’re thinking about Lucas.”
“No,” I say quickly.
“He told me you guys are seeing each other.”
“Not really,” I mutter, resting my cheek on my fist. “Anyway, when do you talk to him?”
Her grin widens. “When he needs girl advice.”
Heat flushes my cheeks. “He doesn’t need advice. I need the advice. He’s so on and off it makes me crazy. One minute he’s kissing me, then the next he’s running away like I’m a leper.”
She giggles. “You’re overanalyzing. Lucas is into you. I think the whole world knows that.”
“Hailey.”
I glance toward the window as the familiar voice comes over the speaker. Jeff waves at me.
“That must be his agent with him,” Vanessa says. “You should go.”
“Is that okay?” I ask.
“Yes,” Jeff says into a mic.
“Oh, you can hear me.” I scowl.
“Every word.”
I slap my forehead.
“Uh huh. All that too. Come out here.”
I slide off the stool and hurry out of the recording booth. The slender, ash-haired man beside Jeff offers me his hand. “Miss Becker. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I’m Ted Gallagher. Let’s go get lunch so we can talk.”
I shake his hand. “Sure.”
Jeff comes with us. We sit in an isolated corner of a restaurant, and Ted pulls out paperwork. “Let’s get right to business. I’m going to offer you this contract. I think I can get you a good recording deal with one of the big labels. I’ve already heard whispers of interest from Warner and Sony. With all the drama some of the big artists have been creating lately, the wholesome girl next door will look good for their image. Plus, you’re incredibly talented. I haven’t heard such talent since Jeffrey here.”
I glance at Jeff and he smiles gently.
“I don’t know what a good contract is,” I say.
“That’s okay.” Jeff touches my shoulder. “We’ll go through it with you. You trust that I won’t let you be taken for a ride, right?”
I nod. He has saved and protected me several times.
“All right.” Jeff motions for the contract to be handed to me. “Let’s get started.”
***
Feeling giddy, I lie on my plush hotel bed as I wait for Mom to answer.
“Hailey,” she says, her bright voice coming down the line.
“Mom! I’ve got exciting news.”
“Oh, please tell me you’re finally with Lucas. I really like him.”
“No.” I frown, wishing I could say yes. “Why are you always so focused on my love life?”
“I want to see you happy.”
“I can do that without a guy, Mom.”
“Yes, but seeing you settled down and having babies will make me happy.”
I chuckle. “Mom!”
“I’m sorry. So, tell me. What’s so exciting?”
I grin, excited to give her the news. “I signed with an agent.”
Pause. “Excuse me?” she whispered, her voice cold.
“I signed with an agent. Jeffrey Halloway’s to be exact. Jeff helped me go through the contract to make sure—”
She hangs up. I pull the phone away from my face and stare at it. Could she really be that against me pursuing a singing career? I try calling again, but she doesn’t answer.
I growl and call Clarissa.
“Hey, Hailey. Calling me instead of Lucas, huh?” She sounds chipper and has a hint of teasing in her voice.
“My mom just hung up on me!”
“What? Why?” She no longer sounds chipper.
“I told her I signed with an agent and I guess it upset her.”
“Well that sucks.”
“I know.”
“I’ll go get Lucas.”
“Clarissa, can’t I just talk to you?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“Nope.”
I sigh. “I don’t want to bother him with this.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s…I’m…” How can I say I feel uncomfortable since her brother refused to have sex with me?
“Come down here. I’m bored.”
“It’s late.”
She pauses. “Oh. It kinda is, huh?”
“Yup.”
She groans. “I need to tell you something.”
“Sure.”
“I think…I think Isaiah is sleeping with Drusilla.”
I hesitate to answer. Lucas had said just that. “I hate to say it, but I think he is too.”
She lets out a low growl. “He’s so…he’s so…”
“Yup.”
“He makes me mad! He’s always like this. Girls are all over Lucas all the time too, but you don’t see him jumping into bed with them!”
“Clarissa—”
“It’s so embarrassing. I mean, we’re talented, aren’t we? We could win without him doing that.”
No, unfortunately. “You are, very talented.”
“Everything is getting so intense now. Final three! Phew, crazy town. Who would have thought?”
“I did.”
She giggles. “Thanks, Hailey.” She shuffles, then, “Lucas!”
“Clarissa!” I hiss.
“Lucas, talk to Hailey. Her mom is pissed about her signing with an agent.”
Lucas takes the phone. “Hailey?”
“Hi, Lucas.” I try to sound cheery, but my discomfort swells up inside me.
“Why’s your mom upset?”
“She doesn’t want to me live ‘that life.’”
“Oh.”
Pause. “Oh?”
“Hang on.”
“Lucas?”
“Just a sec. Okay, we’re alone. Why are you avoiding me?”
I just want to talk about my mother! “Lucas, I’m not avoiding you.”
“Why aren’t you answering my calls?”
“I just…” Why is he so frustrating? “I thought that…I mean, you didn’t…”
“Hailey.” He sighs. “I care about you, and I want to show that I respect you. That’s all it was.”
I smile, touched. Yes, I’ve been overanalyzing, just like Vanessa said. “You do?”
“Yeah. Hey, come down here tomorrow when you get out of recording. I want to see you before you go back.”
“Okay.”
“And that way we can talk about your mother issues properly.”
I giggle.
“There you go. Keep smiling,” he says. “Look, it’s late, so I better go.”
“All right.”
We say our farewells and hang up.
I’m woken by banging on the door. Seven a.m.? I don’t need to be anywhere until nine. I pull on the robe to answer. “Isaiah?”
He gazes at me, his fists clenched. “Hi.”
Glancing up and down the hallway, I ask, “How did you know what room?”
“You know Lucas is a virgin, right?”
No, I didn’t. But why does that matter? That makes his sudden departure way more understandable.
Isaiah wraps his arms around me. “He won’t make you happy.”
“Isaiah.” I push him off. “He told me what you did with his ex. Why would you do that?”
He shrugs. “I slept with all his girlfriends. He didn’t want to do them, so they came to me. She was just the only one he caught.”
I gasp and slap his shoulder. “You slut!”
His eyes darken. “I’m sorry all the good girls go for him. He’s not exactly a saint, you know.”
“At least he’s not sleeping with Drusilla and Jessica.”
/> “Oh, so he’s told you?” He folds his arms, scowling. “Typical. He’d do anything to keep you away from me. Anytime I have a genuine interest in a girl, he comes rushing in and steals her for himself.”
I step back. They’re deliberately hurting each other, over and over, and I’m their current weapon. “Isaiah, I’m sorry. Look, I’m going to stay away from both of you until you can work out your issues. This is messed up. You’re brothers.”
“He started it!” Isaiah yells. “Way back in middle school. I liked Rochelle McBride, but suddenly, out of nowhere, they’re a couple.”
“Middle school?” I gape. “This goes back to your seventh-grade crush?”
“It was more than that.” He stands with his legs splayed, his chest out. “Every girl I liked put me in ‘just friends’ and swooned over him. Perfect Lucas—the gentleman, the amazing performer. Oh, he’s so hot. Gag. Their swooning wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t gone and dated them!”
“But you just said you slept with them!”
He smirks. “Well, from his girlfriend when he was a senior and onward. She was a senior too, so I hadn’t had a thing for her. She was smoking hot, though. Captain of the dance team, with legs a mile long, and she was incredibly flexible.”
“Ew.” Cringing, I step backward.
“Anyway, they’d been dating six months, and she grabbed me one day and came on to me. I thought, why not? He’s done it to me enough. So, I had sex with her behind the bleachers. It was weird because it was the first time for both of us, but it definitely wasn’t the last.”
I’m completely horrified. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I could!” he snarls. “For once someone chose me over him. And now I want you, and you’re choosing him, again.”
“You want me?” I suppress the urge to laugh. “You have a funny way of showing it.”
“I stopped sleeping with Jessica for a while, when I thought I stood a chance.” He grabs my hand. “I would change for you.”
I pull free. “No. I’m stepping out of this. You and Lucas need to work this out. I’m not some trophy for you to fight over. I don’t need this drama. So just go, and tell Lucas I won’t meet him today.”
I slam the door in his face. Fuming, I pace the room. How am I going to calm down and enjoy my day after starting it like this? I shower but still remain furious. I eat breakfast, and still it lingers. I manage to suppress it while with Vanessa, so thankfully she doesn’t notice.
Jeff arrives at the end of the day. He meets me as I leave the recording booth, tilting his head for me to follow. In his car, he asks, “You up for dinner?”
“Sure.” I pout, staring out the window.
“Do you like Chinese?”
“Sure.”
He glances at me, eyebrow raised. “Surly at the moment, aren’t we?”
I scowl, folding my arms as I stare more intently out at the road zooming by.
“You know, you’ve pissed off a few people lately.”
“I don’t care. They deserve it.” I swing around to face him, my anger breaking free of the shackles. “Did you know Isaiah and Lucas have been back and forth about girls for years? Lucas dated all the girls Isaiah liked, and in return, Isaiah screwed them. Who does that?”
His eyebrows shoot up as he keeps focused on the road. “Horny teenage boys?”
“Ugh.” I slouch back into the chair. “I told them I was done with the crap. I don’t want to be the fuel for their fire.” But then, a new emotion explodes from inside me, one that couldn’t push through the rage until that moment, making me burst into tears. “What if Lucas only pursued me to spite Isaiah? If he’s been doing it since middle school, then…” A sob wrenches free. “I thought…and I…”
“Hey, hey, hey. Don’t cry.” He pulls over. He unbuckles and pulls my head to his chest. “Guys are stupid. No guy worth your time would ever make you cry.”
“I thought Lucas was better. I thought, after what Tom did, I’d found someone who would never treat me like that. I’m such an idiot.”
“No, you’re not.” He strokes my hair. “Let me tell you, from a former player’s experience, guys are the idiots. Sometimes we have something incredible right in front of us, and we screw it up. I was lucky when I found Emily that I’d realized I’d been an idiot and to hold tightly to her. One day someone will come along and do the same for you.”
“I wanted it to be Lucas,” I whisper.
He lifts my face to look into my eyes. “Have you talked to him about it? Because from the confusing argument I got during rehearsal today, I think he has a different story to tell.”
“No.” I pout. “That arguing is why I need to stay away. I don’t want to be the reason why they fight.”
He pinches my chin. “They fight because they can. And it’s not just the two of them. All six of them rip into each other about the smallest things. I think there are some underlying unresolved issues that are coming out as being about you. They all love you and are terrified of losing you, so yell and scream when one of them does something, anything, to upset you.”
I sit back, staring out the windscreen. He watches me for a moment before he pulls onto the road again. Underlying issues? Terrified of losing me? I’m so confused, so overwhelmed.
We pull into a parking lot. Jeff walks me into the restaurant with his hand resting between my shoulder blades. It should feel awkward, but it doesn’t. As we sit and he orders, I examine his face, amazed that I’d found him. I respect and admire him more than I could ever have anticipated, and he’d become more than just a rock star for me. Mom’s husband, Marco, never wanted to fit into my father figure role, and my real father had been an abusive drunk, so Jeff seems like the closest thing I’ll ever get to a dad.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” He stares at me over his menu with a raised eyebrow.
I shrug. “I’m just thinking.”
“About what?” He lowers the menu.
“About how I’ve never had a father figure,” I tell him, surprised by my own candid response. “My real dad used to hit my mom, and when he hit me, Mom ran away to keep us safe. I was only five, so I don’t remember much about him. Just that he was big, really big. Mom says he was a linebacker in high school, but flunked out of college. He wasn’t a real go get ’em type. I think that’s part of why she worries about me. She doesn’t want me to turn out like he did.”
“But you are the go get ’em type,” Jeff says, leaning forward. “Since I first pulled your strings in the second round, you’ve fought back. You’re close to finishing your degree, and have continued working on it even while having these crazy commitments. I don’t see you turning out to be a deadbeat.”
“Maybe.” I sigh, slumping. “She freaked out when I told her I signed with Ted. She hasn’t talked to me since. I don’t want to disappoint her when she’s sacrificed so much for me.” I run my fingers over the napkin. “She had me young. Really young. She was only sixteen, a sophomore. When she refused to give me up, her rich parents made her marry my dad. My parents lived in my grandparents’ pool house until they both graduated. Mom says my grandmother did most of the caring for me then, but once she and my father finished school, he insisted on leaving. That’s when the drinking and hitting started, and Mom severed contact with her parents. She says they kept trying to take me from her.”
Jeff stares at me, his back rigid. “That…that must have been hard.”
I shrug. “As I said, I don’t remember much of it. I don’t even remember my grandparents. But I know it bothers Mom, so I try to do what I can to let her know she didn’t waste her life on me.” I snap the wooden chopsticks apart. “When she remarried, she wanted Marco to be my father figure, but we never seemed to mesh. I tried, but he remained distant, and when she had my brothers, he completely stopped trying and focused on them. I felt like the intruder in their home, so once I went off to college, I moved out.”
“I’m sorry, Hailey.”
I smile
at him. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. I’m fine. She just means so much to me, so I don’t want to disappoint her.”
His hand rests over mine. “I don’t think she’s disappointed in you. A little scared maybe, but not disappointed.”
“How about you?” I ask, looking into his eyes. “When you became a star, how did your parents react?”
He chuckles. “Have you heard of Regina Dalton?”
I pause, the name ringing a bell. “Wasn’t she an opera singer?”
He raises his eyebrows. “Yes, very good. It concerns me a little that you know that, but I’m still impressed. Well, she’s my mother, and my father, Geoffrey Halloway, with a G, was the owner of the theater where she first performed. I was classically trained, of course, so they expected me to make it big, but not as a rock star.” He grimaces, making me giggle.
“Do you talk to them?”
He nods. “My mother, anyway. My father died two years ago. He was in his seventies, so you know, sad, but not unexpected.” He squeezes my hand. “The point is, although I became a sex symbol of the nineties, they still loved me. You’re not going to be like that. You will do it your way, and your mother will be proud of you no matter what.”
I smile. “Thanks, Jeff.”
“Anytime.” He gives me a warm smile.
The waiter arrives with our food. We dig in, and he says with his mouth full, “So, tell me what’s going on with Lucas. I’ve seen pictures of you two getting pretty hot and heavy.”
I groan. “Isn’t anything private?”
“Nope. Well, once you have tightly secured areas, yeah, but a beach?”
“Okay, so we set ourselves up for that.”
“You’ll learn. Making out and taking off each other’s clothes—”
“We didn’t take off our clothes!” I say in a low hiss.
He chuckles. “There’s a shot with him shirtless and pulling your shirt off.”
“Oh my…are you serious?”
“Hailey, calm down.” He taps my hand. “The article was all about how cute you two are, and the next shot showed him pulling his shirt over your head. You just gotta keep that stuff to places where prying eyes can’t see.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I pout, my stomach feeling like a ball of lead has formed inside. “I doubt we’ll see each other again.”
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