Racing to Rhapsody: A Rhapsody Novel

by Selena Laurence

  I haven’t told anyone but Romeo what my father offered and how I accepted. My grandmother could tell that something wasn’t right, but she would never force me to tell her, because she knows that when I’m ready I will. I certainly don’t ever want Dez to know, but for some reason I don’t think Tully would tell him. She’s fiercely loyal, but also understands complicated families.

  “I had to,” I answer.

  “Had to?” Her pretty face scrunches in confusion.

  I lean back on the sofa and try to calculate the best way to explain it all to her. And maybe there is no best way, only the true way. So I choose that, the truth. And after two weeks of hiding it, keeping it close to me, hidden in the darkness, bringing the truth out and showing it to Tully is like having dead weight sliced away, allowing me to get my head above water and take a breath for the first time in all these days.

  When I’m done telling her the whole story she sits and looks at me with sad eyes.

  “Can I tell you something?” she asks gently. “About your dad?”

  I nod.

  “He might never love you the way you want. He might never approve of you the way you want.”

  I nod, a lump growing in my throat.

  “I spent most of my life wishing my family would approve of me. Would love me for who I am. And it wasn’t until Blaze came along that I really stopped wishing for it. Because he told me I needed to expect more, I deserved to have better. Blaze and Savvy…”

  She pauses then, swallowing hard as her eyes glaze over. “And Kevin. They told me that if people didn’t love me—even if they were my own family—then they didn’t deserve me. And they were right. You can’t make someone love you, Shannon. But when someone does love you? That’s a gift, and none of us can afford to throw that away.”

  “It’s all I’ve ever wanted,” I tell her sadly.

  “I know,” she says, pressing her hand to mine. “But you need to let it go. Your dad isn’t going to change.”

  “But he gave me the job. He’s leaving me the company.” I know I’m grasping at straws, but I don’t want to give up, because when I do, I’ve lost the thing that’s been my driving force for twenty-seven years.

  She shakes her head. “He’s not going to change, Shannon. I think you know that.”

  “But if I’m not Shannon who’s working to get her father to love her, then I don’t know who to be.”

  Then Tully smiles, and I know why Blaze fell so hard for her because her entire face is lit with such beauty it’s breathtaking. “Be the woman Dez sees.”

  Dez

  A week at my parents’ house is good for what ails me—walks in the foothills around Santa Fe, my mom’s vegan cooking, and some deep soul searching. When Blaze calls to say he wants to change management I agree without a pause. It’s not because I want to punish Shannon for ending things, but because I know I can’t continue to work with her, see her, talk to her, and not have it tear out tiny pieces of me each time.

  Blaze takes charge of the paperwork, as well as taking over my place in the promo tour. I think in some ways he’s grateful to finally be there for me since I spent so much time helping him out when he went to rehab.

  And now the tour is over and Blaze and Tully are off to Ireland with her grandmother, and I’m back at my place in L.A. It feels good to be back in a home base. I’m pretty flexible, but several months of living out of suitcases wore even me down.

  But the one thing that’s bothering me is knowing that Shannon’s back in L.A. now too. It’s hard to believe that even having her in the same city of a few million people is going to be a problem for me. But I have to admit that simply knowing she’s somewhere on the planet bothers me. At least, if she’s on the planet and she’s not with me it does.

  As I walk along the beach outside my house in the early morning, I think back to what I told my father before we started the promo tour, “I don’t just want to like the person I’m with, I want to crave them, I want to need them like I need air.” But I’ve realized now that passion is a double-edged sword. Because that same thing that can make you feel such immense joy and elation can also make you feel intense pain and sorrow. Because Shannon did both of those things for me. She made me happier than I’ve ever been, and sadder as well. And now I wonder if I’m not better off going back to a life that was satisfying. Simple. Moderate.

  My phone chimes and I pull it from my pocket to see a text from Carson.

  Carson: Garrett’s getting out Monday. Needs someone to check him out and go to his ceremony. I promised my mom I’d be here for her next round of chemo. Can you go to Portland?

  Well, so much for being home.

  Me: Yeah. I’ll grab a flight up tomorrow. I’ve got keys to Blaze and Tully’s place.

  Carson: Thanks, bro.

  I take a quick second to text Garrett and tell him I’ll be coming up. Then I walk back to the house to call the housesitter again. I have friends. I have family. Maybe I can get by without passion.

  I have the route to the rehab center memorized at this point, and as I wind through the tall pine forest along the Columbia River I hope that the center has been as effective for Garrett as it was for Blaze and Walsh Clark. Walsh is an alcoholic and Blaze was a cocaine addict. I’m not sure if sex addiction is similar or not. But this place has the reputation of being one of the best in the country, so hopefully they’ve worked their magic on Garrett.

  After parking my rental car, I check in at the front desk and they direct me to Garrett’s room. As I approach I hear his voice.

  “Why the hell didn’t anyone tell me about this? I was in rehab, not dead.”

  Then the person he’s talking to answers, and my heart fucking stops. Right in the middle of the hallway at Cedar Valley rehab center.

  “I’m so sorry, Garrett. I assumed the guys were in touch with you, which is why I was really surprised when Tully said you wanted me to be here for your ceremony.”

  I take a deep breath and push the door open, revealing Garrett looking healthy but concerned, and Shannon, looking more beautiful than I’ve ever seen her.

  “Shit.” Garrett looks panicked when he sees me. “Dez, man, I had no idea what was going on.” His eyes are pleading with me to forgive him, but there’s nothing to forgive him for. We’re the dumbasses who thought we’d spare him the gory details of our management situation until he was out of rehab.

  Shannon has gone silent and completely still, as if she can fade into the walls and I won’t notice her.

  “It’s okay, dude,” I say, keeping my eyes on the woman who still makes my heart beat so hard I feel like I might stroke out right in the middle of the conversation. “It’s our fault, we didn’t want to distract you while you were in rehab.” I swallow. “Hi, Shannon.”

  Her eyes drop to the floor and her cheeks pink up. She can’t even look at me, and it makes me want to punch the fucking wall.

  “I’ll um, just be going then,” Shannon says softly. “I’m happy you’re getting out, Garrett.” She gives him a hug and a peck on the cheek and I’m so jealous my skin feels like it might peel off my bones. Everything in me is tight and prickly.

  “Thanks for coming all this way,” Garrett tells her, his eyes sad.

  She stands awkwardly for another moment, then takes a deep breath and finally looks at me. “Okay,” she whispers. She gives a little wave to Garrett and moves toward the doorway where I’m standing. I quickly move into the hall to give her space to go on by. I realize I’ve spent most of the time I’ve known her giving her space to go on by. And suddenly I regret every time I didn’t push harder, get closer, demand more.

  She starts the walk down the hall, and I can’t stand the idea of her leaving my sight again so soon.

  “Shannon,” I call out before she’s gone more than fifteen or twenty feet.

  She pivots and looks at me. If I were more deluded I’d swear I see hope in her eyes.

  “About the management contract…”

  “It’s okay. I
know you’re doing what you need to.”

  “It’s not to punish you.” I take a couple of steps closer to her, and everything in her body softens while everything in mine pulls toward her, like a magnet to metal. “I wanted to make sure you knew that. Blaze has his reasons for it, but I agreed—not to get back at you, but because I can’t do it anymore.”

  Her voice is soft and tentative now. “Can’t do what?”

  I take a deep breath and look her in the eyes. “I can’t work with you day after day and not be with you. I did it for three years, but that was before—”

  “Before we were us,” she murmurs.

  “Yeah.” We both stand and breathe quietly for a few moments.

  “I understand.”

  “Okay. I uh, just didn’t want you to think that I would do something like that out of anger.”

  “That’s not who you are,” she agrees.

  I nod. Fresh out of things to say and reasons to make her stay. Seems I’m always out of reasons to make her stay. And so she keeps running.

  She starts to turn away, then swings back suddenly. “My father gave me the position,” she snaps out in a rush. “He gave me the vice presidency.”

  “I’m happy for you. Congratulations.”

  “There were conditions,” she adds, a look of desperation on her face. “He insisted that the job have all of my attention. He said that’s the only way he’d give it to me.”

  I look at her trying to puzzle out what she’s not saying—the subtext. Because I can tell I’m missing something.

  But before I can grasp at one of the fine strands of a clue she’s floating, she’s turned and is running down the hall away from me.

  And I know there’s something she’s not telling me, but I also know something else.

  She’s still wearing the steel butterfly.

  Shannon

  I think I might kill Tully. I’m sitting on the company jet waiting to fly back to L.A. and I’m plotting how to hire an Irish hitman to take her out. I should have known something was up when she texted at two a.m. my time, saying that Garrett wanted me to come to his completion ceremony at rehab. And he did want me there, but she was the one who realized that both Dez and I would be there.

  I try to get the image of him out of my head but it’s burned onto my brain. His silky black hair falling over his forehead as he rounded the corner into the room, the way his white t-shirt stretched across his lean pecs and rode up when he lifted his arm, revealing those perfect abs and the trail of hair leading below the waistband of his jeans.

  But most of all I can’t get his beautiful eyes out of my head. So warm and deep, they look right into the heart of me like no one else has ever. If I stare into Dez’s eyes too long all I want is to climb inside of him and stay there forever.

  “You need anything else Ms. Gunn?” the pilot asks as he moves to the cockpit.

  “No, thank you, I’m fine.”

  And I will be. Fine, that is. I’ll be fine, and I’ll get Dez out of my head by working. Because that’s what all of this is for—the job and my dad. And once I settle in, I’ll stop aching for Dez all day every day.

  Of course I will.

  “You want to what?” My father’s voice rises beyond its usual booming volume.

  “It’s not worth the fight, Dad. And with this new position I have more than enough to handle without a high maintenance client like Rhapsody.”

  He stands from his desk and I cringe, wondering if I should have delivered the news along with one of his favorite pastries from the French bakery down the block.

  “They’re your biggest client, Shannon. In addition to the fact that Gunn Management doesn’t kowtow to rock stars pitching temper tantrums. If it gets out that we’re letting clients out of their contracts it’ll be like letting the inmates run the asylum.”

  I take a deep breath. “So we’ll make them sign an NDA. They won’t be able to tell anyone that we let them go, and it’ll all fade away.”

  “All this because you slept with one of them? Jesus, is the guy’s ego really that small? I’d think he should be happy you’re not one of those typical girls who want a ring the next day—or worse a blank check.”

  My face heats. My dad isn’t the typical protective type. He’s never been waiting at the door with a gun when my dates come over, in fact, he’s never asked about my dating life. The biggest thing is that he’s always expected I’ll treat relationships the way he does—as diversions. But none of that means I want to have an in-depth conversation with him about sleeping with one of my clients.

  “It was a lot more complicated than that, Dad.”

  He strolls to the window, cup of coffee in one hand, eyes watching the cars of downtown L.A. slide by dozens of feet below us.

  He takes a sip of his black brew. “You’re not pregnant are you?”

  “No! God, Dad. Of course not.”

  He turns and raises an eyebrow at me. “You’re proof that it does happen.”

  I roll my eyes. “I’m smarter than that.”

  “I would sure hope so,” he murmurs.

  “But I want to let them go. I don’t want to fight with Dez over this.”

  He swings around, pointing a finger at me. “Let the record show that I’m against it.”

  I put my hands up in surrender. “Fine, duly noted.”

  “And get a goddamn NDA.”

  “Of course.”

  He sits back down at his desk. “Now tell me how you’re going to replace them in your portfolio. You’re going to have to work your ass off to find a substitute, and let’s agree that there’s no more sleeping with clients from now on. It was a monumental mistake for both of us.”

  I nod my head, but make note of the fact that my father’s just admitted that I was a mistake. His mistake. Because the last time he slept with a client was my mother.

  While he continues to talk about the new deal we’re putting together for an action movie star and the quarterly taxes the company accountant needs to sign off on, I think about how I ended up here. Not here in this job or this office so much as here in the world.

  My father was almost exactly my age when he knocked up my mother. He’d just started the firm, he was a solo practice, only him and a part-time secretary, and he was offering a lower percentage on deals than the big guys as a way to grow his business. That’s why my mother chose him for her agent when she was starting out. At least that’s the story I heard. I think about what would have happened if I had gotten pregnant while I was with Dez. And I think about how I would have felt. Scared comes to mind. Unsure does as well. But more than that I think I would have felt responsible. Responsible for a new human, responsible for Dez’s happiness, responsible for the part I was going to play in the beginnings of a family.

  And I realize that what my father views as his greatest mistake in life—getting my mother pregnant—wouldn’t have been for me. I can never view anything between Dez and me as a mistake. I loved him—love him—and I would do it all again in a heartbeat. Except the end. If I could do it again, I’d never choose to end things like I did. But the damage is done, and now I have to live with the choices I made. But I’ll never subscribe to my father’s view of sleeping with clients again, because loving Dez Takimoto was a privilege, not a mistake.

  “Why did you have me?” I ask suddenly, surprising myself as much as Dad.

  He stops listing off things for my to-do list and stares at me. “What?”

  “Why did you have me? You said it was a monumental mistake—sleeping with my mother. So why did you have me? And beyond that, why did you keep me? You could have given me up for adoption if she didn’t want to terminate.” I raise an eyebrow, daring him to answer me.

  “Where the hell is this coming from?” He looks like I’ve slapped him across the face he’s so shocked. “We don’t talk about this. We haven’t talked about it since you were six years old.” He shakes his head, scowling.

  He’s right. We don’t talk about it. And I can
’t for the life of me understand why I’ve never pressed him on it. Sure, I asked a few times when I was growing up, but never my dad. I asked my grandmother who gave me what information she knew, but for as long as I can remember I knew my father didn’t want to talk about it and as infrequently as I saw him I didn’t want to spoil things by bringing up the forbidden topic. Once I moved to L.A. and started seeing him regularly the habits were so engrained I never thought about it.

  But now? I want to know. I want to know why he thinks I was such a mistake.

  “Shannon—” he looks at me almost pleadingly, “you don’t want to get into this right now. We’ve got a business to run. Things to do. Why dredge all that up?”

  “Dad, I’m twenty-seven years old and I have no idea who gave birth to me. I don’t know her name, I’ve never seen a picture of her, I don’t know if she’s alive or dead. And you think I was a monumental mistake, so I can’t help but wonder why you kept me at all.”

  “Come on, kid, I didn’t mean it like that…”

  “Then how did you mean it? You didn’t want to raise me. She didn’t want me at all. Why did you take me home with you? I really want to know, Dad. It’s time for you to come clean.”

  He scratches his head and looks awkward for the first time in my life. Finally he rolls his head against the high leather back of his chair and sighs—long and deep.

  “When she got pregnant we both agreed that neither one of us was in a position to raise you. She was from a Catholic family though so she couldn’t bear the idea of terminating. And I…” He turns to look at me, and for a moment I think I see something I’ve never seen there before—tenderness. “I couldn’t stand the idea of a child of mine out in the world being raised by strangers. So we were at a standoff.”

  Oddly, I believe him. My father’s nothing if not a control freak, so it makes perfect sense that he’d be bothered by the idea of not having control over his own offspring.

  “If it had happened a few years later I’d have had the money to hire someone to live in and take care of you, but at that point I was pouring everything I made back into the business, and my biggest client couldn’t work for her second and third trimesters, so a full-time nanny was out of the question.”