Rising Star

by Terri Osburn

  “The spoils of fame,” Casey said, stretched out on one of the narrow sofas. “It’s part of the game.”

  “I’m not playing any games. What if Charley sees this?”

  The redhead glanced up from under his ball cap. “Same as with Pam. If she trusts you, she’ll know it’s bullshit. If not . . .” He shrugged. “Good riddance. You’ve always got Denise there.”

  “I have a feeling Denise’s girlfriend, Laura, would have a problem with that.”

  “Denise plays for her own team?” Casey shook his head. “That’s a crying shame.”

  Dylan dropped onto the opposite sofa. “Where is Mitch with my phone? He swore he’d get one today.”

  Sadly, the iPhone never turned up, and the schedule had been packed tight for the last three days. First on the road actually getting to New York, and then with constant appearances. Every time Dylan found a free minute to try calling the station, Charley’s shift had ended. Then Mitch had a full day of meetings on Friday, doing God only knew what, while Dylan had done the early dinner with Tillman and his wife. He hadn’t known Denise, one of Wes’s backup singers, would be tagging along until she’d offered to share a cab.

  “Maybe he’s in a meeting,” the drummer suggested, sarcasm heavy in his tone.

  Ignoring the barb, Dylan leaned forward. “Let me see your phone.”

  “Why? So you can lose it, too?”

  “I need to see if there’s anything else I’ll have to explain to Charley.”

  Rolling onto his side, Casey dragged the cell from his pocket and tossed it across the bus. “Zero, four, two, seven,” he said. “That’ll get you in.”

  Not surprised, Dylan said, “That’s Pam’s birthday, isn’t it?”

  “Shut up and worry about your own love life.”

  Their roommate had visited three stops on the tour so far, and with each, she and Casey spent more time alone. Dylan had caught the lip-lock goodbye before his drummer climbed back on the bus after the DC show, relieved to see the two lovebirds back to their old ways.

  Keying in the code, Dylan went to Instagram first and spotted Casey’s last post. “Dude. This picture is worse than the paparazzi one. You know that Charley follows you.”

  Casey crossed his ankles. “What? We were having a good time, that’s all.”

  “It looks like Denise is in my lap. Dammit, this is going to make things worse.”

  “Maybe by the time you get your phone back to call her, she’ll have cooled off.”

  That was the thing about cell phones. Dylan didn’t have Charley’s number memorized because she was always there with one quick touch of her name. The new phone would have his contacts, and as soon as Mitch handed it over, he’d make the biggest groveling call of his life.

  “Do you have Mitch’s number in here?” he asked.

  “Nope,” Casey replied. “He isn’t my manager.”

  Dylan threw the phone onto his friend’s chest. “Fine. I’ll wait. But he better be here soon.”

  Shooting Stars Records had their second official artist.

  Clay Benedict strolled into the recesses of Madison Square Garden, relieved to have the business portion of his trip concluded. Chance’s recovery required he spend the rest of the year in sober living in Colorado, but after the first of the year, he’d be ready for the studio. With luck, a notebook full of soul-searching songs would be tucked neatly in his pocket.

  Surrounded by the typical chaos that preceded a live show, he evaded a forklift carrying equipment cases and then shuffled out of the way of three roadies rolling two cases each. Once the path cleared, he spotted Mitch Levine coming his way.

  “Mitch,” Clay called. “Over here.”

  The older man squinted, dodging an abandoned spotlight like a pro.

  “I thought you wouldn’t be here until tonight?” he said. Not the warmest greeting.

  “I finished my business early. Where’s Dylan?”

  “On the bus, I assume.” Mitch carried two phones in his hands, and one of them dinged. “Hold this,” he ordered, foisting an iPhone into Clay’s hand before checking the other. Squinting again, he played trombone with the cell before finding the proper distance to read it. “Looks like the article in Country Today got pushed up a month. Holiday and year-in-review stuff shoved it out of December, so now they put it in November.”

  “Good,” Clay said. “Then Dylan and Charley can stop sneaking around.”

  The manager grumbled. “I’ve got to take a piss. Keep that for me, and I’ll be right back.”

  The always-classy man limped off without awaiting a reply. Clay hadn’t planned to stand around doing nothing, but he also had no intention of following the old codger into the bathroom. So he waited. For five solid minutes. Checking his watch, he sighed in frustration. Tillman’s manager expected him in less than ten. Roger Stacks had managed the first act Clay and Tony had ever signed. Due to their schedules, the men rarely found time to catch up.

  At the point when Clay considered abandoning his post, the phone in his hand rang. The name Matilda Jacobs flashed across the screen. After five rings, the call went to voice mail, but seconds later, the iPhone rang again with the same caller. Assuming the call was important, Clay answered.

  “Hello?”

  “I knew it, you coward. You blocked my number. Bet you didn’t think I’d figure it out, did you?”

  “I—”

  “I’m not interested in your excuses. I only called to do the one thing you apparently don’t have the balls to do. To end this. And not that you care, but I’m pregnant. Congratulations, jerk. I’ll be in Nashville for another week. After that I’m gone, so if you have anything to say to me, I suggest you say it quick.”

  Stunned silent, Clay held the phone to his ear, wondering how in the hell Mitch Levine had managed to get a woman pregnant.

  “That’s what I thought,” the woman on the other end snapped. “Goodbye, you piece of shit.”

  The call cut off, and Clay was left staring at the cell in his hand when Mitch returned.

  “What’s wrong with you?” the old bastard asked as he returned from the bathroom.

  “Who is Matilda Jacobs?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “You apparently got her pregnant, Levine. I assume the name should ring a bell.” Mitch grabbed the phone and tapped away on the screen. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed an open search engine. “You have to Google the woman you knocked up?”

  “Shut up, Benedict.” Mitch continued to type until he found whatever information he sought. Extending the phone forward and back again, he focused in and read silently. “Well, shit. She said she’s pregnant?” he asked.

  “Among other things,” Clay replied. “She also called you a piece of shit.”

  “She wasn’t talking to me.”

  “She what?”

  The old man waved a hand in the air. “Never mind. Don’t tell Dylan. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Does Dylan know this Matilda person?”

  “Probably,” came the reply. “Like I said. I’ll take care of it.”

  Without another word, Levine shuffled off in the direction Clay had entered from. Definitely the most bizarre conversation of the week. Maybe the year.

  “I can’t believe you called him a piece of shit,” Matty remarked, staring from across their kitchen table.

  It had been her roommate’s idea to try calling from a different phone, and the mere thought that Dylan would block Charley’s number had brought on an angry fit long before she’d dialed his number. The jackass thought he could write her off? Oh no. Charley made sure she had the last word.

  “He deserves worse,” she said, sliding the phone across the table. “Now he can’t claim I took off without telling him.”

  “But what did he say?”

  “Nothing.” Charley pretended it didn’t hurt. That she didn’t care if the man she loved turned out to be a too much of a coward to face his responsibilities. “He didn’t say
anything.”

  Still rooting for a misunderstanding, Matty flipped her cell. “I bet he’ll call once the news sinks in. You didn’t exactly give him a chance to speak.”

  “I did, too,” she argued. “And he didn’t make a peep.” Rising from her chair, she grabbed another sleeve of crackers off the counter. The salty little squares had become her constant companions, keeping the morning sickness at bay. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I talked to Willoughby this morning. He thinks I’m going home to take care of a sick relative and agreed to have a part-timer handle my shift until a full-time replacement is found. Elvis will be down with a truck next weekend to take me home.”

  Matty hugged her knees against her chest. “You’re doing this all too fast, Charley. You just got the news a few days ago. Heck, you only told him a few minutes ago.”

  “There’s no need to wait around. This way, no one has to know why I went home.”

  The excuse rang hollow in her ears. Charley was running away. The panic had taken over, and all she wanted was to go home.

  “But you won’t start showing for months. At least stick around until Dylan comes home.”

  “No.”

  “But, Charley—”

  “I can’t do it, okay? I can’t wait around, hoping, only to have him come back and tell me to have a nice life.”

  “But Dylan wouldn’t do that, and you know it.”

  “I thought he wouldn’t forget me while out on tour, either, and I was wrong.”

  “He hasn’t forgotten you.”

  Charley slammed into a chair. “Nearly a week of silence, Matty. He wouldn’t return my texts or calls even before the bomb I just dropped in his lap. I couldn’t endure another two months of nothing, waiting around for some final blow. I couldn’t survive that.”

  With a sigh, her roommate conceded the argument. “You’re right. But what if he doesn’t walk away? What then?”

  “If Dylan decides that he’s ready to be a father, then we’ll talk.” Staring at the floor, she added, “Until then, I’ve made a decision, and I’m going home.”

  They sat in silence for several minutes, the only sound the crackers crunching between Charley’s teeth.

  “I didn’t want to be right,” Matty muttered, dropping a hand on top of her friend’s. “Not this time.”

  Charley slipped a cracker between her teeth, acknowledging the words with a bitter nod.

  Chapter 23

  This could not be happening.

  “Mitch, I backed up those contacts before we hit the road. They should be there.”

  The manager feigned innocence. “All I know is what the chick at the store told me. There was no data under your account. No pictures. No contacts. Nothing.”

  Dylan nearly punched a window out of the bus. He’d already been out of touch for five days, and he had no doubt that Charley had been calling and sending him messages. Messages he couldn’t see because his new phone was freaking wiped clean.

  “How am I going to get her number?” he said to himself, hands fisted at his sides.

  Maybe there was a home number. He hadn’t seen much of Charley’s apartment and couldn’t remember seeing a landline, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. Matty was there first, so the line would likely be in her name. Dylan went into search in his phone and typed in Matilda . . . “Shit. I don’t know her last name.”

  “Whose last name?” asked Casey as he entered the bus.

  “Charley’s roommate.”

  “Jacobs,” he supplied. “Matilda Jacobs.” As Dylan stared in amazement, the drummer shrugged. “What? She gave it to me the night I met her.”

  “You’re good for something, buddy,” he replied, typing the full name into the search bar. A few pictures popped up from social media, along with the information that she worked as an accountant at Sunburst Communications in the office of Eagle 101.5.

  “She’s an accountant?”

  “Yep. She told me that, too.”

  Dylan took a seat on the sofa. “I thought she worked in sales or something.”

  Casey made a tsking sound. “That’s pretty sexist to assume a beautiful woman can’t also be smart.”

  “And it’s insulting to assume people in sales aren’t smart.”

  “If you two are going to carry on,” Mitch said, “I’ve got shit to do.”

  Neither man commented as the manager exited the bus.

  “Why do you need the roommate’s last name, anyway? I figured you’d be halfway through some pleading explanation by now.”

  Holding up the phone, Dylan said, “No contacts. Mitch says there was no data saved on my account.”

  “Mitch is a lying sack of shit.”

  Leaning back, he eyed his friend. “You were never this open about not liking Mitch back when he was getting us gigs and landing us this deal.”

  Casey grabbed a beer from the minifridge. “He didn’t get us a deal, he got you a deal. A fact he’s chosen to remind me of on three separate occasions in the last three months.”

  “We’re a band. He knows that.”

  “Nope,” he said, popping the top. “That’s not how your buddy Mitch sees it. ‘Your ass can be replaced at any time, Flanagan.’ Those were his exact words.”

  Dylan surged forward. “That’s bullshit. No one is being replaced.”

  Sober green eyes locked with his. “It’s your name on the contract, bro. Your name is on the album. And the marquis outside this venue. Lance, Easton, and I are nothing but hired hands, and as soon as Mitch gets the chance, he’ll replace us all.”

  “I won’t let that happen.”

  “Do you know what he told Easton?” Casey asked, ignoring Dylan’s declaration. “‘Try to be uglier.’ He doesn’t want anyone thinking the guitarist in the background is prettier than his meal ticket up front.” The bottle top flew into the trash. “Hell, I’m probably safe because I’m the wooden nickel in this outfit.”

  How had none of them mentioned this before? “Mitch Levine doesn’t have the power to hire or fire anyone. He works for me.”

  “Like the rest of us.”

  “Hey.” Dylan jerked Casey by the arm. “Have I ever treated you like some hired monkey keeping time in the shadows?”

  “No,” his friend conceded. “But you give that asshole too much power. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Where is this coming from? He’s my manager. He manages my business. That’s what I pay him to do.”

  Casey drove a finger into Dylan’s chest. “He manages your life. He says, ‘Jump,’ you say, ‘How high?’ That shit with Charley and pretending you’re a free man? That’s boy band crap. We do this to make music. To entertain people. Not to get teenage girls to hang your picture on their bedroom walls.”

  “What’s the ruckus in here, boys?” asked Lance as he and Easton climbed aboard. “We could hear you three buses down.”

  Holding Casey’s gaze, Dylan said, “Our drummer here is pointing out how much of a pussy I am when it comes to Mitch. Either of you want to back him up?”

  Easton spoke up first. “Your manager is an asshole, man. And you’re the only one who doesn’t see it.”

  Unbelievable. “Y’all know the history. You were there. No one else would come near me after that first deal fell through.”

  “They might have,” Lance suggested. “Mitch locked you in six months out of that mess.”

  “Yeah. After six months of nobody on my side.”

  “We were on your side,” Casey chimed. “Long before Mitch was.”

  Dylan didn’t have a reply. He could only stare as guys he considered family filed off the bus one by one.

  Charley had made a plan. And now she was changing it.

  “You told him you’d be here for a week,” Matty argued. “That was yesterday.”

  “There’s no sense putting off the inevitable.” Charley dragged her second suitcase to the top of the stairs. “Elvis will be here any minute to load the bed and dressers in the rental truck.”


  Matty wrestled the suitcase from her grip. “Give me that. You’re in no condition to be tumbling down the stairs because of a heavy suitcase.” Attempting to lift the black nylon, she grunted. “What do you have in here? A dead body?”

  “The only person I’d stuff dead into a suitcase is on a tour bus, likely curled up with his new love.”

  “Oh my God, woman. You do not know that.” The black bag thudded on each step as Matty dragged it behind her. “I hope this Elvis friend of yours is a strong guy, because there’s no way we’re going to get this in your Bronco on our own.”

  Elvis was, in a word, huge, but Charley didn’t have to say so, since the man in question was standing in their living room.

  “Y’all shouldn’t leave your door unlocked like that.”

  “What the hell?” Matty screamed. “Get the fuck out of my house!” In her panic, she lost her footing and went flying forward, suitcase lunging behind her, thumping down the last five stairs. Thanks to Elvis, she landed upright on her feet, with her nose pressed against his overall-clad chest. He stopped the suitcase with one hand inches before it crashed into her.

  Charley took advantage of her roommate’s stunned silence to make the introductions.

  “Matilda Jacobs, meet Elvis Marigold.”

  “This is your friend?” she mumbled, straightening off his chest and blowing a loose lock of platinum hair out of her eyes. “How big do they build ’em in Kentucky?”

  “We come pretty stout up there, ma’am. Not like the puny little boys you’ve got down here.”

  The insult to all Tennessee males was delivered with a friendly smile that revealed perfect pearly whites, courtesy of the Marine Corps.

  “Elvis, stop scaring the panties off my roommate and grab this suitcase.”

  Without question, he did as asked, shifting Matty gently to the left in order to reach the bag. “I didn’t mean to scare her,” he mumbled, saluting the little blonde with a tip of his ball cap. “It’s nice to meet you, Miss Matilda.”

  “Matty,” she breathed. He lifted the suitcase as if it weighed little more than a baseball. “You can call me Matty.” As Elvis headed outside, she turned on Charley and mouthed, “Holy moly, he’s hot.”