“Not surprised. Just…” I swallow. “Your room is beautiful, Genevieve. I grew up in a space the size of your bed that I shared with a brother. That’s all,” I say with a laugh. “Even now, my entire living area would fit in that dressing room.”
Her eyes shift, and I regret my confession. I’d been trying to put her at ease. “It’s a lot, isn’t it. Maybe too much but—”
I reach for her hand to silence her. “It’s beautiful. It’s perfect.” Like you, my gaze adds when my lips don’t.
She seems to relax again, and sets down her plate on a table near the bed. It’s then that I notice the guitar propped up beside her vanity. I place my snack beside hers and approach the guitar.
“Do you play?” I ask.
She shrugs shyly. “I used to. Not much anymore.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. No need, I guess.”
“No need? What does that mean?”
Her expression darkens as she watches me remove the guitar from the stand.
“I’m not allowed to do my own songs, so there’s no point.”
I glance at her sharply. Sure the words were hard to hear, but not as hard as the tone in which she said them. “You’re not allowed? And what does that mean?” My voice is harsher than I intended, but the familiar anger is returning.
“My stuff is too dark. Too threatening,” she says in a mocking tone that makes it clear she’s mimicking voices she’s heard many times.
“So whose songs do you perform?”
She shrugs. “Whatever the label wants. They know what will sell.”
“But it’s not your music.”
She looks away and pretends to be interested in her sushi again. “It’s common in the industry. Lots of artists don’t perform their own songs.”
“And there’s nothing wrong with that if it makes them happy,” I say gently. Her back stiffens, her fingers clenching in a fist at her side. “Play me something. One of your originals.”
Her gaze lifts to mine when I hold out the guitar, surprised, anxious. Something flickers in her eyes before she shakes her head with a nervous laugh. “No. I don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Play my own songs.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re not good.”
“I don’t believe that.”
Her expression hardens. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I am what I am.”
“And what are you?”
“You know.”
“I don’t. What are you?”
“I’m Genevieve Fox.” She spits the name with such venom it makes me shudder. Her vanity mirror isn’t covered like the ones I saw last time, but she seems to go out of her way to avoid its glare. Even now, her back is turned to the glass, which leaves her at a strange angle to converse with me. Did she only uncover it for my visit? “I have to go to the bathroom,” she mutters, and disappears through a neighboring door before I can react.
I release a sigh when I’m alone, feeling bad for pushing her, but not quite regretting it. How can she know she’s not good if she doesn’t even know who she is? Because she doesn’t. I see it now, clear as day. She’s been told her whole life how to act, how to look, what to think, do, and believe. Her entire identity was formed by committee and she has no clue who the real person is behind the mask. No wonder she can’t look in the mirror. She probably has no idea who the hell she’s looking at.
I put the guitar back on the stand and saunter to the bed to sit and wait. My intentions were good, I swear, but when I see an open notebook on the nightstand, I can’t stop my eyes from scanning the artistic handwriting.
Brown eyes dance
Above the cliffs
Of solitary bliss
Just one kiss
Would be enough
To dismiss
Violent waves
The secrets he craves
In time
If he were mine
Maybe I’d find
The lonely tears
I force away
Are okay
My heart pinches in my chest, and I glance at the closed door that just swallowed that amazing girl. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t stop my hand from turning back a few pages.
Diamond bright, how you sparkle
Rich indulgence you spread delight
Diamond bright, how they clamor
To plunder your unguarded treasure
Those parasites
Those thieves of light
Those borrowers of others’ dreams
They’ll claw and smother until you’re just another
rock
Oh god. Emotion burns hot behind my eyes. This can’t be the same girl who endlessly smiles for cameras. Who fills stadiums, radio booths, and magazine covers with her beauty. The girl who plays her part so well, even she can’t see the façade. No, this is the girl in the mirror. I finally found her, and it kills me that she hasn’t. My fingers shake as I turn back to the opening page.
She stares at No One in the mirror…
I glance up at the click of the bathroom door and catch my breath when I see Genevieve. Maybe on the surface she looks the same as when she stormed off, but she looks completely different to me now. Her gaze is deeper, her eyes rounder and sadder than before, now that I know what’s hiding behind her fake smile. She steps out from the bathroom and freezes when she sees me. The notebook lies open on my thighs, and I make no attempt to cover up my snooping. She needs to know someone sees her, that I’m committed to finding the girl in the mirror. Our gazes lock and her cheeks pale before reddening in angry blotches.
“What are you doing?” she hisses, eyes narrowed and heated. She resembles a threatened animal more than anything, a look I know well from many years navigating sisters. And like any confrontation with them, I respond calmly and directly.
“The notebook was open on your stand. Is this your poetry?”
“That’s none of your business!” She stalks forward and snatches it from my hands. Snapping the book shut, she practically throws it in the drawer of her nightstand.
“It’s really good,” I say gently.
“You had no right to read that!”
Maybe not, but that’s not why she’s upset. “I’m sorry I saw something you didn’t want me to see, but I’m not sorry I read it. It’s—”
“It’s none of your business, like I said. You should go, Oliver.” Her tone is back to steady and cold. I hate that she tucked away her emotions again. I hate that I’m the latest “crisis” she needs to manage.
“No.” I say, crossing my arms and meeting her gaze.
Her eyes widen in shock. “That wasn’t a request.”
“No, it was a suggestion. One that I’m choosing not to accept. I’m not running.”
“You invaded my privacy!”
“You invited me into your bedroom.”
“For privacy! Because…” She must hear herself, but instead of backing down, she digs in further. Wow, she’s committed, I’ll give her that.
“Do you even know why you’re upset right now?”
“I’m not upset,” she says, and it would be easy to believe her. How often does that work on everyone else? Always? Because she’s right. Her face isn’t upset; her voice is a smooth siren song. But the fingers hidden in her crossed arms dig into her skin. Her lips tremble with the subtlest tick. No one would notice. No one except me who’s become dialed in to every one of her frequencies. She’s become the puck. My focus, my drive, an instinctual force I sense even when I lose visual. She braces in front of me, and I’m back on the ice, locked in on a breakaway heading toward me at full speed. I read her every movement, feel what I can’t see.
“I want to meet her.”
She stiffens. “Who?”
“No One. The girl in the mirror. I want to meet her.”
She shakes her head. “She doesn’t exist. That’s the point.”
“She does. That’s the point.”
“Get out, Oliver.”
“No.”
“Get out!”
“I don’t run from a fight.”
“Don’t make me call security!” She picks up her phone, and I stare at her trembling hand. Her finger rests on a button, her eyes saturated with fear and pain. My stomach clenches as I study her. I don’t run from a fight, but I also don’t leave women scared and shaking in their own bedrooms. I feel sick as I force myself up from the bed and hold up my hands.
“Okay. I’ll go,” I say softly.
She doesn’t move as I back toward the door, everything in me screaming not to leave her like this. To fix it. But my puck is sailing over my head, so far out of reach that all I can do is watch it clear the glass and tangle in the netting. How long will it be trapped there?
I grip the door on my way out, hesitating against one last truth I can’t let go. If I never see her again, she needs to know. I turn my head and watch her for several seconds. So beautiful. So shut off from everyone else—herself most of all.
“I think I could have loved her,” I say quietly.
A sheen spreads over her eyes. “Who?”
“The girl in the mirror.”
And I leave.
CHAPTER 6
He speaks without words, laughs without caution
Strange in the way he brings color to gray
He’s a danger to himself
How he stands in to help
Facing storms meant to keep him at bay
If I let him suffer as my buffer
If I open the vault no one sees
Who will be waiting in the wake of courageous
When he finally believes
The vault is empty?
GENEVIEVE
I can’t breathe after Oliver leaves. Even if I’d wanted to call him back, I end up on the bed, trying to pull in air at a reasonable clip. An anxiety attack, sure, I’ve had them before. Often lately, and I have plenty of strategies to deal with them. After getting myself back to functional, I pop a pill and cuddle against a body pillow to wait for it to take effect. I still have twenty minutes to get my crap together before we have to leave for the meeting. Twenty minutes to make sense of what just happened and bury it.
Oliver saw my poetry. Another soul brushed mine, and I’m not okay. No one’s seen that part of me, not even Hadley who tapped on my door a few minutes after Oliver left. Like Oliver before her, I sent her away after assuring her I was fine. I’ll do damage control on that hiccup later. I can only imagine what he told them all on his way out.
Your boss is a train wreck. How can you work for that crazy bitch?
I wrap the blanket tighter around me, shuddering at my own harsh appraisal. There’s no way he’d think something like that, let alone say it. He’s a saint, which is why I sent him to safety. Every time my gaze lands on the door, I see those warm brown eyes melting in betrayal as I kicked him out. His tall, solid body temporarily filling the gaping hole leading to the dark corridor beyond. But his large frame wasn’t what filled that void in the doorway, it was his overwhelming presence—his essence—and I wrecked it like I wreck everything. I threw him away, the color, the light. A wave of chills washes through me at each blast of the thought in echo. My limbs tingle; my heart rate stutters on the verge of erratic rhythms again. I clench my eyes shut and pull in deep breaths. Fifteen minutes to finish grieving and get back up.
Maybe if I rinse off in the shower? But then I’d have to move and I’ve just found the sweet spot of my pillow. That place where my own warmth has been absorbed and is now being fed back to me in a soothing lie. If I close my eyes I can pretend it’s someone else. Anyone who would dare a connection with the cold, colorless girl who sucks light and life from those around her. Like what I did to Oliver. I could see it in that moment before he turned away. The life I drained from him in our short acquaintance.
Stop. You are in control.
You are in control.
Am I? I hope so if I have any chance of surviving the rest of this day.
Everyone’s here. Everyone’s smiling. Stocker Carmichael, C.E.O. of White Flame Records himself made the trip in from New York for this. As usual, my parents sit to my left, nodding in agreement with everything White Flame says, except for the occasional insignificant point to preserve the illusion they have any control over my career. My manager Samantha Turner sits across from me with her typical steeled poise that simultaneously makes you feel comfortable, confident, and protected. But things are different today. Even Sam’s professionalism isn’t enough to quiet the ember of panic burning deep inside as we discuss my contributions to history—their words, not mine. Who the heck wants to be responsible for dictating history?
“Our momentum has been slipping recently,” Stocker says in a calm, logical tone. “We haven’t had a number one since ‘Boy Crazy,’ so in light of the decision not to do a Christmas tour this year, we think it’s best to launch the world tour in January instead of March as originally planned.”
I nearly choke on a sip of water and stare at him in disbelief. Not that he’s watching my reaction. They don’t even look at me when they say stuff like that anymore. No, they talk amongst themselves like I’m not even here, like my contributions to history have nothing to do with me.
“It’s December,” I interrupt. “We’re going to pull together and launch a full tour in a month? The album isn’t even finished yet.”
My mom shoots me a disapproving look, and I shift in my seat so I don’t have to see her in my peripheral.
Stocker releases a small smile that tells me he was expecting my response. “I get that this is an aggressive timeline, but it’s entirely doable. I’m assured the album will be ready next week, so we feel confident to announce a January fifteenth release. Then we launch the tour a week later. We already have teams working on scheduling and production. In fact, we’ve been working on it for a while already.”
I stiffen in my chair, my fists clenching beneath the table. I feel my joints cramping, my muscles coiling into strike position. “You’ve been working on this for a while and you’re just telling us now?”
A frown settles over Stocker’s face, and I notice the others seem more troubled by me than by him. How is no one else upset about this? I look to Sam, but even she seems more concerned by my reaction than anything Stocker’s said.
“We wanted to make sure it was viable before we brought this to you. It’s still a month away,” Stocker says. I hear his words, and the trained part of my brain nods in agreement. Silent questions drift around the room, flashing in the air before settling over me. Not questions about a tour or an aggressive timeline, questions about me and my reaction. I draw in a deep breath, sink my nails deeper into my palms—and force a smile.
You are in control.
You’re acting crazy.
You are in control.
You need to calm down. This is your truth.
“It’s going to be fine, Genevieve. We wouldn’t have proposed this if we didn’t think we could make it happen. We’ll have to step up rehearsals, of course, but we’re already working on a schedule that will be manageable for everyone and…”
He keeps talking. Everyone’s nodding. Everyone’s smiling again because I’m smiling now too. I feel air on my teeth, so it’s a good smile. I blink. Can’t forget to blink when you smile or it doesn’t look real.
Twenty-seven cities. Millions of fans. Radio interviews. TV interviews. Editorial shoots. Clothing brand. Fragrance line. Possible supporting role in a major film. Would you like to get into acting? Because you could. You can do anything you want. You’ve reached the top. The world is yours. The world is ours. You are the hopes and dreams of an entire generation. You are our future. You. You. You.
Are everything.
And nothing.
“Would you excuse me for a moment?” I ask, pushing back from the table.
Stocker stops mid-sentence, and I sense all eyes on me as I walk calmly from the room.
&n
bsp; In the bathroom, air comes in short gasps. I lean against the stall door, fumbling for my phone.
You are in control.
I can’t breathe.
You are in control.
Can’t see straight.
You are—
NO!
I’m not in control. I have no control over this vast mechanism that owns me. I’m a prop, a figurehead holding up an entire universe I never asked to be a part of, let alone fuel. I’m not strong enough for this, not right for this. Nothing fits. Everything is broken and falling from the sky in jagged pieces no one else sees. I’m not me. I’m no one. There is no me. My fingers tremble as I scroll through the numbers on my phone. I don’t have to go far to find him.
Tears burn behind my eyes as it rings. Even as I silently plead with him to answer, I know he won’t. Why would he? I threw him away. I humiliated him. I took every good thing he is and threw it back in his face because I couldn’t handle the truth he forces me to confront. The truth that’s been so painfully obvious since before he came into my life. The truth that just exploded in that conference room and ripped away everything I thought I was and everything they need me to be.
You are an imposter.
“Genevieve?”
Just his voice sends waves of relief through my body. I collapse against the metal wall, struggling to pull in air through the sobs. Just enough to get the words out. That’s all I need. He’s right there. I have to reach him!
“Genevieve, what is it? Are you okay?”
I shake my head, the tears breaking free and soaking my lips with their salty bite. No! I cry out, but the word won’t come. Nothing will when I open my mouth. My throat is closed, crushing my shattered screams.
“You’re scaring me, Gen. Did you call me by mistake?”
Never! Just don’t leave. Please don’t leave. My shirt collar is warm and wet. If he were here. If he could see. Ah! Why can’t I get the words out? I choke through another torrent of emotion.
Breaking South: A Turner Artist Rocker Novel (The Turner Artist Rocker Series Book 3) Page 6