Cold Hard Cash

by Frankie Love

  Dad raises an eyebrow, dismissively. “It’s all fun and games when you’re twenty-one. But the real world isn’t easy on privileged girls.”

  I don’t answer. There’s nothing to say. I honestly don’t think he’s ever heard me; I have no reason to believe he will now.

  “If you have nothing more to say, Evangeline, I have a meeting in five. Can you see yourself out?” Dad walks over to where I’m standing and kisses my forehead like we’re not in the worst fight of our life. Like I’m a little doll he can keep on a shelf. “And don’t forget tomorrow, remember? You have a dinner date with Thomas Bracken. Now that is something that will be good for you. Get you out of the house with a safe, respectable young man.”

  I purse my lips. It’s unbelievable that I’ve been home for all of three days and already Dad thinks he knows what is best for me.

  “Listen,” he says, “I’m having drinks tonight with the manager of my newest talent. And if you want to get out and do something so badly, go get dinner at the club. Everyone there is vetted and respectable.” He raises a finger patronizingly, wagging it in my face. “Just no dinners with any of my clients. It’s even in the contract. Against my rules. Business and pleasure never mix. Besides, you’re way too good for them. Always have been. The perfect daughter, the perfect student.”

  I scowl. As if I’d ever date the guys he signs. The only half-decent one all year was Jack Harris, and the entire world knows he’s a married man.

  He leaves with a smug smile on his face, leaving me alone in his office. I think he actually believes he just parented me.

  I exhale, completely disappointed by this well planned—on my part—meeting that went absolutely nowhere.

  And did he seriously suggest I make some plans for tonight? Does he not know me at all? I don’t do nights out.

  I never have, but especially not now.

  Whatever meaning I used to draw from life now falls flat.

  I spent my life trying to make my mother proud, but she’s gone. I can’t help but wonder why I spent so many years sitting before a piano. Because she wanted me to? In the end, my musical talent wasn’t enough for her to choose life over death, so why should it be enough for me?

  My dad is a multi-millionaire and my mom devoted her life to me, her only child.

  Well, she also spent a fair share of her life on alcohol. She spent as much time in rehab as she did at the house.

  I’ll never need to work in my life, never need to wash my own clothes or grocery shop. I can hire people to do everything for me

  So, yeah, I get that it’s a privileged life, but it’s still my life. It’s the only one I get.

  There’s this poet I read in a Lit class—Mary Oliver—and she said, This is my one wild and precious life. That’s how I feel. Mom dying so suddenly put it all in such clear, precise focus.

  Dad wants me to stay in his box so I stay safe, so nothing happens to me—but the four walls he and Mom made for me are too small.

  I’ve spent forever tiptoeing, making sure my words were light and my smile sweet.

  But maybe I’m bigger than that.

  Maybe my life is too.

  I just don’t know how to make it happen, because I’ve always let my world be defined by the people around me.

  I don’t know how to define for myself, even if I want to.

  Pulling open the doors to Dad’s office, telling myself not to take it personally that Dad hired the interns who wander around yet he wouldn’t hire me, I step in the hallway with my heart on my sleeve.

  I step into the hallway knowing something needs to change. Now.

  By the time I press the button for the elevator, I feel as if my heart is crushed. As if I’m all alone. As if what I really want is for someone to reach out and offer me their hand, and be in this with me. For just a day, even.

  I’m not greedy. I’m just so lonely.

  In the elevator, I blink back tears. This can’t be my life. Dad dismissing me. Mom being dead. Me having no one else.

  I spent my childhood with private tutors and piano coaches, and I have nothing to show for any of it. I don’t even want to play music anymore.

  I just want to go back in time.

  I want something that no longer exists.

  My throat feels all tight, and I need to be outside. I need fresh air and deep breaths and no more worries and no more fear. I want oxygen and hope, and anything besides what I’ve got.

  I let my head fall back against the elevator wall as the doors slide shut.

  But before the elevator doors close completely, a hand pushes through, the doors jump open. A man walks in.

  And, with one look at him, I remember how to breathe.

  Chapter Three

  Cassius

  I thought I was gonna fly off the rails about ten times today, and I’ve only just got to KMG headquarters. This should be the start of the rest of my fucking life; instead Chad and Gina come here like they’re my fucking entourage, determined to make a name for themselves riding my coattails.

  It’s been three weeks since the show where KMG offered me a deal. Three weeks since I found out my brother’s been fucking my girlfriend.

  Ex-girlfriend.

  This morning, when I was getting ready to leave in the private car KMG sent to the apartment complex to pick me up, the two of them walked out of their room. Chad was in a suit and high gloss shoes. Gina wore pants that, yes, were hella tight, but she also wore a blazer. They looked professional. Well, like they wanted to be seen as professional—seen as something besides the broke jokes we all are.

  And if I was a bigger ass, I’d have told them hell no, but I don’t want to make any waves. Not today. Right now I just need to fucking keep my head on straight.

  But damn, they’ve been all up in my business—while I signed my contract, took some headshots, reviewed the tour schedule. I can’t handle watching them together; I need to get the fuck out of this building.

  They’re still here, looking over the photos from the shoot I just had, deciding which images to use for some promotional material. As my manager, Chad told the art director we were working with that he could cover the rest of the decisions on my behalf, and then he dismissed me. Like I couldn’t fucking pick out a glossy 8x10.

  But fuck, I could care less about the headshots. I just need to breathe. I need out of the space Chad and Gina fill.

  The worst part is that they know how much I depend on them. I’ve relied on them since the day I got out of prison. And somehow my safety net has become the one thing I despise most.

  I need to figure out a way to separate myself from them, maybe schedule a meeting with the head guy around here. Marshal. He launched Elle Camino’s career, and I’ve certainly never seen her East Heights posse hanging around her, trying to bring her down.

  Maybe that’s the part that needs to motherfucking change. Maybe it’s time for me to be my own man without my brother signing off on it. I can get a manager on my own terms, one with my best interest at heart. Because it wouldn’t surprise me to find Chad selling me out if it means more cash in his pockets.

  Though … shit, the idea of cutting ties with him would mean saying good-bye to the only brother I’ve got, and he’s also the one who’s helped me keep my head low, helped me stay away from the guys who let me go to prison, when I wasn’t the only one committing crimes that night three years ago. Dad left before I knew him, Mom is a mess, and Gina…. Fuck, Gina’s just more baggage I need to let go of.

  That’s heavy shit to deal with before I’ve had lunch.

  I head to the bank of elevators, slip my hand through a door just before it slides closed. I can’t wait for another one to arrive. I need out of this building, now.

  “Shit, that was close,” I say under my breath.

  I step into the elevator; there’s only one person in here, and it’s a girl. Well, a woman. My age, probably. Dark-haired, and dressed the part of an uptight rich girl. A hot-as-fuck rich girl.

  But o
ne glance at her red-rimmed eyes and trembling lips, and it’s clear she’s on the verge of a breakdown—and fuck it, if there’s one thing I’m well-versed in besides music, it’s falling apart.

  “You going to the lobby?” she asks. Her gaze seems to flit over mine, ever so briefly, and then she’s staring intently at the wall of buttons.

  She sucks in a large gust of air, and I wonder how someone so petite could have lungs so large. And how someone so small can take up so much space in a nearly empty elevator.

  Everything about her, though, demands my attention.

  I nod, mesmerized by the way her emotions are splayed across her naked face—her upturned nose, her soft cheekbones, and her lashes wet with tears. She’s what muses are made of, and I’ve only had my eyes on her for five seconds flat.

  “Yeah, the lobby.”

  It’s as if the bullshit photo shoot I just left never happened. Or it’s like it did, but entering this elevator is some alternate reality.

  Whatever was fucking with my head earlier no longer matters.

  “Then we’re good,” she says, her voice soft, hushed. Like she doesn’t trust it—her words or her strength.

  The L is lit, and the elevator starts its descent from the eightieth.

  “You sure you’re good?” I ask. I can’t help it. I’m a rescuer. A saver. A fixer.

  Why the fuck else did I stay with Gina so damn long? Because I thought if I left she’d fall apart.

  Instead, we were what fell apart.

  I stayed for nothing.

  Believing the best in people is a fucking double-edged sword that I’ve fallen on way too many times.

  But, damn—in one minute I know I’d fall for this girl, too.

  She has gray eyes, with dark lashes, and the tears welling up in them make her look like she’s going to break. Like any moment everything inside her is going to crash and fall.

  I can’t take my eyes off of her.

  She doesn’t notice. Her eyes are focused on the rows of buttons that will take us to the ground level, plant our feet on something solid.

  But what I really want to do is pick her up and carry her somewhere safe, because I have a bad feeling she’s about to get hurt.

  “Do you need something?” I step toward her, and I swear her body leans in to me, as if my words are exactly what she needs.

  “I need to get outside.” Her words are spoken softly, breathlessly. “I think I’m having a panic attack.”

  “This isn’t a panic attack.” Looking her over, I resist pulling her hair back and pressing my mouth against her pink, parted lips. Damn, I’ve never felt like this before—instant attraction and an absolute need to save the girl in front of me.

  “It isn’t?” she asks, deflated. “Well, I’m really angry right now.”

  She may be falling apart, but she isn’t overcome with anxiety. I try and explain that to her.

  “You aren’t shaking or hyperventilating or freaking out.” But even as I say it I wonder who the hell I think I am to tell her how she feels?

  She huffs, dejected. “Actually, this is me freaking out.”

  I look at the light over the elevator door. We’re falling quickly, passing the sixtieth, the fortieth floor.

  I suppress a smile. When Gina’s upset, she’s a fucking force to be reckoned with. It’s all smashed windows and words thrown harder than a punch.

  This, though, is a meltdown, which in my experience is a lot easier to handle.

  “I wouldn’t call this a panic attack or angry episode.”

  “Oh yeah?” she questions. “What would you call it?”

  Floor twenty.

  “You’re a mess,” I tell her. “Maybe you’re having a shitty day or an existential crisis, but angry? I wouldn’t have guessed that.”

  She wipes her eyes, brushing her tears away, looking at me more closely. “What are you, a therapist?”

  I bite my lip. Shit, I’m certainly no shrink. I had to learn that shit in the slammer, when they made me take anger management classes as part of “rehabilitation” or something like that.

  Who am I to tell this girl anything?

  But I swear, she wants me to. She wants me to tell her what to do next. She swallows, looking up at me with those cloudy eyes, practically begging to be swept away into some blue-sky day.

  Oh, I’ll fucking give this girl the sun if she wants it.

  The elevator stops.

  We’re at the lobby. The door rushes open, and we step out as people crowd in.

  I glance over at her, and she’s looking out across the lobby, eyeing the glass doors two hundred feet away. I don’t think she can make it that far on her own.

  She looks over at me, pulls in her lips like a lost girl wanting to be found.

  I grab her hand.

  “Let’s go get some fresh air,” I tell her.

  She doesn’t hesitate.

  Chapter Four

  Evangeline

  His hand is softer than I’d have guessed. It holds onto mine as he leads me across the lobby and out the door.

  I don’t have time to think it through.

  But I know, even if I had the time, it wouldn’t change my choice. I’d let this man carry me anywhere.

  Maybe it’s a case of right place, right time; maybe it’s more. Maybe it’s exactly right. I needed someone to carry me away from the trap of that building, and my suffocating father—and then this man walked into my day and carried me away.

  Exactly what I wanted.

  When do I ever get the exact thing I want? Never.

  Yet here he is. A man whose blue eyes reminded me to breathe, because I didn’t want to die before I spoke to him.

  And then what did we talk about? About my anger issues and panic-ridden moment. I’m sure that really turned him on … said no girl ever.

  And, oh. Just, oh, my hand in his feels so warm. So comforting. So right.

  And I don’t know the first thing about him, besides the fact that his hair is light and his eyes are lighter, and his shoulders are broad and his grip solid and his words sincere. Like he knew exactly the right thing to say, without knowing a single thing about me.

  Like he knows everything.

  We push through the enormous glass door of my father’s building—a place where I’m only welcome if I play by a set of rules I silently agreed to a long time ago, before I even knew their importance. But I’ve outgrown those rules: Smile. Agree. Hands on the keys.

  That can’t be the sum of me.

  Though, if you take those things away, what’s left?

  “Hey.” The stranger is looking down at me. We’re outside, and I pull in my bottom lip, wondering what happens next. “Breathe,” he tells me. “In and out.”

  I do as he says.

  “Again.”

  I nod, inhaling, exhaling. I close my eyes, letting the LA sun wash over my shoulders and feeling the concrete beneath my feet. I no longer feel like I’m free-falling.

  I’ve been caught.

  “Better?” he asks, as my eyelids flutter open, as my eyes meet his.

  I nod. “Much better.”

  And I am. He’s still holding my hands, and it’s like the world is spinning but not in a dizzying way. In a way that reminds of being a child on a carousel.

  In a way that feels alive with movement.

  “Want to go somewhere?”

  “Where?” I ask, knowing I’ll go anywhere, because I don’t want to ride a carousel all day, buckled to a toy horse, stuck in a circle. I want to break free.

  “Away,” he says, his eyebrows raised, tempting me with a side smile, not realizing I don’t need a smile from him in order to go.

  My heart, it’s off and running.

  Still, I smile, shake my head. Who is this man? “I don’t know you.”

  “What do you need to know?”

  I look at him more closely, realizing that I’m crazy attracted to this guy and the way he acts like he actually doesn’t give a fuck about anything bes
ides this exact moment. But I also know he’s not my type at all. I date the guys who attend NYU: business majors and law students, oxfords and blazers and khaki pants.

  This guy is ... different.

  He has on a straight-billed ball cap and a tight tee shirt, and his biceps could ... well, they could carry me anywhere. He has on slim jeans, high-top shoes, and a chain around his neck. He looks straight out of my dad’s catalogue of clients—and that’s when I realize, of course he is. We were exiting the same floor.

  “You were coming from KMG?” I ask.

  “Yeah, you?”

  “Yeah. I, um, my friend’s an intern there.” I lie. Not a spectacular way to start this … friendship, but for some reason I don’t want him to know I’m Marshal Kendrick’s daughter. I’ll be judged as something I’m not. And I’m so tired of that. I’m so tired of myself.

  He nods. “So ... should we go?”

  I may be ready to throw caution to the wind, but now my curiosity has been piqued. “Why were you up there?”

  He runs his hand over his jaw. “Honestly?” The question makes me blush, because I know I wasn’t being honest with him. “It sounds so fucking pretentious, but I just signed with them.”

  “Oh, yeah?” At least my dad has faith in him as an artist. That must mean he isn’t a wanted criminal. My dad would have had a background completed on him before he forked over an advance. Even though this stranger looks like he stepped out of a music video, I’d be lying if I said his rough edge didn’t make me a little ... or a lot ... weak in the knees. “Did you sign the contract and everything?”

  He raises an eyebrow and offers me a corner smile. Oh. That smile is solid gold. Like, dimples in his cheeks perfection.

  “Why?” he smirks. “You after some cash?”

  I snort. “What? No,” I scoff, embarrassed at how I may have sounded. “I don’t want your money.”

  “I think you might want something I have.”

  “What? I swear I don’t want anything from you.”

  “You sure you don’t want anything I can offer?” He squeezes my hand, and that’s when I realize he’s still holding it.