Alex rolled his eyes. “Come on. Get it all out of your system before we arrive so you don’t go charging in there.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Alex placed his black nail polish-tipped fingers on Jase’s shoulder. “You make it fucking hard to be on your side, mate, the way you go off on Matt. What was it Miss Sherlock used to say in primary school?”
Jase grunted. “Use your words.”
“Yeah. Use your words instead of your fists, or your legs. You looked like a dick when you marched out on Bexter yesterday.”
“Oh, god. Are you kissing his arse now?”
Alex shook his head. “No. I’m your best friend. I want what’s best for you. Don’t give a flying fuck about Bexter, to be honest. But I don’t want you to blow this for yourself. You don’t want to be skint anymore. You want some cash and a better life?” Alex pointed to the building. “It’s in there, mate.”
Jase glanced at Alex and then opened the car door, stepping outside just as a frigid blast of air blew through the lot. He let the sting of it cool his anger. Sometimes, it blew up for no real reason. At least, none he could put his finger on. Sometimes, it was the mere mention of easy triggers. Matt. His childhood. The band, which he contributed to less than a fraction of anyone else. He walked a tightrope of feeling that the band only existed because of him as a singer to a deep loathing of himself for his ambivalence.
“Want a coffee?” Jase asked as they entered the building.
“Nah. I’m good. I’ll see you in there.”
Jase’s head, while not the throbbing mess it was when he’d woken up disoriented in his hotel room, was muddled. Unclear.
The soft floral scent of her reached him before he turned the corner to see Cerys making a cup of tea. She wore skinny jeans, ripped at the knees, but this time she had a black slouchy sweater that slipped off one shoulder, revealing creamy skin and a black camisole, silk maybe. Her hips swayed as if dancing to music.
“Well, if it isn’t the intern. Morning, Baby Bexter,” he said, reaching over her to grab a mug from the shelf and setting the coffee maker to make a large black coffee.
He saw her shoulders lift in a sigh before she turned to face him. “It’s Cerys. While I’m at work.”
Jase leaned back on the refrigerator, crossing his arms and legs. “I prefer Baby Bexter.”
Cerys popped a hip and glared at him. “Well, as funny as this might be for you, my professional reputation is important to me, and people don’t need reminding that I’m Jimmy’s daughter.”
Jase scoffed. “You think they don’t remember that every day?” He saw the flicker of hurt, or maybe guilt in her eyes—his radar was off with her.
“Maybe they do. But you don’t need to be a dick about it.”
“I’m not being a dick if it’s true. You’re Jimmy’s kid, right?”
“I read somewhere, once, that rudeness is a weak person’s imitation of strength. I think I just found my evidence.”
Jase imitated a dagger going into his heart. “Ouch, Cerys. If I had any feelings that might have hurt.”
She turned away from him and removed the teabag from the cup. “Excuse me,” she said, gesturing to the fridge.
He stepped aside and opened the door, catching the scent of her again as she looked inside. He was rewarded with a glance down the front of the baggy sweater. Lace and silk. Not to mention, the round curves of her arse as she leaned to reach for the milk on the lower shelf of the door.
And now he was getting a boner for Baby Bexter, which was quite possibly the last thing he needed.
Damn.
She stood quickly and focused her eyes on him. On closer inspection, they split the difference between green and blue.
“I feel sorry for you.” The look she gave him said she meant it.
“There’s nothing to feel sorry for me about.”
“No,” she said, cocking her head to one side. “Every morning, if you are really lucky, you get to wake up. You get to make a choice of how you want to spend the next twenty-four hours on the planet. You have the opportunity to make a difference.”
“Bit sentimental for eleven o’clock on a Thursday, isn’t it?”
“No, Jase,” she said softly, that look back in her eyes. The one that said she could see beneath his skin to the secrets he kept buried there. Like he was laid out for her to inspect. “You can be anybody you want to be, starting the very first moment you open your eyes. You don’t even have to explain why you aren’t the person you were when you went to bed yesterday. And yet, you woke up today and decided to be this person.”
She paused to gesture up and down his body, but it was the sneer on her lips that squeezed his chest. “And I think there are only two reasons a person makes that decision,” she continued. “Pain or fear. See you in the studio,” she said, grabbing her tea before breezing out of the room.
Jase put his hands to his sternum and rubbed. He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but those words, softly uttered, had hurt more than a punch.
Cerys exhaled through the last few moments of her meditation app, her thoughts drifting to how to repair the fractious relationship she had with her father’s client. Forty-eight hours since their coffee station run-in, and she was still irked by him. He was a dick, most definitely. And she’d been right in her assessment. Except the studio was being paid a lot of money to get an album out of them, and pissing off the lead singer wouldn’t lead to anything good. Especially one as hotheaded as Jase Palmer.
She grabbed her earrings from the dish on the dresser, and accidentally knocked over the birthday card that her mum had sent. Siân could get a card and gift all the way from their home in Conwy in Wales, but her father had told her she’d have to wait until that evening for his.
Which was a shock in and of itself.
His text had been blunt.
I made the reservation you asked for. Dinner at 8.
Nothing said happy birthday like a message that made her feel like he was forcibly doing her a favour. She’d only suggested them eating together on a whim. Now she felt as though she owed him.
The logistics were equally terse. He’d meet her at the restaurant.
She added the slender gold bracelet her mum had sent to celebrate turning twenty-seven years old. It had a charm of the sun on it.
Fy heulwen.
My sunshine.
Because she refused to be anything other than hopelessly optimistic, despite Jase’s words. But she needed to find a way to protect herself from them.
Intern.
Baby Bexter.
Two things she really didn’t want to be known as.
She hurried to the kitchen and pulled out the food she’d prepared. A fruit salad, overnight oats, which she intended to smother in chocolate chips and Nutella, and a mini bottle of prosecco and some fresh orange juice.
Once everything was assembled, she sat down, and video called her mum.
“Cerys, my love,” Siân said, her Welsh lilt so reassuring it almost brought tears to Cerys’s eyes. “Happy birthday.”
“Thanks so much, Mum. Thank you for all my gifts.”
“Well, there was a main present and a couple of silly ones.”