Grayson wasn’t the only one eyeballing him now. Flo and I were just as suspicious of this character change. Jace hated Billie with the sort of bitter passion that could only come from loving her with all of his being. One didn’t move from love to hate to indifference just because we’d managed to create a truly spectacular song in her presence.
Nope.
What the fuck had Jace been doing during his “drink/shit.”
“Come on, once more and we drop it into a track to send to Big Noise,” Jace said, shuffling us all back into position as he took his place by the studio mic. “It will get them off our back for a bit since we haven’t sent any progress tracks up until now.”
He paused, clearly expecting us to burst into fucking song like a cheesy musical movie, but instead, we deadeye stared him down, waiting for him to break and explain what the fuck was going on. Something had happened between him and Billie; I knew it like I knew I was going to find her the second we got out of the studio today. An obsessive itch that no scratching was going to help.
“Not now,” Jace growled. “Not here.”
His expression grew even more serious, and I was struck with the same instinct I’d had with Grayson before. We were not safe to discuss the important shit here, which made me think maybe we were being watched. Or at least listened to. In that case, it was best to act normal until we figured out where we were safe to freely speak.
But also… what the fuck?
I strummed the opening chord. Flo joined me two beats later, and then Grayson added his drumbeat. Jace made sure we were recording, and then he jumped in with the chorus, the only lyrics he had so far, but I wasn’t worried about that. The rest would come; they were already floating in the air around us, just waiting for a voice. Music was a lot like that; in some ways we created it and in others, it was already in existence, just waiting for someone to give it a voice.
When the final note echoed, none of us spoke or moved for a good minute. Music like that lived in your fucking soul, and I’d almost forgotten this feeling. No matter how dark that melody was, it actually filled me with light, and for the first time in weeks, I didn’t crave the blissful high of drugs or alcohol. No numbing required for me to exist in my own body.
Music was a high I’d never been able to replicate, not with the best fucking shit in the world.
“Time for lunch,” Flo finally announced, removing her guitar and placing it in the case. “I think I might actually be hungry today.”
I was in the process of putting my precious guitar away too, but that had me looking up to examine her closer. Since the shit with Billie, I’d been ignoring Florence’s existence, and somehow, I’d missed how thin she’d gotten. I’d missed her refusing to eat or function in any productive way.
I mean, fuck, she could have had half her face missing, and I’d have missed it in the drug-induced state I’d been in. I’d been a real piece of shit lately. “Lunch sounds good,” I acknowledged. “I’m going to cook, and we should eat together outside. Take a break from this house.”
The house we couldn’t speak freely in, apparently.
It was time for us to find a place where we could air whatever bullshit was happening around us and make sure we were all on the same page. We hadn’t acted like a cohesive band for a long time, and it was time to get back to that. We might have lost our way—me more than anyone else—but we weren’t dead. We could come back from this, and the chart topper we’d just created together was proof of that.
Bellerose would not be broken by outside forces, not while I was still fucking alive. And to stay alive, I needed to sort myself out. Whatever motherfuckers were watching us and controlling our lives had better be careful because Rhett Silver was no longer living in drug land.
Nope, this motherfucker, who spoke about himself in the third person because he could, was done with all that shit.
Except weed of course. Let’s not go too crazy.
The rest was done, though. Time to focus on music and Bellerose.
And maybe Billie, until I could cut her from my heart and mind for good.
seventeen
BILLIE
After almost revealing my secret to Jace, I lost my shit for two hours and hid in my room, tears streaming down my cheeks in a relentless emotional release. It was like a dam had been broken, and none of my usual tactics to suppress emotions were working. Was this all just fallout from the years of keeping this secret from Jace and finally, almost anyway, revealing everything to him in one explosive conversation?
Was there even a sliver of relief in my pain, despite my not knowing if he’d even heard that one random line that had slipped out? Maybe, once he knew, we could hash it all out and finally move on with our lives. I didn’t need Jace to love me, but it would be nice if he didn’t hate me with the sort of passion that spanned multiple albums and resulted in a ton of Grammies and AMA awards. Fucker.
Thankfully, during my little breakdown, the band was locked in the basement recording, and Angelo was out on the phone, taking care of mafia business. Or whatever the hell he did for hours on the phone. So I got to lose myself in peace, and these days, moments of peace were all I could ask for.
Especially from Angelo. In some ways, we’d never been farther apart than we were right this minute as an alleged couple about to have a baby. I barely recognized the guy I’d once loved. Who I’d once dreamed of spending my life with, along with his best friend.
We were all different people now, shaped through our choices, with many new scars. But that didn’t change the fact that our past would always be with us. Haunting our every fucking step, until we finally figured out how to let it go.
If that was even possible.
When my stomach protested loudly, reminding me we had skipped out on the sandwich, I finally pulled myself together and had a quick shower to help calm the puffy, red-eyed look. By the time I emerged, dressed in the same outfit, I felt a little better—definitely calmer, with my game face back on. This was not the time to forget we were in a life-and-death situation, and being surrounded by sexy rock stars who each owned a small piece of me was no excuse to go endangering them all.
That would make my sacrifice, both times, completely worthless.
If that was the case, I wasn’t sure I could remain in any sort of mentally stable state.
Entering the kitchen, I tried not to flinch when I came face to face with Rhett. He was the only one there, calmly stirring something on the stove. When he lifted his gaze to meet mine, his eyes were a touch bloodshot, but otherwise, he looked very clear and sober.
My puffy face probably had him thinking I’d been hitting the drugs and alcohol, even with the baby belly sticking out before me.
“Hey,” he said calmly.
If he’d have thrown that pan at me, I’d have been a little less shocked.
“Hey?” I replied, a questioning tone slipping out in that one repeated word.
“Are you hungry?” he added conversationally, as if the past almost two months hadn’t happened. Along with the angry words he’d thrown at me this morning, which had more than implied he fucking hated my guts.
Unable to help myself, I quickly glanced around, wondering if there was a film crew here or something. Someone had to be supervising to have Rhett’s attitude do such a three-sixty from the last time I saw him. I mean, he’d been furious and out of control, and I couldn’t blame him for either.