Bad Girl

by Piper Lawson

  Serena’s been glued to my side all week at Wicked as I make arrangements, working with Cross’s assistant.

  I keep it together, accepting condolences and making decisions. Though really, he had most of it figured out. Speakers. Invitations. The drinks at his visitation. Hell, even the flowers.

  I didn’t peg Shannon Cross as a flower guy.

  That’s the part I want to scream when people shoot me looks of sympathy and pity or ask what he would have wanted.

  I don’t know him. And I never will.

  “It’s a lot of people,” I say, looking out the window of the limo past Jax.

  “It’s the end of an era. Wicked Records has ruled for decades.”

  I’ve never seen Jax in a suit, and he’s so handsome I wish I could appreciate it more. Clean-shaven with a dark suit, crisp shirt, and no tattoos in sight, he could be a record executive himself.

  The only hint of rock star about him—besides the fact that he’s the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen—is the way his hair falls over his forehead at the front.

  Jax’s strong fingers thread through mine, and I stare at them. He’s not usually a PDA kind of guy, and after the hellish week, the move touches me more than I could’ve imagined.

  “Thanks for coming.”

  “My agent would have my hide if I didn’t.” He forces a smile. “But I’m not here for him. I’m here for you, Hales. And I’m not going anywhere.”

  A warm feeling starts in my stomach, spreads through my body.

  He can’t possibly appreciate what it means to hear that, but knowing Jax Jamieson has my back makes everything else a little better.

  And he’s mine. He asked me to move in with him and I said yes. Even if we haven’t talked about it since, I know we will.

  “What will happen to Wicked?” I ask under my breath.

  “What do you think?”

  I hesitate. “I don’t know. I’ve spent all week thinking about the man; there’s been no time to think about the company. I guess someone else will take it over.”

  He shrugs. “Or it could be sold off to pay for expenses. Those artists on contract will be released. Some people will get their money out, others won’t.”

  “You mean it could be over?”

  “Yeah.”

  My stomach clenches. Something about that feels wrong.

  More wrong than the fact that Wicked’s founder, its leader, is lying in a casket a few hundred feet away.

  On TV, it always rains at funerals, but today is sunny. A ton of people are gathered around the cemetery.

  My eye lands on a girl my age with straight platinum-blond hair that glows against her black dress.

  I spoke with Ariel on the phone once this week to let her know about the arrangements, to see if her family would come.

  She’s with her father, who doesn’t look so different from mine. They should look alike since they’re brothers.

  Jax and I stand in the front row. I’m in a daze as the minister speaks. When people cover the casket in roses.

  “Miss Cross? Would you like to say a few words?”

  It’s Telfer.

  Of course, I don’t say it.

  I reach for the folded paper in my pocket and walk toward the front.

  The people in the crowd blur together as a lump rises in my throat.

  I’ve done speaking before. I had help preparing for today from people who knew him better than I did.

  Pretty much everyone.

  When my mom died, I went to see a counsellor who told me there were a lot of things I might feel. Overwhelm. Grief.

  Guilt.

  This is different but not easier.

  I open my mouth to start the speech I wrote and rewrote, but nothing comes out.

  The birds in the trees don’t share my affliction, chirping in the background like it’s any other day.

  My gaze finds Jax in the front row. He’s the last person to mourn Shannon Cross, but here he is.

  Jax’s dark head inclines. So slight it’s nearly imperceptible.

  I’ve never asked for a savior before, but now I can’t move. I want to tell him I’m frozen.

  With my eyes, I try.

  In the space of a breath, he’s unclasped his hands and he’s at my side. His dress shoes toe the damp grass next to mine, and I feel taller and braver at once.

  I wait for him to speak.

  He doesn’t.

  We stand there in a beam of cold sunlight, wrapped in our coats and hats, as Jax Jamieson sings the first cover I’ve ever heard him perform.

  Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” fills the cemetery, disappearing at the edges into the crisp winter air.

  There are no walls to reflect the sound, to warm it, to capture it. There is just the crowd and the trees whose leaves have fallen and the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard.

  “That was something else.” Lita follows the direction of my stare as we stand together inside the reception hall.

  “It might be the last time he sings in public.”

  “That’d be a crime.” She pours a drink. “Did I ever tell you I was going to be a veterinarian?”

  “No. For real?”

  “Yup. I had straight A’s in high school. Got accepted to a good college. But I got the chance to book a tour and I never looked back. Now I have a rented apartment, no car.”

  “You regret it?”

  “Never.” She takes a long sip. “When people don’t do what they’re meant to do, it eats at them. You saw Mace. Being told he’s not needed anymore’s like telling him he’s living in a cage. Even Jerry can’t stop because he doesn’t know any other way.”

  “Jax isn’t like that.”

  “No. For Jax, it’ll be worse.” Her words make me straighten. “He just won’t realize it until it’s too late.” She downs the rest of the drink.

  I watch her go as a man in a suit winds his way toward me.

  “Excuse me, Miss Cross.”

  “Telfer,” I say.

  I’ve heard the name dozens of times this week. Hundreds.

  It’s felt petty to correct people under the circumstances, but now I need to remind the world I’m not Haley Cross. I have an identity that has nothing to do with a man I never met until this summer.

  “Miss Telfer. I was your father’s lawyer. I need to talk to you about his will. With his other surviving family.”

  He pulls me into a room where the other family’s already waiting and delivers what he has to say.

  Each phrase of legal jargon streams in one ear, out the other. But when he gets to the punch line, I ask him to repeat it.

  Twice.

  “There you are.” Serena’s worried eyes leap out from below the black fascinator pinned in her hair as I emerge from the room. “I’ve been looking for you for ages. What was that about?”

  “He left me everything.” Serena’s eyes widen, but I can’t feel anything except numbness seeping through me. “His money. His house.”

  She rubs my arm. “Okay. Well, that’s understandable.”

  I press a hand to my face. “Serena, he left me his company.”

  I hear her gasp, but I’m looking past her to where Jax is talking with someone across the room. As if sensing me, he turns, a questioning look on his handsome face.

  “I own Wicked.”

  20

  Haley

  “Any word from the lawyers?” I ask Jax as he drops into the seat across from me at the campus café.

  It’s quiet in the morning, with most students either still asleep or in class. The familiarity of it all—the tables, the chairs, the stage area—is much needed after the chaos of the last week and a half.

  “The petition for custody’s gone in. Grace’s lawyer’s responded that they’re contesting it.”

  The tightness in Jax’s voice reminds me he hasn’t had a walk in the park lately either.

  I reach across the table to weave my fingers through his.

  “When are you going back to Da
llas?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  He stayed at a hotel last night because he and Scrunchie have decided the apartment isn’t big enough for two alpha males.

  “Come with me, Hales.” His amber eyes fill with determination. “Pack a bag and come. Serena can bring the rest of your things, or you can get them later. Hell, we don’t even have to go to Dallas right away; we can take a vacation on a beach somewhere. You and me and some peanut-free island we can get lost in.”

  I want to scream yes because the one thing that hasn’t changed is how much I care about him. Through all of this, he’s been there for me. Although I’m not sure life will ever feel normal again, I want to pretend it can.

  I want to order some pizza and watch home reno shows and documentaries with the rock star I’m completely in love with. I want to shut the door on the world and just pretend forever.

  “I want to, Jax. You have no idea how much.” He leans in, and there’s so much satisfaction in his expression I want to purr. “But I have to tell you something. Cross left me Wicked.”

  The tension invading his body is a living thing, and I wonder if he even notices the way he straightens in his chair.

  “Shit.”

  “I met with the lawyers this morning. They said I could look for an investor to buy it or to sell it off for parts.”

  Jax’s jaw works. “What are you thinking?”

  I tell him what I spent the morning deciding. “I’m not doing either.”

  His touch is gone as he folds his arms over his chest, pulling the long-sleeved shirt across his biceps. “What do you mean?”

  I remember finding the kids recording late at night. There’s so much I need to know. If not about Shannon Cross, then about the work he did.

  “He left me his legacy, Jax. He’s built something that matters. Maybe I don’t fully understand it yet, and maybe he lost himself in the building of it. But he’s made it possible to create music that changes the world, and changes the people who made it. I won’t turn my back on it, or take it apart. Not yet.”

  I need him to understand this.

  Judging by the way he shifts his chair back, it’s not going well.

  The satisfaction is long gone from his face, replaced by wariness and accusation.

  “If you pulled back any further you’d be at another table right now.” I mean it as a joke, but it’s an observation.

  “You’re keeping the company,” he says at last.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ll stay here and run it?”

  I know it must sound ridiculous. “I’ll leave people in charge who know what they’re doing. But I want to be part of it.”

  “You’re not coming back to Dallas.”

  The hurt in his voice twists my gut.

  “It’s not the right time.” I lean forward, trying to close the space between us. “We can fly back and forth. Or you could come to Philly.”

  “I’m fighting for my daughter, Hales,” he mutters. “I can’t do that from another city.”

  My heart squeezes. “Jax, nothing else has to change.”

  “Everything’s changing,” he insists, his voice raw. “You don’t even know him—you don’t even like him. But you’re choosing him.”

  “I’m not choosing him. I…” My throat works as I try to come up with words that will make this right. “I need to understand him.”

  If anyone knows what it’s like to have a family in chaos, to want to put things right, it’s Jax.

  He rubs a hand over his jaw, and I’m praying he’s starting to get it.

  At least until he says, “I’m not living my life at Shannon Cross’s whim, especially now that he’s dead. If you do this, we’re done.”

  Done.

  It’s such a good thing, being done. All my life I’ve taken pride in getting through.

  Through my mom’s death, through tour, through more coding all-nighters than I can count.

  This kind of done grabs me like a fist.

  I remember our conversation in the back of a Town Car outside a bowling alley in Dallas on a warm summer night.

  You’re standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down into the abyss, and you’re twice afraid.

  Once for the knowledge that you could fall and perish.

  And once for the knowledge that the choice of whether to stay or whether to jump is ultimately yours.

  “I signed the papers this morning.”

  My whispered words hang between us like the ice on the trees outside.

  All of it feels like years ago. The bowling alley, our kiss on his bus. The day I showed up at his hotel and he took me apart and put me back together again.

  Jax’s jaw works as he stares past me, unseeing, for a long moment.

  I want to shake him, to tell him he’s making this harder than it needs to be. That everything can be simple, even if it’s not the way we’d planned.

  Before I can, he rises from his chair and shifts over me, dropping a soft kiss on the top of my head. “I’ll see you around, Hales,” he murmurs against my hair.

  But there’s a finality that doesn’t match the words.

  When Jax walks out, I swear he takes my heart with him.

  I look down at my hands tucked under the table. The drop of blood on my thumb where the nail’s ripped.

  I never got it before. What it means to exercise your ability to choose.

  It’s as if the whole world is crumbling from the outside, falling in on itself. Burying you in a landslide.

  Still, under the pressure and heaviness and pain and anxiety, I feel the tiniest shred of something burning inside my chest.

  Purpose.

  “Are you okay?” a voice asks from somewhere above me.

  I blink up at one of the employees, a girl who’s stopped next to the table. “I’m going to be fine,” I say.

  “Oh. I meant do you want another drink,” she prompts, nodding to the empty glass in front of me.

  I shake my head and she returns to the counter.

  I’m going to be fine, I repeat, conviction building in my gut.

  Because today, and tomorrow, and the day after that? I’m going to do something that matters.

  Even if the man I love hates me for it.

  21

  Haley

  Two years later

  * * *

  I’m bleeding.

  It’s eight forty-five, and my lip looks as if it was the final victim in a B slasher flick.

  “That’s what liner’s for,” Serena’s disembodied voice chirps from the phone on the marble bathroom vanity.

  “I want to look like a damn grown-up for this meeting.”

  “You do. Watch where you’re fucking going! This isn’t the Autobahn!”

  “Stop driving and talking. It’s making me nervous.” I wet a tissue and dab my lip. The plum color that was supposed to say “sophisticated” leaks more.

  “It’s Bluetooth. I’ll be at your door in five. In the meantime, use some makeup remover.”

  She clicks off before I can tell her I don’t have makeup remover.

  Concealer it is. I stab it on with a finger, then take one final look in the mirror at my pencil skirt and blouse before dashing out of the upstairs bathroom and down the creaky staircase as fast as my heels will safely carry me.

  In the formal dining room off the hall, I take a quick inventory—computer bag, files, makeup kit, plus the coffee that brewed automatically—and gather everything on the custom table as Serena’s Range Rover pulls up at the curb of my tree-lined street.

  I walk out the door. There are birds in this older neighborhood, and mature trees just starting to blossom in the spring.

  “Tell me it’s not that bad,” I say as I slide into the car, armload of gear in tow.

  Serena inspects my face. “Do you want to start the day off with lies?”

  I set two travel mugs in the console cup holders.

  “I love that the owner of a record company makes me coffee.”


  “Part owner. And I love that you stayed with me.” I mean it, and her eyes glint a little before she turns back to the road. “You ever regret it?”

  “What, sticking with your nerdy ass? Never.”

  We cross town in less than ten minutes, and Serena pulls into the Wicked lot.

  “Morning, Miss Telfer. Miss Daniels.”

  “Morning, Jeff.” I nod to security as we cross the lobby.

  We ride the elevator up to the top floor.

  “Haley,” Derek, who used to be the VP of production and moved into the CEO role after my father’s death, greets me as I enter the boardroom.

  I take a seat across from the rest of the management team, Serena on my heels.

  “Serena, you’re joining us?” He raises a brow.

  “She is.”

  Wicked’s head of production, Todd, runs a judgmental eye over her. “I understand she joined the PR department when you took control of Wicked, but you stopped calling the shots when you sold the company.”

  “I sold eighty percent of the company. I’m the only owner who works here.” Without expecting a paycheck, I add silently.

  “Work here?” he scoffs. “You run an after-school program.”

  Derek cuts in smoothly before I can argue. “I trust you reviewed the financials. We have little slack. The music industry is changing fast, and we’re losing traction.”

  Moving Derek into the CEO position after my father passed away had seemed like the best move. I still don’t regret it, though sometimes I think he lets me out of things in deference to my father. The fact that I kept him.

  The new head of production has none of those biases.

  “Our junior artists will help carry this company into a new age,” I point out.

  “They’re children,” Todd protests. “We should be dropping the program, not investing in it. Free up studio space we can lease. Not to mention the equipment. Their sweaty little hands are taking up a few hundred thousand in instruments and gear.”

  I straighten in my chair. “You can’t be serious.”

  “None of them are in a position to supplement this company’s income,” Derek says. “It’s not that they’re untalented, but they’re kids without proper training, media coaching. Now, we’ve spoken to the majority shareholders, and they’re in favor of cost-cutting measures. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Wicked is a business venture for them. They don’t have the… affection for it that you do.”