by Piper Lawson
From the way her attention flicks from me to the minions and back, she’s wondering if I know. She’s wondering if they do.
I won’t spill her secrets. We all have them. I’d never hurt anyone like that, no matter what they did to me.
“You could have some compassion,” I tell her, “but instead, you push people down so that no matter how far you fall, you’re still on top.
“This thing between us is over because it takes two people to fight and I’m out.”
I turn back to my computer, catching Pen’s eye on the way.
Once I hear the footsteps fade as Carly and her minions leave, my friend gives in to the grin. “Holy shit, you’re a badass.”
The rest of the day, I study with Pen, swim until my muscles burn, and mess around with some poetry.
But I can’t wait for dinner, because Tyler texted to say he’d be there.
Now he’s sitting across from me, and we’re eating lasagna, and I’d give everything I have if my dad and Haley and Sophie would disappear so I could crawl across the table and ask him to please do that thing with his tongue that makes me want him so. Fucking. Much.
“You need a dye job,” I say between bites. He’s wearing a black Henley that hugs his muscles in a decidedly groan-worthy way, and the blue in his hair’s fading.
Tyler chews thoughtfully, swallows. “You wanna help?”
His voice is sexy. All of him’s sexy.
“Sure.”
“How was prom?” Haley asks Tyler.
“Fine.”
“Better than fine,” I correct. “He won prom king.”
Now I’m the focus of Tyler’s deep brown eyes, and warmth starts at my toes and fills every part of me until I’m crossing my legs.
“Congratulations,” Haley says warmly.
“Doesn’t matter much if you can’t pick your court.”
My chest warms, and I almost don’t hear Haley ask me, “Are you ready for dress rehearsal tomorrow?”
“Think so.” I’ve practiced everything to death, and I’m going to go through it again in my mind tonight. I’d rather spend my time with Tyler, but that’ll keep.
“Glad to hear it. I feel as if I’ve barely seen you this weekend. What’ve you been up to?”
“Um, Pen and I worked on school applications today. Dad fell asleep and missed all of Endgame.”
“Not all of it.”
My gut twists sharply. I turn toward him, and there’s an intensity on his face that cuts through the dreamy haze.
Did he hear Tyler come home? See him?
My heart stops in my chest.
If he did, that could ruin everything in one moment of stupidity.
If he did, Tyler would be gone already.
The thought isn’t as reassuring as I’d hoped.
But Dad doesn’t comment the rest of dinner, and the conversation turns to cute things Sophie’s doing, whether I’m going to work at the library again this summer, and a new charity project my dad’s taking on.
After we finish dinner, I help Haley clean up, then volunteer to take Sophie for a bit before her bedtime.
I’ve just put her on my hip when my phone buzzes.
* * *
Tyler: I better hear you practicing through the window tonight.
* * *
This one-handed typing thing must be an acquired mom skill, but I manage to respond without dropping my sister.
* * *
Annie: I’m doing a mental run-through.
* * *
Tyler: I’m doing some mental run-throughs of my own.
* * *
Okay, so now I have to leave time for getting off before bed.
Not that it’s a hardship. I’d probably be thinking of him anyway.
The sound of a guitar from my dad’s office pulls me in that direction.
Normally he does paperwork there, but tonight, he’s playing. I watch him for a minute, the way he and his guitar speak their own language.
It’s beautiful.
Sophie’s squeal has him looking toward the doorway.
“It’s nice hearing you play,” I tell him. “You don’t do it enough.”
“I’m retired.” He shifts back on the stool. “It’s not my life anymore. You girls are.”
“It doesn’t have to be one or the other.”
Dad lifts the guitar over his head, sets it on a stand in the corner. “You’ll understand someday.”
Sophie squirms, and I shift her, stroking her soft pink cheek until she smiles. “She’s perfect, isn’t she? When do we get less perfect?”
Dad comes closer, folding his arms over his chest. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
My chest aches. “I want to take music lessons. Theory. Voice. Tyler’s been helping me“—his brows furrow, and I press on—“but it’s not enough. I know you don’t want to teach me, and that’s probably for the best because we’d fight the whole time, but I want to learn.”
I expect him to turn me down, and he looks as if he’s on the verge. “If I say no, you’ll find a way to get them anyway.”
“Yes.”
He rubs a hand through his hair. “All right, then.”
My chest expands.
Sophie spits out her soother, and my dad grabs it off the floor.
“If you five-second rule that right now,” I warn, “I’m going to have to tell her when she’s seventeen and wants to know why her life sucks. ‘Dirty-floor soothers.’ That’s what I’ll say.”
His eyes crinkle as he goes to his desk. “Haley’d have my back.” He pulls out a new soother from the top drawer, passes it to my fussy sister who latches on like it’s life itself. “Besides, you never had it easy, and you turned out all right.”
He looks at me as if waiting for me to disagree with him.
I can’t. Tonight, despite the emotional turmoil of the last forty-eight hours, I don’t feel like I’m bleeding out.
The road ahead isn’t easy, but there’s a glimmer of hope.
I cross to him and reach up to hug him with my free arm. He hugs me back. “Tell me one thing,” he murmurs. “Should I be worried?”
“What do you mean?” I ask when I pull back.
“Dropping classes. Staying out late. Swimming in your school clothes.”
I smile. “I’m okay. I promise.”
He searches my expression. “There’s nothing you want to tell me.”
“No. Night, Dad.”
“Annie.” I hesitate at the door, and he looks at me along time before nodding to Sophie. “Give her to me. It’s a school night. You have things to do.”
I think of Tyler in the pool house.
I wonder if he knows.
But he doesn’t say anything as I pass him my sister, then turn for the door.
19
This week feels like I’m living a roller coaster—or a series of them, one after the other, without time to get off in between.
It’s after midnight when I round the house, guitar in tow, headed for Jax’s converted tour bus.
I spend a lot of time in here with Jax, but it’s different on my own. I’m surrounded by memories, by history, but tonight when I take a seat on the couch, it’s just me and the incredible instrument under my hands.
Is there any part of my life Annie doesn’t touch anymore?
I play song after song, and while I play, I think.
About me, about her, about the future.
I want to make something of myself. Maybe more than a session musician. Jax has fame and obligations, but he also has a lot of positive impact. He employed dozens of people, inspired millions, by doing what he does best. You can’t do that by playing small.
A noise has me jerking my head up to see Jax appear at the top of the stairs.
“You’re up late,” he observes.
“Can’t sleep.”
“Me either.”
Jax crosses the floor, completely at ease—he should be, this was his tour bus for the better part of a decade—but wh
en he gets close, I see the ease is an illusion.
His jaw is tight, his eyes unsettled. “Nice guitar.”
My gut twists sharply, but I’m ready.
I set the guitar down. “I’m calling Zeke back to tell him I can’t come to New York.”
Jax takes a seat on the opposite couch, crossing an ankle over his knee. “I assume you’re going to tell me why.”
I rise, the photos on the wall drawing me closer. One of me and Annie at Jax’s old label, me wearing the Ramones T-shirt she bought me, has me lingering.
“Before you brought me here, you made me promise something.”
“To stay away from my daughter.”
“To look out for her,” I correct. “And I have. I care about her more than anything. Maybe there’s always been some part of me that wanted more than her friendship, but I didn’t believe I could have it. Sure as hell didn’t believe I deserved it.”
I take a deep breath and turn to face him. “I know you don’t think I’m good enough for her.”
“Why do you say that?”
My hands fist at my sides. “Come on, Jax. Don’t fuck with me. I’m only here because you feel guilty.”
He leans forward, and I continue.
“I know everything. That you met my dad fifteen years ago when he was stringing together whatever shitty gigs he could. Bartending to keep enough money for beer. Sometimes to keep the lights on.
“He worked at Wicked as a part-time janitor until he got fired for missing too many shifts.
“But the highlight of all of it was meeting you. You were young like him, came from nothing, and you were a success. He wanted what you had, and you gave him advice.”
Jax folds his arms over his chest, and the amber eyes so much like Annie’s glow. “What did I tell him?”
“You know.” But I say it anyway. “You told him not to let anything or anyone get in his way. That in order to succeed, he had to look out for himself.”
Emotion rises up in my throat, huge and awful and unfamiliar.
“But he had a three-year-old son at home. And he took that advice—your advice—to heart.”
My chest is tight as the memories come back, ones I’ve done everything in my power to push down. Me vying for his attention, finally realizing I’d never get it. The only time he was encouraging was when I joined the program at Wicked for troubled teens because he thought he could use my connection to the label.
When he realized he couldn’t, he decided to take from me directly.
The year before I left to come here, it all spilled out one night—how his lack of success was my fault, that he’d always blamed me for holding him back.
“I know that’s not the only reason he neglected me,” I continue, my voice rough. “You gave him permission, but the idea was his. I can’t even blame you because you brought me here. You knew and you set out to make it up to me.”
Jax shifts out of his seat, pacing to the end of the bus in slow strides before turning back. “Tyler… I have no idea who your father is.” His voice is strangely precise. “I meet a lot of people. I don’t know your dad, I don’t know what he did, and I don’t know what I told him.
“I won’t defend myself or him. All I can tell you is I was a kid with a seven-figure contract trying to deal with my own reality and I didn’t know how.”
Disbelief has me shaking my head. “So, why did you bring me here? If you didn’t feel as if you owed me, needed to make it up to me—”
“I told you. You were talented, and you fit in with my family. I saw something in you, and I trusted you.”
His words spin in my mind. It makes sense, and it doesn’t.
I thought I was here because he had a debt to repay, but it wasn’t his debt...
It was mine.
He gave me his trust, his help, his home, with nothing in return.
My brain hurts. I’m willing to believe there are good things in this world, but this is too much. Too far.
He continues, “You’re going to have a career in this industry. Your father couldn’t, but you can and you will.
“That doesn’t come easily when there are people in your life you care about. You’ll have to choose what’s right for you and right for her, and those things will not be the same. The first time you have to choose to tour or take a gig in another city, you’ll have to make that choice, and it will tear you apart.”
His words paint pictures in my mind, and I try to shove them out. “No. I can take care of her.”
“Tyler, protecting her in a sheltered world means nothing. You haven’t seen the start of it. A single person in my circle watched you play, and he was drooling on his two-thousand-dollar shoes.” There’s affection and scorn in equal measure. “You can’t stay for her. I won’t watch you give up your future. She won’t either.”
“She needs me.”
“She needs you because you’re here. When you’re gone, she’ll rely on herself.”
I want to argue, but so much of the shit she’s been through this year was made worse by my presence—her fights with her dad, with Carly.
But I’m not ready to give up.
“What about you and Haley?”
Jax barks out a laugh. “You think what you and my daughter have is the same as what me and Haley have? I would lay down my life for Haley, no questions asked. Walk through hell and back. I’d give up everything I am, my future, my world, for her. I have done it, and I’d do it again.” His face contorts in pain, and I wonder if he’s going to say something else but stops. “When I was your age, I was incapable of that kind of love. It would’ve destroyed me.”
“You were capable of having a child.” I think of the letter from Annie’s mom.
He nods. “At first when I learned about her existence, I denied it. Pushed her away. I was wrong to do it, but it was too much. I couldn’t deal with the demands of the life. When my manager showed me a picture of her, it all changed.
“It wasn’t how I planned it, but she was mine. She’ll always be mine.
“I know she didn’t have the perfect childhood. If I could have gone back and fixed it all, I would’ve.”
The words slice into me. I can’t stand the thought of being selfish like my dad, that I could be hurting not only myself but the girl I care about and the only man who ever looked out for me.
“If you don’t want to leave her,” Jax starts, “tell me you love her.”
My stomach drops. “What?”
“Tell me you love her like I love Haley.”
I’ve seen Jax and Haley together. Their bond. It’s something I’ve never let myself hope for, not to mention trust.
If I ever could love someone like that, it’d be Annie. I know it in my heart.
I lift my palm, search the lines a girl traced there once.
It took sixteen years for someone to tell me I’d have a bright future.
It wasn’t my dad. It wasn’t some producer.
It was Annie.
I open my mouth to respond, but Jax beats me to it. “It’s not enough. If there’s a moment’s hesitation, an ounce of reservation, it’s not enough.
“What were you thinking would happen when you started your career? When she left for school?”
Those words break me. I’ve always had a plan, always been two steps ahead or killed myself trying to be.
“I don’t want to hurt her.” My words echo in the bus.
“You can hurt her a little now or more later.”
I think of her face after prom. I imagine it amplified tenfold, a hundredfold.
“She’s stronger than you think,” he goes on. “But when it comes to you, she’s weak.”
I want to grab the photos off the wall and hurl them across the bus. I wish I could dismiss his words, but I can’t. I see the truth of them every time she looks at me.
I’m older. I should know better. I owe her better.
If Jax was forcing me to leave, I’d tell him to go to hell, but he’s asking.
Jax Jamieson, the biggest musician in a generation, the man who acted like a father to me when he had no fucking reason to, is asking.
I rock back on my heels. “If I leave, she’ll think she doesn’t matter to me. That I lied to her.”
He crosses to me and lifts a fist. I don’t flinch. I’ll take whatever punishment he wants to dole out. I deserve it and more.
Instead, he grabs my shoulder in his strong grip.
Jax’s expression is clouded with the same pain ravaging my body, my soul. “Our hearts make liars of us all. I lied to her for years, and I love her more than you ever could.”
20
“You ready to sing your face off, Miss Ariel?” Pen asks when I slide into her car with my bags for opening night.
“So ready.” I bounce excitedly in my seat.
“When’s Tyler coming?”
“I’m not sure. I texted him but haven’t heard back yet.”
I didn’t notice Tyler at school today, but I didn’t have time to look for him. I was exempted from classes for final preparations for opening night.
“But I got all these candles and snuck them down to the gazebo for tonight.”
She squeals, and my stomach flips.
Between the musical and what happens after, this is going to be the best fucking night of my life.
We get to school, and I hug my friend before taking off to do my hair and makeup backstage.
After, I warm up with the rest of the cast, doing vocal exercises and some physical stretches.
I try to peek at the audience but can’t get a good look. On impulse, I hit Tyler’s number. It goes to voicemail.
“Hey, it’s me. I’m going to pretend you’re here to say break a leg or promise me cheese fries, but I can’t wait to see you tonight.” I swallow my nerves. “Thank you for helping me with this. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
I leave the phone out, face up, while I go back to the dressing room.
“Fifteen minutes!” the stage manager calls.
