by Violet Duke
Another fleeting look of regret flashed over Brody’s expression before again being replaced by that detached, I’m-in-it-for-the-money smirk…that for a second, Rylan was certain was a mask.
It was a very short second.
“I’m sure,” Brody shrugged, straightening his suit, “the media would love to shine a spotlight on Cooper’s parents. On how hard it must have been on Quinn for me to have left her pregnant and alone, a college dropout, forced to live with her best friend Luke, and now with creditors chasing her for years. God, can you imagine what a field day the media would have with that? I bet within twenty-four hours, folks will start speculating if Luke is Cooper’s dad, and if she’s secretly using the money to pay off some ill-gotten debts she was passing off as medical bills.” He crossed his arms coldly. “You’re in the music business—you and I both know how ugly these online crowd-sourced fundraisers can turn. And last I checked, the one that got started for Cooper the other week has gotten over a thousand donations already.”
What? That was news to him. He and Quinn had been so busy lately, he doubted that even she knew.
Brody tsked, steamrolling right along. “Private information in the wrong person’s hands can turn a campaign like that ugly, real fast.”
No shit. Rylan had seen it a number of times already, where folks who had no claim to fame were suddenly top internet news because of random social media posts going viral over an online fundraiser gone bad. Hundreds of thousands of comments twisting the truth via a massive game of telephone between strangers who really didn’t give a crap, but just got swept up in the social media shitstorm.
“Remember that one band who got a whole bunch of donations from fans and strangers, only to then become pariahs getting death threats when someone leaked that all of the band members had debts and skeletons in their closet?” Brody titled his head as is considering something carefully. “I suppose I don’t have to talk about that at all. I could tell the media that we both did what was best for Cooper. I could choose to focus the media’s attention on what an amazing job Quinn has done raising Cooper on her own. You know, since media attention that would make my career thrive would probably not be good for her…if what the private investigator I hired last week says is true.”
“You heartless son of a bitch.”
Brody dropped his little charade, and that weird little accent, as well. “Let’s cut to the chase. I’ll stay completely out of sight until my flight home next week and give you my word that you’ll never hear from me again if you sign the rights of that song over to me. I’ll get out of your hair and I’ll never interfere with Quinn or Cooper’s life, and I’ll do whatever I can to keep this from turning into something that could turn ugly for Quinn. I’ve had a PI on her for over a week; I know about her business problems.”
That was definitely a threat. Rylan let loose the punch that had held Brody’s name on it from the minute he saw his face.
Brody shoved him back and wiped the blood from his mouth.
Which was still yapping.
“Face it, Rylan. If the chocolate shop goes under and she needs to go get a corporate job to keep up with the bills, I’m sure any media attention like this is the last thing she’ll want when she’s thrown into the hiring pool with the big boys—MBA or not.”
“And seeing as how you two broke up,” continued Brody, “I don’t see how it’s any skin off your dick to release the song rights. So do we have a deal? You’ll of course have to tell her that I’d given you the song a while ago and you just never gave me credit until now, but we’ll figure out a nice way to spin that as well…probably along the lines of you not being able to keep my benevolence a secret any longer—“
Rylan slammed him up against the wall again. “You planned this, you goddam prick.”
“You give me too much credit. I actually didn’t think of it until now. Thank you, by the way.”
Even with a forearm shoved up against his throat, Brody managed to sound bored. “I guess we can add jealous new boyfriend attacking ex to the laundry list of media buzz.”
Dammit! Rylan instantly let him go.
Brody straightened his suit and took a step back. “My PI knows your cell phone number. I’ll call you this weekend with the time and place to meet on Monday, with all the appropriate paperwork. That should give you enough time to figure out how to tell Quinn. Remember, if you screw with me, all bets are off.”
While he wasn’t stupid enough to turn his back on Rylan, he did walk away, leaving Rylan in that alley wondering how the hell everything went from bad to worse in ten short minutes.
The song he loved because he’d written it for Cooper would be hard to give up, but he’d do it to save them from all the worst case scenarios that Brody had painted, which, sadly, were all a very real possibility.
Losing the song, he could get over.
That wasn’t what was making him sick with fear at the moment.
There was a strong possibility he’d lose Quinn and Cooper completely in the process as well.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FOR TWO DAYS straight, all Quinn had been able to think about was that almost kiss.
And Rylan.
Mostly just Rylan. Everything about him.
The last few weeks, she’d come to realize that while Luke was always going to be her best friend, Rylan got her in ways he didn’t. When things happened in her life, lately, Rylan was the first person she felt like calling. She loved spending time with him and found her days were infinitely better just by having him in them.
Yes, it took losing him for her to understand that but in her heart, she believed she wasn’t too late.
And she had every intention of telling him that when he came over tonight.
A half hour later, when her doorbell rang, she’d practically tripped all over herself to answer it. “Hey.”
“Hey back.”
He looked…pensive. Sad.
“Everything okay?” She reached out to touch him, and then stopped. They needed to talk first. “You look upset.”
“I’ll be fine. So how did the auction go?”
She smiled brightly then. “We raised $10,000 after expenses.” Tilting her head to the side, she added softly, “And I heard you won something pretty special in the auction. Old Man Gunderson’s cactus, onionweed, and olive chutney, if the rumors are true.”
Rylan cringed, but then chuckled. “The rumors are true. I bought ten huge jars of it.”
She grinned. “I heard you were quite the eager bidder, too. Word is, the bidding went from a starting bid of a dollar, to crickets chirping, and finally one very reluctant fifty-cent bid, which you outbid by two hundred forty nine dollars and fifty cents.”
“You can’t really put a price on that chutney, but I figured twenty five dollars a jar sounded about right.”
“You made Mr. Gunderson really happy.”
“It’s a win-win. I’ve been experimenting with new organic insecticide recipes. From the jar I opened and caught a whiff of, I’m thinking I might have found the next big thing.”
“And Xoey just about peed her pants when she heard you volunteered to be in charge of washing the one-hundred tie dye shirts at next month’s family fair.”
“No one else wanted to mess up their washing machines. So, after I promised them that you’d be helping me, they wrote my name down.”
Thinking about doing laundry with him a month from now shouldn’t have felt so incredibly special, so right. But it did.
She took a deep breath. “Rylan—”
“Quinn,” he began at the same exact moment.
She shook her head with a smile. “You go first.” It was a wussy move on her part, but as long as the outcome is the same…
“Look, there’s no easy way to say this so I’m just going to say it. That song you love so much, Believe in Believing, I didn’t write that for Cooper.”
Quinn felt her mouth fall open in shock.
His confession hung there like thick,
heavy fog in the room. But no matter how many times the awful words echoed in her head, she couldn’t bring herself to believe it.
“What do you mean you didn’t write that song? Did you get help on it?”
Please let that be the case.
“No. The guys and I arranged the music for it, but the lyrics were written by someone else. I just never said anything until now.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “But I’ve heard people ask you about it and you’ve told them you wrote it for Cooper. You told me you wrote it for Cooper.”
“I lied.”
Her eyes narrowed, if there was a lie involved, it was happening right now. She was sure of it. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I can’t keep taking credit for another man’s song. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if this song were responsible for some drama or backlash for you and Cooper.”
She listened to his carefully measured words and called bullshit. “What’s going on here Rylan? Tell me the truth, right now. You know I hate being handled, just as much as I hate being lied to.”
“I’m not handling you. I just…didn’t write the song.”
Convenient how he didn’t assert that he wasn’t lying. “Fine, so then who wrote it?”
His jaw clenched. Another damning tell. How the man won so much in poker was beyond her.
“Brody. Your ex Brody was the one who wrote it.”
Never, in a million years, did she ever expect that name to tumble out of Rylan’s mouth.
And especially not in that context.
Now she wasn’t just pissed, she was outright livid. Hands fisted, steam practically shooting out of her ears, she stared down Rylan, and demanded, “What the hell did that jackass do? Is he blackmailing you? Threatening you? That’s totally the bastard’s MO. I’ll kill him.”
A small smile lifted the corners of his mouth, but it was gone a moment later. “He’s not threatening me, Quinn. He really did write it. He contacted me weeks ago when you first found out about Cooper’s surgery. I guess the surgery came out as during some follow-up story after the chocolate and beer throwdown. He wrote the song, sent it to me, and begged me not to tell you or give him credit.”
She wasn’t buying a single word. But she kept letting the amazing, utterly misguided fool keep digging his grave deeper.
“But I couldn’t let this song go on the fundraising CD with my name as the lyric writer. So I told him I was going to give him credit.”
After staring at him in silence for a long minute, she pulled her phone out of her purse. “Do you know how many times a day I listen to Believe in Believing? How many times I listen to these words and hear how much you love my son?”
He stood there mutely, the stubborn man, refusing to tell her the truth.
“Dozens and dozens of times a day, Rylan. And each time I fall in love with it even more, each time I fall in love with you even more. The person who wrote that song is the man that in my heart, I’d want to be Cooper’s dad. And now you’re standing there telling me that man is Brody.”
Shock, anger, regret, denial, frustration and a hundred other emotions raced across his face, but he kept his silence.
Quinn felt sick to her stomach. Even the thought of attaching Brody’s name to that song made her crazy. “So now you’re saying that by some musicians code of honor, you want everyone to hear this song, and think of Brody as the man who loves Cooper as much as the song portrays.” She glared at him. “You want me to basically tell everyone who hears this song that Brody isn’t the complete loser who abandoned me and his child without a single dime, without even a damn phone call throughout any of Cooper’s surgeries or hospital scares.”
“You want me to stand by and let all those listeners think that I don’t hate him with every fiber of my being for leaving me alone and scared after my emergency c-section when the surgeons told me we’d almost lost Cooper. That I don’t hate him for not comforting me when they told me Cooper might not survive his first week of life, or speak or laugh. That I don’t hate him for not being there to comfort his own son on the endless nights when Cooper would cry, not because he was an infant who wanted milk or comfort, but rather, because he was struggling to breathe and fighting more pain than any newborn should be expected to endure.”
Rylan reached for her but she backed away.
Now that she started, she couldn’t stop.
“But you know what? That’s not even when I started hating him. The man was dead to me when I started my second trimester and he bartered me off to a loan shark to cover his gambling debts.”
Rylan paled. Shock, fury, and…heartbreaking sympathy flew across his features.
“That’s right. You want to know why I hate gambling so much? It’s because I was wagered off once. Brody had a fifteen thousand dollar debt so not only did he steal everything he could from me, but he also gave me to his loan shark. Like he owned me. Like I was his slave, his property that he could give away to who knows what fate. He bartered this deal and took off.”
Voice shaking, she stared at him and said dully, “My only saving grace was that the loan shark had a semi-decent conscience and didn’t want a single pregnant college chick who would be showing in about a month be an indentured escort for his high-end prostitute business. So he let me trade my grandmother’s two-carat diamond ring, the one that I had wanted to bury my mother with, but couldn’t, because her living will insisted I keep it for my own engagement, and then pass it on to my children, along with the beloved history of her mother’s mother wearing it.”
Before he could say a single word, she walked over to the door and pulled it open.
“I think you should leave, Rylan. Because whether you’ve been lying this entire time or you’re just lying now, you’re doing it because you’ve made a deal with the devil. My own personal devil. And now, every single time I hear that song, that’s all I’ll be able to think of.”
He stepped out onto the porch.
And she closed the door behind him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
RYLAN HAD LOST HER once and for all.
All weekend, he picked up his phone countless times but before he could finish dialing Quinn’s number, he just remembered the look of devastation on her face, heard every single heartsickening word of what that bastard Brody put her through.
Rylan couldn’t have begun to imagine the levels of evil Quinn’s ex had reached.
But now that he did, if anything, it made him more determined to sell Brody the song to keep him out of Quinn’s life for good.
“You’re early.” Brody sat down across the table from him. “Were you waiting long?”
“Spare me the pleasantries, asshole. Just give me the paperwork so we can be done with it. I want your ugly face out of my town.”
“By all means.” Brody slid a stack of paperwork before him. “It’s tagged and ready for you to sign.”
“Rylan William Grey, don’t you dare sign that.”
Rylan and Brody both looked up in surprise to see Quinn headed toward them, her face grim.
“Honey, it’s all for the best this way. Brody has agreed—”
Quinn stopped right at their table. “This isn’t Brody.”
What?
She tilted her head at the nameless man. “You’re looking good, Cam.”
“Likewise, Quinn.”
Quinn turned back to Rylan. “Rylan, meet Cameron, Brody’s older brother, manager, and all around Mr. Fix It and vacuum cleaner for all of Brody’s trouble and crap.”
“That is what’s on my business card,” said Cam, dryly.
Rylan frowned. “I checked out your ex’s photos online and matched him up.”
“Yeah,” nodded Quinn. “They’ve always looked similar. Cam always looked smarter, and a touch douchier.”
Cam chuckled. “Same old Quinn.”
And because Rylan was clearly in a strange alternate universe, Quinn smiled back before shaking her head and volleyin
g back, “Same old Cam. I knew your brother wasn’t smart enough to come up with this plan. It just took me a few days to get over the hurt and figure it all out.”
Rylan felt a migraine coming on. “I’m completely confused as to whether I should bash this guy’s head in right now or not.”
The question went unanswered as at the moment, Cameron and Quinn were busy facing off and ignoring him completely.
Quinn tsked. “I’ve forgiven a lot of what you’ve done for Brody over the years but this was way below the belt. Stealing another artist’s song? Even for you, this seemed extreme.”
Cam let out a heavy sigh. “You were always the only one who thought I had an ounce of good in me.” He looked over at Rylan. “I was going to keep it as an insurance policy only, I swear. If things got out and got ugly, I was going to bring this out to try and redeem him at least a little. We weren’t going to take it, perform it, or anything.” He turned back to Quinn. “I was actually going to go over all of that with Rylan today – it’s all in the paperwork.”
Rylan studied his worried expression. “What do you mean if things got out and got ugly.”
“The deadbeat dad thing,” guessed Quinn. “Am I right?”
“Gold star for Quinn. But there’s a little more to it. I know it’s going to be hard for you to believe, and I don’t blame you, Brody does finally seem to have gotten his shit together a little. At least enough to be stable. He’s seeing someone who’s a pretty good influence on him. He’s in gambler’s anonymous. And on the music front, he’s on a few good-sized tours and concerts.”
Cam scrubbed a tired hand over his face. “The thing is, he had to hit rock bottom first before this turnaround. It wasn’t that long ago, too. Ever since, I’ve been worried that it would take just one thing to send him on a tailspin that even I won’t be able to pull him out of.”
Despite everything, Rylan could see at least that this man cared a great deal for his brother. “So you were worried that with the media coverage on Cooper, someone might dig a little and find out about Brody abandoning him.”
