Say it Louder (10 page)

When we meet up for band practice on Monday afternoon, I finally admit to Jayce and Tyler the gory details of what I saw last week between Kristina and Chief.

Well, not
all
the gory details. The sound of flesh slapping flesh, my girlfriend screaming to be pounded harder, and Chief’s naked white ass pointing straight at me … those images are burned in my brain.

I tell them that I threw Kristina out, but I think—from her texts—that she came back, so I’ve been avoiding my place. Tyler’s been a champ giving me a place to crash for a couple of nights, no questions asked, but I know he’s curious about what’s happening and I owe him the truth.

I owe it to them all.

I don’t tell them that I spent a night wrapped up in Willa’s bed, or that she told me to get lost until I deal with Kristina. Even when I went back and warned her that Kristina knows her address and might try to hurt her to get back at me, Willa just crossed her arms and marched me back out the door of her tattoo shop.

“I can take care of myself. But you have to take care of your shit. When it’s done, you know where to find me.”

Every day that ticks by has me further paralyzed by the fear of fallout from confronting Kristina. And I know I’m a hypocrite being frozen by what-ifs, when those are exactly what I told Willa to fight.

Jayce’s face hardens when I admit I haven’t seen Kristina yet or thrown her out of my house for good. “You promised to get rid of her. The way I see it, this is even more reason to cut her loose.”

“I will. I just don’t know how she’ll react.” My excuse is weak and they all know it.

“I told you it doesn’t matter. Whatever she’s going to do to lash out at you and the band, we’ll deal with that.” The fierceness in Gavin’s voice dares me to defy him. “But right now, we’ve got to deal with the other half of the problem. Chief has to go. There are no two ways about it.”

“What about the album release?” Jayce says. “We’re close enough to dropping it that switching managers could seriously complicate things.”

“Remember that our label likes Chief. He doesn’t just handle our PR, he handles them, and that’s worth something,” Tyler adds. “If we lose him, we could be on shaky ground.”

Gavin says we’re already on shaky ground—between his disappearing act and the unauthorized release of the song “Wilderness,” the label execs and their legal department have already given us too many warnings.

And then there’s the tour. Chief’s main focus over the last few weeks has been organizing a seventeen-city stadium tour that would kick off next month. Jayce reminds us that negotiations could fall apart if we cut ties with Chief.

“It has to be a business decision,” Jayce says, but right now I’d love to make it personal. Intense physical pain-type personal.

“He fucked Dave’s girlfriend. That makes him untrustworthy. There’s your business decision,” Gavin argues.

“I already pulled his contract. We can dismiss him for gross negligence. I checked with our attorney to be sure.” I skip over the part where I already told him he was fired as he was backing his half-naked ass out of my house.

I also skip the part where I asked the attorney to look over Willa’s gallery contract. After he inserted clauses to limit the gallery’s rights to reprint her work for advertising purposes, he gave Willa the green light to sign.

And just like that, Willa’s going to have her own show.

“What are you smiling for?” Tyler looks at me strangely. “Looking forward to another night of my amazing cooking?”

I snap back to the present. “I just want to be done with Chief.”

“You think you could handle some contract stuff until we get a new manager?” Tyler asks, and suddenly all eyes are on me. I was the manager before Chief, and now they’re looking to me to deal with the aftermath.

“Yeah. It’s not Chief’s band. It’s ours. The label will deal with me.”

Gavin spreads his hands. “Then we’re in agreement?”

Tyler nods first, then Jayce. Good.

Gavin turns to me. “You want to go to his office and deliver the news with me?”

“You’re going?”

“I’m not letting you go alone and get your ass thrown in jail for beating him to a pulp,” Gavin retorts.

“Not that he wouldn’t deserve it,” Jayce adds. “Prick.”

“I appreciate the support,” I say, and I mean it.
Like
whoa
I mean it, and for the first time in too long, I feel like I do actually have their support.
 

***

“No matter how badly you want to make this personal, Dave, this isn’t.”

Gavin places a steadying hand on my shoulder, no doubt seeing the rage that wants to spring from my chest. Since I saw Chief slinking out my front door half-dressed, I’ve fantasized about the dozens of different, satisfying ways I could beat the shit out of him.

“Don’t tell me it isn’t personal when I caught him fucking
my
girlfriend in
my
bed,” I seethe.

Gavin gives my shoulder a gentle shove, knocking me back a step as we ride up the elevator to Chief’s office. “No. This is about choosing a manager that better fits our creative direction. We don’t need one more drop of bad press.”

Gavin’s expression softens and I know he feels guilty for setting off the first firestorm in the wake of his muse Lulu’s overdose. When he admitted that he had a part in it, things went south fast for our band.

We were stunned, frozen, almost incapacitated. Gavin had always been our bright main sail, our fearless leader. I was the rudder. Working out of sight, making a thousand tiny corrections to keep us on the right course no matter which way the wind blew.

When Gavin fled, I stepped in. It’s how it always was—if Gavin got too drunk or crazy or was just too hungover from partying the night before, I navigated us safely home. And I was the one who pushed back on his drinking and smoking weed so that we’d get sharper and more focused.

Gavin and I step into an elevator lobby and a pretty receptionist invites us to take a seat. She calls Chief, but her eyes never leave us. She knows who we are.

I cross my arms and spin around, ignoring her, surveying the framed album covers on the walls. Our first two major label releases,
Beast
and
Feast
, are up there among impressive company, A-list names that routinely top the charts.

“Guys?” Chief cocks his head and we follow him to a small conference room with a kickass view of Midtown. He sits. We sit. He pours us each a glass of water from the pitcher on the table. It’s all very civilized.
 

“Before we start with what’s on your agenda, I’d like to apologize,” Chief says. “You caught me in a compromising position, and of course I’d like to make it right.”

“How could you?” My voice is hoarse with anger, and I mean it both ways: how could he violate my trust, and how could he possibly make it right?

Chief takes my question for its second meaning. “I’d like to suggest we have a cooling-off period. I’ll take a step back from daily management, we’ll bring in a producer to work with you guys more closely on getting the album done and out the door, and then we can work together again once everything’s back to normal.”

He smiles, his white teeth and skinny beard and balding head looking very content. Very comfortable. I want to knock the comfort right out of that sack of shit.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Gavin says, giving me a warning look that says he’ll handle this. “I think our relationship has run its course. We have an immediate termination clause in your contract. We’re using it.”

“This close to an album release? Don’t be stupid.” Chief snorts.

“No,
stupid
is screwing the girlfriend of one of your clients.” Gavin says.

“You don’t shit where you eat, Chief,” I add. “I hope a couple of bangs with Kristina’s skinny hips and fake tits was worth it for you.”

“I’m this close to getting you a sold-out stadium tour for fall.” Chief’s index finger and thumb are an inch apart. “If we go our separate ways now, you’d jeopardize that. You don’t want to do that to the band, do you, Dave?”
 

I clamp my teeth together, my jaw ticking and stomach roiling. I can’t let him get to me.
 

But Chief pushes a little harder. “They already know you’re a controlling jackass. Do you want to be a selfish bastard too?”

I jump from my seat and my fist comes from nowhere, connecting with Chief’s jaw. My legs hit the table and send the glasses flying, shards and water spraying everywhere.

“Calm down, for fuck’s sake!” Gavin’s got one hand on Chief’s chest and one hand on mine, forcing us apart, and Chief’s face purples with anger. A vein bulges at the side of his forehead, his lip bleeds freely, and I can tell he’s ready to hit me the fuck back into next week.

“This is over. You hear me? Over.” Gavin’s chest heaves as his head whips between the two of us. “Chief, you’re going to agree that we’ve parted ways to go in another creative direction. That’s your story and you’re sticking to it, or else we might need to share our real reasons for looking elsewhere with your other clients.”

“There’s no need for threats. We’re all adults here.” Chief spits blood on the once pristine conference room carpet, now littered with shards from shattered water glasses. “I know how to quit when I’m ahead. But I’m not sure Kristina does. You’d better be a lot more careful cutting ties with her.”

Gavin growls and gives me a push toward the door. “I say, let her do her worst. And just like Dave fought for me when I was running scared, it’ll take a lot more than that lying bitch to take Dave down.”

“Don’t bet your ass on it,” Chief says.

Gavin grabs the door handle as we exit. “I’m betting the band on it.”
 

***

“That went well,” Gavin says, his voice light and a grin creeping as we take a crowded elevator back to the street level. It’s the lunch rush and I’m glad to be out of that sterile conference room air and spilled onto a hot August sidewalk.
 

I flex my fingers. My knuckles are already swelling.

“You’re going to catch shit from Tyler for that,” Gavin warns.

I nod. “Pretty much guarantees I’ll be off beat.” I’ve ruined my fist for practice, but making the break from Chief is satisfying.

“You know you’ve got to go home and talk to Kristina, right?” Gavin gives me a hard look. “You can’t camp out at Tyler’s forever. And you promised Jayce that you’d cut her out of your life completely. Can’t do that if she’s still
living
at your house. Even if you’re not.”

We need to go back to Tyler’s place to regroup with the guys, but I can’t show my face to Jayce until I’ve ended things with Kristina.

Maybe the cop car was a coincidence. Surely if the cops were looking for me, they would have shown up at Tyler’s place?

“No time like the present.” I hail a cab to Brooklyn.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

She’s curled up on the couch she bought, with the tablet she bought, and her eyes flick up as I step inside.

“I told you to get the fuck out.”

“And go where, exactly?” Her tone is regal, mocking me.

“Crawl back under a slimy rock?”

She rolls her eyes. “Fuck that. You know things haven’t been good with us for a long time. I was lonely. And bored. Chief was a good listener.”

I slam the door, the sound reverberating off our walls. Check that,
my
walls. My house. “Don’t even pretend that makes it OK.”

She huffs out a breath like I’m taxing her patience and lays the tablet beside her. “Look, maybe we’re not in love, maybe we haven’t been in a long time. But we make a good team. I’ve contributed just as much to making Tattoo Thief a success as you have. Organizing appearances, making nice for media. You need me.”

“I don’t need shit.”

She stands and walks around the couch, her hands perched on her hips. “No, you do need me. While Gavin was messing with a junkie and Jayce was fucking anything with tits, you needed me to keep things going. Behind the scenes.”

I grind my teeth, trying to understand her angle. “We had a manager for that. He failed us. You failed us. You can’t call this anything less than a betrayal, Kristina.”

Her eyes soften and she steps toward me, bringing her thin frame close to my chest. And my body betrays me, knowing hers too perfectly. She wraps her arms around my waist, pulling me toward her. “We can get past this. It was just a—thing. A fling. It didn’t mean anything.”

I go rigid. “It means everything! Don’t tell me it didn’t mean anything when it means
everything
that you betrayed me. And you betrayed Violet’s secret.”

Kristina pulls me in tighter and I feel her shrug. “She was getting under Jayce’s skin. She was going to be a problem sooner or later.”

I lean away from her and finally see what Kristina hated so much about Violet and Stella. They were threats because they were
real
. They offered my bandmates a real person to trust, and Kristina didn’t want the competition.

“We can pretend this never happened,” Kristina says softly, her hand sliding up the back of my neck. Now her sharpened nails feel like claws, like she’s one of the carrion birds that pecks at my chest in my nightmares. Her breath is rancid on my cheek, sour wine and cigarettes.