Say it Louder (13 page)

The man sizes me up and Willa recovers enough to introduce us. “This is Thomas, the owner of Righteous Ink.” She nods at her boss, and then turns to me, fumbling for words. “And this is Dave. My … friend.”

Thomas wags unruly brows at me, part appraising, part playful. “Looks like a pretty friendly friend.”

I extend my hand and he takes it, a hard shake, but not a threatening one. “I’ve been helping Willa with some contract stuff.” I pick up the papers on the counter like they’re my alibi.

“My art,” she adds quickly. “There’s a gallery that’s going to sell some.”

Again, Thomas’s eyebrows do an expressive dance. “Sounds fancy. Good for you, lady.” The fondness in his expression seems like that of a kind uncle, despite his hard-edged look. He shuffles to the back room and I hear coffee pouring. “How was business while I was gone?”

Willa slides off her stool and gives him a recap of clients and bookings while she straightens the counter and he circles the shop. Her eyes never meet mine and I take it as my signal to leave, so I stuff the contract in my bag alongside Kristina’s extortion papers.

“I’d better go,” I say quietly. “I’ll have the attorney get these back to the gallery if you’re OK with that.”

Willa finally looks at me and there’s a tightness in her eyes, her raw honesty replaced by the same guarded expression I saw right before our kiss.

How can I tell her she doesn’t have to be defensive around me? Even though everyone else who walks through the door of this shop wants something from her, I don’t. I just want her.
 

I suspect Thomas’s return has snapped her back into her me-against-the-world survival mode. I move toward her for a goodbye but she steps back, out of my reach, and it’s like a fog descends between us.

I hoist my bag over my shoulder to hide how much that rejection stings.
I didn’t force that kiss.
I came close to the edge, but I let her close the gap, and she wanted me.

I’m sure of it.

But now she’s shifted so fast from hot to cold I don’t know where I stand with her, or how to make it right.

I stuff my hand in my bag and pull out a pen, then scribble my phone number on a scrap of paper and slide it across the counter to her. “Text me later, OK?”

She tucks the paper in the back pocket of her jeans and nods, her blue eyes clouded with something left unsaid. It’s not enough, but it’s all I’ve got for now.

***

Task one accomplished: go over the contract with Willa.
 

Task two: meet with the attorney. Anyone who tells you a rock star’s life is all glam and parties has never sweated it out in a recording studio or sat through interminable meetings with the suits.

I brave the heat and hoof it downtown to the law offices of Leverda, Maloney and Probus, one of the only entertainment firms in the city where people seem to remember they’re lawyers first and in showbiz second.

My counsel is a laid-back, no-bullshit guy named Eric, an amateur drummer who doesn’t tote around a mile-wide ego. We shoot the shit for a while, talking about the new kit he just bought, and then we speed through the few things that need changing on Willa’s contract.

Eric flips his laptop closed, assuming we’re done.

I take a breath. “There’s another thing.” I hand him the stack of papers that Kristina gave me and watch his practiced poker face dissolve.

Eric whistles low when he’s flipped the last page. “You want to give me the backstory on this?”

“No.” My lips twist into a wry smile. “But I’d probably better.”

“Damn right you’d better. You’d be paying her a lot to just walk away. More than most
spouses
get. This could take more than half of your net worth.”

I nod miserably and give him the short version of what’s happened.

Eric scribbles notes in the margins. “This amounts to a paid gag—she can’t sell your story or photos, or do interviews, positive or negative, with any media, or pretty much anyone else.”

“You see any loopholes?”

“Some.” Eric appraises me. “She could talk to the police. She could claim you beat her and take out a restraining order, and if that leaks to the media, things could go badly for you.”

I wouldn’t put making stuff up about me past her, but considering she’s got real dirt on me, she doesn’t need it.

“Why can’t you just walk away and let her have her fifteen minutes?” Eric asks. “I promise you that gossip channels and magazines aren’t going to pay her nearly what you’d have to pay to keep her from selling your story.”

“Keeping the secrets locked down is worth more.”

Eric leans forward. “Worth more than three million?”

I cringe at the number. “A lot more.” I give him as few details as possible. “But if she reports that I’ve committed a crime, wouldn’t that make her an accessory?”

“It could, or she could seek immunity in exchange for her confession.”

Shit. “Then what can I do?”

“You’d probably have to sell your place. And sell off a lot of assets to transfer them to her.”

I bow my head and shake it slowly. “No other way I can think to do this.”
 

“I can.”

My head whips up and Eric’s eyes are bright. This is what turns his crank.

“Let’s add a few more clauses. A poison pill if she takes the money and reneges on her promise to keep these secrets buried. Like she can’t pass information to someone else to sell it. And if she lies about you, she gets nothing and you get damages. And we can add a trickle clause that means she won’t get her hands on everything immediately. That’ll help you shave off some taxes and keep most of the money in trust as insurance.”

The tight band around my chest loosens a fraction. “Will she take that?”

“We’ll make it a limited-time offer. My guess is greed will win. If keeping these secrets is worth this much to you, I’ll write it up.”

“Do it.”

***

I wait for the text that doesn’t come.

I watch my brownstone like a thief, and when I’m sure Kristina isn’t home, I creep in and pack what little I want to keep.

Movers evacuate my boxes in less than two hours, heading for a storage unit until Kristina moves herself out of my brownstone. A few bags of clothes and a laptop are all I take back to Tyler’s, and my drum set lives there anyway.

And still I wait for the text that doesn’t come. Willa’s.

Other texts roll in, important ones.

Eric confirms that Kristina signed the agreement after demanding a generous monthly stipend to rent an apartment in a fancy-ass new loft in Williamsburg. The fucking kicker is since I’m the one with income, I have to co-sign for it.

But I’ll sign just about anything to have her gone for good. I sign away half of everything I’ve earned in the last seven years, but I promise myself the next seven will be even better.

Willa’s words echo in my head:
There are worse things to lose than money.

Eric also nails down Willa’s contract with the gallery and tells me the clock is ticking for her to deliver her work to the gallery. I smile at my phone with that message.

Still no text from Willa. My brain sets up and shoots down a dozen reasons why.

In the loneliness of Tyler’s loft, on the makeshift mattress in a corner beneath Tyler’s raised-platform “bedroom,” I’m restless and painfully alone. I have no idea when Tyler and Stella will be home.

There isn’t even Call of Duty to shoot out my anger—I stupidly sent my game system to storage.
 

Porn on my laptop doesn’t hold much appeal with nothing but flimsy orange curtains dividing my “room” from the echoing loft.

And I think gin already proved its point in terms of being a shitty problem-solver.

So I pump iron. I throw another dime on the bar and lift until my muscles twitch and shake with exertion. I feel the sweat trickle down my arms as I lift, and the burn as I struggle to control the letdown without a spotter.

At least the contract is one thing I can do for Willa. To show her … I could be here for her. If she’d let me.
 

No, that’s too half-assed. I want to be
with
her. I don’t care if it’s a night out with spray paint or drinking coffee behind the counter of her tattoo shop. I want her like a rhythm that takes hold in my gut and won’t quit when the song is over.
 

I want her like I want music.
 

I might not be the most creative or talented in the band—fuck, I know I’m not—but I know that I’m passionate about music. And I’m passionate about building something out of it, a band and a career and the three friends who I’m closer to than brothers.

I’ve thoroughly fucked them over by letting Kristina in like a cancer. So cutting her out is paying a high price, but if it buys them some peace, and my freedom, and keeps our band together, then it will be worth it.

I can make more money. I can’t make a new band.

I wince as I lower my last rep, remorse for the way I’ve treated my best friends creeping up my throat like bile. I’ve been an asshole—controlling, short-tempered—and I feel like even more of a heel because I’m just starting to get it.

Maybe it’s feeling that I’ve been controlled, and so I let Kristina’s poison flow out from me. Or the fact that I’ve been scared shitless of telling them how deep I’m in, and how much danger I’ve put them in as well.

I shower and change, my heartbeat quickening as I realize that this stupid piece of paper I’ve signed with Kristina isn’t the end. It’s the beginning. If I’m going to get out from under the ton of shit she’s piled on me, I’ve got to start shoveling faster.

And unless my phone chimes with a text from Willa in the next five minutes, I know right where to start.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Righteous Ink is quiet when I enter, scanning the room for Willa’s pink hair.

“In back.” I recognize the man’s deep voice as Thomas and I find him cleaning equipment in a small tattoo room. When he looks up and recognizes me, he adds, “She’s not here.”

“I see that. Any idea where she is?”

“Do you think she’d want you to know?”

I pause at his direct question, a challenge. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I have to see her. There’re some things …”

Thomas chuckles. “There are always things. I let her go early today. She had to finish a couple more canvases before she packs them up for the gallery. It’s a good thing for her, a big thing.”

I nod. “I get it.”

Thomas narrows his eyes. “I don’t think you do. A girl like her, she doesn’t get a lot of breaks. Has to claw for each thing she’s got.” He eyes my designer jeans and expensive sneakers. “Doesn’t look like you’ve got much experience with that.”

“Actually, I do.” I grit my teeth, annoyed that I’m always explaining, always apologizing for the success I’ve built with my band and my own hands. “I didn’t grow up with much. I mowed lawns and recycled bottles to earn my first drum kit. I know what it means to work hard to make a dream happen.”

Maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to her, deep beneath the physical. Her focus on her art, her willingness to earn it, are two of the things that drove me hard when our band was starting out. I like that she doesn’t ask for permission.

Thomas stands, kicking the tattoo artist’s stool under a table, and I follow him to the break room. He pours us each a mug, black, and he takes a chair, nodding at me to sit. I can tell I’m in for a lecture.

“You don’t know Willa,” he says, and before I can interrupt, he hushes me with a glare. “You don’t. I met her when she was a street kid, shelter-hopping but just managed to earn her GED. I hired her as part of their job-placement program, just to run the desk and clean up around here, plus she was sporting a nasty amateur tattoo that needed fixing. And she liked to draw.”

I run through what I’ve seen of her arms and he answers my question before it fully forms.

“The ocean waves. I did that for her after she’d been here a couple of months. Some bastard inked his graffiti tag on her, like she was his property, and she let him because it meant protection. That he could kick her around but nobody else could.”

He takes a long swallow of coffee. “She said she’d drown him in the deepest ocean if she was ever strong enough. So we did that together. Drowned his name beneath a sea of ink.”

My mind reels with the weight of each new piece of knowledge.
Willa used to be homeless.
Things start clicking into place: things she’s said, the way she lives, and the way she moved seamlessly through the camp beneath the rail bridge.
 

“Once she turned eighteen, she was shit outta luck in terms of housing, so I helped her out. Let her live with me a couple months.” I glance at Thomas, brimming with questions, and he frowns. “Not like that. I like ‘em pretty, but with a lot more going on between their legs.”

I press my lips together in silent apology for assuming the worst.
 

“She apprenticed for me. Worked her ass off to learn the craft and built her own book of clients and designs. She doesn’t want or need either of us to solve her problems. She can take care of herself.”

“But I want to help her.” I want—so much more than that too.