The Song in My Heart (24 page)

Jennifer shook her head, her massive mane of hair once again unruly. “First of all, you’d be eaten alive in this business without representation. Secondly, if you don’t hire Dayna, she’s within her rights to have a court order you to surrender a certain percentage of your future earnings to her. That’s whether you manage yourself or hire someone else to manage you. Dayna will own a piece of you either way. And if it were me?”

Dess and Erika moved to the edges of their seats.

“Better,” Jennifer continued, “to have the devil close at hand, if you know what I mean.”

Erika sat back, closed her eyes in a look of defeat. Her jaw was clamped tightly in anger.

“This is all my fault,” Dess said disconsolately. “I should never have signed off on that exit clause.” To Erika, she whispered, “I’m so sorry, honey.”

Erika’s eyes flew open. To Dess, she said, “Don’t ever say that, sweetheart. You have nothing to be sorry for. You could never have known that you would be making music with me or anyone else. Or that—that
bitch
—would come after us. Besides, you did what you had to do to get her out of your life.” Erika turned to Jennifer, calmer now. “So you’re saying I don’t have a choice in this?”

“Not if you want to accomplish anything with your musical talent, no. Quite frankly, with a litigious Dayna Williams hanging over your head, no one else will want to touch you anyway.”

Traffic noises from eighteen floors below faintly penetrated the thick windows of Jennifer’s office, as the three women sat in contemplative silence. Dess wasn’t surprised her ex was trying to glom onto Erika, because anyone with even the tiniest shred of instinct or knowledge about the music business understood inherently that Erika had the goods to go far. But she couldn’t help thinking that it was personal, a way for Dayna to get back at her for cutting off her source of income, diminishing her power and influence in the business, when she chose to end her career.

“You said there was some good news too,” Dess remembered.

Jennifer’s expression remained grim, and her blunt honesty was one of the qualities Dess admired most about her. It also helped that she was probably the best entertainment lawyer in the Midwest, even though it would be hard to guess that from her simple, modest office.

Jennifer steepled her hands on the desk. “The contract requires that Erika only need sign a fair, industry-standard contract with Dayna. Now…” She looked pointedly at Erika. “Dayna will undoubtedly try to convince you to sign for much more than that, but as it stands, you only need to sign with her for one year and twenty-five percent. That’s a reasonable industry standard.”

Erika perked up. “So after that I can dump her?”

“Absolutely.”

Dess watched a cascade of emotions march across Erika’s face. Relief, hopefulness, puzzlement, resignation, futility, anger.

“I don’t know what to do.” Erika’s eyes darted anxiously between Jennifer and Dess.

“I think this is something the two of you need to discuss,” Jennifer suggested, rising from her chair. “Take as long as you need.”

Alone together, Erika swiped an errant tear from her cheek. “Baby, I can’t do this to you. I cannot collaborate with someone who abandoned you during the most difficult time in your life. I could never respect someone like that. What she did to you…” Erika balled a fist in her lap. “It makes my blood boil.”

There was no point in listing Dayna’s flaws. They were many, and they were inarguable. “You don’t have to respect her, Erika. And don’t forget. The very things that make her a nasty person make her a very successful business manager. I just didn’t have the good sense to keep those two things separate.”

“Can I ask you something?”

Dess’s heart broke a little. “Of course. You can ask me anything, you know that.”

“What did you ever see in her? As a girlfriend, I mean.”

Erika didn’t have to say the words, but what Dess was sure she meant was, how could you have loved her but you won’t commit to me?

“Trust me,” Dess said. “I’ve kicked myself many times in the ass, asking myself the same question. I think what I was attracted to was her ability to take care of things, to take control, to
handle
everything so that I didn’t have to. She was competent, capable, the take-charge type. And that allowed me to concentrate on my music, which was what I loved most. I chose to ignore her faults, and by the time I began to realize I wasn’t in love with her, I was becoming ill.”

Erika’s eyes widened. “So you weren’t sorry she left you?”

“I was sorry about the timing. I needed all the love and support I could get when I was sick. But no, I wasn’t sorry the relationship ended. It took me dozens of sessions with my therapist and a couple of years of being well before I realized that her leaving me was for the best.”
Even though seeing her face still makes me want to kill her
, Dess thought. She could never be friends with Dayna, nor could she ever completely forgive her for her heartlessness.
And if she ever does anything to hurt Erika…

“I won’t do this if you don’t want me to,” Erika said. “Even if it means never earning a single penny from singing again.”

The honesty in Erika’s face, the scale of what she was offering, brought tears to Dess’s eyes. “You would do that for me, wouldn’t you?” Dess’s voice broke.

“I would do anything for you, Dess.”

With her good arm, Dess pulled Erika closer and stared hard into her eyes. “Then you will sign for one year with Dayna Williams.”

Erika gasped. A maelstrom of conflicting thoughts and emotions were going through Dess too.

“If you don’t,” Dess continued, trying to tamp down the tremble in her voice, “you will never get this out of your system. You will never know what you might be, and I can’t live with that. And besides, if you don’t do this, Dayna wins. We’ll both be her prisoners.”

Jennifer rapped softly on the door, announcing her return, and Dess collapsed back in her seat.

She might, she realized, have just made the biggest mistake of her life.

* * *

Erika took a deep breath, cast a final look at Sloane for strength, and somehow managed to stride onto the stage like she hadn’t a care in the world. How she made it look so easy came from the practiced battleground of her childhood—that scarred place where she had to pretend she desired the same goals as her single-minded parents, pretend her home life was a happy one, pretend the kids at school didn’t bully her. Oh yes. With her dazzling smile, straightened shoulders, her cocky strut across the stage, she could pretend with the best of them.

“Hello, Chicago!” she shouted into the mic, bowing deeply to show off her cleavage. And her ass. Sell the assets, she thought, because voice alone doesn’t make you a star these days. “How you all doing tonight?”

The crowd responded with a passion that continued to amaze her, even though her popularity had steadily grown with each concert and festival. The wolf whistles, the shouts were well past simple politeness. Maybe two thousand people—her largest crowd yet—were on their feet with a thrum of anticipation that buzzed like an electrical current. It was, she supposed, largely because of Dess’s accident and their connection to each other. People wanted to see who the famous Dess Hampton had come out of retirement to play guitar for. There were rumors—false, of course—that Dess might appear. There had also been conjecture in the press that Erika and Dess were romantically involved, though nothing had been substantiated. Still, people wanted to feel that connection to Dess’s greatness, no matter how remote.

Dess
. God, how she wished Dess were onstage with her. Her absence was like having a tooth freshly extracted and the tongue insistently finding and worrying about the gap. It was almost painful to have her gone. The fact that Dess wasn’t even in the audience—it was too risky with the press out in full force—simply drove home the fact that she might as well exist on a different planet right now.

Don’t
, Erika told herself.
Don’t go to that dark place. This is joyous, this is music!

Sloane and Red launched into the opening of an old Hendrix blues song, “Hear My Train a Comin’.” The electric guitar work was dynamic and rousing, the drumbeats charged. Erika rolled out her voice slowly, tantalizingly, like a distant train gathering speed as it approached. With every phrase that was sung, her voice intensified in timbre and her body loosened and moved in the same groove as the guitar licks. It was as though the guitar notes were shooting straight through her veins and out her skin; she wouldn’t have been surprised to see sparks. She became so immersed in the music that for long stretches she forgot everything—where she was, who she was, everything that had come before, everything that was expected henceforth. It was a sliver of time that existed in its own dimension, right here on the stage.

When it was time to slow things down with “I Put a Spell on You,” Erika found her eyes involuntarily searching for Dess in the crowd. Her heart ached at her inability to capture Dess the way Dess had captured her, so deeply and irrevocably and right to her soul. She sang from the depths of her walled-off frustration, from the gut-wrenching pain felt only by someone who has loved completely but can never truly be in possession of that love.

If only I could put a spell on you, baby
, Erika thought,
I’d do it in a flash. And you’d be mine
.

The crowd went nuts, and Erika was left to wonder in amazement how a girl from rural Texas managed to affect people to such a degree. Dayna Williams, she knew, would want to figure out the magic formula, so they could bottle and sell it like widgets off an assembly line. She’d told Erika as much in their meeting an hour before the concert began. We’re going to sell you, she’d promised, and people won’t be able to get enough of you. Erika didn’t know if she could believe the woman or even wanted to. As soon as she had signed on the dotted line, the agent had bolted to O’Hare to catch a flight back to California so she could get started right away on making Erika a star, she’d promised her.

It turned her stomach to have to sign with Dayna—the woman who’d treated Dess like crap. But Dess, Sloane, that lawyer woman Jennifer, had all insisted that it was her only viable option. And it was only for a year.
One year
. She could put up with almost anything for a year, she reminded herself. In fact, it would pale in comparison to the years of misery she’d survived as a child.

But if the price resulted in the loss of Dess, well,
that
she wasn’t yet sure she could survive.

Moving to the keyboards, her voice thick with emotion, Erika announced, “This next song I want to dedicate to a very special woman. A woman who is ‘The Song in My Heart.’”

* * *

Dess drew in a breath; it stalled painfully in her chest as Erika began singing their song. The song—Erika’s voice—was so beautiful, so passionate, so fervent, that if she were not already in love with Erika, she would be by the song’s conclusion.

“You okay?” Carol whispered beside her.

They’d snuck into the concert, Dess swaddled in an oversized ball cap and wraparound sunglasses, her trussed-up arm hidden inside the open flap of her baggy denim jacket. It had been impossible for her to stay away, so she’d dragged her unwilling sister along for support.

“Yeah,” she finally answered. “I’m fine.”

Carol mumbled something that Dess, completely mesmerized by Erika singing the words they’d written together, couldn’t distinguish. She didn’t need to be told that she had to be some kind of fool to let Erika go off into the crazy world of the music business. And not only without her, but with the despicable Dayna Williams at her side, guiding her. Carol was probably scolding her—she’d voiced her opposition to the plan when Dess explained it to her on the way to the concert. But Carol didn’t know Erika the way she did. She didn’t fully appreciate Erika’s potential, her gifts, her drive and ambition. She couldn’t possibly understand that there was no other way, that anything short of Erika reaching for the stars would be a slow suicide. And besides, it was the reconciling of a debt Dess felt she owed the universe. She’d never be free of her shame if she didn’t push Erika to climb to the heights she so richly deserved.

“Shit!” Carol exclaimed, loud enough to be heard this time. She clutched Dess’s good side, began sharply steering her away.

“What?”

“Don’t look, don’t look.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“A photographer. He’s spotted you.”

There was a stirring in the crowd not far from her. She ducked her head, instinctively pulled her ball cap lower over her ears, but it was too late. She glimpsed a long-lensed camera pointed at her as Carol began roughly pulling her away. Whispers escalated, people around her began calling out her name, pointing. A movement of bodies shifted, like water currents, in their direction. Panic rising in her throat, Dess broke into a run. Her arm smacked into something, and pain shot through her like a lightning bolt.
Fuck!
Did they have no mercy, chasing her down like this when she was hurt and clearly in pain? It was just the way it had been six years ago, when, sick with cancer and radiation that had permanently ruined her singing voice, she’d begged for privacy, yet still, they refused to leave her alone.

“C’mon,” Carol yelled, tugging her faster. “Just a little farther.”

Dess fought the urge to cry. She’d just wanted to see Erika sing one last time, before things turned irrevocably complicated for them. But already, nothing was simple and never would be again, and the bitterness of that realization crushed her hard, made her stumble on the uneven earth of the park. Carol pulled her along again, and her tears gushed from her like a waterfall.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Even knowing it was the last evening she’d spend with Dess for a few weeks couldn’t diminish the high tonight’s concert had given Erika. Her voice had been as near perfect as she could ever hope, she and the band had performed flawlessly, and the crowd—
man!
—the crowd had loved her. They didn’t let her go until she sang two encores, and she happily rode the wave of their energy and their rabid appreciation. She was vibrating by the time she sang her last note, bowed and strode regretfully from the stage.