The Duet

  “Say what you really mean, Brooklyn,” he said, stepping directly in front of me so that I had to crane my neck back to look into his eyes.

  “I am.”

  He shook his head. “Say the truth.”

  “I don’t have to,” I said, feeling the first tear slide down my cheek. “I wrote it down in the lyrics.”

  His eyes pinched closed as he absorbed my words and how final they felt. I studied his features, so contorted in anger and sadness that it was hard to make out just how beautiful they were. When his eyes opened again, he didn’t say a word. Our eyes locked for three seconds. Three long seconds. Three… Two… One. And then he was gone. He was gone, and my door was slammed shut so hard that the hinges rattled, and I was left to crumble to the floor.

  I stabbed the heel of my palms into my eyes and cried, letting loose the emotion that I’d felt the entire time I’d been with Jason, but was never allowed to show. I was supposed to be the cool, confident girl that could have the sex without the commitment, have the orgasms without the relationship. In reality, I was as much of a fraud as Jason was.

  “Wow. Did I just hear you break up with Jason Monroe?” Cammie asked from across the condo.

  I laughed at how wrong she was. “No. That was the end of our collaboration,” I clarified, trying to soak up my tears with the back of my hands before pressing up to my feet.

  “Wow. No wonder you’re a solo artist then,” Cammie said, tilting her head to the side and studying me with a wary glance.

  I rolled my eyes and did my best to pretend that everything was fine. I’d lived a long life without love and now I would just go back to that. Simple as pie.

  “Where’d you put that bag of Jolly Ranchers?” I asked.

  She tried to hide her smile. “You took the bag over to your neighbor across to hall and told him he could use them in his orgy because you were done with them.”

  Oh shit. “No, I did not.”

  She nodded solemnly. “You definitely did.”

  I clapped my hand over my eyes. “Great. I have to move now.”

  …

  The next morning a courier arrived and slapped me with a document from Jason’s legal team that detailed certain facts that I was and was not allowed to say in public or to the press. Our relationship as a whole was off-limits. During press for the Grammy performance, I was advised to keep the conversation platonic. No mention of Lacy or Kim would be allowed to go to print. If I slipped up, there would be a lawsuit.

  I didn’t have to sign. If he wanted all of that private, he should have explained everything beforehand and had me sign at the beginning.

  Still, that two-page document took my broken heart and tore it apart all over again. I was merely a loose end that needed to be tied up.

  After two hours of stewing over it, I signed the papers and mentally added a “fuck you” to the end of my signature.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Yes, I regretted letting Jason leave my condo that day.

  Yes, I knew that the correct decision wasn’t always black or white.

  Yes, I looked down at my phone every morning and wondered if I should give him a call.

  No, I never did.

  Put on my clothes, they’re the same as before

  Count to two, and then to four

  Each day I know is new

  but still you’ve left me, turned my whole world blue

  You can stay hidden forever

  No one can pull you out

  I told myself never say never

  But now I’m starting to have doubt

  I told you where to find me

  I told you where I’d be

  You left me there, waiting

  Waiting with a plea

  You can stay hidden forever

  No one can pull you out

  I told myself never say never

  But now I’m starting to have doubt

  So won’t you find me

  This is my final plea

  Because for you, I’ll wait

  But please, don’t be too late

  The music paused, the red recording light flipped off. I tugged the thick headphones down off my head. The vocal booth was small, but after recording a half dozen albums inside the four walls, it’d become a second home of sorts.

  My team was sitting on the other side of the thin glass: Summer, my agent, and the studio director, Tom. He always helped mix my music and I didn’t trust anyone else behind the studio dials.

  “I love it. It’s been a while since you’ve done a break-up song,” Tom said, pressing replay on the song I’d just sung into the condenser microphone. It was hard to listen to the lyrics. They were still raw, the sadness was so easy to decipher in my voice. I hoped they just thought I was acting for the sake of the song. It wouldn’t work if I didn’t sound tormented by loss, so what did it matter to them if that loss was real or not? Just as long as I sold records, right?

  “It’s gold, Brooklyn. I’ve gotta run. Don’t forget that your rehearsals for the Grammy performance start tomorrow,” my agent said before answering a call and stepping out of the studio.

  Summer was the only one who stayed silent and I feared it was because she knew the truth about where I’d found the inspiration for the song. She nodded at me with a solemn smile and then stared back down at her phone, probably reworking my schedule. I was behind on a lot of commitments and on top of that, I’d need to start recording my next studio album. The song I’d recorded a moment earlier would be the first track on the CD and I feared most of the other songs would have a similar feel.

  They say you should write what you know. So… that was my plan.

  …

  I had one week until the Grammys and every spare moment in those seven days was planned out to a “T”. I had three rehearsals, Cammie’s graduation, dress fittings, workouts, voice lessons, and countless interviews.

  Yet somehow there was still ample amount of time to think about Jason. He’d made a change to the beginning of our duet. I would have protested it that late in the game, except the changes were good. Really good. His assistant had sent them over the day before and I’d sat there reading them and trying to decipher the secret meaning of every word as if they were pieces of Jason’s soul. Sadly, after an hour of staring at a computer screen, I came to the conclusion that they were just words.

  …

  The first day of rehearsals for an award show is always a frenzy of activity. The sheer manpower that goes into putting on an event of that magnitude is almost equal to the number of guests who would actually be in attendance.

  I stayed in my dressing room after I’d arrived; enjoying the peace and quiet once my voice coach had left. I knew I was due on stage in a few minutes for my rehearsal, but I couldn’t help scribbling lyrics down in my notebook. In the last few days it’d been permanently attached to my hand, housing the words that were tumbling forth without much effort at all.

  We were never really friends

  Always something more

  Maybe if I’d seen it before

  I could have kept you from walking,

  Kept you from walking out that door

  A gentle knock on my dressing room door pulled my attention from my notebook.

  “Brooklyn, we’ll be ready for you onstage in fifteen,” a stagehand announced on the other side of my door.

  “Thanks!” I called back, glancing down at the lyrics one more time before stuffing the notebook back into my bag. I was still trying to cram it all the way in when my dressing room door opened.

  “I thought I still had fifteen minutes,” I protested, before looking up and coming face to face with a man who was most definitely not a stagehand.

  I hadn’t seen Jason since he’d slammed the door on his way out of my condo a few days before, but there he was, looking too handsome to ignore. His features were lit by the shadows of my dim dressing room and I paused on my way to sit-up, just taking him in.

  “Sorry. I should have knocked,?
?? he said, but he didn’t turn to leave, so clearly he wasn’t that sorry.

  I crossed my arms and stood up off the couch, steeling myself for whatever he was about to say.

  “We have fifteen minutes until we need to be on stage,” I pointed out.

  He nodded. “I wanted to talk to you before we went up there.”

  “Okay,” I answered, standing even straighter. “Talk.”

  “I’m sorry for not telling you about Kim.”

  I had wanted an apology so badly. I had wanted him to acknowledge his wrongdoing, but not before we were about to be on stage. Not when I was about to have to spend the next few hours singing with him. So I just nodded, once.

  “Is that all?” I asked, moving toward the vanity to grab a clip for my hair. It usually got warm on stage and I knew we’d be up there for a few hours. Also, I really needed an excuse to turn away him.

  “I shouldn’t have kept everything from you, but you should have been honest with me, too,” he said.

  My head snapped in his direction, but he didn’t back down.

  “Honest about how you felt about us,” he continued. “You should have waited and listened instead of jumping on the first plane out of Montana.”

  I laughed, completely taken aback by his comment.

  “Yeah, maybe I should have. Now can you please get out of my dressing room?” I gritted my teeth together to keep from tearing up.

  “I’m sorry about that stuff from my legal team. None of it was sent with my consent,” he said, walking toward the door and propping it open for a moment.

  I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. My camp would have done the same thing.”

  He smiled gently and looked down at his feet. “Yeah. Cammie sent me a fruit basket with a note that said, ‘One of these has been poisoned. Enjoy.’”

  My mouth dropped and his features softened just barely. I could see a piece of the carefree Jason I’d come to love at his ranch.

  “She always did try to fight my battles for me.”

  His jaw clenched. “I don’t think you need anyone helping you. You’re using my past to push me away all on your own. If you want us to be over, that’s your decision, but I didn’t take you for someone who gave up so easily.”

  I shrugged, staring down at the carpet, searching for an explanation that wouldn’t come.

  He left without another word.

  I wanted to shout at him. How dare he push the blame onto me in this situation? He was the one who didn’t want “complicated”. He was the married one.

  …

  A stagehand came to get me a few minutes later, after I’d wiped the stray tears from my eyes. I followed him blindly, trying to collect my thoughts so that I could actually concentrate during the rehearsal.

  I saw Jason when I was halfway up the stairs backstage. He was already on his mark, adjusting the monitor in his ear so that he’d be able to hear himself practicing. I looked down at my own monitor, adjusting the wireless receiver in the back pocket of my jeans.

  There were a couple dozen people sitting in the audience at the Staples center. The show’s producers, assistants, stagehands, costume designers, sound engineers, set designers. They were all there to watch rehearsals, which meant they’d be the first group of people to watch Jason and I sing together. Lovely.

  “How’s it going?” the choreographer asked us as I stepped up to the gray ‘X’ taped onto the stage about two feet away from Jason. My microphone was set up in front of the mark, and my guitar was resting on a stand next to it. With everything else going on, getting to use my own guitar felt like having a security blanket.

  I shot Jason a side-glance. “Been better,” I replied, aware that our conversation was easy to hear by everyone in the audience.

  “I think I’d have to agree,” Jason said, gritting his teeth and staring down at his guitar in thought.

  The poor choreographer had no clue what to say to our responses. “Alright then, let’s run through the song once. I’ll get a feel for the sound, and then we can adjust things as we go. This is going to be a stripped-down performance. The two of you together is flashy enough so we won’t need to add much else.”

  We nodded and started strumming on our instruments to warm up and test our sound monitors. I took a few breaths, relaxing my fingers over the fretboard.

  The choreographer moved to the back of the stage and the house lights dimmed as the lighting crew focused a spotlight on Jason and me. I’d warmed up in my dressing room with my voice coach, but being out there was a different ball game. Even at Jason’s ranch, I’d never given it my all. We were always strumming in his room, singing quietly and playing softly.

  It was finally time to put our hearts into it.

  …

  Later that night, LuAnne called me. I was in the middle of staring aimlessly into my refrigerator, hoping that dinner would magically make itself, when her name lit up my phone screen.

  “Lu? Is that you?” I asked, like an eighty-year-old. Side note: why do we still not trust caller ID?

  “Brooklyn! How are you? Did I catch you at a good time?”

  Her voice was so good to hear— it was almost as good as having her there in person. Almost.

  “Yes. Yes, what’s up? Is everything okay?” I’d given her my number before leaving Montana, but I hadn’t expected her to call to catch up so soon.

  “Everything is great,” she said. I listened to her feet shuffle across the floor before she spoke up again. “I’ve just been thinking about a few things, and I’m calling because I doubt Jason is going to give you the full story about his past. He’s so weird about things, never likes to admit that he’s a good man deep down. If his mama were still alive, she’d be calling you herself, so I’ll have to do it for her.”

  I frowned, trying to keep up. “What are you talking about LuAnne?”

  She sighed. “Just give me five minutes and I’ll explain it.”

  I took a seat on my sofa, happy that for once Cammie wasn’t at my condo. I settled in and LuAnne started her story, filling in pieces of Jason’s life that he may not have ever told me himself.

  “Jason and Kim were good friends growing up. They were both quiet, smart kids in a small town so it wasn’t a surprise that they got along well. After high school, Kim got pregnant by some boy from out of town. I don’t know all the details, but I do know that she went to Jason before she told anyone else about it. Apparently she was on her own with the baby. Big Timber isn’t the most progressive town and her parents were old fashioned. As you can probably guess, Jason wanted to help Kim. He loved her as a friend, so he did the right thing.

  “As far as the town knew, that baby belonged to Jason. They got married the summer before Lacy was born.”

  “That’s why he married Kim?”

  “Yep.”

  “So this was all way before his career took off?” I asked, trying to get the timeline straight in my head.

  “Years before.”

  My mouth hung open before I thought to ask a question. “What about the media? Why didn’t they ever find out he was married?”

  “Their marriage license is stuck in some file down in the Big Timber courthouse. I can’t remember the last time our town took kindly to media snooping around about Jason, especially after he got big.”

  “Didn’t he wear a wedding ring?” I asked.

  She sighed. “The second Jason went on tour, their rings went off. Jason didn’t want Kim and Lacy shoved into the spotlight, and Kim wanted the freedom that came with a bare ring finger.”

  LuAnne stayed silent as I tried to process the story.

  “I can’t believe Jason did all of that,” I said, still processing his past.

  “Exactly,” she said. “So maybe you should go easy on the guy.”

  I laughed, taken aback by her brazenness. “I will. Thanks for telling me all that, LuAnne.”

  “You’re welcome. Don’t call me back until you two have made up. I want some babies at this ranch.??
?

  My mouth dropped for the one-hundredth time since answering her phone call.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “So you and Jason are going to be friends again? Just like that?” Cammie asked as we sat in the limousine on the way to her college graduation. She looked stunning in a white sheath dress. Her dark brown hair was naturally wavy and sat beneath her graduation cap in an adorably dorky kind of way. Her navy graduation gown fell across her lap and she kept absentmindedly running her hand down the fabric. I knew she wouldn’t admit it, but that gown symbolized a lot of hard work for her.

  “No. We aren’t friends.”

  She narrowed her gaze on me. “The lady doth protest too much.”

  “Huh?”

  “You said no like someone who’s lying about saying no.”

  I gave her a pointed stare. “You watched ONE episode of Criminal Minds and now you think you can read people like a detective.”

  She shrugged and checked out her fingernails in a dramatic fashion. “I think I can. It’s a gift. For instance, I know that you still like Jason, dare I say, you even love him. And he isn’t a complete idiot, so he loves you, too.” She looked up at me. “There, how did I do?”

  I looked away, trying to concentrate on the scenery outside of the limousine window. “Terrible. You would make a horrible detective.”

  When we pulled up outside of her university’s stadium she moved toward the door of the limousine. But before she got out, she looked back at me and winked.

  “Just so you know, you’re a cute liar.”

  I flipped her the bird but she was climbing out and didn’t see it. Instead, a thin Asian man, with a giant camera hanging around his neck, peered into the limousine at that exact moment, placing himself on the receiving end of my crude gesture.

  “Oh God, I’m sorry,” I said, trying to clear up the situation, but the driver was already shutting the door. Whelp, there goes my Asian male fan base. All one of them.