Chapter Seventeen
CHASE
The Next Morning
Today’s trip to the office had nothing to do with work and everything to do with avoiding the chaos of last night.
The office never sleeps because it’s not your typical Monday through Friday, nine-to-five job.
We deal with rock royalty, and they don’t stick to business hours, so we need to be available to them twenty-four-seven.
I’m in today to keep my mind active and try to gain some semblance of normalcy.
I didn’t sleep a wink, so I’m sure I look like hell, but honestly, I couldn’t give a shit.
Sitting at my desk, I stare down at my phone, flipping it once between my fingers before setting it screen-up like it’s daring me to hit call.
I told Lyric I’d reach out today, and it’s already pushing eleven.
No point in waiting. I unlock it, scroll to her name, and tap the screen before I give myself a chance to overthink it.
The line starts to ring, and a low pulse begins behind my ribs while my jaw ticks. Every second she doesn’t answer tightens the pressure in my chest like a vice.
I hate this—hate that I gave her a reason to doubt me.
That I handed her every excuse to disappear.
At least her number still works—that’s something. It’s a thread I can hold onto, even if it’s fraying. I lean forward, elbows on my desk, staring at my phone, willing the call to go through.
But the line clicks over to voicemail.
Her silence is loud.
Deliberate.
“Shit,” I mutter, dragging a hand through my hair, the weight of it all sinking into my shoulders. I close my eyes for a beat, then glance back down at the phone, thumb hovering as I exhale through my nose, slow and sharp, trying to shove down the frustration clawing at my throat.
She’s screening me.
Can’t blame her.
Not after the shit I pulled.
But I’m not giving up that easy.
I open the text app, thumb still tense, already searching for words that might break through the wall I helped her build.
Me: I’m not giving up on us.
I stare at the screen, waiting, barely breathing.
My pulse kicks up the second the little bubble shifts from delivered to read, and my chest tightens.
Every second that passes without a response feels like a deliberate punishment, but I keep hoping she’s just thinking. Crafting a reply. Letting me sweat.
But the reply never comes.
She read it and chose silence.
Now she’s ghosting me.
And the worst part? I fucking deserve it.
I rake a hand down my face, rubbing hard against my jaw to keep from slamming my phone across the room. And as if to break me from my own internal ruin, footsteps stomp down the hall, and my door swings open without so much as a knock.
“Have you sealed the deal yet?” My father’s voice barrels in like a wrecking ball, full of arrogance and zero awareness.
I look up slowly, my jaw clenching. The urge to tell him to ‘go fuck himself’ simmers right behind my tongue, but before I can even speak, he keeps going.
“Jesus, son. You look like shit. Pour yourself another drink. It’ll take the edge off whatever little soap opera’s going on over there.
” He gestures vaguely in my direction, like the aftermath of my relationship, my life, is just a mild inconvenience to him.
I flip my phone face down on the desk and push back in my chair, the weight of my father’s indifference pressing hard on my shoulders. My chest still hasn’t unclenched, and my skin’s hot with humiliation and fury.
He ruined everything.
And now he’s standing here pretending like it was nothing.
Like Lyric and I were nothing!
Still sitting in my chair as I look up at him, I need to press him about last night.
About why the fuck he was even there in the first damn place.
“You never said why you were looking for Dax and me last night,” I grind out, watching him carefully, trying to keep my voice steady even though every nerve in my body is frayed to hell.
He straightens his jacket like the question’s beneath him, puffing his chest as if he’s getting ready to take the podium at a board meeting. “Oh, like I can remember that now.”
My teeth grind together. Of course, he can’t remember. Because for him, this is just another day. Another manipulation. Another wreckage left in his wake for someone else to clean up.
I lean forward, elbows on my armrests, fists clenched.
And for the first time, I realize that maybe Lyric was right to walk away.
I rise slowly from my chair, every muscle taut, my jaw clenched so hard it’s starting to ache.
The anger rises, deep and molten, bubbling beneath the surface of my skin.
My eyes lock on his, and when I speak, my voice is low and sharp, the edge of it honed from months of swallowing lies.
“After what I did for you, after what I gave up, what I lost, you don’t get to lie to me. ”
His expression falters, just for a beat. That polished, smug mask he wears every day at the head of his empire slips, and beneath it, there’s something real. Something he knows damn well he can’t bury, not with me. Not with the son who carried the cost of his mistakes.
He shifts his weight, the bravado shrinking. His gaze meets mine, but this time it doesn’t challenge, it concedes.
Because he knows.
He fucking knows.
And we both remember exactly what it cost me.
His eyes narrow, and he sighs. “I was across the street, eating dinner. Had a clear view through the front window. I watched you the entire night.”
Time stops, and the air vanishes from my lungs, sharp and sudden like I’ve been sucker punched. “You watched me?” My voice is low, almost guttural, grinding against the back of my throat like gravel. I take a staggering step back, my heart thudding as if it’s trying to break out of my chest.
I rake a hand through my hair, every muscle in my body screaming with the need to punch a wall or rip something apart. My skin crawls like I’ve been exposed, like every fucking vulnerable moment I shared with Lyric wasn’t mine at all.
It was his.
Observed, judged, and weaponized.
“You sat there like a fucking puppet master, pulling strings while I made a fool of myself. While I introduced her to my friends, while I let her in, when I told her I fucking l-loved her!” My voice cracks, but I don’t stop.
“Jesus, Dad.” My hands clench into fists, trying to breathe through the fury and the bone-deep shame.
“You sat there and watched me as if it were a show. Like I’m your fucking entertainment.
” My chest heaves as I point toward the window, still feeling his gaze crawling over my shoulders.
“You violated something real. You don’t get to watch me fall in love and then try to monetize it! ”
He exhales, seemingly unfazed by my outpouring of emotions. “Lyric is talented,” he says with a shrug, like that’s supposed to justify any of it.
I snort out a semblance of a laugh. “She’s not a damn product, Dad.
She’s not some acquisition to be scouted and pitched and profited off.
She’s the first person I’ve been real with—” I cut myself off, swallowing the lump in my throat, the one that knows this whole thing was never going to end in anything but disaster.
He holds my stare. And for once, there’s no challenge in his eyes, no smirk on his lips, just silence. The kind that says he’s not proud of what he did, but he’d do it again if it meant there’d be a deal on the table.
I take a step forward, heat pounding through my veins, my voice rough with disbelief. “I put my life on the line for you. I gave up everything. My name. My freedom. And you repay me by circling Lyri like a vulture the second you smell opportunity?”
“I did what needed to be done,” he says, his tone hardening. “That’s how this business works, son.”
“No!” I bark, my voice slicing through the air like a blade. “That’s how you operate. You lie, you manipulate, and you justify it all in the name of business. But I am the one drowning in the wreckage while you keep your hands clean.”
His mouth stays shut. Not because he’s out of things to say, but because for the first time, he knows I won’t buy a single line of his bullshit.
I step back, trying to hold my shit together as everything in me threatens to implode. “I don’t know what kind of man that makes you,” I rasp, the ache in my chest pulsing like a second heartbeat. “But I know what kind of man it’s making me. And I hate him!”
The silence stretches, thick and damning.
And then it shifts.
Because something’s just not adding up.
I level a hard stare on him as the pieces of this fucked up puzzle start clicking into place. “You didn’t just stumble into that bar last night to Joe Goldberg me, did you?” My voice lowers, sharp and dangerous.
Dad rolls his eyes. “Calling me a serial killer stalker now? A bit extreme, don’t you think—”
“You knew she’d be singing…” I narrow my eyes on him, “… because someone tipped you off.” I stiffen, my stomach turning, because I already see where this is going.
The slow twist of the knife, straight into my back.
His eyes flicker, barely, but it’s enough to know that I’m right.
My voice tightens. “Tell me!” My voice rises higher, a clear warning this time.
“Fine,” he mutters, the word scraping out of him as if it burns. “Dax told me about the girl. He said you were seeing someone and mentioned that you told him she had the voice of an angel. He mentioned you were going for drinks at a karaoke bar, and that if she sang, he’d give me the heads-up.”
The admission hits me like a sucker punch to the ribs.
My breath shudders out of me, fury tightening my chest. I turn away before I do something I regret. I run my fingers through my hair, gripping hard, tugging until it hurts, anything to channel the storm inside me somewhere that isn’t into him.
“You’re saying Dax, my best friend, the one person who swore he had my back, handed you a goddamn playbook on her and told you when to show up?”