Chapter 40
40
brONSON
S ince day one, Jordan Peck has always taken care of us.
So, it came as quite the shock to everyone when we woke up this morning and... she wasn’t there.
For the first time, Criminal Records was on their own.
August met us down in the hotel restaurant, slotting semi-seamlessly into Jordan’s usual duties of getting us prepared for our Boston show. I say semi because, while I knew my Jordan had something up her sleeve when she walked out on us with Christian Myers last night, the others did not.
They spent the morning and most of the afternoon in a panic. August did his best to soothe them and answer their questions, but he offered very little in details, sticking to the schedule Jordan left behind.
It’s show night.
And the show goes on, always.
That’s all it came down to, in the end. As much as we needed Jordan — and where the hell did Chrissy run off to? — we have a job to do. We’re going to do it.
At least, that’s what we said as Mac drove us to the venue tonight.
Twenty minutes before showtime, our feeds exploded with the latest Gossipa article.
SHAKE-UP AT MIDNITE!
PAUL MONROE’S SUGARY PLOT AGAINST CRIMINAL RECORDS EXPOSED!
“The recording provided to Gossipa by an anonymous source has been verified by insiders,” Addison reads aloud from her phone, sitting back on the dressing room couch with a wide-eyed Harvey by her side. “A source from Midnite Music has confirmed that Mr. Monroe was fired from his senior position at the company this evening, stating, ‘We trusted Paul to lead this company. To learn that he was willing to sell us out for personal gain is devastating.’” Addison blows a raspberry. “Damn.”
I smile, lightly tapping my drumstick against my knee as I tilt my folding chair back to touch the wall.
She did it. She actually fucking did it.
Jordan took down Paul Monroe.
“Save your sympathy,” Knox says as he adjusts his tie in the mirror. “Guy doesn’t deserve it.”
“New Midnite Music leadership says they’ll be ‘re-evaluating’ a few of his recent business decisions,” Addison skims out loud, then looks up at Harmony. “Keep an eye on your inbox, babe.”
“Yeah!” Knox grins. “Maybe we’ll get your contract back.”
Harmony paces silently by the door, her chin pinched between two fingers. “Maybe,” she says, seemingly far less giddy about the news than he is.
“As of posting, Sugar Sound has withdrawn their offer to Mr. Monroe, but has refused to comment,” Addison reads.
Jonah exhales hard. “That says everything, anyway,” he says from his seat on the opposite couch next to Katrina.
“Yeah,” Katrina says. “No kidding.”
“You thinking this was Logan?” Jonah asks Knox.
“Could be,” Knox answers. Satisfied with his look for the moment, he plops onto the vanity stool and faces us. “Who else had a grudge against Monroe?”
“We did,” Harvey says.
“They said it was an unnamed female voice on the tape,” Katrina says.
“And?” Knox asks.
“And...” She tilts her head, letting her sharp Benton eyes pierce deeply into her brother’s.
“What?” Knox scoffs. “No way.”
“No way what?” Harmony asks, pausing her pacing.
“I’m just saying,” Katrina says. “Jordan would have never left with Christian like that unless?—”
“But she did!” Knox argues. “You weren’t there, Kat. She walked out on us.”
To that, she looks at me sitting off to the side, tapping my leg with my stick. “What do you think, Bronson?” she asks.
They all look at me.
I say nothing.
“Yeah, Bron.” Knox bobs his head. “You’ve barely said a word since last night.”
Addison chortles. “That’s pretty standard.”
I shrug. It’s true.
“You know Jordan better than any of us do,” Knox says to me. Also true. “What gives?”
Jonah studies me closer. “You know something,” he says.
Knox arches a brow, seeing it, too. “Where’s Jordan, Bronson?”
I stay quiet, honestly enjoying this a little.
“August!” Knox barks at the open door.
A moment later, August appears in the doorway. “What is it, Knox?” he asks, out of breath and holding a clipboard in one hand.
“Where’s Jordan?”
Everyone looks at him, eager for his reply.
August blanches. “I don’t know,” he says.
“August.” Knox leans forward on his stool. “What do you know?”
“Nothing.”
“Where’s Jordan?”
“And Chrissy?” Jonah adds.
August swallows hard. “I dunno.”
“August,” Knox snaps.
“I don’t know!” August says again. “Okay? All they told me was to cover for them until they got back.”
“Got back from where?” Addison asks. “New York?”
August turns up his hands rather than answer yet again that he doesn’t know.
“Whatever,” Knox says, brushing it off. “It wasn’t them, anyway.”
“How do you know?” Katrina asks.
“Because Jordan would never do anything like this,” he says with a laugh. “She makes the rules. She doesn’t break them.”
I smile to myself.
“No,” Knox says definitively. “It’s far more likely that she ditched us for a fancy new contract in New York City, and the sooner we all accept that fact, the better.” He snorts. “Joke’s on her anyway, now that Monroe is out. You know, I bet any second now, she’s going to come crawling back and I think we should tell her where she can stick it.”
“Stick what, Knox?”
Knox startles, instantly standing off his stool as Jordan appears in the doorway. Dressed for show night in a tight pencil skirt and a silver blouse, she scans the room with a short smile.
Everyone reacts. Some stand up while others stiffen in the seats.
I sit still, quietly lowering my chair legs to the floor.
“Oh, thank god,” August says, deflating. “You’re back.”
“I’m back,” she says.
“Christina, too?”
“Uh, yeah.” Jordan pivots, one hand pointing back. “She’s talking to Roy over?—”
August doesn’t wait. He drops the clipboard into Jordan’s hands and bolts out of the room.
“… there,” Jordan murmurs before holding the clipboard by her side.
Knox clears his throat. “Hi, Jordan.”
“Hi,” she replies.
“Bye, Jordan,” he spits.
“Hold on,” Jonah says. “I wanna hear what she has to say.”
“Who cares what she has to say?”
Katrina raises her hand, prompting everyone else to do the same. Myself included.
Knox crosses his arms and glares.
“I’m sorry, Knox,” Jordan says as she takes out her phone. “I had to make it look convincing so Christian would take me to Monroe.”
With a tap of her thumb, an audio recording plays.
“Less Criminal Records means less Midnite Music. You remove Criminal Records and… it all comes down. Sure, they might stay afloat for a while with some barely legal pop princess or an aging old rockstar trying to reclaim his former glory, but they won’t recover. And if they do, well... Under my leadership, under our leadership, Sugar Sound will have already overtaken them. But for that to happen, I had to first find out how to bring Criminal Records crumbling down…”
I smile.
“So, it was you,” Katrina says over the audio. “You leaked the recording to Gossipa.”
“Not just that,” Addison says, impressed. “She got him to spill his shit to a microphone.”
“Actually,” Jordan says, grimacing as she taps to stop it. “Logan did the leaking.”
“Logan?” Jonah asks. “Really?”
Jordan nods. “Turns out, you and Addison were right, Jo. All I had to do was get him talking, and he dug his own grave.”
“Then…” Katrina says. “That’s it? It’s over?”
“Far from it,” Jordan replies with a sigh, but her eyes shimmer with excitement. “It’s gonna be a few days of phone calls and interview requests and sorry, no comment , but… yeah. Monroe is out.”
“And now we’re enemies with The Electrics again,” Harmony says.
“Nice while it lasted, I guess,” Addison says with a shrug.
“What about Christian?” Katrina asks.
Jordan exhales slowly. “We wish him the best,” she says stiffly.
Addison snorts. “Nice way of saying fuck that guy.”
We chuckle as Jordan shrugs.
“He thought he was doing what’s best for him,” she says. “Can’t fault that.”
Knox steps forward and everyone goes quiet. He slowly comes to a stop in front of Jordan and stares at her, standing only an inch taller with her in her heels.
“Knox,” she says, her eye contact warm. “I’m really sorry about what I said at the?—”
He throws his arms around her, nearly lifting her off the floor in a fierce bear hug. “Imnotworthy,” he says, his mouth smothered against her shoulder.
“What?” she asks.
Knox drops to his knees. “I’m not worthy,” he says louder. He performs a deep bow, his palms touching the floor in reverence.
Embarrassed and amused, Jordan takes a step back. “Knox, it’s?—”
“You are a total badass, Jordan.”
“It was no?—”
“I am truly grateful to know you and be a part of your life.”
“That’s... real sweet, Knox, but?—”
He snatches her ankle with one hand, stopping her from moving farther away. “Please don’t leave us again,” he says. “August is awful.”
August pokes his head through the door. “Hey!”
Knox offers him an apologetic head bob, but doesn’t take it back.
Jordan smiles. “I won’t, Knox,” she says. “I told you before that I never even considered the offer. I meant that.”
Knox hops up and throws his arms around her again. “I love you, Jordan,” he says.
“I love you, too, Knox.”
The others step toward them. I stand up, too, and make my way over to add to the massive group hug wrapping around Jordan’s petite form.
“We love you, Jordan.”
“Can’t believe you did that.”
“Thank you, Jordan.”
“You’re amazing, girl!”
“Okay,” she says, strained, her head angled upward for air. “Okay. I love you guys, too.”
I release the group first and step back. One-by-one, the others drop the hug. As they all step back, Jordan sniffs, discreetly swallowing tears as she looks around.
“Well?” she says. “Did I miss shot time?”
“Nope!” Jonah says, already reaching for the bottle of bourbon as Katrina shuffles over to grab the stack of paper cups sitting beside it. “You’re just in time.”
We each fill our cups and stand in the usual circle, but there’s something unusual about this time. The air tingles around us; a warm bond that’s suddenly stronger than before.
We’re a family.
And nothing could ever break us apart.
“Three!” Katrina says, beginning the countdown.
“Two!” Addison says.
“One!” Jonah says.
“It’s shot time!”
We toss back our shots. The warm liquid tingles my throat as I make eye contact with Jordan across the circle and, almost instantly, I feel it rush toward my head as well.
Nothing could ever break us apart.
Except maybe… one thing.
“All right,” Jordan says, raising her clipboard. “Let’s table the rest for now. I promise I’ll tell you all the details later, but now we have a show. Harvey.” She nods at him. “You’ve got a crowd to warm up for us.”
“On my way,” he says, breaking off from the circle with Addison, who follows him out of the room.
And just like that, we sink into our pre-show rituals. Knox and Harmony step off to the side, whispering sweet whatever to each other as she subtly adjusts his tie so it looks good. Jonah picks up his acoustic and sits down to tune it at the last minute while Katrina continues her vocal warm-ups.
I walk out of the dressing room to find a quiet corner to stand in, my drumsticks pinched lightly in my fingers.
“Bronson?”
I pause, her voice like a bullhorn behind me. Turning around, I watch as Jordan follows me out of the dressing room, her clipboard held against her chest.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” she asks.
I nod and we shift off to the side to stay out of the way of the crew, still rushing to finish preparations.
“I just, um…” She pauses, taking a quick breath. “I just wanted to say thank you for… well, for punching Christian Myers in the face.”
I raise my brows, surprised.
“Don’t do it again, obviously,” she adds with a smile. “But, just between you and me, I appreciate that you have my back. You always have and I’ve always… liked that.”
I smile, too. “You’re welcome.” Swallowing hard, I say, “Last night.”
“Last night?” she asks.
“You and Christian left together,” I say. “He didn’t try anything, did he?”
“Oh, no,” she says. “I mean, he wanted something to happen, but I faked a few tears. Said I wasn’t ready yet.” She shrugs. “He bought it. Couldn’t get away from me fast enough, actually.”
I nod casually, pretending like that’s not the best damn news I’ve ever heard. “Good. I wouldn’t want another reason to break his nose.”
Jordan smiles at that, then clears her throat. “Anyway, uh… You got my signal, right?”
“Yeah,” I answer. “The pen?”
“Good!” She exhales, relieved. “Good. Because I didn’t want the band to worry, but… it kinda seems like they didn’t know what was really going on?”
“I didn’t tell them.”
She pauses, curious. “Why not?”
“Well, I didn’t want Knox shooting his mouth off and wrecking whatever you were planning.”
“Right.” She grins. “Yeah, I guess that’s always a possibility.”
We chuckle.
“And...” I shrug. “I kinda like it when we have secrets between us.”
Jordan looks down, but her lips curl upward. “I like it, too.” When she looks up again, she looks at me the way she does when we’re alone. “Listen, Bronson, about our little secret. I, um… I told Christian in New York that I couldn’t be with someone I can’t trust. I believe friends should always be honest with each other and I don’t want to lie to you, so… here goes.”
I say nothing, hanging on every syllable.
She takes a breath. “The last few weeks have been great. We’re really great together, Bronson, and I want to thank you for being there for me. It means a lot to me, probably more than you realize. But I think it’s a good thing that we broke things off when we did because I...” She hesitates, but never breaks eye contact with me. “I’ve developed feelings for you.”
I say nothing.
I don’t even breathe.
“You don’t have to say anything,” she says. “I know you don’t feel the same way about me. I know it was just sex for you. And that’s fine! That’s great, even! But as fun as our time together has been, I can’t keep doing it. It would just be too weird, I think.”
I nod slowly, my throat clenching.
“I’d like to go back to the way things were between us. Just friends. Because you are and always have been my best friend. You mean so much to me, Bronson. I’d rather have you in my life as my friend than not at all, so... And don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll get over this crush eventually and it’ll be like it never happened. That’s all it is, I think. Just a crush.”
Jordan leans forward and kisses my cheek.
I stand still, my heart pounding hard against my ribs.
Say being just friends isn’t enough for you, either.
Say you want to be with her, too.
Say something.
Jordan smiles, the weight of the words now lost from her shoulders. “Anyway,” she says, stepping back. “I’ll leave you to finish getting ready. Sounds like a good crowd out there tonight.”
Say it wasn’t just sex.
Say you love her, too.
Say something, dammit!
Jordan turns around, her clipboard tucked safely in her arm as she heads toward the wings, Harvey’s set just moments away now.
She takes my heart with her as she goes. And I… I… fuck!
Use your words, Bronson.
“Jordan.”