Chapter 27
Still Alice
Two days later, and I was still chasing that opportunity to talk to Noah. Yesterday we’d sat down with Tyler and showed him what we had.
And he’d officially offered to rep us!
Despite our plan being to wait and do it on our own, this was too good of an opportunity to pass up. The contract had our dream terms as far as we could tell. But we had to find a lawyer to represent us and read through any contract first, so it wasn’t official -official. I’d tried to pin down Noah to tell him about it yesterday, but he had another guy bonding day—this time it was paintball. Something about retribution and all-time glory. I was happy he was finally clicking with his guys again. I was just bummed that I had this news that I still hadn’t told him.
And it was definitely a face-to-face deal. I couldn’t just text him news this big.
The next time I saw him was during church while we were surrounded by everyone.
And then it hit me how ridiculous I was being. I hadn’t seen my boyfriend in three days, but I couldn’t tackle hug him because I’d made such a big deal about us being on the downlow.
I was going to do it the minute soundcheck was over.
I was a professional, after all.
Despite the play shoving match I was currently having with Grady.
“Dude, you’re kinda ripe,” I stage-whispered to my friend. “Did you forget to put on deodorant today? I have some in my locker you can use if you want.”
Grady paused for a second then playfully pushed my shoulder. “Sure, thanks. I mean, if it’s strong enough to battle your B.O…”
I laughed and shoved him back. “Screw you. I smell like a fresh summer field, thank you very much.”
“My point exactly.” Grady muffled his laughter and stood a little closer to me than he had before. Probably to smell my lovely scent.
“Alice!” Lark screeched from backstage. “Alice!”
My blood froze. She sounded so freaked out. Panicked.
I turned and ran toward her screaming.
“Alice! Holy shit. Alice!” Lark ran down the hall toward me, waving her cell phone in one hand. “Oh my god, Alice. You will never believe what your asshole ex did!”
I stopped running and clutched my chest. She was fine. No visible blood, but there was the promise of blood to come, judging by the fury coming off her in waves. “You’re okay? You’re not hurt?”
“What?” She stopped in front of me, panting and still waving her phone. “No, I’m fine. Look at this!”
I ignored her phone and sighed heavily. “Thank god. You freaked me out! I thought someone was trying to kill you or something.”
“Oh, someone’s gonna die, and it’ll be your asshole ex-boyfriend. We ride at dawn.”
I grabbed Lark’s arm and shuffled to the side of the hallway as someone came through with a dolly loaded with boxes of merch. “Okay, what’s going on?”
“Look! I mean listen to this!” Lark stabbed a finger at her phone and suddenly music echoed through the hallway.
It only took me a second to recognize my song ‘ Lost Boys ,’ only it wasn’t us singing it. I recognized Parker’s voice then Brandon’s voice. “They stole our fucking song? Where is this playing?”
“It’s all over radio and streaming. They’ve released it. They released our song.”
“What the fuck!” I clicked on the credits and read with disbelief. He listed himself as the writer. By Parker Webb.
“What’s going on?” Noah popped up next to me with Chase at his side. “Hey, isn’t that your song?”
“Yes.” Lark grabbed her phone out of my hands and shoved it in Noah’s face. “Parker fucking Webb stole it and his stupid band released it as theirs.”
“Whoa.” Chase looked as shellshocked as I felt.
It was like an out-of-body experience. I was hearing the lyrics I’d written, only I wasn’t singing them. And neither was Lark. Sure, they’d tweaked a few of the lines. It wouldn’t really make sense for them to sing the song from the woman’s point of view. But it was still my song.
Stolen. Again.
“How could he do this again?” I shoved a hand through my hair. I might’ve tugged just to make sure I was awake, and this wasn’t all just a weird dream.
“Wait, again?” Chase asked. “What are you talking about?”
Lark cocked a hip. “Alice wrote their whole debut album. Only Parker got his panties in a wad when she started getting attention. Parker didn’t like the idea of playing second fiddle to Alice’s awesomeness, so he convinced the rest of the group to kick her out before they signed with their label. And he kept all her songwriting notebooks and music since they’d been living together. She didn’t get one credit or a single penny from all the work she’d done. And now he’s doing it again.”
“Holy shit.” Chase turned to Noah. “Did you know about this?”
“I knew about the earlier shit, but not this latest song.”
Dimly I could hear Chase, Noah, and Lark talking, but between the blood whooshing in my ears and the sinking sensation in my chest, it was amazing that I was still standing.
“Tyler! Get our lawyer on the phone,” Chase shouted down the hall.
“What’s going on now?” Tyler popped up behind Chase.
My eyes darted between Tyler and Noah, and I whimpered as my literal nightmare played out in front of me. The best and worst things ever to happen to me were colliding in real time.
“They should call their own lawyer.” Tyler turned to Lark. “Who do you guys have looking over the contract?”
“Contract?” Noah repeated.
“Yeah. I offered to represent the Monarchs. But we’re still negotiating the contract.” He turned back to Lark. “I have to say though, this whole song stealing news is concerning. Do you guys have proof that you wrote the song?”
I could feel the weight of Noah’s gaze on me as I stepped forward. But I couldn’t bear to look at him and see his disappointment that I’d kept this from him. I should’ve found a way to tell him sooner. “I have all my notebooks and music sheets at home, and I registered the copyright before we even sang the song in public—months ago. So there’s no way Parker can claim it’s his. I wrote it.”
“That’ll go a long way toward the lawsuit you all should file.” Tyler sent me a sympathetic smile. “But you should act fast. Get your lawyer on the phone and have her file against them ASAP.”
“And your offer of representation?” I asked with my heart in my throat. “Has that been rescinded? Or paused?”
“Absolutely not.” Tyler scoffed. “I still want to sign your group. Because as horrible as this bullshit is, we can use it to springboard your launch. I predict we’ll have labels calling left and right to sign the group so good that Alien Attraction stole from them.”
Chase grinned and slapped Tyler on the back. “That’s the shark we’ve all come to know and mostly love.”
“Lark, can you—”
She cut me off, “Already on it.”
Lark walked away to talk on her phone, presumably to our lawyer, and I turned to Noah.
“Surprise.” I waved weakly with lame spirit fingers. “I’ve been trying to talk to you since it happened, but Tyler came to our show two days ago and—”
“I know.” Noah smiled sadly as he shook his head. “We talked about it at laser tag. It was Xander’s idea, actually. He thought you were good and told Tyler he should check you guys out.”
“Oh.”
“And I agreed,” Noah rushed to explain. “I would’ve brought it up to him sooner, but you were being all weird about people knowing about us. I didn’t want to rock the boat, I guess.”
“Right. I, uh, one of the things I’ve been trying to talk to you the last few days was us.”
“Oh.” Noah’s face shut down and he leaned back with his hands shoved in his pockets.
“No. No! Not that. I just mean…I’ve been thinking about us and the whole secret thing. I was being ridiculous. You’re an amazing man, and I’m proud to say that you’re mine.”
Then I squealed as Noah all but tackled me. His arms came around me, and then he was kissing me. And I kissed him back.
“Uh, guys?” Jesse said behind us.
Noah kept kissing me. My cheeks heated with my blush, but I didn’t make him stop. Noah clearly needed this public claiming, and I was going to let him have it…as long as he didn’t get too out of control.
After another minute of kissing, Noah pulled back and looked down at me. “You’re fucking fantastic, and I’m proud to call you mine too.”
“Noah.” I melted. It was good his arms were still around me because suddenly my knees were weak. “Is there a storage closet around here?”
“Right, uh, you guys?” Jesse laughed. “I can speak from personal experience that storage closet encounters can get messy. And awkward for your coworkers. Especially since we all know you’re together now.”
I groaned and buried my face in Noah’s chest. Of course they heard that. It was no big deal. I just wasn’t ever going to be able to look either man in the face again.
“Also, we all kinda guessed about this a while ago,” Chase drawled. “You two weren’t exactly as secretive as you think you were.”
“Oh yeah.” Jesse laughed. “Anyone looking at the two of you could tell you were fucking.”
“That’s hilarious coming from you.” Chase poked Jesse’s side.
Yup, it was official. I was never going to be able to look at any of them again.
“Right. Could you all cool it?” Noah asked, his chest rumbling against my ear with his deep voice. “Not everyone is as free and open as you two.”
“Hey, we’ve never been in a devil’s threeway.” Jesse scoffed. “Can you say the same, princess?”
Noah growled. “Are you trying to get me into trouble with my lady?”
Oh. I blinked a few times as I absorbed this new information.
“Asshole,” Chase bit out followed by a smacking sound.
“Ow.”
“What’s going on?” Xander’s voice joined in. “Shouldn’t we be doing church right now?”
“Yup. I’m late.” I gave Noah a squeeze then popped out of his embrace and gave the group a general wave. “Gotta finish setting up. You all…as you were…”
And then I booked it down the hall, embarrassed to my core over that whole exchange. I definitely couldn’t look any of them in the face again for a long while.
But I’d have to eventually, since they were my boyfriend’s best friends.
My boyfriend. Noah Hawker was officially my boyfriend.
My embarrassment turned to glee. And I was happy as I got back to setting up.