Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
KAYLEE
Iwas in my bedroom sewing together the last few pieces of my repurposed dress when the doorbell rang. My heart spiked with nerves. I put down the fabric, attempting to avoid pricking my finger on the needle and failing. I winced at the sharp jab, both in my finger and my chest.
I’d known it was coming. As much as the band had tried to keep our address a secret (no one wanted crazed fans showing up on their doorstep), I’d known that my mom would somehow figure out where I lived.
I’d had a feeling she would show up on my doorstep the moment I’d hung up on her.
I’d just hoped it wouldn’t be this soon.
I heaved myself off the bed and padded downstairs on bare feet, squaring my shoulders and putting on an impassive face before I opened the front door.
My heart, which had dropped to my toes, began to soar.
“Micah!” I cried joyfully, wrapping my arms around his middle and snuggling my face into his chest. “I missed you.” It had only been a week, but our separation, and the subsequent radio silence, had felt like months, and this unexpected visit lifted my spirits like nothing else could. He must have been ready to talk.
I pulled back from his arms and looked up at him.
“I’m happy you’re here, but why didn’t you text that you were coming over?” I asked.
Micah was looking straight forward at a spot above my head. His arms stayed at his sides, not returning my hug. His face was as impassive as I’d tried to make mine before I’d opened the door. My soaring heart plummeted back down to the ground.
Had he changed his mind about staying together? Had he thought things through and decided he couldn’t get over our disagreement after all?
I slowly eased back from our one-sided embrace.
If Micah didn’t want to be in a relationship with me anymore… and if the band broke up for good…
Despair threatening to pull me down like quicksand, but before I could flounder Micah spoke.
“I got a call from your mom,” he said flatly.
My eyes grew wide. Oh crap. What had my mom done now? Had she decided to go after Micah, now that I’d cut her off? That was just the kind of thing she would do.
“Micah, I’m sorry,” I told him sincerely. “I told my mom off and hung up on her. I knew she was going to be mad, but I didn’t think she would start harassing you next.”
“Is that why you’re sorry?” Micah asked. He finally met my gaze. “Because your mom is harassing me?”
The look in his dark eyes scared me more than any conversation I’d ever had with my mom. They were full of anger, pain and disbelief. What had my mom said to him, to turn those usually so loving eyes into this maelstrom?
Then it hit me.
My mom had told him.
I closed my eyes briefly and sighed.
I’d been seventeen when we’d gotten our first recording contract. The others had all signed. Because I was underage, I needed a parent to sign for me. But I’d left home at sixteen to move in with the band. I’d cut off all contact with my mom by then.
“Are you sorry for anything else?” Micah bit out. He never used that tone of voice with me. “Can you think of something else you might be sorry for?”
I let a breath out through my nose and lowered my gaze to the floor. I’d worried he wouldn’t understand why I’d done it. I’d hoped that, if he ever eventually found out, he would come around to supporting my decision. That he would realize I’d done the right thing.
“So she told you?” I asked, looking back up. “What did she say?”
Micah’s jaw muscles were visibly working as he clenched and unclenched his teeth.
“You forged your mother’s signature on our recording contract,” Micah said, his voice a low hiss.
I looked him in the eye.
“Yes,” I said. “I did.”
His eyes blazed in a way I’d never seen before. There was no passion, just fury.
“Do you know what you did?” Micah burst out, his biting tone now turning to enraged. “Our contract is null and void. It has no legal standing. It’s a completely worthless piece of paper!”
“I—”
“Do you even understand the consequences here?” Micah seethed.
“You—”
“Not to mention that forging a signature is illegal,” he stressed, continuing to speak over me before I could say a word. “People get sued for pulling this sort of shit. People go to jail!”
“It—”
“They can sue you and make you pay back every penny they’ve ever given us,” Micah ranted. “They can press charges and get you arrested.”
“Micah.” I said his name firmly to stop his tirade, and forced myself to remain calm in the face of his growing wrath, despite my rapidly beating heart. “The label’s not going to sue me or put me in jail. You’re thinking in worse case scenarios again.”
“Did you even think about the band at all?” Micah demanded, running a hand through his hair roughly and completely ignoring what I’d said. “That contract is meaningless. What do you think the label is going to do when they find out?”
“They don’t have to find out,” I said. “No one needs to let them know.”
“Tell that to your mother!”
It felt as if a vice had grabbed ahold of my heart and was slowly squeezing, bleeding it dry. I swallowed hard as a flutter of panic took wing in my stomach.
“Did she say she was going to tell them?” I asked.
“Not outright, but she heavily implied it,” Micah said. “And I wouldn’t put it past that woman.”
I’d had months to think about this, years even. I’d been thinking, and worrying, and wondering about what my mom might do from the very day I first signed those papers.
“I don’t think she will,” I said. “She knows that it’s the only leverage she has against me. If she tells them and they drop us, her cash cow is gone. She wouldn’t risk that.”
“I don’t think you understand,” Micah said, seemingly frustrated that I wasn’t as worked up as him.
“It’s not about the money anymore. You told her to fuck off.
You pushed back against her, you stood up to her, and it pissed her off.
Now I think she just wants to hurt you, like she’s done a hundred time before.
” Micah pinned me down with a glare. “But this time her ammunition is literally explosive. She could blow up our lives if she wanted to, and I think right now that’s exactly what she wants to do. ”
“Yes, exactly,” I said, nodding emphatically. “She just wants to hurt me. She’s always hurt me. She’s hurt me my whole life. What do you think she would have done if I’d asked her to sign that contract? What do you think she would have done if we gave her any power or say over the band?”
“She—”
Now it was my turn to cut off Micah.
“She would have made outlandish requests and refused to sign if the label didn’t meet them.
” I began ticking off each statement on my fingers.
“She would have gained complete control over my work and my finances. She would have forced us put in ridiculous stipulations that only benefit her. She would have had control over the future of our entire music career!”
Now I was the one getting mad and shouting.
Micah might have been upset with what I’d done, but I hadn’t done it impulsively. I’d thought about it, weighed the consequences, and decided it was worth it.
But Micah didn’t agree, and now he was pissed, just like I’d known he would be.
I inhaled a slow, deep breath to calm myself down. We didn’t need to both be worked up and on edge while having this conversation.
“You’ve seen what she’s capable of,” I said.
“You of all people should understand. You know how she treated me. You were there to see it first hand. You were there to hold me every time I cried.” My voice threatened to falter.
“You know exactly what she would have done if she had that kind of power over me. Over us. It was better for everyone to keep her out of it.”
“By illegally forging her signature,” Micah said with a scowl.
“Yes,” I said. “Sometimes you have to bend the rules.”
The fact that I was unrepentant seemed to upset Micah as much as the actual deed.
He took in a deep breath and tilted his head back to look up at the ceiling, which meant the gears in his head were turning.
I waited quietly, letting him parse his thoughts.
“Why didn’t you come to me?” he asked eventually, the pure anger shifting to a kind of betrayed, wounded look.
“Why didn’t you ask me for help? My parents could have done something, figured something out.
We could have had you emancipated. Or gotten you a legal guardian. We could have done something!”
“Do you remember what happened the day after the label emailed us all the contract?” I asked. “That was the day your dad was admitted into the hospital with respiratory issues.”
Micah drew in a sharp breath. I looked him in the eyes. I didn’t need to remind him what had followed. He knew well enough.
“You had your own problems,” I said. “Your family didn’t need to deal with mine on top of that. It was better for everyone that I did it my way.”
“Better?” Micah snorted. “How is jeopardizing all of our music careers better?”
“At least this way we actually have a music career!” I shouted, shocking him into silence.
We stood there in the foyer of our mansion, the mansion our music royalties had bought, just staring at each other.
“I can’t believe you would do something like that,” Micah finally said quietly.
“And I can’t believe you don’t understand why I did it,” I said.
“I do understand why you would want to,” he replied. “But that doesn’t mean you should have.”
That vice in my chest continued to squeeze painfully. Was this another one of those differences in core values? Another hurdle we couldn’t get past?
“What are you going to do now?” I asked him. “Tell the label? Tell the band?”
Micah looked away and made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know whether it’s better to get ahead of this or call your mom’s bluff. I need to think.”
“We should do whatever’s best for the band,” I said.
Micah let out a displeased huff through his nose and looked back at me with a narrow-eyed glance as he turned to leave the mansion.
“I think you’ve done enough.”