Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Her phone buzzed before she reached the bar. Grant’s name filled the screen.
“Morning,” she answered. “Tell me you slept.”
“I did,” he said. “Better news than yesterday. Summit asked for an expedited call. Executive direction to resolve. Their words.”
Tony set a mug by her elbow, and she put the call on speaker.
“Tony's here, Grant. Timeline?”
“Ten minutes,” Grant said. “I want you both on. I'll cover the teeth. You keep the edges straight.”
“We're ready,” she said.
Tony slid onto the next stool and opened his notebook. “Straight edges are our specialty.”
They pulled up the draft from last night and highlighted the key ideas. Ownership. Masters. Artwork. All files. All metadata. No carve-outs. She wrote it again at the top of her pad in block letters and underlined it twice.
The conference tone sounded in her ear. A new voice joined the line, lower than yesterday’s counsel.
“This is Martin,” he said. “General Counsel. Vivian is on another matter; I am speaking for the company.”
“Grant Parks,” Grant said. “I have Carlene and Tony with me.”
“Thank you for joining,” Martin said. No small talk. “We will not drag this out. Our view is that the relationship is no longer productive. In the interest of de-escalation, Summit will walk away from the contract.”
Tony lifted his brows at her. She kept her face flat and her pen steady.
Grant did not blink. “Define ‘walk away.’”
“Immediate termination,” Martin said. “We will stop marketing, stop the release. You can handle your own recording and touring. In exchange, you release Summit from all claims. And you pay for the recording time we've put into the album.”
Carlene spoke before Grant did. “On termination, rights revert to the band. That includes the album recordings, all stems, session files, ISRCs issued to date, and any art files created while under contract. We will need written confirmation that you will not reuse or exploit any stills, audio, or copy from our livestream.”
“That is a significant ask,” Martin said.
“You offered to walk,” she said. “Walking means you do not keep our shoes.”
Tony bit back a laugh. Grant let the silence hold.
Martin tried a new angle. “We invested in studio time and staff. We need a credit.”
“Not if we reimburse you,” Grant said. “If you need restitution for expenses, state a number and identify the invoices. We will review.”
“Expenses are not a barrier,” Martin said. “We want to exit cleanly.”
“Good,” Carlene said. “Then the deliverables are clear. Send the termination and the transfer of rights in one document, along with an invoice for the studio time. Our approval over the public statement remains.”
Martin exhaled into the line. “You do not need us. Consider this a warning shot.”
She let the sentence sit. “Consider it received. Consider ours returned. We are thrilled.” She softened the word as it left her mouth. “We are resolved.”
Grant steadied the sides. “We will need three things in the agreement. One, mutual non-disparagement. Two, a covenant that Summit will remove all references to the band from owned channels within twenty-four hours, excluding the neutral statement we approve. Three, a warranty that you have not licensed the material to third parties and will not.”
“Agreed in concept,” Martin said. He cleared his throat. “For appearances, we would like the joint statement to indicate a mutual decision.”
Carlene wrote the sentence as she spoke it. “We can live with mutually agreed to part ways. No language assigning fault. No language implying a breach.”
“We will draft now,” Martin said. “You will have it within the hour.”
“Send the assets transfer list separately,” she said. “We will confirm completeness. When we verify, we will sign.”
“We will do so,” he said. “Good day.”
The line clicked off. Grant stayed.
Tony leaned back on the stool and exhaled in one long ribbon. “Well, that happened.”
Carlene stared at the word she had written at the top of the page. Ownership. She circled it once, slowly, so she would remember this feeling later when the work got heavy again.
Grant broke the quiet. “I will push them to include the asset schedule with the draft. If they stall, we will put it into a condition precedent.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I will keep our statement short.”
“Short and dull,” Grant said. “Dull wins days like this.”
He hung up. Tony tapped his pen on the wood. “They thought ‘walk away’ would scare us.”
She chuckled. “That's what I think too. It freed us.” She closed the pad and stood. “Should we go tell everyone?”
Tony grinned like a kid on Christmas and jogged toward the studio. Through the glass, she saw him wave an arm and point at the door. Axel stepped back from his kit. Sean unstrapped his guitar. Jami reached for the handle and found her eyes first.
He crossed the barn in five long strides. “You need me?”
“You'll all want to hear this.”
She held his hand when she said it out loud as the band members gathered around. “Summit is terminating the contract. Complete reversion. All files, all rights. We approve the statement. We're done.”
He went perfectly still, then laughed once, sharp and surprised. “You're not joking.”
“No.” Her throat tightened on the single word.
Sean whooped behind him. Axel clacked sticks together, then picked up Maddyn, and covered her mouth with his. Tony grabbed Livia in a hug that shook them both.
Jami reached for her waist and lifted her the way people do only when they forget that gravity is a thing. She linked her hands behind his neck and didn't care who watched. When he set her down, he pressed his forehead to hers. His voice was a rasp. “We own our music.”
“You own your music,” she said. “Say it again in your head until your bones know it.”
He kissed her once, quickly, then spun toward the others. “We own our music.”
Axel grinned. “And we book our tour.”
Tony said. “I already have three venues I can call.”
“Call them,” Jami said, already reaching for his phone. “But wait for the paper before you confirm.”
Carlene set her laptop on the bar and opened a new document titled Separation, Clean.
She built a checklist while the barn buzzed.
Deliverables. Stems. Masters. ISRCs. Artwork.
Session logs. Transfer letter to platforms. Confirmation of takedowns.
She left a blank line for the one thing she did not want to forget and wrote it last.
Silence after posting. Let the music speak.
Her email pinged. Martin’s draft arrived with a second attachment labeled Asset Schedule.
She skimmed the agreement and clicked the schedule.
File names, dates, studio logs, exports.
Two gaps. She highlighted both and sent the list to Grant with a note: Add missing stems from 3.
2 and 3.4 sessions. Add the arrangement file for “Keys”.
Grant responded, On it.
Jami slid onto the stool beside her, breath still high. “Tell me what to do that keeps me from getting in your way.”
“Try on the word, tour, without saying, when, yet,” she said. “Let Tony lay the grid. You go make a set list that sounds like who you are now, not who you were three months ago.”
He nodded, then startled. “We keep the new ones too.”
“All of them,” she said. “Every song you made belongs to you.”
He closed his eyes for a second and then looked at her. “Thank you.”
“You did this,” she said. “I just moved pieces while you held your line.”
He turned in his seat and called to the room. “Break for ten. Then we cut the outro on “Keys” and start the next one.”
Axel saluted with a stick. Sean pointed at the control room. “Tony, bring your calendar. I want your eyes on the geography of our lives.”
Tony held up his phone. “Grant first. Then geography.”
Carlene worked through the draft with Grant on mute. She deleted every verb that sounded like a press release. She replaced amicably with mutually. She added the stills clause in plain words a third grader could follow. She wrote a joint statement that did not boast.
Hart & The Hurricanes and Summit have mutually agreed to part ways. We will share our music and our plans on our own channels soon. Thank you for standing with us.
She sent the edits. The reply landed fifteen minutes later.
Accepted. Executed copy to follow after assets are verified.
The second asset schedule came with the missing files. She downloaded them, checked the timestamps, and nodded to Tony. “Complete.”
Grant forwarded the execution packet. Tony printed the signature pages and laid them on the bar. Jami signed. Tony signed on behalf of the entity. She signed the acknowledgement for receipt of assets. Simple strokes, no flourishes. The way you mark agreements, you intend to honor.
Tony scanned and returned the pages. Grant’s last email came one minute later.
Fully executed. You are clear.
Carlene read it twice. Then she closed her laptop, pressed both palms to the cool wood, and let herself feel the full stop.
Jami rested his hand in the small of her back. He did not rush the moment. “Say it.”
“We are independent,” she said.
He squeezed. “We always were.”
The barn erupted again when Tony announced it out loud. Maddyn cried and laughed at the same time. Axel shouted for a tour name they would never use but would tease each other about for months. Sean strummed a big open E and let it ring like a bell.
Carlene took a single photo. Not faces. Not tears. Just the signed pages on the bar with four guitar picks resting on top like anchors. She set it aside for later and opened the post scheduler.
“No press quotes,” Tony said, reading her mind. “Just the note we wrote.”
“Just the note,” she said. She attached nothing but the words and set the time for early evening. Then she closed the laptop again and turned to the room.
“Ten minutes are up,” Jami called. “Back in.”
They filed into the studio with the kind of focus that comes once a door finally shuts behind you. She stayed at the bar, listening. The first take had edges, the good kind. The second take breathed. On the third, he held the last note and made space for silence to finish the thought.
Tony hit save and looked up. “Tour grid after this?”
“In here first,” Jami said. “Then everywhere.”
They ran it once more, then broke. Tony spread a map across the console, the paper soft from the places his hands had traveled.
Sean stood at his shoulder, mouth already moving with names.
Axel tapped an easy rhythm on the edge of the desk while he thought.
Maddyn took photos of cables and coffee cups for a morning reel.
It looked like work. It looked like them.
Carlene slipped up the stairs to the loft with her pad.
She sat on the gray rug and wrote a list for the next forty-eight hours.
Transfer notices to the distribution platforms. Update bios.
Draft a crisp tour announcement with no fluff.
Call the routing friend she trusted. Book a photographer, not a poser.
Confirm Quinn’s time for the build-out. Choose a door color for the bathroom upstairs.
She added that last one because the world was big, but the little things made it livable.
She heard footsteps on the stairs. Jami lowered himself beside her and leaned back on his hands.
“You hiding?” he asked.
“Decorating in my head,” she said. “And giving you five minutes before I throw you into venue holds and merch inventory.”
“I can take it,” he said. “But I wanted to take this first.”
He pulled his wallet from his pocket and slid a tiny photo across the rug. It was the house shot she had snapped on the first day she toured the property, the porch in afternoon light, the old boards straight and honest.
“Why do you have this?” she asked.
“Because it looks like a promise,” he said. “We kept one today.”
She set the photo on her knee and nodded. “We did.”
He tipped his head toward the stairs. “Dinner at the table, then a list. You can tell me where you want outlets, and I will pretend to have opinions.”
“You always have opinions,” she said.
“I have good ones about you,” he said.
That earned him the simple, quiet smile he liked best on her. He stood and offered his hand. She took it, and they walked down together.
At the bottom, Tony looked up from the map. “You ready for the part where we scare ourselves on purpose?”
“Every day,” Jami said.
“Good,” Tony answered. “Because I have a route that looks like us. It includes our current tour stops, then I've added more.”
Carlene listened as they marked the first five cities in pencil, not ink. No dates, no promises they could not keep. Just a path.
When they finished, she wrote one more line at the top of her pad.
Own it. Build it. Play it.
Then she closed the cover and tucked it under her arm. The barn felt different now. Not bigger. Just truer.
“Let’s go home,” she said.
“Let’s go home,” he echoed, and the day moved with them.