46. Luke
luke
. . .
Iknew the second Bailey answered the phone that whatever was about to happen was bad.
She had been sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the fireplace in Cole’s house, Iris asleep against her chest while she half stared at the flames and half scribbled in the notebook balanced on her knee.
It had become her routine lately. To hold Iris close while she wrote constantly in her journal.
I wasn’t sure if she was using it to process her grief or if they was writing songs again.
When her phone rang she almost ignored it, then she saw the screen and carefully shifted Iris into the bassinet beside the couch before answering.
“Hey.”
I watched her face slowly harden, and the tension in her body grow until she was almost vibrating.
“No.”
Another pause.
“No, Rachel. I said no.”
I set my guitar down quietly and stood from the kitchen table.
I had been keeping myself close, while also trying to give Bailey space and we had been falling into some semblance of a routine.
I had spoken with my therapist about the best way to approach the discussion about us, about the divorce and I was hoping to have the conversation with her that evening.
Bailey started pacing in front of the windows. “I don’t care what they promised advertisers.”
She listened again before laughing once, sharp and disbelieving. “You cannot seriously be saying this to me right now.”
Every muscle in my body tightened. The last two weeks had hollowed her out.
Grief moved through her strangely. Some days she barely spoke at all, disappearing into silence while she held Iris for hours.
Other days it was like she was vibrating beneath her skin, angry at everything and nothing all at once. This was one of those days.
“I don’t give a fuck about the opening slot,” Bailey snapped. “My sister just died.”
The room went silent except for Iris cooing softly in her sleep. Bailey pressed her hand to her forehead like she was trying to physically hold herself together. Then quieter, more wounded than angry, she whispered, “How are they all this cruel?”
Something inside my chest twisted violently. I crossed the room slowly, close enough if she needed me, but not touching her. Bailey listened another few seconds before finally shoving the phone toward me with shaking hands.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
I took it immediately. “Rachel.”
Her exhausted sigh crackled through the speaker. “Thank god.”
“What the fuck is happening?”
I watched Bailey move toward the kitchen island before bracing both hands against it, her shoulders trembling.
“They announced her as the opening performance at the awards show without my approval,” Rachel said flatly. “I tried stopping it. I’ve been fighting with the label for three straight days.”
Rage crawled hot beneath my skin.
“They cornered her publicly,” I said.
“Yes.”
I looked over at Bailey again. She looked furious, destroyed and so fragile. All at the same time.
Rachel exhaled heavily. “She said no too many times and now they’re using public pressure.
They are going through her contract with a fine tooth comb, Luke.
They are using everything they have to get her back to performing, sponsors, production costs.
The percentage of the album Bailey wrote and sang on.
The other artists attached to the project.
They know she won’t want collateral damage. ”
Of course they did. Because Bailey spent her entire life protecting everyone around her.
I lowered my voice. “She’s barely holding herself together.”
“I know.” Something in Rachel’s tone shifted then. It was almost hesitant and that scared me, because Rachel didn’t hesitate. “There’s more.”
I felt my stomach tighten immediately. “What?”
“We have been working to untangle you from that parasite that calls himself a manager.”
My eyes were still on Bailey, she was pacing in the kitchen ringing out her hands.
“I tracked down Kacey.” I sucked in a breath, but Rachel continued, “She admitted Dave gave her access to your room.”
My whole body locked up,“What?”
“He told her where you’d be. Told her when photographers would show up. Told her what to say afterward.”
I stopped breathing. Rachel’s voice sharpened. “Kacey swears nothing happened between the two of you. And from what Dave told her, nothing happened with any of the other girls he threw your way.. Dave wanted pictures, he wanted an angle… a story to sell.”
Bailey turned slowly toward me, like she could sense what was going on inside me.
I knew that I would never betray her, even after she left, even with the divorce… I knew. But with the drugs… part of me feared.
“Nothing happened?" I asked quietly.
Rachel laughed bitterly. “No. They were all plants. Most of them weren’t random at all. Dave fed locations to photographers constantly.”
I dragged a hand over my face, nausea twisting through me. But Rachel wasn’t done;
The pills, alcohol, the women, leaving me in jail, refusing rehab… the press. It was all orchestrated. I still made choices. Still destroyed everything. But suddenly pieces clicked together in ways that made me feel physically sick.
“How long have you known?” I asked.
“I suspected,” Rachel admitted. “But Kacey finally confirmed it this morning.”
Bailey was beside me and by the look on her face I could tell she heard what Rachel had said. Tears streamed silently down her face now. She looked like every wound had been ripped back open all at once.
Rachel spoke carefully. “Luke… you need to decide how you want to proceed. If this gets out publicly it becomes a war. I am not saying this to dissuade you, because I have your back. But this will be much more than just going after Dave and his company…”
I already knew that. And judging by the look on Bailey’s face…So did she.
The days leading up to the award show felt like standing beside a forest fire waiting for the wind to change direction. Bailey stopped sleeping. Cole messaged me one night worried and I found her in the studio with red swollen eyes and another page full of lyrics spread across the piano.
These weren’t Bailey Brooks lyrics.
Grief sharpened her into something almost unrecognizable sometimes. I watched her pour everything she was feeling into music so raw it made my chest ache. She was funneling years of anger, betrayal and loss into her music. She was taking aim at the industry, social media, me, herself… all of it.
And fuck… it was good.
That was the hard part. Bailey had always written from emotion, but this felt different. Like she stopped caring whether the songs were beautiful and started focusing on making them hurt.
One afternoon I walked into the studio to find crumpled papers scattered across the floor while Bailey sat at the piano staring into space.
Noah leaned against the sound booth wall looking wrecked.
Bailey played the final chord again.
It was slow and haunting.
Then she sang softly,
“You taught the world to say my name
Then left me bleeding for the fame…”
Silence swallowed the room afterward.
Noah blew out a breath. “Jesus.”
Bailey didn’t react. It was like she didn’t see him there or didn’t care who was around to see the destruction. She grabbed another sheet of paper and attacked another song. Ripped open another wound.
I moved toward her carefully. “Bai…”
Her eyes snapped toward me instantly. Her usually warm, caring eyes were burning with an anger I had never seen in her before.
“They want a performance?” she asked coldly. “Fine.”
Noah straightened immediately. “Bailey,” he warned quietly.
“No.” She stood abruptly from the piano bench. “They announced me publicly without asking. They want their fucking performance? They want their dancing monkey? They’ll get one.”
Every instinct in my body screamed this was headed somewhere dangerous.
“What are you planning?” I asked.
Bailey laughed once without humor. “Funny thing is… they never specified what songs I had to sing.”
Noah slowly approached her, like she was a wild animal. “Bai…”
“They want Bailey Brooks?” she snapped. “They want their perfect little industry darling smiling while they cash checks off my grief?”
Her voice cracked hard enough my chest physically hurt.
Then quieter, “They should’ve left me alone.”
Noah made his way into the room with her. “Nobody is saying you can’t be angry.”
“I am furious,” Bailey whispered.
I knew this whole situation was eating away at her. Because this wasn’t Bailey. With everything spiralling around her, she was allowing her grief to hollow her out until anger became easier to carry.
She started writing songs faster after that. One about Sadie, then about the industry chewing people apart. One about feeling like a ghost inside her own life and then there was the song about public perception of her. She called it In Her Shoes.
The first time I heard it I had to leave the studio halfway through because I thought I might throw up. Every line forced me to finally understand what the past few years had cost her.
Bailey sounded tired, resigned in her anger. Like someone who spent years breaking quietly. That hurt more than screaming ever could.
I tried talking her down twice. Not because I disagreed with her anger. God knows she earned it.
But because I knew Bailey. And I knew once the grief shifted, once the sharpest part of this pain dulled even slightly, she would have to live with whatever happened next.
“You’re going to burn everything down,” I told her softly one night after everyone else finally left.
Bailey sat on the studio floor surrounded by lyric sheets and an empty tea mug. Without looking at me she said, “Maybe it deserves to burn.”
I didn’t have an answer for that, because part of me agreed. She had every right to feel the way she did about the machine that wanted to keep feeding off her even after Sadie died.
I understood why she wanted to set fire to all of it. But I also knew Bailey wasn’t rage. She wasn’t malicious and she would never want to attack her fans.
Bailey had her anger to shield her soft heart from the pain of her grief.
But she was love, she was all heart and that is what her music was.
That is who she was to her fans. How she took the pain from a line I had said carelessly and turned it into an anthem for the people who loved her.
Her fans. And I was terrified she would destroy herself trying to make everyone else hurt as badly as she did.
That night after Bailey finally fell asleep on the couch in the studio, I stepped outside into the cold mountain air and called Rachel.
She answered immediately. “Please tell me she’s sleeping.”
“For now.”
Silence. Then Rachel sighed. “How bad is it?”
I looked through the studio window at Bailey curled beneath a blanket surrounded by pages of songs that looked more like wounds than music. I knew what needed to be done. This wasn’t about me or Rachel or the label… It was about saving her.
“She’s going to walk onto that stage and burn her entire career to the ground,” I said quietly. “And I need your help to stop her.”