Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Juliet had a love/hate relationship with being on tour.
She loved her music and loved to be able to perform it. She loved working with her team to create the show, learning the dances and routines, even if it was labor-intensive.
More than anything, she loved not being immediately available to her stepfather to roll out like some sort of show horse. Usually.
But she despised how demanding it was. How she barely ever knew what state she was even in. The demand for perfection in every step, because there were thousands of people watching, every night.
Presently, she was in the liminal space between soundcheck and the start of her performance, and there was a ruthless, demanding, throbbing pain that stabbed at the back of Juliet’s left eye, shooting into the back of her head that wouldn’t quit.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t abnormal, especially when she was touring. The lack of sleep, changing of time zones, and high-energy, high-frequency performances were undoubtedly the worst combination to trigger her migraines.
The only thing that made this one worse was that she wasn’t even at a stop for her own fucking tour today; she was at one of her stepfather’s galas.
Which was also why she didn’t have her medication readily on hand, as it had been packed and sent to North Carolina, where she’d be flying later tonight, after she did her stint here in Texas.
She was lying on the couch in the second-floor powder room that she’d commandeered as Harrison’s party played on downstairs. Her arm was slung over her eyes, willing not only the pain away, but also the nausea.
When the door opened, she didn’t move an inch, knowing without looking that it was her assistant, Laura. Unless she was running late – which she wasn’t – no one else would think to come looking.
“After a lengthy conversation with the pharmacist, I’m victorious,” Laura announced, shutting the door behind her.
“Thank god,” she breathed.
Gritting her teeth and clamping her lips tightly to ward off the urge to expel anything, she sat up, already holding out her hand for the injection pen.
Laura placed it in her hand, the top already off. Juliet immediately hiked up her skirt and injected the medication into her thigh.
After holding for several seconds, waiting for the quiet click to signal it was done, she let out a small sigh of relief. No, it hadn’t kicked in yet but just knowing that it would soon was enough.
She didn’t have time to take a break. The beginning of her tour was a lot more packed than the final few months would be later this year and today was supposed to be the final break in her schedule before jumping into her next set of shows on the east coast.
Unfortunately, Harrison didn’t really take her rest and relaxation into account.
“Okay.” She took a long, deep breath, fully blinking open her eyes. She could just barely focus on Laura’s silhouette in the darkness. “You can hit the lights.”
“You sure?” Laura asked, reaching for the switch next to the door.
She hummed her assent, already angling to look toward the mirror to double-check her makeup.
And she was pleased to see that she’d done a flawless job before her migraine had gotten so intense that she’d had to call it a day. She was still good to go.
Before her triumphant feeling could take over, she caught sight of that look on Laura’s face.
The look that said Laura had something to say and Juliet wouldn’t love it.
“What is it?”
Laura’s expression barely changed, but it was in the slightest shift in her eyebrows that gave away that Juliet was right. She’d known Laura for six years now, and even though her assistant was one of the best in the game, she couldn’t completely fool Juliet.
“Ah… nothing much.” Laura shrugged. “We can discuss after the interview and the performance. Maybe on the plane tonight?”
Juliet narrowed her eyes. “Laura.”
“Juliet,” her assistant mirrored her tone, one of the few people Juliet would accept that from.
Though Laura was her assistant, she was nine years older than Juliet was, and she’d certainly been around the block – so to speak – when it came to managing demanding personalities. Juliet thought it made them work very well together.
She locked in on the way Laura’s index finger twitched slightly against the phone in her grasp. Juliet’s phone, which Laura was frequently in charge of checking when Juliet had a migraine and the screen felt like murder.
Ah. So whatever it was had to do with something she’d seen on the phone. “Give it to me.”
Laura’s grip tightened. “You still have at least ten minutes before you should be looking at a screen. You can look later. Trust me, it’ll be better that way.”
“I do trust you,” she muttered, and despite the sharpness of her tone, it was the truth.
She trusted Laura more than she trusted anyone else in her life, including Robbie. And… well, that was the very short and complete list of people she actually trusted with anything meaningful.
She angled her chin up, defiantly. “Which is why I know that you being all evasive means I am not going to be pleased when I see whatever you’re hiding, and I want to see it now.”
Laura might be the person Juliet would label as her best, truest friend. But at the end of the day, she also worked for her. So, she sighed before giving in and handing Juliet her phone.
“No matter what you see on there, keep in mind that you have to do the interviews with Harrison’s ‘carefully selected journalist’ soon,” Laura advised, rolling her eyes at carefully selected journalist.
Her stepfather not only had Juliet over a barrel when it came to performing at his elite mega-events several times a year, but also when it came to promoting his businesses.
He didn’t want anything to come off as insincere, though, so he always slipped her the talking points beforehand.
Juliet was to approach these interviews as if she had chosen to do them, promoting her own work, while casually slipping in praise for Harrison and whichever business venture he was working with.
She’d done it so many times by now she could do it in her damn sleep.
It took about three seconds to see what Darcy had said on Miles Stanton.
Formulaic. Boring.
Throwing the words around that had been so fucking cutting to Juliet when she’d first read them.
Words that had cut so damn deep because it wasn’t as though they’d been said by one or two critics, and then smoothed over.
No, those words had burrowed into her psyche, echoing through her mind as she’d worked on her latest album.
And somehow – somehow – Darcy managed to pinpoint them.
“What the fuck,” she hissed, stabbing her index finger at the screen to tap play on the snippet of the video from the talk show.
There Darcy was, sitting on the couch nestled safely between her sister and her best friend – aw, so sweet – and when she turned to look at the camera –
Juliet knew it had already been recorded. She knew this wasn’t live; she wasn’t an idiot.
But she felt it. She felt like Darcy was looking right at her, like Darcy had wanted to grab her attention as she echoed Juliet’s critiques aloud.
She wanted Juliet’s attention? She had it.
That throbbing behind her eye intensified, but she used it to drive her forward. Rolling her shoulders back, she thrust her phone back at Laura. “I believe it’s time for my interview.”
Laura lifted her eyebrows, carefully taking the phone from her. Her tone was dubious as she pressed, “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather wait another five minutes? Let things… settle? Take a moment to let your meds really kick in?”
No, Juliet’s migraine wasn’t gone yet. The shot was starting to work its magic, sure. But she was invigorated beyond that. Far, far beyond that.
Apparently, there was nothing so invigorating as Darcy Kincaid was, with insults dripping from her full, glossy lips.
“I’m ready now.”