Chapter 27
Taylor stands at the center of the recording studio, looking at Demian Flores through the glass that separates the recording booth from the control room. The producer is talking to a sound engineer who adjusts levels while listening to his instructions.
She’s been in New York for three weeks now and, although she’s starting to find her rhythm and adjust to everything, there are still moments when she feels completely lost—especially when her gaze drifts to the far side of the booth and she sees Abigail, utterly absorbed at her computer, torturing her just by being there.
The harder Abigail works to keep her distance from Taylor, the more trapped Taylor feels, like she’s fallen under some kind of spell she can’t break, like Abigail is a damned forbidden fruit she needs to bite for her heart to keep beating.
Today, she’s more beautiful than ever. She isn’t wearing one of her usual suits; she’s shown up in white straight-leg pants and a khaki blouse, her hair clipped back with a few strands falling loose, giving her a casual look that makes her seem much younger.
"Okay, Taylor," Demian’s voice says through the headphones she’s wearing. "I think from here on we can start working a bit on those endings. Let’s see if we can make that wail more accessible."
Taylor frowns, not entirely sure what he means by making her wail more accessible.
"What do you mean?" she asks, adjusting her headphones.
"I mean something less... ethnic, maybe? Just tweak it a little so it sounds more universal, Taylor. You’ve got an incredible voice, but the wail is too pronounced—let’s try to soften it a bit."
Taylor feels her pulse speed up. Her eyes go straight to Abigail, who’s still at her computer, apparently oblivious to the conversation.
She wonders what would happen if, besides hearing her when she sings, Abigail could also hear the direct-channel conversations between her and Demian.
Would Abigail agree with what he’s asking?
Taylor wants to tell Demian that the wail is part of her voice, but Abigail is the one who hired him, who’s worked with him before and trusts his judgment.
How is she supposed to contradict him? It would be like contradicting her—and Taylor trusts blindly in everything Abigail advises.
"Okay," she finally agrees, though something twists in her stomach.
The music starts and Taylor opens her mouth, but when those moments come where that wail usually erupts in her throat, she holds back, keeping a tight leash on that part of herself she’s always considered her essence.
Her voice comes out clean, polished, technically perfect—but stripped of the primal force that takes anyone’s breath away.
"Much better," Demian tells her when she finishes. "Let’s try again. Remember, less rasp and more pop melody."
Pop melody. The phrase ricochets in Taylor’s head, making it throb like a jackhammer pounding her brain. She wants to scream instead of sing; still, she tries to hold it together—after all, they’re the professionals.
Taylor starts to sing again, but with every note she hits, she feels something inside her dying, that every time she opens her mouth she becomes someone she doesn’t recognize.
Demian, however, seems pleased as he watches her, as if now is when he actually likes how she sings, not all those other days when they were working on other parts of her phrasing.
Halfway through the song, the music cuts off abruptly.
"Stop," says a voice that isn’t Demian’s, but Taylor recognizes it immediately because it hurls her back to those rehearsal days at the Smithville space.
She lifts her gaze to the glass, heart in her throat. Abigail has stepped into the producer’s booth and must have hit the mic button to talk to her.
"Is there a problem?" Demian asks.
Abigail ignores him, walks up to the console and hits the button again to speak directly to Taylor.
"Can you take off the headphones for a second?" she asks, fixing her with a stare.
Taylor obeys, confused, watching as Abigail leaves the control room and walks straight into the recording booth, closing herself in with her.
The space feels much smaller with her in it, charged with that cold energy that always surrounds Abigail and, at the same time, with all the electricity that always crackles between them and refuses to dissipate no matter how much the executive behaves like a cold, ruthless bitch.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Abigail growls, with that razor-edged tone that could cut a diamond.
"Singing," Taylor answers, trying to look away from those gray-green eyes where she can once again see the golden flecks she hasn’t seen in weeks.
"No, you’re not singing. You’re playing a generic singer who could be anyone," Abigail says, folding her arms. Her breasts lift with the motion and Taylor’s mouth goes dry. "Where’s your voice?"
Taylor clears her throat and glances sidelong at Demian. He’s talking to the sound engineer and looks nervous. She can’t hear what they’re saying unless they press the damn button, but it’s obvious he’s not happy with Abigail being in there questioning his methods.
"Demian says I need to be more accessible," she murmurs, exhaling hard to let off a little tension, "more pop."
"Demian can go fuck himself," Abigail snaps without lowering her voice in the slightest, making sure the producer hears her loud and clear.
Taylor’s eyes go wide. In the three weeks she’s been in the city, she’s seen Abigail be cold and distant to the point of acting like a robot, but she’s never seen her blow up like this—and certainly not on her behalf.
Abigail turns toward the glass and presses the intercom button so hard Taylor fears she’s broken it.
"Demian, get out of there," she orders, her voice thunderous.
The producer hesitates for a second, but Abigail’s enraged look convinces him that obeying is the smart move. He leaves the control room and steps into the recording booth, clearly annoyed.
"Abigail, I understand you want to protect your client, but I know what works in the current market—"
"What works is talent," Abigail cuts in. "And you’re asking her to ignore hers."
"I don’t want her to ignore it, I just want to make it commercially viable," Demian defends himself, while Taylor keeps her eyes on Abigail—on the vein standing out in her neck, to be exact.
Taylor thinks how much she’d like to kiss her right there, feel her pulse on her tongue and then bite her collarbone, suck her until...
"Her style is too distinctive; if we don’t polish it—"
"Did I ask you to polish her style?" Abigail asks with a terrifying calm, like she’s gearing up to destroy someone with her next line. "I hired you to produce Taylor Davey, not to turn her into a cheap copy of any other pop singer."
Taylor bites her lips. Despite the knife-edge tension filling that tiny room, she’s fascinated by the moment.
Now she understands why Abigail is always there, sitting in that corner where she seems to ignore her.
She’s there because she still believes in her, because she’s still the person who doesn’t want to change her or hide her—she wants the world to see her exactly as she is, the way Abigail sees her.
Taylor presses her back to the wall, feeling like her chest is going to explode when she realizes the Abigail she knew in Smithville is still there somewhere, behind a stack of barricades the executive insists on keeping between them.
"If you can’t work with her style, that’s fine," Abigail goes on, relentless, "I can hire someone who will. But tell me now so we stop wasting time."
Demian blinks. It’s not the first time he’s disagreed with Abigail Stone, but certainly never at this level.
"No need. If you want to keep her style, we will," he says, giving Taylor a gentle smile.
"Excellent," Abigail says without flinching. "Now get out. I need to talk to Taylor alone."
Taylor stays pressed to the wall, intoxicated by the surging energy Abigail’s giving off today. When they’re alone in the booth, the silence between the acoustic panels is so sudden the singer feels like she can hear her own heartbeat.
Abigail leans against the wall beside her, almost facing her, folding her arms again as she watches her with eyes now a darker shade of gray, like storm clouds.
Part of her feels a little relieved. She needed to blow up at something, and Demian did her a favor when he tried to alter Taylor’s voice.
Erin’s been at her place for two weeks. She was supposed to be gone by now, but just yesterday they told her there’s a problem with getting the keys to her apartment.
The contractors are running late on the remodel her beloved stepsister asked for because apparently they ran into an unexpected issue—classic renovation stuff—and she’ll have to stay at least a couple more weeks.
Some days she doesn’t mind having her there; other days she’d open the window and shove her into the void.
And then there’s the woman barely half a meter away, looking at her with those huge dark eyes, her small breasts outlined beneath that worn gray T-shirt from a rock band Abigail doesn’t recognize.
Sometimes keeping her distance from her is easy—she stays far away, keeps interaction to a minimum, and disappears as soon as she knows Taylor doesn’t need her.
And then there are moments like this, when she could brush her lips with a fingertip if she reached out, when she feels the intensity of Taylor’s gaze scorching her skin like coals smolder beneath it, and she thinks if only she’d met her anywhere else and Taylor’s career didn’t depend on the clarity of her thoughts and actions.
"Thank you," Taylor says, yanking her back to earth with a rough tone that alters every molecule in Abigail’s body, rocketing her back to that first time when Taylor whispered obscenities in the same rasp.
"Don’t thank me," she snaps. "Just do your job, sing the way you always do."
"I was trying..."
"No," Abigail cuts her off. Her neck goes rigid before she can stop it. "You were pleasing him, and you’re not here to please anyone."
To please anyone but me, Abigail means, but she swallows the thought because Taylor doesn’t belong to her, not enough to think about her that way—even if it’s what she wants most.
Taylor bites her lower lip in an unconscious attempt to hold her tongue, because what she wants to say is that she does want to please her—just in another way—but she doesn’t say it, because she doesn’t want to drive away this Abigail standing in front of her now.
"I thought I’d disappoint you if I contradicted him," she replies, not looking away from her agent.
Abigail straightens, pushing off the wall. Her heart is beating so fast her chest aches.
"I didn’t bring you here to turn you into something you’re not," Abigail says, in a softened tone Taylor hasn’t heard in weeks.
"Your voice isn’t meant to please. I need you to remember that every time someone like Demian asks you to change it.
Your voice is pure, honest, wild, and raw.
The second you start trying to tame it, you’ll have lost the one thing that makes you special. "
Taylor stares at her, tingles racing across her chest so fast they make her dizzy.
It’s the first time since she arrived in New York that Abigail speaks to her like she’s not just a business that needs protecting to stay profitable, but like she genuinely cares.
She’s been showing it since she got up from that chair and stepped into the control room to interrupt the session.
"Why are you so sure Demian’s wrong?" Taylor probes. "He’s a producer—this is what he does."
"I do this too, and if Demian is going to turn into another Ethan for you, I’ll take care of him."
Taylor quirks a smile, and all Abigail wants is for her to pounce on her the way she did the last day they were together in the trailer.
"That won’t be necessary. I don’t want to change my voice, and if you’ve got my back, I won’t give in again—to him or anyone," Taylor says.
They look at each other for a moment that stretches longer than it should. Taylor still feels the current that’s always existed between them, that electricity Abigail insists on ignoring, but that pulses around them like it has a life of its own.
"Tomorrow we have the first meeting with a record label," Abigail says suddenly, looking away to cut the choking tension. "I’ve been putting it off until you were more settled, but we can’t delay it any longer."
Taylor wants to jump for joy. Truthfully, she wants to jump on Abigail, hug her tight, devour that mouth, and share her euphoria with her. She’s the first person she thinks of when she’s excited and the last one she thinks of when she goes to bed.
"And what if they don’t like my style?" she murmurs, thoughtful, because, whether she realizes it or not, Demian’s stupid request has made those seeds of insecurity Ethan planted sprout inside her.
But that’s what Abigail is here for.
"If they don’t, we’ll find others. They’re not the only ones interested."
Abigail takes a step toward her.
"You’re not changing your fucking style for anyone. Understood?"
"Have dinner with me tonight," Taylor blurts before she can think about what she’s saying. "Just to talk strategy for tomorrow’s meeting," she adds quickly.
Abigail stares at her, surprised at first because she didn’t see that coming and wasn’t ready for it.
Then something shifts in her expression and Taylor can’t read it.
That makes her nervous, because she doesn’t know if Abigail’s about to drop one of her sharp barbs to make it clear they won’t share space anywhere that isn’t work-related, or if she’ll just turn around and leave her hanging.
"Seriously," Taylor presses when she stays silent. "It’s my first meeting with a record label. I don’t know what they’ll ask me, or what kind of answers I should give," she improvises, desperate.
The truth is she doesn’t give a damn about any of that right now; she just wants to have dinner with Abigail.
"Strategy dinner," Abigail murmurs, though there’s a teasing note in her voice when she says it.
Taylor wants to smile, but that would only make her intentions more obvious and, although she knows Abigail isn’t stupid, she doesn’t want to risk insulting her intelligence.
"Yeah, just that, a strategy dinner."
Abigail sighs, aware that deep down she’s playing with fire. But honestly, it doesn’t seem like a bad idea. Taylor needs that strategy; it’s true she has no clue what’s coming, that they’ll ask questions she’s not prepared for, and that it’s better if she answers the right way.
"All right. There’s a place not far from your building and mine. It’s within walking distance. I’ll send the location later. Now finish—and do it the way you always do."
Abigail leaves the booth and Taylor puts on her headphones without hiding her smile.