8. Chapter Eight #2
Hunter remained in the booth until he could breathe without bracing a hand against the wall.
Serena’s final choice held more honesty than anything he’d given her during the campaign.
He respected her for leaving the moment she accepted that he didn’t want her.
He wished he’d shown Wendy half that courage before she packed a bag.
When Hunter returned to the conference room, Billy stood next to a screen filled with tour dates. Lawyers, label executives, production heads, and sponsor representatives looked toward him. The release schedule at the center of the table included the completed duet master.
Hunter moved to his empty chair but didn’t sit down.
“The joint tour is canceled,” he said. “So are the documentary, the sponsored appearances, the interviews, and every piece of romantic publicity built around Serena and me.”
No one moved for a beat. Then everyone spoke at once.
“You can’t cancel the tour just like that.”
“The master is already queued for launch.”
“We have vendor exposure in eleven markets.”
“Serena’s team hasn’t agreed to–”
“Serena is withdrawing,” Hunter said. “And so am I.”
Billy stared at him. “You spoke to her?”
“Because you told her my wife left after I asked you to keep it private.” Hunter gave Billy the ugliest look he could muster.
“She was entitled to know a material change affecting the rollout.”
“Wendy isn’t rollout information.”
Billy’s face closed. “Hunter, sit down.”
Hunter ignored him and looked to the head of music operations. It was enough that Billy had practically forced him to tell everyone that Wendy had left him.
“The studio duet has never entered commercial distribution,” Hunter said. “Take it off every release schedule and shelve the master permanently. It isn’t to be released, licensed, sold, or sent to radio.”
“You can’t erase the Bowl performance,” Billy cut in. “Half the planet has a copy.”
“I’m not pretending we can erase it. Stop new official distribution and licensing anywhere my companies have control. What strangers preserve doesn’t require me to keep selling it.”
He turned to the publicity director, then.
“Remove Wendy’s reaction from every Trace-owned account, campaign file, documentary cut, sponsor package, and approved press asset. No one uses her face to sell this again.”
Legal objections came next. Claims, buyouts, deposits, partner disputes, and board challenges.
Hunter listened until they began repeating.
He’d spent months using the size of the machine as proof that stopping it would hurt too many people.
Billy had made that fear useful, and Hunter had made it true by signing.
The projected losses replaced the launch numbers on the screen.
He felt the old terror immediately. His father at the kitchen table with another rejection.
His father turning shame into anger, then walking out as if failure had given him permission to abandon everyone who’d watched it happen.
Hunter had built an empire because he believed enough success could seal every exit.
The launch numbers had looked like proof that the empire was still growing.
Canceling it felt like cutting through his own safety line.
“The directly contracted band and crew get the compensation their canceled tour agreements guarantee,” he said. “Pay it from my personal funds.”
Billy gave a humorless laugh. “You can’t make every hotel worker, driver, local vendor, and partner whole with one check.”
“No. Counsel can handle the wider claims and buyouts. But the musicians and crew who planned their lives around work I approved won’t lose the money I guaranteed because I finally made the decision I should’ve made before the Bowl,” Hunter clarified.
“This isn’t leadership,” Billy said. “It’s guilt with a blank check.”
Hunter looked at the man who’d found him playing for almost no one, who’d fought labels for him, built tours from empty calendars, and taught him to treat momentum like oxygen. Billy had helped create everything Hunter was afraid to lose. Hunter had let that history become permission.
“You’re fired,” he deadpanned.
Everyone fell quiet again.
Billy turned pale. “After everything I’ve done for you?”
“You treated Wendy’s leaving as information to manage after I told you to protect it.”
“I protected your career.”
“And I kept letting you use that pretext to make choices I wanted the benefit of without taking the blame. That’s on me.
” Hunter forced himself to hold Billy’s stare.
“You didn’t build this lie alone. I approved it.
I signed it. I stood onstage and sold it.
That’s on me. But you don’t manage me anymore. ”
Billy picked up his tablet. “When this costs you more than panic can pay, don’t call me.”
“I won’t.”
Billy walked out without looking back.
The remaining executives waited for Hunter to change his mind and reverse what he’d done. He didn’t. He gave the necessary instructions, directed every unresolved claim to counsel and operations, and left before they could turn the wreckage of his marriage into another presentation.
Eli waited in the corridor with his guitar case at his feet.
“You heard?” Hunter asked.
“The walls aren’t thick enough for what just happened.”
Hunter leaned against the opposite wall. Exhaustion settled into his bones.
“The tour is done,” he said. “The master is shelved. Serena left. Billy’s fired.”
Eli studied him. “And you want me to tell you that means you fixed it?”
“No.”
“Good, because you stopped new damage. That’s all.”
Hunter’s first response rose hot and defensive. He’d just blown apart the career revival everyone said he needed. He’d accepted losses that would take teams of lawyers to count. He swallowed the protest before it became words he’d immediately want to take back.
Eli saw it anyway. “Paying the crew is an obligation. Firing Billy is a consequence. Serena leaving is a consequence. Shelving the master should’ve happened before Wendy heard it with seventeen thousand strangers.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” Eli stepped closer. “Because next, you’ll be tempted to say Billy pushed you, Serena wanted you, and some stranger cropped the video. None of them could’ve done this without you saying yes over and over.”
Hunter closed his eyes. Wendy in the audience. Wendy in the podcast room. Wendy walking out with a packed bag. All he could see was her.
“I said yes,” he answered. “I know that.”
“She didn’t leave because of one decision you made.”
“I know that too.”
Eli’s expression eased by a fraction. “What are you doing now?”
“Going to Aria Springs.”
“Did Wendy ask you to?”
“No.”
“Then don’t show up at her parents’ house.”
“I won’t. I won’t contact her. Or them. But I need to get out of LA.”
Eli watched him long enough to make clear that a promise wasn’t proof. “And if she never sees you?”
Hunter looked through the studio glass at a wall-sized photograph of him and Serena underneath stage lights.
“Then she never sees me.”
***
Counsel arranged a furnished rental on Orchard Lane in Aria Springs under a business name. The lease used keyless entry, so no landlord or agent waited to recognize him. Hunter drove himself north after dark with one bag in the back seat and his old guitar in its scuffed black case.
He didn’t turn toward the Loom estate when he entered the small town. It killed him to know that Wendy was there, sleeping under her parents’ roof, and he had no access to her.
The bungalow sat beyond the center of Aria Springs, on a quiet road lined with old trees.
It had one bedroom, a narrow kitchen, a small porch, and an avocado-green refrigerator that buzzed louder than the air conditioner.
There were no staff, awards, framed magazine covers, or photographs of Hunter’s face.
He carried in the bag and guitar, then stood on the porch. Beyond the roofs and dark fields, the valley spread toward the lights around Aria Springs. Somewhere past those lights, Wendy was living a life he had no right to enter.
He went inside and opened his laptop. He searched for the podcast Wendy had abandoned. If he wanted to learn who his wife truly was, he’d have to begin where he should’ve begun years ago.
He pressed play.