Chapter 30 #2
It makes me light-headed and proud all at once to see her like this, facing a room full of people, ready to play impromptu. It’s an easy song, yes, but the technicalities were never where her struggles lay.
“Do you remember the words?” Lily-Anne asks me.
I arch a brow. “Bah bah bah?”
She snorts. “That will do.”
Another smile tugs at my lips, and as I strum the first chords, Lily-Anne joins in, her fingers picking out the melody with delicate precision. We begin to sing, and for a moment, I forget there’s anyone else here.
There’s just her, the music, and the simple pleasure of playing beside someone who makes me feel alive. The others join in on the chorus, my mood lifted by their joyful bah-bah-bahs, no one louder than Ellenor, her voice cutting through with cheerful abandon.
My joy is short-lived. Whilst the song leaves the others laughing, Jack wears a very different smile as he pushes himself off the mantelpiece.
“Wow, Brandon. Haven’t seen you do a duet since Nova.”
The words hit like a brick to the ribs. Silence falls so complete you could hear a pin drop on Barbara’s extra-plush carpets.
Lily-Anne gives Jack a nervous glance, her fingers tightening around her glass.
Ellenor, beside her, freezes mid-sip, the wine hovering just shy of her lips.
Even Rupert and Barbara, who usually fill any silence, sit rapt.
Jack laughs awkwardly. “Sorry, that came out wrong. I just meant…she was special, you know? To both of us.” He glances my way as though seeking brotherhood.
I don’t give him the satisfaction of reacting.
“Wait, is this Nova, the singer?” Ellenor asks.
“Yep. She was quite the personality—life isn’t the same with her gone.” He presses on, forcing a chuckle that doesn’t quite land. “It was a terrible day when we lost her. For both Brandon and me.”
“She died from an overdose, didn’t she?” Ellenor prompts.
Jack’s face softens, seizing the chance to redirect. “Yes,” he says solemnly. “Sleeping pills. I called the ambulance, but it was too late.” He bows his head, the picture of tragic grace. “I was with her until the very end.”
My ears roar, my knuckles tightening around the guitar neck until the wood creaks.
“Do you see it yet?” Nova’s voice hisses through the noise.
My mind races.
“I called the ambulance,” Jack just said—but that wasn’t his story years ago. At Natalie’s funeral, he claimed he was at a press conference promoting her tour. He returned to the hotel to find flashing sirens. Hem sworn it.
Was that a lie?
And if not, why rewrite history now? Does he think it sounds better to say he was with her in her final moments?
I stand abruptly. The movement startles everyone. Even Jack stops talking.
“You said you were at a press conference on her behalf,” I say, watching him closely.
Jack straightens off the mantelpiece, unblinking as he returns my stare. “I was. Earlier in the day.”
“When we spoke at her funeral, you said she was already dead when you returned to the hotel.”
People stare. It might be my harsh tone, or my bluntness, but I won’t mince my words now.
“Yeah…” Jack says slowly. “I mean, she was in a bad state. She was basically gone when I called the ambulance.”
My head tilts, a predator cornering its prey.
“You told me the ambulances were already there.”
Silence stretches, taut as wire.
Just when I think I have him, he laughs—a bashful, endearing sound—as he rubs the back of his neck. “Ah. One of us must not be remembering right.” He sighs, offering a helpless shrug. “I don’t know, mate. It’s been a few years. Traumatic day for all of us.”
Eyes flick between us, no one daring to speak.
“You said you attended a press conference…” I begin.
He put his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. Earlier that day.”
“See, I don’t recall it being televised.”
Not that I went looking for it. Seeing Jack stand on a podium, answering questions about his love life with Nova, was the last thing I wanted to do in the wake of her death.
But it’s strange—I never came across the interview by accident.
Perhaps, on a subconscious level, I assumed it was out of respect for Nova.
But with a room full of journalists, that doesn’t seem likely.
His expression barely flickers, but I catch it: a quick flash of unease before he smooths it away. “Well. It was more of an internal PR meeting, really. But Nova’s publicist was there. Just to discuss a possible rebrand she’d been thinking of. Nothing major.”
I scrutinise him, trying to tell the truth from the lies.
“Publicist?” I prompt, floating the word.
“Yep. Becky. Did you meet Becky? Top girl. Knows how to get shit done—”
“Rebecca Navarro?” I cut in.
“Yep. That’s her.”
A senior publicist, if I recall correctly, if not the head of PR. She would have been in touch with Natalie day in, day out.
“Getting warmer.” Nova’s singsong voice ripples through me, silken and mocking as I watch the light fade outside the window. “Getting…very…hot.”
“Excuse me,” I mutter. Before anyone can stop me, I exit to the back garden.
My head throbs with thoughts that won’t quiet. The night air offers no relief. It’s cool, but airless, like breathing through glass.
I plunge through the chaos of the garden, dodging swamps and gargoyles as my mind races, chest tight, vision swimming.
I take out my phone. I don’t even think before pressing a name long dormant in my contacts: Rebecca Navarro.
It’s 7 a.m. in LA. Too early to call, but I have to know.
I pace while it rings.
“Rebecca,” I greet when she answers.
She laughs warily, her words laced with a Texan twang. “Well, hell. Brandon Ward. Thought you’d joined a monastery. What’s the occasion?”
“Sorry to call you so early.”
“Must be important.”
“It is. I know it’s been years, but…I need to ask about the meeting you had for Nova—Natalie—the day she died. The one Jack Willoughby attended on her behalf.”
“Meeting?” Her tone shifts. “What meeting?”
Nova’s laughter echoes around me as I frown. “There was a PR meeting.”
“No. But hold on…” I hear the clack of a keyboard as she murmurs, “I’m double-checking…Nope. Nothing.”
I halt in my tracks. “It was cancelled?”
“No, I’m saying there was no meeting at all, Brandon. It was never even on the books.”
“Are you absolutely certain? Because Jack said you attended the meeting.”
“Yeah, Jack says a lot of things. But I remember that day, clear as anything…” The humour in her voice shifts, replaced by a low note of melancholy. “It’s still fresh in my mind. Christ. Nat called me herself just a couple of days before it happened, crying after he dumped her.”
My breath catches. “He what?”
“Jack left her. I thought you knew?”
“No. I didn’t.”
“Shit.” There’s a pause, the line crackling faintly.
Then Rebecca starts talking. “Where do I begin? Poor girl. She wasn’t in the best headspace, though none of us realised how serious it had become.
No one likes falling off the charts. It can really shake an artist’s confidence.
Anyway, we’d been exploring some new creative directions, a rebrand of sorts—this was weeks prior, and to be honest, it was difficult to get through to Natalie. I was mostly speaking to Jack.”
“Sounds familiar.” I can’t keep the venom out of my voice.
“Yeah. When I did finally speak to her—when she called me up in tears—she raised the idea of stepping away from the spotlight for a while. I’m not sure if that ever reached you.”
I grip the phone tighter, my pulse drumming in my ears. Stepping away. I can almost see her trying to change course, to choose a healthier life after years of pushing herself past breaking point. And Jack…I can only imagine what he thought of that.
“So, he left her,” I say flatly. The words taste sour. It’s not surprising, merely sickening to have it confirmed.
“Yeah, well, you know Jack—he always knew which way the spotlight was swinging. And Nat’s songs were slipping off the charts. Reckon he damn near lost his mind when she wanted to quit. You heard about the photo, right?”
“What photo?”
“It was on Pandora’s socials—her and Jack, all cosy.
You remember her, the TikTok girl we signed?
He was out in LA that day, shooting behind-the-scenes content for her new single.
” She snorts. “It was more like partying, and not exactly discreet. That’s why Nat was so upset when she called me. She saw photos of them kissing.”
The world unbalances around me as I try to comprehend it all. Jack broke Natalie’s heart when she was at her most vulnerable and immediately latched onto the next rising star.
Meanwhile, miles away, Natalie sat locked in a hotel room, her heart breaking as she watched him through a phone screen. Nausea lurches through me to imagine the pain she must have felt.
Why didn’t she call me?
I would have dropped everything.
Rebecca says, “It damn near killed her to see it—oh. Shit. Sorry, bad choice of words.”
I grit my teeth. “No—the words fit.”
Jack was what finished her.
I never liked him, not even when he was the eager-faced new hire at the campus café asking me to show him the espresso machine. I could never explain it. Something in me simply recoiled from his wide smiles.
It’s why Nova’s ghost has haunted me. Deep down, I never trusted his version of Natalie’s death.
The pathetic story he spun—how he left her alone to chase a bit of press conference glory—was the perfect mix of vanity and self-pity to make me believe it.
It confirmed what I thought of him.
And it stopped me realising that what I thought of him was generous.
Rebecca fills the silence, “Lord, I wish I’d done more, looking back.
I was worried, you know. Natalie was distraught.
I told her she ought to speak to someone—even gave her the number of a therapist we send our stressed artists to.
Hell, I even thought about calling you when Jack wouldn’t pick up his damn phone.
I wish I had, now. It might have made all the difference if she’d spoken to you. ”