Chapter Twenty #2
I didn’t think he would try to handle me like that, but the fact that the idea even popped into my head spoke volumes.
Adriana: Did you see the video?
Brooks: I did.
Adriana: Was that you?
The little icon popped up to show me Brooks was recording a voice message. It disappeared within seconds. It didn’t come back. Instead, I got two words.
Brooks: Talk later.
Thanks, asshole. Very helpful. I’d just let my imagination run wild and convinced myself that the entire date night had been orchestrated just to get me up on stage.
Brooks was clearly avoiding me for nefarious reasons and not just because he was busy in the city, talking to his lawyers.
Unfortunately, knowing that my brain was just fucked from too many people treating me like a commodity for years didn’t automatically stop those thought patterns.
At least part of me knew that I was being irrational.
I’d just sung Brooks’s praises to Esra and I’d meant every word.
Considering my head was already a shitty place to be, I opened the comment section.
I expected the worst.
Instead, I was faced with a cascade of supportive voices.
A good number of them were about Brooks and his addition to my song, but the majority were actually about me.
I blamed my algorithm for that. Still…People wondering where I’d been.
People proclaiming how much they’d missed me.
People saying my voice had matured and sounded so much better.
Not people. Based on the screen names, it was mostly women.
Considering how tight that dress was, I would have expected a lot more guys in this comment section making gross comments about my body.
“Okay, I’m ready to go,” Skye announced, and I flinched.
She sat next to me on the bench, her popsicle stick polished clean.
“How long have you been sitting there?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Half a popsicle long. Are you doomscrolling?”
“Do you know what doomscrolling is?”
“Not really.” She shrugged. “You’re making a doomy face and you’re scrolling.”
“It’s when you look at things online that make you stressed and worried, but you keep looking at more of it anyway. I was actually reading some really nice comments. I just have a resting doom face.”
“Okay,” she chirped and shrugged. “Better than resting bitch face.”
“Swear jar,” I deadpanned.
She groaned and stomped off toward the hotel.
I took one last peek at the comment section, my eyes catching on one.
CHACHACHAYENNE94: Fuck yes! I’ve been waiting for this comeback since the engagement announcement.
I was tempted to reply “not a comeback,” but I did the mature thing. I clicked the phone screen off and followed Skye.
· Brooks ·
I should have texted Addie the second I found out about the video.
I’d forwarded it to Jamie with three simple letters to express my thoughts—wtf—and had spent the rest of the afternoon poring over all the details from my past that the Greens had dug up to diminish me in court.
Most of it was meant to paint me as unstable, but all of it was several years in the past. When I’d told Addie that I hadn’t slept with a woman since way before the tour, that had been the truth.
I hadn’t told her that my last one-night stand had happened the night before I’d heard her sing live for the first time.
I didn’t want her to think that there had been anything disingenuous about the way our friendship had formed.
I’d heard her sing and knew I had gotten too complacent with the life I’d built.
In retrospect, I wouldn’t have been ready for Skye if I hadn’t been inspired to start with small changes like that several months before meeting her.
Now with a job, a house, and a fiancée—technically fake, practically consuming my thoughts—lined up in a small town that couldn’t be more “all-American” if it tried, my life looked completely different from the one the Greens were trying to paint me into.
It still took hours to go through all the articles, pictures, and videos they were entering into evidence. It was past midnight by the time I made it back to Wild Fields. Our suite was so quiet, even the door’s beep and electric lock echoed through the dark.
I slipped into my room where Addie’s shape slowly rose and sank beneath the covers. Under different circumstances, I would have bothered with the bathroom, but I wasn’t going to risk waking her. I just peeled out of my clothes and joined her in bed.
Despite my best intentions, Addie turned around. She grumbled, blinked, and slapped her arm around the bed until she found my chest.
“Asshole,” she grumbled.
“Yep.” I deserved that for still not having responded to her text.
Insult aside, she clawed at my chest and writhed close enough to sling a leg over me.
When it came to sleep, all of her touchy-feely reservations went out the window.
Addie was the clingiest sleeper I’d ever encountered.
She became my personal weighted blanket every night, and it had been doing wonders for my own sleep.
I curled my arms around her torso and pulled her onto my chest, her legs tangled around mine, and she let out a happy little sigh.
“Was it you?” she mumbled, rubbing her cold nose against my collarbone.
“No, I promise,” I whispered and kissed her forehead. “I didn’t mean for our night to go public.”
“Okay, good.” Within seconds her breathing levelled out again.
I hated that she even had to ask, but I couldn’t blame her after what the music industry had put her through. At least she had enough trust in me to take my word for it.
I drew patterns over her back, stared at the ceiling, and swallowed the sour taste of a conversation we’d have to have in the morning.
I’d taken that meeting with Doyle at Marble Audio months ago, before knowing what he’d done, before Addie had allowed me into her life—but between the custody case and our relationship shift, the results of that meeting had been shoved to the back of my mind.
She would have found out sooner or later and we could have talked about it then.
In the wake of that video stripping her of her chance to dictate her own reentry into music, however, I couldn’t just let her find out. She deserved to know that her old record label no longer controlled the rights to her first two albums.