Brandon
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
“RIGHT ROUND” — FLO RIDA, KESHA
Present Day
When I told Rylee I had time for lunch today, she didn’t bother to send me a location.
Rylee Jackson
Same place as always.
Which means the coffee shop down the street from the house—the one with the barista Rylee likes solely because she over-sugars her coffee but would never actually admit to it.
Her striking red hair is impossible to miss, catching my eye as soon as I walk through the door. She’s already sucking down a Frappuccino with an ungodly amount of whipped cream, flipping through a magazine like nothing else in the world matters.
I place my own order at the counter before settling into the chair across from her, waiting for any acknowledgement of my existence.
A few moments pass, and… nothing.
“Wow, Ry,” I mutter. “Good to see you, too.”
“Oh,” Rylee says after another beat passes, glancing up at me. “You’re here.”
“Did you think I wasn’t going to show up?”
She shrugs, completely unbothered. “I thought you might have plans with someone… more important.”
Here we go.
If there’s one thing to know about my sister, it’s that she doesn’t waste any time. There’s no beating around any sort of bush with her.
Straight to the point, as always.
“Someone more important than my little sister?” I smirk, leaning back in my chair. “Never.”
She rolls her eyes, taking a long sip of her drink like she’s already over this conversation—over me.
Just in time, my coffee is ready and my name is called. I push my chair back, rising to my feet and taking my sweet time grabbing it. If it buys me a few extra seconds before this turns into a full-blown interrogation, I’ll take it.
But sure enough, the moment I sit back down—
“Are you really gonna make me say it,” she asks, “or are you going to be a decent human and just tell me the truth?”
I take a slow sip from my coffee. If she doesn’t want to sugarcoat anything—I won’t either.
“Johanna and I are together,” I tell her.
No build up. No dancing around it. Just the truth she asked for.
“But you already know that, don’t you?”
Rylee doesn’t respond right away, but of course she doesn’t. She just sets her drink back down and clasps her hands together in front of her.
“I do,” she says finally. “But I wish I’d heard it from you.”
“I didn’t know how to tell you, Ry,” I sigh. “I know how you feel about her. You were the one who had to put me back together when she left, and I’ll never be able to thank you enough for all you did for me.”
That seems to land—I can see it in the way her posture shifts. I haven’t really told her how grateful I was—and still am—for her help.
“I appreciate that,” she replies. “But it really doesn’t matter how I feel about her. It matters how you do.” She pauses, something flickering behind her eyes. “So, tell me—how do you feel?”
The question sits heavily between us. Not because I don’t know what I want to say, but because I know she’s not asking casually—and my answer isn’t casual either.
“I’m in love with her.”
My voice is steady. Certain. Unwavering.
“Still?” she asks. “Even after… everything?”
It’s not judgement behind her tone. Just—the need for confirmation.
“Always,” I say. “You know that.”
Silence stretches between us as Rylee processes what I’ve told her, only the sound of coffee shop business humming faintly in the background.
“Has she said it back?” she asks again, softer this time.
I exhale slowly, my gaze dropping to my cup.
“No.”
Rylee scoffs under her breath. “Of course she hasn’t.”
“Come on, Rylee,” I sigh. “It’s not—”
“This is exactly what I’m talking about,” she cuts in, sharper now. “You’re all in, and she’s still just… figuring it out? That’s not balanced, Brandon.”
“She’s trying,” I push back. “She’s here. I know how intense all of this is—of course it’s scaring the hell out of her, but she’s not running this time. That has to count for something.”
“I’m not saying it doesn’t,” Rylee huffs. “But it doesn’t completely erase everything that happened before.”
I drag a hand down my face.
When is she going to let the past go?
“This isn’t all that different from the issues you had with Eric,” I argue, knowing the moment it leaves my lips that I’ve triggered a Code Red response. “At least Johanna—”
“No,” she snaps, venom dripping from every word. “Your precious Johanna was the cause of a lot of those issues—at least the more recent ones. You don’t get to throw Eric in my face. It is not the same and you know it.”
I stop, because I know exactly what she’s referring to.
The images flash through my mind whether I want them to or not of the night that Eric and Johanna spent together over a year ago. Not only were Jo and I not together—hell, we weren’t even on speaking terms.
I don’t love thinking about her with Eric—in fact, I really hate it—but there’s always been a part of me that knows I don’t get to judge how she lived her life when I wasn’t around to be part of it.
“Fine,” I mutter. “It’s not the same.”
A beat passes.
“Ry, the bottom line is this,” I continue when she doesn’t respond, holding her gaze steady. “Jo and I have talked. We’ve hashed out the past, and we want to be together. Can you support us—support me—or not?”
She still doesn’t answer right away. Instead, she leans back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest as she studies me like she’s trying to decide if she believes I’m not about to ruin my life all over again.
“God damn it,” she mumbles, shaking her head again. “You’re fucking serious.”
“Yeah, I am.”
She sucks in a breath, then—
“Okay.”
I blink, not sure if I heard her or someone at the table next to us.
“Okay—really?”
She nods once, but there’s still tension in her expression.
“I still don’t trust her,” she says plainly. “But I do trust you.”
Fair enough.
“I want you to be happy,” she continues. “You deserve it more than a lot of people I know, but if this goes sideways—”
“It won’t,” I insist automatically.
Her brow lifts.
“Don’t do that,” she interjects. “You don’t get to pretend you know how this ends.”
I give a lengthy exhale, dragging my hand through my hair—because she’s right, I don’t know how this is all going to turn out.
“Fine,” I concede. “But neither do you.”
She searches my eyes one more time—looking for cracks in my armor, hesitation, or anything that tells her I’m going to change my mind.
She doesn’t find it.
“You’ve got your one shot,” she says. “Don’t waste it.”
I nod once.
“I won’t, Ry.”
When I get to the studio, I realize I’m the one who’s late this time.
The room is alive, the gang is already hard at work with something we worked on yesterday pulsating through the speakers. Conversations are overlapping, bleeding into each other as I push through the door and step inside.
Grayson is at the main console, leaning over Jake’s shoulder as they debate different levels on the track.
Mia sits perched on the arm of his chair, scrolling through her phone.
Her camera hangs around her neck, undoubtedly so she can take photos of us recording for our social media pages.
Eric is in a chair in the corner of the room, plucking away mindlessly on his guitar strings, and Tony—
Tony’s exactly where I’d expect him to be, sprawled out on the leather couch against the back wall like he owns the place.
“Ugh, you finally decided to show up!” Jake groans, noticing my presence. “Just after I praised you for being the punctual one.”
I lift a hand in acknowledgement, dropping my equipment bag near the only empty chair in this shoebox of a room.
“Miss me?” I mumble.
“Not even a little,” Eric replies without so much as looking up.
Figures.
Grayson doesn’t say anything.
He just watches me far longer than necessary as soon as he realizes I’ve arrived. I haven’t had a chance to check in with Johanna after her lunch with him, and I can’t tell from his expression alone how it went.
Small victories—at least he’s not shoving me up against a wall and rearranging my face.
“We were just about to listen to some of the rhythm tracks you recorded last night after we left,” Eric says without looking up.
“Jake—cue something up, my dude!” Tony hollers from his position on the couch.
Jake grumbles something under his breath—something that strangely sounds like I hate this fucking chicken shit outfit as he scrolls through the system history, pulling up the last thing I recorded.
My stomach drops, because the first thing I notice is the length of the track.
I know exactly how long those recordings are supposed to be.
I’d been recording ten to fifteen second progressions, and this one is… well, far longer than that.
Fuck. Fucking. Shit. Fuck.
A cold wave of realization crashes over me like a bucket of ice water, so quickly it almost knocks all the air out of my lungs.
Did I stop recording before Johanna came in?
I did, didn’t I?
I had to.
I remember setting the guitar down—
I walked across the room—
I—
Panic fills my entire body, a hot and immediate contrast to the sensation from just moments ago, and suddenly I feel like I’ve been engulfed in flames and I don’t know how to put myself out.
Do I actually remember physically hitting stop?
“Uh—Jake,” I start, nearly launching myself out of my chair. “Maybe don’t play—”
It’s too late.
He clicks play, and the room fills with static. A moment of relief fills me, until—
“This one’s awfully long,” Jake mumbles, dragging the cursor to the middle of the track.
It begins to play again, and this time, there’s noise—but it’s definitely not the sound of my bass.
Fuck, Johanna. Such a good girl, so wet and ready for Daddy’s cock.
Jesus Christ.
Every muscle in my body locks.
No. No, no, no—
I could fall over and die right here and it would actually be preferable to this.
The whole room stills. I fully expect Jake to stop it immediately, but he lets it play through—much to my chagrin—his curiosity peaking along with everyone else’s.
Come on, Daddy. Give it to me—no holding back.
“Turn it off,” I roar. “Now!”
Jake finally snaps to attention and slams a button, killing the sound instantly.
“Was that—?” Mia begins to ask.
Grayson stiffens in his chair, looking like he’s about two minutes from losing his mind.
“I think we all know exactly what that was,” he says slowly.
His tone is even, but I don’t buy it for a minute. Not after an entire room of the people closest to us just heard me fucking his sister’s brains out.
“No way,” Tony says, dragging a hand over his face with a disbelieving laugh. “No fucking way.”
“Tony,” Eric warns, but there’s no heat behind it—just shock.
I can’t look at anyone. I’m just two more words away from going out to play in LA traffic, but somehow, I can’t seem to make myself move either.
“Delete it,” I say, my voice strained. “Jake—”
He nods instantly, pounding another key. “It’s gone.”
Tense silence nearly swallows the room. No one moves. No one dares to speak.
I can feel every side pressing in on me—the weight of what just happened. The way every single person in this room knows exactly what’s been going on with me, whether I want them to or not. Whether I—or we—were ready for them to know or not.
“I can’t be in here,” I mutter, suddenly able to make myself rise from the chair at the sheer force of discomfort and back towards the door.
No one tries to stop me—but I don’t expect them to, either.
The second I reach the end of the hallway and break out into the sunlight, I brace myself against the brick of the building and sigh as the door slams behind me. My heart is still racing, panic still buzzing through my veins like I just sprinted a mile.
What the hell was I thinking?
I let out a shaky breath, pushing off the wall and taking a few steps, considering what the fallout would be if I just… took off.
Before I can make a decision, the door clicks shut behind me. I hadn’t even heard it open, but I have half a mind to think it’s Grayson, here to give me the punch I’d been expecting earlier.
But it’s not him at all.
It’s Mia.
She takes a step towards me, but stops when I put my hand out.
“Brandon, I—” she starts.
“Mia, you don’t have to be nice to me,” I huff. “Grayson’s going to kill me no matter what, so you might as well be on the winning side.”
Her eyes soften immediately.
“Had he heard—that—before he had lunch with Jo today,” she says slowly. “He might have—killed you, I mean.”
I blink. “What?”
She nods. “She told him about the two of you.”
A breath leaves me, somewhere between relief and exhaustion.
She actually told him.
“He already knows,” she clarifies. “You just… gave him confirmation in surround sound.”
I scrub a hand down my face. “Fantastic.”
Mia takes the opportunity to step a little closer now, softening her voice when she speaks again.
“Whatever she said to him,” she continues, “it mattered. Trust me, he didn’t walk in here today ready to fight you.”
“You sure about that?” I counter. “You weren’t around the first time I went through this with him, Mia. This isn’t exactly something he’s ever been understanding about.”
She pauses, considering how to respond. Then—
“Do you remember when I came to LA for the first time?” she asks. “We went to that diner and the whole group was crammed into a booth, tossing around ideas about what would happen between Grayson and me?”
“Of course I do.”
“You were the only person who knew what to say to me,” she says. “And one of the first things you ever told me was that you’d loved Johanna once.”
I don’t know how to respond to her. I used to be the voice of reason—the guy who knew all the answers.
Now I’m… an embarrassment at best.
“You never stopped loving her,” she presses. “You just got better at pretending you had.”
I nearly fall over as I’m pacing. Her words are more true than anything else I’ve said to describe the last few years, I’ve just never been able to see it that way.
“I don’t want to screw it up, Mia,” I admit softly. “You and Gray… you’re the goal, you know?”
She laughs—a full, hearty laugh that fills the entire space and echoes off the brick walls even though we’re outside.
“You know better than anyone how long it took us to get to where we are now, B,” she says, still grinning. “You and Jo will get there, too—hopefully without the divorce and the massive car accident.”
A small, reluctant laugh slips out of me, too.
“Pretty low bar, Mia,” I smirk.
She studies me for a moment longer.
“If you love her, Brandon,” she says. “Just… love her.”
Emotion covers her face as she breathes in, composing herself.
“Don’t worry about Grayson,” she assures me. “Don’t worry about the guys. Just worry about Jo, and I’ll worry about the rest—okay?”
I raise a brow. “How exactly do you plan to do that?”
“I’m kind of magical.” She shrugs. “Just wait and see.”