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And he was left staring after her, wondering what the fuck he’d just done.
Chapter Twelve
When he finally made it back into the studio—ten minutes after the five he’d allotted himself—Wyatt found his bandmates waiting for him. And if he’d thought they’d looked pissed before, it was nothing compared to what this latest wait had done to them.
Ryder was pacing, hands yanking at his too long hair. Quinn was muttering to himself as he scrolled through his phone like a madman. And Jared…well, Jared was glaring at the door like he was waiting for Satan himself to walk through it. And the second Wyatt did, the guitarist was out of his chair and across the kitchen.
Wyatt knew the punch was imminent, but he didn’t try to defend himself. Hell, after all the shit he’d caused, he figured Jared had at least one free shot coming. They all did. Of course, that was before the guy’s fist connected with the side of his face—it had been a long time since they’d settled things by fighting, and Wyatt had forgotten just how hard a punch Jared had.
No time to categorize the damage, though, not when Jared was already pulling his hand back a second time. “What the
fuck did you think you were doing?”
Wyatt just raised a brow at him, his gaze going between Jared’s face and his fist. “I gave you one.”
“Is that supposed to scare me? After three months in rehab you look like a gust of wind would blow you away. You sure as shit laid down for Germaine like it would.”
That set him on edge despite himself, and he gave up discreetly trying to catalog the damage to his face so that he could shove Jared, hard. “Fuck you. You don’t know anything about it.”
“I don’t know anything about—” Jared broke off. Ground his teeth together. Worked at unclenching his fists. “Fuck you. Nobody knows more about your shit than we do. And we’ve always had your back. Always. So you want to explain to me why the fuck you pussed out the second Germaine put a little bit of pressure on you?”
“I didn’t puss out.”
“Sure as hell looked that way to me.” Jared glanced over his shoulder at the others. “What about you guys? Didn’t it look like that to you, too?”
“Stop being a dick,” Quinn told him, his voice ringing through the room with an air of finality. “And both of you come sit down so we can talk this out.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Ryder said, even as he pulled out a chair to sit down. “Wyatt quitting the band isn’t an option.”
“It’s the only option. You know the label’s just going to keep pushing you about me—”
“And we’re just going to keep pushing back,” Jared interrupted, looking at him like he was a moron. “Why the fuck do we pay a small fortune to our lawyers and management if we’re just going to roll over and let them fuck us?”
“It’s not about rolling over! Can’t you see that?”
“All I see is you backing off from a fight. And that isn’t like you.”
Wyatt snorted. “Who the fuck are you kidding, Jared? It’s exactly like me.”
“No,” Ryder interjected. “It isn’t. If you were going to walk away from this fight, you would have done it a long time ago.”
“I tried. You wouldn’t let me.”
“Damn right,” Jared snorted.
Quinn shot him a look. “So what makes you think we’re going to let you do it now?”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” Ryder told him. “And if you think we’re going to let you make the wrong one here, then you’re out of your fucking mind.”
“It’s my decision.”
“It’s our decision,” Jared countered. “This band has always been a democracy, and three beats one every way you look at it.”
“You don’t get it.”
“No, you don’t get it!” Quinn pushed back from the table so fast his chair tipped backward and crashed to the ground. No one even looked at it. “We’ve stood by you for ten years, Wyatt. Ten years. Through the drugs, through the self-mutilation, through rehab, through relapses…what makes you think we’re going to cut you loose now?”
