Page 2 of The B Side

“Listen, little girl, I can do whatever the hell I want, here. You’re on my property. You’re at an event I paid for. That little stunt you two pulled was on my stage, with my name attached. You keep your mouth shut right now. I knew you were trash from the moment I saw you. This–” He broke off with a snort, his eyes dark and glittering as he inched closer to Darcy. “This was all your fucking influence, huh? I should have known you had something up your sleeve. Hanging around for the last year, not making your own music. This–”

The rage – this fury that felt like a living, breathing creature inside of her – directed at Harrison wasn’t new. It was so familiar to her that it had a home in her soul. But she’d always had to push it back, chain it down into the cage it belonged in when it had tried to fly out of her in the past.

This time, she didn’t swallow it down, didn’t try to silence it. Because she didn’t have to.

Instead, she reached out and shoved at the wrist he had outstretched in Darcy’s direction. Mostly because she could see so clearly in her mind how he might reach out and take it further.

Juliet, unlike Darcy, was not well-versed in physical altercations. She much preferred emotional and mental tactics if the need arose, but she couldn’t deny it felt good.

When Harrison rounded on her again, she angled her chin up at him as she stated, “Darcy had nothing to do with this.”

Darcy would stick up for her in an instant. Juliet knew that she didn’t have to say a word here, and Darcy would support her, would defend her, would lead her out of here.

She’d never had that kind of steady, stable, trustworthy love before.

But she didn’t want Harrison’s ire focused on Darcy. For the first time, she wanted it on her.

“Oh, really,” Harrison drawled, crowding her in that way he’d always loved. Making a point of caging her in, making her really feel how much slighter and shorter than him she was. “You were in a relationship with Robbie for how long, and then this worthless–”

Juliet had no control of the way the words flew from her mouth, the fire raging through her veins. “I’ve been fucking women since long before I knew Darcy.” She scoffed, an angry sound that scraped roughly at her throat on the way out. “You really thought you knew about everything I’ve ever done. And that made you feel really powerful, huh? Made you feel like you knew everything about me, that you had me under your thumb in every way. You think just because you’ve controlled my career, you’ve had any idea what goes on in my private life? You don’t have a damn clue. You never have.”

She’d always held onto that. Held onto the fact that even though Harrison pulled so many strings at Copper Canyon, he couldn’t pull any when it came to her. This one thing, her sexuality, was all hers, and she’d wanted to throw it in his face for so long.

And it was everything she’d ever hoped for.

The way his eyes widened, then narrowed.

The way he opened his mouth, then closed it.

Like he couldn’t wrap his head around what she was saying. If she knew Harrison – and she did – it wasn’t even her sexuality that necessarily fazed him. It was that she’d always been this way and that she’d acted on it, without him ever suspecting.

Oh, that was going to eat at him for a very long time.

Satisfaction worked through her in a way she’d known would feel good, but couldn’t have feasibly known how good it would feel. Not until she saw it. Like she was filled with a kind of empowerment she’d never known.

“That’s – I know every inch of your contract with Copper Canyon; you can’t–”

“I can. And I did. Because I’m a lesbian, and no contract – not with you, not with a record label – can change that.”

It took him a few seconds to attempt to regain control over the situation. “I’ve already contacted my legal team the second you pulled that shit on stage, Juliet. Trying to pull my name through the mud, trying to sling the shitstorm that’s headed your way onto me? Not happening.”

“I’ve also been working with my legal team for months. Which is how I know for a fact that there’s finally no recourse you can take. That ‘shit’ I pulled? My contracts with you and Copper Canyon are officially over. I can kiss whoever I want, wherever I want. Darcy is my…”

Girlfriend didn’t even feel like enough. Definitely not right now, not with the enormity of what they’d just done together.

“My partner,” she settled on, because that was precisely what Darcy felt like to her. At this moment especially. “You can get real used to seeing our names and faces splashed everywhere, together.” Juliet wasn’t even sure she was prepared for the sheer amount of publicity coming their way, but right now certainly wasn’t the time for her to go down that road in her mind. Not when she needed to drive her point home, to twist the knife into Harrison even deeper. “And you know what? All of the people who are inevitably going to have a problem with my sexuality? They’re going to think about all of those ads I’ve done for you, all of the manipulation you put in using my name, my face, my fame… I guess that’s going to come back for you now.”

She could see the moment the truth of what she said clicked for him, the way his entire body tensed even more, the way his jaw clenched. And his fists.

Because the thing that mattered the most to Harrison was money. Second to that was his image. And Juliet had just threatened them both in a way she couldn’t, and wouldn’t, take back.

“Harrison!” Her mom’s voice echoed through the night air as she burst through the door between them, out of breath.

She’d likely run through the backstage area trying to find them, before realizing that Juliet had no intention of sticking around.

Juliet couldn’t see her, because she refused to turn her head. She refused to look away from Harrison.

She’d spent so long doing that, both literally and metaphorically. He’d held the power for so long, for her entire fucking life from the moment he’d entered it, and she’d had to bow to him.