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“I’m going into that ballroom,jackass. A girl’s got to make a living. And what do you care what I do? I haven’t heard from you since you slinked out of town. Or is it something else? Do you feel like stealing this opportunity from me, too?”
She couldn’t help herself.
In the end, the snark always won.
And in this case, it was for a good reason.
He’d full-on passed off her music as his own. That’s how he’d gotten his foot in the door. Yes, one could argue they’d somewhat collaborated on the songs, if you called being in the same apartment and breathing the same air collaboration. Vance had mostly played with his phone and taken selfies of himself while she worked, but by the time she figured out what he’d done, he’d already signed with a label.
And what was she supposed to do?
She was a broke college student when she’d heard the first bars of her song play on the radio with his heavily modulated voice belting out her lyrics. She’d been furious, and rightly so. But she didn’t know the first thing about going after someone, nor did she have the resources to do it—or, more importantly, the proof.
The guy might be a first-class jerk, but he was smart enough to take every slip of paper, every notebook, and delete every audio and video clip from her phone that connected her to the music.
Even if she’d had the resources, it would be a he said, she said case.
It was a gamble she couldn’t afford to take.
Vance tried to play off her comment, yucking it up with his entourage, but agitation rolled off the man in crashing waves. “Feisty as ever,” he bit out, brushing her off, but she’d struck a nerve, and she wasn’t done.
“This isn’t feisty, Vance Viberenski,” she replied, enunciating the syllables of his less than cool last name. “This is complete and utter disgust. How do you live with yourself?”
For a split second, trepidation flashed in his eyes. But before she could blink, a slimy smirk spread across his lips. “Isn’t she hilarious?” he spouted to his crew of goons, then leaned in. “Still trying to pretend you’re some badass and not the little girl nobody wanted. How very, very sad,Harper Barbara.”
The man might rely on Auto-tune and a bevy of sound techs to make him sound half-decent, but he sure had a talent for wielding cruelty.
The breath caught in her throat.
Only Babs called her Harper Barbara.
As much as she despised the guy, she couldn’t heap the blame solely on him. She’d let herself be used. She was the one who’d shared her heart, her music, and the details about her parents with him.
Her lips parted, but nothing came out.
Vance’s blue eyes glittered with brutal delight. He leaned in and lowered his voice. “My label has a team of lawyers. They’re sharks. You throw an accusation at me like that again, and all I have to do is make one call. They’ll slap a defamation of character suit on you faster than you can say the name ofmyhit song, ‘Every Time You Break My Heart.’”
His song?
The hissing breath against the shell of her ear made her want to crawl out of her skin.
She took a step back, hating the man, but he wasn’t wrong. He held all the cards.
What had she seen in this prick?
Her poor judgment in men wasn’t the only thing gnawing at her soul.
Other slippery voices whispered in the darkest parts of her mind.
He took off because you’re not a star. You don’t have what it takes to make it in music. You’re no good.
You’re the girl who gets left behind.
She pushed the maddening thoughts aside. Her gaze grew glassy, and she looked away. She wasn’t about to let him see that his verbal daggers had hit the mark.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” she said, willing her voice to remain steady. “I have an interview. I’m about to become the internet’s next hot performer.”
His eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. He peered at the ballroom doors. “You’re really going in there? I thought you were kidding.”
