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We’d be much further.
“You can spit your hate all you want, Arch.” I shake my head, a half-smirk accompanied by no humor pulling up my lips. “See, I’m smarter now than I was then. Stealthier.” I make a show of my hands, waving them down my body as if I’m the showcase prize. “More mature.” I wink and smirk right in his ragey fucking face with outstretched arms. “But we both know you changed my shit without my permission outside of the contract under the assumption we’d eventually draw up another one.”
Archie stutters at my words and fumbles his hands around his desk, proving my theory right in the process.
“And then you shared it with others. Didn’t you.” It’s not a question because I already know the answer, one that he won’t share. I drop my arms to my side and deliver my final blow. “I’m out Archie.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing Reck.” Archie comments after a tension-filled beat of silence that’s not actually quiet thanks to his labored breathing, pulling a scoff from my throat and an eye roll I don’t hide from him for once.
“Except I do this time, Arch. The band’s obligations were up the moment we got home. We even threw a party.” I shake my head and turn to address Ian. “We’re done here.”
A tight jut of his chin is all I need to follow Ian to the door.
“And by the way,” I pause at the open threshold. The knob in my hand, a foot out the door. “My name’s not fuckingboyorsonorReck.It’sRex, motherfucker.”
I raise my hands and flip both middle fingers to someone I once idolized until Ian is shoving me out into the hall.
“Just had to fucking take it that far, didn’t you?”
“Have you met me, Ian?” His heavy sigh is the only response I get on the matter, accompanied by our echoing boot steps thumping over the worn puke green flooring.
You’d think a record tycoon would replace his fucking carpet.
Thumps echo behind us, along with shouted demands and curses, papers flittering out into the hall from Archie’s office like delayed confetti.
Sounds like Archie is big mad in there.
“What are you going to do now?” Ian asks, smashing the elevator call button and stepping to the side so that his back is to the wall and mine is covered.
“Leo set up this whole ‘road trip’ tour.” I shrug and watch the numbers tick down on the elevator. “I owe them the final ride.”
My phone chirps for my attention, and I pull the thing out to find a message from my twin. I send him a quick confirmation of my safety and dismiss the messaging app to pause on my background photo.
“And what about that?” Ian taps the screen with a meaty finger, nearly knocking my phone out of my hand as he pushes past me to take up most of the elevator car when the door dings open. I juggle for a moment but keep the device from skittering to the floor and step into the cramped lift with my bodyguard.
“What’s it to you, Ian?” It’s a rhetorical question, his interest pissing me off more than I’d like to admit, but he grunts his response anyways.
"Just fucking call her.”
18
ARIA
Six hours in the car after a night like the one with Rex had me screaming at the windshield like it was the car’s fault that my heart hurt and my nether regions ached and my eyes wouldn’t stop leaking.
That’s a hell of a combination to feel.
I came home a mess to my sisters who helped me pick up the broken pieces of my pitiful heart. They theorized and fantasized about his untimely death, as any good sister would, but their anger only fueled the urge I’ve felt deep in my soul for a long time.
Not to kill anyone, per se.
But to let go. Of the old me, the past.
The survival me.
The stuck version of me.
So, over the third pint of ice cream and buried under a blanket fort we made to get my mind off of he who shall not be named, I made up my mind.
