Page 50 of Wicked Angel
Shane looked confused. “But don’t you guys have a contract?”
“Yeah. We have a contract. But that contract was for Breakneck. Which means me, JC, Noah and Miles. According to Cary’s lawyers, Breakneck is no more, thanks to JC and Miles fucking bailing.”
“Well, fuck. I need a drink.” Shane went over to the bar fridge and got out a bottle of chilled vodka, pouring it out into glasses along the bar.
“What are you, a savage?” Lex wandered over to the bar as Shane slid a glass his way. “Put some mix in there. Soda and a lime or something, for fuck’s sake. It’s barely four o’clock.” Then he glanced over at me. “Don’t tell me you’re drinking straight vodka with this lunatic.”
“Not yet, but the night is young.” Shane smirked at me, nudging a drink my way on the bar.
I knew what my friends were doing. Trying to lighten the mood. It was what they did, and it usually worked. Because shit didn’t get to me, in general.
Professionally, I was unshakable. Unbreakable. No matter what came at me, I wouldn’t be defeated. From the very beginning, I’d had thiscan’t stop, won’t stopmindset about my career.
I did not even know how to process all these fucking roadblocks that were suddenly in my path.
No, not roadblocks. No one was blocking my road.
They were drilling the road, leaving fissures, and now they were dynamiting the road, leaving gaping chasms. The road was becoming impassable, and very soon, if I didn’t stay ahead of it, it would stop me in my tracks.
“We’re going out.”
My friends looked over at me. Lex set his drink down. “Oh, fuck.”
“I know that look in your eyes, bro,” Shane said, but his face split into a grin.
* * *
Whenever the fuck later, we were at a nightclub downtown. The Ruby. Me, Shane, Lex, and somehow, Dane, who we’d dragged the fuck out by showing up at his office unannounced and putting him in the limo I’d hired.
Unfortunately, the married men had killed my perfectly decent idea of hitting the strip club—“It’s for your own good”—so here I was. Getting babysat by a bunch of dudes.
Lamar was with us, but he wasn’t drinking. The five us were wrapped around a table in the VIP section even though it was Monday and the bar was just opening for the night. They’d opened for me, early. One of the perks of being a rock star: bars let me in even when they weren’t open.
The manager himself poured us drinks before his staff got in.
“They’re fucking me,” I announced, after the waitress deposited our latest round of drinks on our table and departed. My friends had kept the conversation on other things—also for my own good, probably—but the more liquor I put back to try to forget, the more it fought its way to the surface.
“They can’t fuck you,” Lex said easily. “You’ll find a way around it. You always do.”
I took the drink Shane slid in front of me and put the whole thing back. I didn’t even taste it.
“What’s the plan?”
I looked at Dane blankly. “What?”
“The plan.” He was still wearing his suit from the office, without the jacket, his dark-blond hair neatly in place. He looked way too respectable right now, actually, to be drinking with the rest of us. However, Lex, the biker/criminal, was Dane’s own brother, and Shane, the underground fighter and general delinquent, was Dane’s best friend. The four of us had been a crew since high school, and maybe we were all too stubborn to change that. And/or loyal. So, here we were. “You always have a plan,” Dane pointed out.
I did. That was very true.
But all this shit had blindsided me. It went against all my plans. Yes, I’d had conflict in my band. We’d come to the verge of breaking up before. But none of my bandmates had ever walked out on the band before.
They’d never walked out onme.
“My plan,” I said, “was to salvage what was left of the band. Me and Noah. Replace the band members we lost, so we can still make good on the record deal. But losing Cary and the studio does not look good. Cary was part of this deal, too. The record company is gonna freak.”
“Why?” Shane said. “Who cares if you switch producers? You’re the rock star.”
“Cary Clarke is more than a star. He’s thirty-five and he’s already a legend in the music biz. This is gonna hurt us. Bad.”
