“You can’t prove a thing.” His voice is more certain than his eyes.
“I’m sure Drex wouldn’t mind testifying for me since some of Gep’s hacker friends have already tapped into his cloud and found several sex tapes, none of which, I’m guessing, had consent.” I turn to Drex. “Am I right about that?”
Drex swallows and drops his eyes to the floor.
“I won’t let you get away with this.” Malcolm struggles to get the words out past his rage.
“Let me?” My breath comes quick and shallow, anger rupturing the calm I’m barely holding on to. “At what point in this conversation did you become confused? I hold all the cards. Every scenario is one I’ve designed. Every outcome gets me something I want, even if that’s just you broke and behind bars. Kai will weather any storm that comes with exposure. I’ll make sure of that, but you won’t.”
Malcolm’s marble eyes shift like a rat’s from Drex to Gep to me and back again. A cornered rodent, looking for a way out. But there isn’t a way out. I’ve blocked all his escape routes. Even though my hand is throbbing, discolored, and limp, I can’t focus on the pain because I see how close he is to caving.
“And if I give you all copies of the tape—”
“And release Kai and Luke from their contracts,” I insert.
“And release Kai and Luke from their contracts,” he concedes, lips tightening and eyes slitting like a snake’s. “Then you withdraw your offer from my investors? And I just go on about my business?”
I won’t mention just now that I have wheels in motion to undercut the contracts he has with the remaining artists on his roster. I won’t mention it because he won’t know I was behind it.
“Yeah. On about your business.”
What’s left of it.
Neither of these low life parasites will have much left by the time we’re done, but at least they won’t be in jail, which by all rights they should be. If it weren’t for the public spectacle that would become for Kai, I would press for that. We don’t always get everything we want precisely the way we want it, but I can live with this. Knowing Gep and Bristol, they’re already setting up contingencies to protect our interests. This is as fixed as it will get for now. Now to fix my hand.
And then finally to fix things with Kai.
I WAKE UP PIECE BY PIECE, my body sounding no alarms, but languidly shaking sleep from one limb at a time until I’m fully aware. The bedside lamp I left on still shines a dim, soft arc of light across the bed. I’m huddled under the covers, basically the same position I passed out in after I took my meds. Bristol left to work on whatever she works on for Rhyson soon after our conversation in the kitchen, and I’ve been here at the house all day waiting for calls that never came. Information about what’s happening. Confirmation that Rhyson is okay. I fell asleep alone and anxious.
But I wake up with him beside me. He’s sitting up, shoulders against the headboard, his eyes pewter-dark and set on me.
“It’s kind of creepy waking up to you watching me like that.” I toss back to him the words he said to me what feels like a millennium ago in this very bed, hoping it lightens the air between us. “But I could get used to it.”
One side of his mouth tips up a degree, but his eyes remain sober. I brace myself for whatever he has to say. If the tape is coming out, I can take that. It would be humiliating and debasing, but I can withstand that. If I have to stay with Malcolm for two years, I can endure that. Or if I’ll be sidelined, unable to perform and back at the Note slinging overcooked burgers, I’ll do that, too. Whatever the outcome that has him looking so serious, I can take it. As long as he doesn’t say we’re over. As long as he can forgive me for lying to him and keeping this all a secret. That is the only scenario from which I’d never recover.
“Do you remember the first time we made love?” he asks softly.
The question is like an arrow from overhead in the middle of a picnic. It ambushes me. It goes straight to the center of my heart. I can’t keep up, my poor, half-asleep brain struggling to process this unexpected conversation. It’s not the test I thought I’d be taking, but I think I have all the answers.
“Of course, I do.” I don’t sit up, but instead burrow deeper under the covers, searching his face. “On your pool table.”
Half a smile crooks his lips.
“I’d never felt anything like that.” He gives into the rest of that smile briefly. “I mean, the sex, yeah. But the closeness. I’d never felt that close to anyone in my life.”
“Neither had I.”