She rounded on him. “Chance, for once, just once, in your goddamn life, would you actually respect my wishes? Would you just do what I asked you to do instead of arguing with me and needing to be right and pushing and pushing and freaking pushing?” For a second, she was sure she was going to burst a blood vessel in her brain and die of pure frustration. Death by irritation.
He stared at her for a long moment. Then he pursed his lips, nodded, and backed out of the room. Literally backed out. Like he was afraid of what would happen to him if he didn’t keep his gaze on her. She was tempted to throw something at him to scare him, but she resisted. The whole thing was so ridiculous that the minute the door closed behind him, she gave a laugh of disbelief.
“If I find this on the Internet, I will hunt you down and cancel your birth certificate,” she told Tennyson.
“What am I—stupid?” Tennyson scoffed. “I have the opportunity of a lifetime here. I’m not going to jack it up.”
Maybe those were words to live by. Wasn’t that what she herself had with Chance—the opportunity of a lifetime?
She took another massive bite of his old bagel and grabbed the notepad to read what Tennyson had been writing.
It was an opportunity not everyone was afforded, both personally and professionally. She needed to remember that.
Time to bleed on the page.
Chapter 15
By eleven that night, Chance felt he’d gone a round with a bear. And lost. He was exhausted. His neck, back, arms were all sore. A headache was dancing behind his eyes.
When he closed his front door behind Tennyson, who had left for the night, he found himself alone with Jolene, uncertain what to do or say. So he decided to be honest. “That was brutal.”
She nodded. “It was hell. But we have three really amazing songs. I’m just not sure I can record them without wanting to punch you.”
Chance rubbed his jaw, sighing. “Punch me if you need to, JoJo. Let’s work out whatever we have to work out. I want to move on.”
“We opened a lot of old wounds today. I feel like we owe Tennyson money for therapy.”
“Tennyson is going to do just fine financially from this. I’m kind of terrified of her. That is a woman who isn’t afraid to slice and dice.” He shook his head. “Right when you think you have a minute to regroup, she comes in with a lyric that is so true and awful, you want to pound a wall.”
“Or throw a plate?” Jolene smiled at him and dropped down onto the couch, drawing her legs up. “I may or may not have done that today, after all.”
“Can I sit by you?” His voice was tentative.
“Yes. I don’t want to fight, you know. I actually want you to come over here and hug me.”
The relief he felt was huge. “Really? I can do that. I will hug the stuffing out of you.” He sat next to her and pulled her into his arms, grateful that he was being given the opportunity to touch her, give her comfort. Hell, comfort himself. “It was easier to write an album of love songs, I gotta admit.”
She nestled up against his chest. “You were the one with the brilliant idea to write a breakup album.”
“I was stupid. Though I have to say, this is good stuff, JoJo. Really good.”
“I know. That’s why I didn’t throw Tennyson out on her skinny ass.”
“And here you said you could write a song with a potbellied pig if you needed to,” he teased her.
She snorted. “That would have been less painful. A pig wouldn’t ask me to describe how I felt seeing you at the CMAs with another woman.”
Yeah. That hadn’t exactly been a stroll in the park. He didn’t want to go there again. Not tonight, when they were both strung out and busted. “Maybe we needed this?” He heard the question in his own voice. He pressed a kiss on the top of her head. “I love you, you know that, right?”
“I know.” She glanced up at him, her eyes tired and glassy. “I do know that. But this is a reminder that we need to communicate better. We need to discuss what we want, both as a couple and as a professional duo.”
He thought about it. “Do you want to talk about this now or tomorrow, when we’ve had some sleep?”
“I think we should clear the air before we go to bed.”
It encouraged him that she was planning to spend the night. There had been a point or two when he’d been convinced she was going to walk out and he’d never see her again. Hell, he’d debated doing that himself. “Career-wise, I would like to look past this album and plan what we want to do. In a perfect world, I’d love to play smaller venues with you, like we did at the Bluebird the other night.”
“That’s not practical, but I know you know that.”
It frustrated him that somehow they’d gotten swept along into a career that they now had no ability to control. “I do know that. But if we commit to one more stadium tour for this album, in my mind, we back off and go a little more acoustic the next go-round. Do we really need a huge-ass tour every single year? It might be a way to do a reboot. I mean, these songs we were working on today are more suited to a more intimate venue.”
“You’re right.” She yawned. “But how do you stop a train that’s already rolling?”