“No, I am not defending Tennyson, JoJo. I turned her down when she asked me to collaborate with her.”
“Collaborate? Is that a new euphemism for ‘get naked and rub body parts’?”
Whoa. There had been no naked, nor would there ever be nude rubbing. “Hey, now. Just calm down, Jolene.”
Jolene saw red. At no time ever had any woman heard a dumb-ass man commanding her to calm down and thought that he was right, she really should dial herself back a notch just to satisfy his patronizing tone. Nope. Not. Ever. And this was not the day when the course of history would be changed and women everywhere would suddenly realize that, yes, they should calm down.
“I don’t think I want to do that.” She moved over to his fireplace. “But I will tell you this. You just call up Tennyson and tell her you’re available to collaborate, because I am going to be working with Wayne Rush for a while.” Her voice was ice-cold.
It was satisfying to see Chance’s jaw drop. “Excuse me? What are you talking about?”
“I got a call from Wayne’s team. I said yes.”
“You can’t do that.” His nostrils flared and his jaw twitched. His hands folded into fists. “We agreed on what was next for us.”
“It’s an opportunity I can’t afford to pass up.”
“It’s a betrayal.”
She felt a pang of guilt at his words. “Easy for you to say. You have your family to fall back on. I’ve got nothing, no one.”
“Bullshit. You have Shane, you have Ginny. No one is going to let you land in a pile of mud.”
“I can’t work with you and Tennyson. I can’t do this.” Damn it, she was crying. “You lied to me.”
“I did not.”
Jolene was confused and upset. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t somehow pull it together and sit there with Chance and Tennyson and write music about the pain of her relationship with him. It would be impossible. It would also make her vulnerable in a way a businesswoman couldn’t afford to be. “I can’t work with you! We can’t be partners at work and at home. At least not right now. I have to sort all this out in my head, and I can’t do it sitting there across from Tennyson Mitchell. This is perfect timing, frankly. I can’t afford to sit back and wait to sort out my emotions about our business partnership. If we want to save us, our professional pairing needs to take a backseat for a minute.”
“I don’t know how to unravel the two, JoJo.” His voice was earnest. “You and me, we’re Hart-Rivers. We need both to exist.”
“Yet having it all-or-nothing seems to hurt both of us.” She felt a pounding behind her eyes and wasn’t sure what she was saying. She just wanted out of Chance’s house. She needed to think, to regroup. To be smart.
“Don’t do this. Tell Wayne’s people no.”
“I already said yes.” She wanted him to understand. She needed him to understand. “I want your support.”
“Yeah, well, you said yes to me, too, and you’re backing out on that.” Chance looked away from her, running a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, I can’t support this. Don’t I matter to you at all?”
That he could ask the question almost destroyed her. “You matter too much. You become everything. I think that we have taken our duet as far as it can go. Or maybe we just need a break, but something has to change, because I can’t have my every second wrapped up in you.” She needed to leave before she totally lost it.
“If you go on tour with Wayne, everything will be nothing.” His voice was shaking with anger.
If he had shown fear at losing her, or raw pain and confusion, she might have stayed. She might have been willing to pass up the opportunity of a lifetime. But he stood there, and he had his finger pointed at her, and she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t be the one who opened herself up wholly, who let him intertwine in every aspect of her career and her heart, if he couldn’t do the same. She wanted a compromise. Recognition that her feelings had legitimacy, and he didn’t seem to be able to give that, no matter how hard she wanted to read between the lines and find it.
That pain was overwhelming, and she curled her fingers into fists so he wouldn’t see that she was trembling. There was no hiding her tear-filled eyes, so she just gave him a nod and turned to leave.
In a move that she had to admit was thoroughly childish, she swiped their Song of the Year Grammy off his mantel and walked out. Tit for tat, y’all.
He made a groan of frustration in the back of his throat, but he didn’t follow her.
Jolene got in her truck, drove around the corner, parked, and sobbed. Mother-effer, this hurt. She never should have gone there with Chance again. Fool her once, fool her twice. But enough was enough.
Sometimes when one door closed, you took your pink cowboy boot and you kicked another one open.
She was going on tour with Wayne Rush, country legend.
And she wasn’t even remotely excited about it.