And the thing that repeatedly kept me from falling asleep was wondering how I was going to deal with Emma. She thinks she’s here to work for me, and on its face… that’s true. But my motives are far more selfish. She’s here merely because she intrigues me. I’ve got the leverage and privilege behind me that ensures she stays within my line of sight so I can figure out how I want to play with her.
Last night, she read over the lawsuit brought by the members of my former band, Kickback—sans Keith Carina, of course. It essentially alleges that they jointly own the copyright of certain songs on my Core Deviance album and they were entitled to a portion of the royalties. That album went platinum in less than a year, and because I published that as an indie artist, those royalties all came to me—less the production costs Midge fronted. After I paid her back her investment with interest—at my insistence—the resulting monies I pocketed has me set for life.
Emma spent an hour grilling me on how those songs came to be, and I told her I wrote the lyrics and composed the music for those songs, the original intent to be played by Kickback. I showed them the songs, and we played them together a few times. We made some minor chord changes together as a band, but no changes were ever made to the lyrics.
“I did some basic research earlier and there are two types of copyrights,” Emma explained. “The first is for the composition of the song, and the second is for the recording of it.”
“I composed those songs,” I reminded her. “Every word and musical note was my creation.”
“But the band helped you make some changes,” she pushed at me.
“Minor chord changes,” I scoffed. “But those songs are my creation. They’re my art.”
Emma nodded as if she understood me, but spent a few seconds scribbling down some notes. Then she asked me, “Tell me about the bad blood between you and the members of Kickback.”
So I told her everything.
Keith Carina, Joel Paxton, and Neil Hartsough formed Kickback with me during our freshman year together at Carolina. We’d all played in bands while in high school, not together of course, but that was really just fooling around.
Kickback was different though.
We were good.
I mean really good.
I was lead guitarist and vocals. Keith was on bass, Joel was drums, and Neil was on keyboards. We started out just playing cover songs at college hangouts, but we became really popular. All of us struggled with school and studies, and the more gigs we booked, the more we all blew off classes. We finally decided to go full time with our music during our junior years, all dropping out with not even a backward glance, a fact my parents are still pissed about despite my success now.
“What caused the band to breakup?” Emma had asked me point blank.
I gave it back to her as simple as I could make it. “Greed.”
Her eyebrows raised in question, so I explained. “We were at a crossroads with the band’s future. I had all these great songs I’d created that were just begging to be recorded. Around the same time, a very minor record label had interest in us and made us an offer. The guys wanted to take the offer, and I didn’t. I wanted to either hold out for a bigger deal with a larger label, or record the stuff ourselves. I had Midge willing to front the production costs.”
“Midge?” she asked with surprise.
“Well, yeah,” I told her with a fond smile. “She believed in me. Hell, she helped raise me, so I’m like a son to her. She had no qualms about giving me the money to record and produce Core Deviance.”
“So you split over whether or not to take that deal?” Emma surmised.
“Yes,” I admitted with a flush of burning anger toward my former band. For their short sightedness and greed for quick money. For the inability to trust me and our talent—that we could be bigger than what that dinky little label was offering us. And really fucking pissed that they’re now snapping at my heels, hoping for me to throw them some scraps from my success without them.
Ultimately, Emma said she’d need to do some more research, but that she would work on some responsive documents to their lawsuit. And with that, she took the provided laptop from the desk and walked back into the bedroom where she shut the door. It was after one AM the last time I’d looked down the hallway and still saw light shining out from underneath the door. Thereafter, I just stared at the ceiling until I was able to finally fall asleep, using the sound of the bus’s tires on the pavement to help me along.
“I’m going to take Sirius for a short walk,” Emma says, and I jolt out of my memories. “Then I’ll come back here and get to work.”
“Sounds good,” I say as I stretch my arms upward and roll my head to loosen out some minor kinks. That couch wasn’t all that comfortable.
My gaze slides to Emma and she’s blatantly staring at me.
Well, at my naked chest.
She just stares, transfixed, and my dick gets infinitely harder. Lowering my arms, I rub a hand across my chest as if I’m just casually scratching it and watch as her eyes follow along. Just to see what she’ll do, I give a little tug on the silver ring through my right nipple.