I frowned. “How much earlier are we talking about?”
He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on the table, hands interlocked. His silver Rolex gleamed in the overhead light. “We’ve booked the studio for December twenty-seventh.” In four weeks. Three months ahead of schedule. “We’ve been extremely lucky to land Daniel Maynard, thanks to his recent divorce.” A satisfied smile slithered onto Remar’s face, as if he personally was responsible for the demise of the producer’s marriage. Although I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had been. Rumor had it Remar was on wife number five. Presumably he knew a trick or two about wrecking marriages, especially his own. “You do know who Daniel Maynard is, right?”
Just the greatest producer in the United States when it came to rock music. He had produced the albums of some of my favorite bands, and they’d all gone straight to the top of the charts, every fucking time.
I nodded. “I do.”
“Good. Then you understand how important this opportunity is for the band. And how important it is that you’re ready to record the album come December twenty-seventh. We’ve managed to book him for a week. Then he won’t be available until the following October. Is it correct to assume you’ll be ready?” His tone indicated the question was rhetorical. We would be ready or else our contract would be null and void. That was why the two suits were here: to remind me that if the album wasn’t ready when the label expected it to be ready, we could say goodbye to the record deal.
“Don’t worry. We’ll be ready.”
“Perfect. Make sure that you are.”
I waited for him to say something more, maybe give me a reason why he wanted to talk to only me instead of the entire band. But after a few seconds it became clear I’d been dismissed.
Relieved to escape the chilly regard of everyone in the room and get ready to do what I lived for, I headed for the door.
“And before I forget,” Remar said in the tone of someone who was incapable of forgetting, “there’s a reporter here from Rock News. I granted her a brief interview with you and the band for after your show. Please don’t disappoint her.”
“No, sir.” I hoped she didn’t mind interviewing five guys coming down from an adrenaline high. Five guys who tended to forget their filters while coming down from the high, Mason being the worst of us.
And since when did Remar book our interviews? Our publicist was responsible for that, the same way she was responsible for making sure the world knew me only as Tyler Erickson. Although that wasn’t an especially tough job, even with social media. Thank you, Mom, for being so gung-ho to home-school me.
Pushing the thought of Remar from my head, because there was no point in trying to figure out anything to do with the man, I left the room. I respected his decisions. So far they hadn’t been wrong. But next time I saw him, I’d make sure he understood I wasn’t the boss of the band. It was a democracy. The band and the music weren’t just mine. They belonged to all of us, each adding his own vision to the mix.
No sooner had I shut the door behind me than my phone played a classical tune. What the hell? I pulled it from my pocket, mentally kicking myself for letting Aaron borrow the phone. Only he would have reprogrammed it to play classical music.
I checked the screen. Brandon. Again. He knew I had a show tonight, so for him to be this desperate to talk to me meant that whatever he had to tell me was damn important.
“What’s up?” I asked, half wondering if it would’ve been better to ignore the call the way I had ignored his texts.
“Shit, Nolan. I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”
“Yeah, got that. Sorry. Had to meet the president of the label for a little powwow.” I pressed the elevator down button. “What’s such a big deal it couldn’t keep?”
“It’s Hailey.”
My heart slammed against my rib cage at the urgent sound of his voice. What about Hailey?
“She’s in a coma.”
Chapter 2
Nolan
FIVE YEARS AGO
When it came to the law of best friends, the unwritten rule stated that if you fell in love with her, you should never ever tell her the truth. To do so would only fuck things up. If you violated that rule, and she didn’t feel the same way, you would’ve lost the one person who meant the world to you. And if she did feel the same way and things didn’t work out in the end, where would that leave you?
Royally screwed, that’s where.
I flopped down next to Hailey on her parents’ couch and pretended her scent didn’t affect me. Good luck with that. I didn’t know where it came from—maybe her shampoo, or maybe the spray stuff girls loved dousing on their bodies. All I knew was it reminded me of my mom’s sugar cookies. And I loved Mom’s sugar cookies.