The Duet(78)

Summer was the only one who stayed silent and I feared it was because she knew the truth about where I’d found the inspiration for the song. She nodded at me with a solemn smile and then stared back down at her phone, probably reworking my schedule. I was behind on a lot of commitments and on top of that, I’d need to start recording my next studio album. The song I’d recorded a moment earlier would be the first track on the CD and I feared most of the other songs would have a similar feel.

They say you should write what you know. So… that was my plan.

…



I had one week until the Grammys and every spare moment in those seven days was planned out to a “T”. I had three rehearsals, Cammie’s graduation, dress fittings, workouts, voice lessons, and countless interviews.

Yet somehow there was still ample amount of time to think about Jason. He’d made a change to the beginning of our duet. I would have protested it that late in the game, except the changes were good. Really good. His assistant had sent them over the day before and I’d sat there reading them and trying to decipher the secret meaning of every word as if they were pieces of Jason’s soul. Sadly, after an hour of staring at a computer screen, I came to the conclusion that they were just words.

…



The first day of rehearsals for an award show is always a frenzy of activity. The sheer manpower that goes into putting on an event of that magnitude is almost equal to the number of guests who would actually be in attendance.

I stayed in my dressing room after I’d arrived; enjoying the peace and quiet once my voice coach had left. I knew I was due on stage in a few minutes for my rehearsal, but I couldn’t help scribbling lyrics down in my notebook. In the last few days it’d been permanently attached to my hand, housing the words that were tumbling forth without much effort at all.



We were never really friends

Always something more

Maybe if I’d seen it before

I could have kept you from walking,

Kept you from walking out that door





A gentle knock on my dressing room door pulled my attention from my notebook.

“Brooklyn, we’ll be ready for you onstage in fifteen,” a stagehand announced on the other side of my door.

“Thanks!” I called back, glancing down at the lyrics one more time before stuffing the notebook back into my bag. I was still trying to cram it all the way in when my dressing room door opened.

“I thought I still had fifteen minutes,” I protested, before looking up and coming face to face with a man who was most definitely not a stagehand.

I hadn’t seen Jason since he’d slammed the door on his way out of my condo a few days before, but there he was, looking too handsome to ignore. His features were lit by the shadows of my dim dressing room and I paused on my way to sit-up, just taking him in.

“Sorry. I should have knocked,” he said, but he didn’t turn to leave, so clearly he wasn’t that sorry.

I crossed my arms and stood up off the couch, steeling myself for whatever he was about to say.

“We have fifteen minutes until we need to be on stage,” I pointed out.

He nodded. “I wanted to talk to you before we went up there.”

“Okay,” I answered, standing even straighter. “Talk.”

“I’m sorry for not telling you about Kim.”

I had wanted an apology so badly. I had wanted him to acknowledge his wrongdoing, but not before we were about to be on stage. Not when I was about to have to spend the next few hours singing with him. So I just nodded, once.

“Is that all?” I asked, moving toward the vanity to grab a clip for my hair. It usually got warm on stage and I knew we’d be up there for a few hours. Also, I really needed an excuse to turn away him.

“I shouldn’t have kept everything from you, but you should have been honest with me, too,” he said.

My head snapped in his direction, but he didn’t back down.

“Honest about how you felt about us,” he continued. “You should have waited and listened instead of jumping on the first plane out of Montana.”

I laughed, completely taken aback by his comment.

“Yeah, maybe I should have. Now can you please get out of my dressing room?” I gritted my teeth together to keep from tearing up.

“I’m sorry about that stuff from my legal team. None of it was sent with my consent,” he said, walking toward the door and propping it open for a moment.

I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. My camp would have done the same thing.”

He smiled gently and looked down at his feet. “Yeah. Cammie sent me a fruit basket with a note that said, ‘One of these has been poisoned. Enjoy.’”