Chapter One
Present Day
Jackson
I hate doing the right thing, especially since it means that I’m ensuring my ex-girlfriend and the only woman I’ve ever loved, Violet, will never choose me over Cole Morgan.
Standing in my brother’s bar, I tip up my chin, staring him down, and ignoring our half-brother standing beside him. Honestly, I don’t care about either of them, or how we’re related.
“You look like shit,” Cole says.
“This is what real work looks like,” I say.
“Yeah,” Parker says with a smirk. “Must be real hard counting all that money.”
I start to reply to his oh-so-witty observation, with one of my own, but I stop. I didn’t come here to pick a fight. Instead, I take deep breath and say to Cole, “You need to come to the concert on Sunday.”
“Why?”
“Violet needs you,” I admit.
“So?” Cole says, all casual, and I want to punch him in the throat. He has no idea how much this is costing me to be here, and not in terms of counting all that money.
“What the hell’s your problem? I’m here, offering Violet to you on a silver platter, and all you can say is so?” I run a hand through my hair.
“Rae isn’t a thing. She’s a person, with feelings and—”
I groan, letting my head fall back. Of course, he still calls her Rae, and of course, he’s still concerned with how she’s being a treated. But I’d like for him to be concerned with getting her back, so I can say my piece and leave. “Not you, too.” Can I have at least one reasonable, logical conversation with him?
“Get out.” Cole starts to turn away.
“If I leave, there’s no way you can go. The concert’s been sold out for months. All the last minute tickets are gone.” That makes Cole stop and turn around to face me.
“So you say.”
So I say? God, this is worth less and less of my time, and for damn sure it’s not worth the humiliation. “It’s the truth.”
“Fine,” Cole says, crossing his arms over his chest. “But I want to know why you’re here.”
If I’m honest, it’s because I love Violet enough to let her go, and it’s not just about loving her. I owe it to her, for that night, for leaving her, for putting her through everything, and letting her take the fall. Cole is who she wants, and I’m going to give him to her. Still, I can’t admit all that.
Smirking, I say, “I’m bored and want to see her go ape-shit on you.”
“She doesn’t want you, does she?”
No, you ass, she doesn’t. “What do you think?”
He grins, all at once familiar, because I’ve seen our dad smile exactly like that. My smirk fades.
“I think you’re here because you want to do the right thing by leaving the tour, and Rae, alone,” he says.
Last chance, a voice in my head whispers, leave here and console Violet tonight. She’ll be yours.
An internal battle is taking place inside of me, one I’d thought I’d already fought and won, but it’s hard to give up the one person who’s been the best thing in my life. Violet and I sang with each other for years. She knew my strengths and weaknesses better than anyone. We played to each other and the crowd.
I’ve never felt more alive than when I sang with her onstage. And I never felt more dead than when she’d wrecked her car, and I’d found her in the middle of a field with the windshield embedded in her stomach.
However, the events that had led up to it, and the ones after it, had ruined our relationship permanently.
Only now I know our relationship was orchestrated by Everett, my dad, aka agent, aka producer, aka self-serving asshole.
Besides, I don’t want to be Violet’s consolation prize. I want to be the man she fights for, the one she believes in and takes a chance on. Again. But I know that even if I don’t help her and Cole get back together, she’ll never choose me.
I stare at Cole, long and hard, before reaching into my pocket and holding up a single ticket, with a backstage pass. “Here.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.” His hands shake, and I blink. “Rae and I are better apart.”
He’s lying. I know he is. “Did Everett threaten you?
Glancing around, he nods.
“He does that a lot.”
“Would you be able to stop him from making good on his threat?”
I pull the flash drive, with the pictures and videos of all those girls he made promises to, all those barely legal girls he’d promised to make stars, and delivered nothing but heartache to instead, out of my other pocket and hold it up. “Maybe.”
“A flash drive?”