Break It Up Part 14

I shake my head, but Logan's not looking at me now.

"She'd threaten to cancel shows or report us as no-shows to the label. I don't agree with it, you know? It was way too harsh, but it was effective." He glances at his watch and winces. "I wonder if Ben really is gonna be a no-show." His cell phone is on the counter, and he picks it up and dials. "And he's not answering." Logan puts the phone down with more force than necessary.

At the same moment, Zach bursts into the room. "Anything?" he demands.

"No, man."

With a curse, Zach kicks the wall. On the monitor, mounted in one corner, we can see the lights dim onstage and the opening act begin.

Zach runs his fingers through his hair and clenches his fingers, as if to rip it all out by the roots. "Anybody else called him?" His gaze turns to me.

I really want to stay out of this, but one look at the desperation in his eyes makes me pull out my phone. The line rings twice, and then Ben answers, "Kyra?" Music blares in the background.

"Where are you?" I ask.

"Just out. Hanging."

"You know you're on in fifteen, right?"

"Oh. Yeah."

"Well, get over here." I put as much force into those words as I can.

"That an order?"

"Yes." I have no idea why he'd take orders from me, but it's all I've got. If he doesn't show, then that'll be a major embarra.s.sment for his cousins.

"All riiight." He sounds like a kid being dragged out of bed for school in the morning. "Um, I guess I'll get a cab or something."

"Where are you?"

"I dunno. Just this place."

All I can tell from where I sit is that it's a place with music, probably a club.

"See you." He hangs up.

Everyone in the room stares at me as if I'm a doctor about to announce whether or not they're terminal. No pressure or anything. I shrug. "He answered and said he'd get a cab and come here. He doesn't know where in the city he is, so I have no idea where we could send a car."

"He better show," says Zach, "and he better be sober. Could you tell if he was?"

I shake my head. "He might have been drunk, or he might have just been acting like it."

"Well, thank you," he says. The way he speaks, we could have only just met, but his fingers fidget and his shoulders are tense.

I nod as if I barely know him. "I'm sorry I couldn't do more, Mr. Wechsler."

"Whaddya know, whaddya say?" shouts Ben's voice in the hall. I wonder if he even needed a cab or if he was somewhere right next door, acting out for the fun of it.

"I will kill you!" Zach yells. "I swear. This is not cool."

"Aw, what? You gonna fire me?"

"Maybe we should."

Ben appears in the doorway, his face red as a beet. "Good luck with that."

The camera crew is getting all of this, and alarm bells go off in my head. All this footage they have of the band acting out is worth a TON of money, and it seems like a bad idea to let them have it.

"Get ready," says Logan. "We're on in ten."

"I'm ready." His clothes are rumpled and his hair isn't styled. I doubt he's wearing any stage makeup either.

Both Zach and Logan look ready to strangle him, so I intervene.

"Come on." I grab his wrist and tug him back out into the hallway. "Your dressing room is down here."

He comes willingly enough and smirks at me as I select an outfit for him. The Wechslers are wearing red and blue, so I select a s.h.i.+rt that's a bright turquoise and some nice jeans, which I toss at him. "I'll step out for exactly three minutes, and then I'm coming back in to make sure your makeup gets done."

"Yes, Mother." He snickers.

I shut the door behind me and make a run to craft services for a large cup of coffee. "Large and strong," I direct them.

Two and a half minutes later I'm back outside his door with the makeup artist tailing me, and the schedule's so tight I don't bother to wait the extra thirty seconds. I don't knock either-I just go in.

Ben spins away from the mirror and looks at me in indignation. "Excuse you." At least he's dressed in the clothes I picked out.

"Coffee." I hold up the cup. "You will drink it."

"I need a straw. It'll stain my teeth."

"Aw, and ruin that pretty face of yours?" I march towards him, pinch his cheek, and shove the coffee into his hands. "Drink. It. Now."

"All right, all right." He takes a swig and gags. "I need sugar."

"You need caffeine. Drink it."

He scowls at me, those green eyes of his glaring in offense, but he does what I say and gulps down more coffee.

I turn to the makeup artist. "I know it isn't much to work with, but see what you can do."

She chuckles, sets down her case, and gets to work.

Miraculously, Triple Cross steps onstage ten minutes later with no one the wiser. The opening act did one extra song to fill the gap. Aidan claps me on the back, but I suspect I didn't make that much difference. My guess is that Ben timed it all in order to freak his cousins out. I doubt he'd ruin a show.

"OF COURSE he would ruin a show," says Zach several hours later. We're in his room, eating popcorn. "He doesn't understand that if he loses this gig, that's that, you know? You're lucky to get this far once in your career. You can't just drop something that's working and pick up something else and expect to have fans show up to your concerts."

"If you're so concerned about this band, why do you give the film crew guys so much freedom to film whatever they want?" I ask.

"That's how concert movies work."

"No," I say. "They work however the contract says they work. Jason was in talks with a company to film behind the scenes of his last movie and he called the shots-literally."

Zach looks up like I just poked him in the chest. "So he could eliminate any evidence he was having an affair?"

I drop my handful of popcorn in surprise, the little white puffs scattering all over my lap and the couch. "He wasn't having an affair." I gather up my popcorn, the light kernels barely registering against the skin of my palm. "He and Vicki Hanson are old friends, so if someone shot them hanging out together and stuff, they could make it look like they're together all the time, but they're not."

"You don't know he didn't have an affair."

"Yes I do," I shoot back. "And you don't know Chloe." His antagonism has blindsided me, though. This was a friendly conversation only seconds ago.

"Does she ever smile?" says Zach.

"Yes," I snap. "But you know what she does for a living? What she's doing right now?"

"Yeah, she worked on that case where the kid died."

It's as if someone's just sucked all the air out of the room. He says this lightly, as if it was part of the plot of a television show and not real life.

"Excuse you," I say.

"You see this press conference?" Zach pulls out his smartphone, taps the screen a few times, and holds it out to me.

It's Chloe standing behind a podium, the APD seal on the curtained backdrop. Jason's wife is rigid with discomfort, but her voice is clear and her tone measured. She doesn't read from notes, but rather looks straight out into the crowd of a.s.sorted press.

"It is with regret," she says, "that I report that Esperanza Dominguez is deceased, and her case has been deemed a homicide. We cannot release details at this time-"

I s.n.a.t.c.h the phone out of his hand and am on my feet in one fluid motion. "Turn that off."

"That's one cold fish," says Zach. "She needs to work on her media presence."

"You ever have to tell the world about a small child getting murdered?"

"That's part of her job."

"No it's not. She's a forensic scientist. Her job is in the lab."

"She chose to be the spokesperson for that case."

"She goes above and beyond," I say. "A lot." I think about last summer, when she came with me to New York where Jason was working on a film. She was my roommate when she could have lived anywhere on whatever terms she wanted. I was still in a relations.h.i.+p with Nate Bowers, who was five years older than me and trying to convince me to move in with him. Chloe wasn't preachy or pushy, but she was there for me twenty-four-seven. That, and she lived her life in that quiet yet determined way of hers. She and Jason still weren't sleeping together, which I still think was pretty ice princess of her. But Jason's response to that was to get down on one knee, which I thought was insane. They were both obviously out of their minds.

But I learned something that summer. I learned that it's okay to be yourself, even if you're completely weird, and the people who matter in your life won't hold it against you. I decided to get to know myself a little better and stop trying to be who others wanted me to be. And I realize now, staring at Zach, that I've been too much of a coward to make good on that promise to myself where he's concerned. He may be the hottest guy I've ever seen, the subject of countless erotic dreams, but at the end of the day, he's just another person.

n.o.body disrespects Chloe.

"Listen," I say. "You can say what you want about whoever you want, but you do not attack my family."

"She's your step-aunt-in-law. How is that even family?"

"Do you even know what family is?" I shoot back. "Yours is just a bunch of business relations.h.i.+ps. You ever consider while you're putting Ben down that he's your cousin? That Triple Cross probably won't last forever, but he'll still be your cousin fifty years from now?"

"I know that Chloe probably won't be your family fifty years from now, given Jason Vanderholt has moved on."

"I'm leaving. Goodbye." I throw his phone down on the couch, make a beeline for the door, bypa.s.s the elevator, run down the stairs, and don't stop running until I'm standing in front of my hotel room door. That's when I catch my breath and think about poor Chloe. People watch her give everything for her job and then mock her for it.

I get out my phone and tap in Jason's number.

"Kyra," he says. "You in trouble?"

"What?" I shout. "Gee thanks."

"Where are you?"

"I'm in Lisbon."

"Oh. Right."

"Why do you let Chloe get screwed over by the media? Why don't you protect her?"

"Hey, calm down."

"People make fun of her. They make a.s.sumptions about her. How come you don't help her?"

"Help her how, Kyra? Teach her to smile for the cameras? This is Chloe we're talking about."

"You let them roast her alive."

"Are you drunk or something?"

"No."

"Okay, why did you just call me and start yelling at me about this?"

"Someone made fun of Chloe."

"Well...great."

"And I wish you'd stop that from happening."

"I would if I could, Kyr, but the media are unstoppable when they go into attack mode. I've tried, believe me, to rein them in. I mean, I got People not to run that picture of you, but the arguments that worked that time, they don't ever work with Chloe. n.o.body cares that she's not a famous person in her own right or that she wants people to respect her privacy. By marrying me...she basically waived all those rights." He's agitated too.

I burst into tears. In moments like this, I am so grateful I'm not famous. Right now I'm just some random girl crying into her cell phone in a hotel hallway. I let myself into my room and go flop down on the bed. This room's bigger than the one I had in Madrid, but I still get it all to myself. It's also not on the floor reserved for the crew again.

"Kyra?" says Jason. "What's this really about?"

I hate how well he reads me. "Nothing."

"Ky-ra," He draws my name out. "What's going on?"