Page 65 of Protecting Hailey

Anne looked up, thinking. “I don’t have a long list. There’s just Daryl and my assistant Mark.”

“I’ve never met Mark. Where is he now?”

“He works from home. He’s not a full-time employee. He handles my monthly bookkeeping, books my flights and cars, things like that.”

Christian handed my mother a notepad. “I need you to write down his number, and home address, and describe the last few meetings you’ve had with him.”

My mother took the notepad from Christian, sat down on the couch, and began to write.

“What about me?” I asked.

He kissed my forehead. “I need you to rest.”

“That’s it?”

“Yup.”

“I can’t sit and do nothing while someone is trying to hurt me.”

“That’s why you hired me.”

“Come on, Christian. There’s got to be something I can do.”

He stared at me, and after a few minutes, he crossed his arms and nodded. “You’re going to write your next song and make it your best one yet. Take all the emotions you’re feeling now and pour them into your music because he’s not going to win. He wants to stop you and you’re not going to let him. You got that?”

His words ignited a spark inside of me. My breathing grew rapidly as I absorbed everything he had said. He was right. I wouldn’t let that bastard stop me. The guy in the coffee shop wanted to stop me. Those online trolls wanted to insult me, and that bastard wanted to scare me. But I would just keep on writing and performing.

I rose on my toes, held his cheeks in my hands, and kissed Christian with all the passion I felt for him. “Thank you. That’s exactly what I will do.”

I turned, picked up my guitar, and hummed the last melody I’d been working on. But it felt too lighthearted. Instead, I went to my room, picked up the electric guitar, and plugged it into the amp. I hadn’t played the electric guitar since my angry teenage years. I ripped down the chords and held the note, letting it vibrate through my fingers and throughout the room. I hit a particularly high note and felt it deep in my chest. I plucked at the chords until tears streamed down my face. There were no lyrics yet but that was the sound of my next hit. I just knew it. I felt it in the way my pulse hummed after I hit the last note.

I wiped my face with the bottom of my band T-shirt and wrote down the melody. I played it again, changing a few chords here and there, fine-tuning the chorus.

I worked on the lyrics next.

You think you can hurt me.

You think you can scare me.

You don’t know me.

You don’t know anything about me.

Take my house.

Take my car.

Take them all, but you can never take this away from me.

I am no microphone.

I am no overtone.

I am Hailey Jones.

I dropped the pencil and stared at the words. My heart swelled, and I knew those were the lyrics. I wouldn’t change them because they were me.

I showered, put on my pajamas, and crawled into bed.

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