Page 13 of The Fix

“There?”

“At the studio,” I answer and raise my shoulder to hold the phone to my ear and free up my hands. “She had papers, Leo.”

“Fuck,” he snaps, and I reach for the purse I’m lucky I was able to grab with all the distractions.

I search my bag and silently groan when I remember that Lugh never handed the papers over to me. He kept them in his hand when he took off with the woman.

He stayed behind.

“We had to leave the studio,” I say into the phone and secure my purse at my feet. “She was causing a scene.”

Leo’s heavy sigh echoes over the line, accompanied by the slam of a car door on his end. “So, he knows now?”

“I …” I risk a glance to my left where the man in question sits awkwardly across the remaining seat cushions not taken up by my butt. He hasn’t moved. Hasn’t spoken. “I’m fairly certain he’s dissociating.”

In fact, I’m fairly certain I hear a continuous low growl coming from his side of the car and we’re running out of time before he decides to do something stupid. Something like jumping out of a moving vehicle.

“Sounds about right,” Leo huffs. “Fuck, any brilliant ideas?”

It’s my turn to sigh into the phone. “I have no idea, Leo. But I do know that we don’t have much time.”

He lets out a long string of curses, vocalizing the storm brewing beside me because we both know what comes next with Tobias Jeffers.

Binders. Destruction. Disappearing.

And little me left to clean up the dang mess the bassist leaves behind.

Not to mention whatever was caught on camera tonight slipping to the media and growing like wildfire with rumors and partial truths Leo and I will have to fight the backlash of.

“Let me talk to him.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Anna, let me try.”

I hear the desperation in the band manger’s voice. I hear how much he both cares for the man he considers a brother and how badly he doesn’t want this to go sideways for himself. The band, the label.

For Toby.

It’s something I’ve yet to understand about this strange group of men. They care to a fault, in a way that’s almost sheltering. They downplay the things Toby does. Put up with his antics and insanity without much fight.

Enable his addiction.

If it were up to me?

Tobias Jeffers would be gone.

Guess it’s a good thing it’s not up to me.

Except right now, I have more control over the situation than the manager does. I’m here and he isn’t.

And while the man on the line might be my boss, I know better than to chance what’s happening. No one knowingly tempts the Hulk.

“No.”

He huffs.

“Ann—”

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