Page 31 of Knot Just A Fan

“Yes, you’re the leader, but as you pointed out,Iam the manager. I manage you. Yes, you can fire me, but will you? Over a photographer who could be replaced in one phone call—and was? In fact, your new photographer is a bloke called Vance and he’ll be joining us at rehearsaltonight. So before you get your fucking tits in a tangle, let me say this: our focus is on the business of making and packaging and performing your music, and moving on with our lives. We’re here to build and bank on all the good stuff that’s happened. I don’t know what happened between this lot and her—” Ash waves a hand at me and Enzo. “And frankly, I don’t fucking care. If two-thirds of this band wanted her gone, then she’s gone.”

“You’re right,” says Gray, quietly, but his brown eyes have a steel in them I haven’t seen in a long time. Not since that day he got off the phone with his father, having not spoken to him in decades. The bastard called him up after our first televised awards success. And Grayson had something to say in response. “You are the manager. But you manage. You don’tchoose. You can advise. But you don’t decide.”

“We all decide, do we not?” said Enzo. He’s standing now, walking between all of us like a slow-motion pinball, beseeching our better selves. “We need to get on with stuff, and we can discuss what happened if you like, Grayson, but honestly it is not worth it at this point. Weird things happened that night, she, ahh, she?—”

He looks at me. We discussed what to say when Grayson found out, but somehow I think we both hoped the other person would be the one to say it. So I do.

“Gray, she came to us, called me a cunt, and said she wanted out. You know she and I never got along very well. She wasdistracting you from getting on with Willow. And I can pretty much guarantee she doesn’t ever want to hear from any of us again.”

It’s a pathetic story, but it’s partly true.

Grayson’s eyes widen as he takes this in. “That makes no sense. Why would she?—”

He stops as though there’s a voice in his head feeding him an explanation.

“Her friend threatened to report us to the Guild as being discriminatory.”

“But she called you a cunt.” Grayson’s voice is flat.

I nod.

“That partistrue,” adds Enzo, in the most unhelpful way possible. I shoot him a glare. “That she called you that, I mean. Not that you are.” He pauses, shrugs, grins. “Well, but you are.”

Grayson turns on him and Ash shakes his head as though trying to clear the air with it, and they start to argue. We could have this conversation all day but the fact is, we’re selling our band and pack leader a twisted truth. Or a lie. And one of those begets another.

“We need to focus on what matters,” I say after a few minutes. “Ash, are you able to feed this Vince person the lowdown on what we need and want, during rehearsal? Then we can just dive in.”

“Vance, I think,” says Enzo. “Isn’t it Vance?”

And then the bell rings. Ash holds up a finger and runs down to open the door. A minute later he trails Briella up the stairs and into the office.

Her face is red, clashing terribly with her dyed-pink hair. But her lips glisten, and her eyes shine bright as if she’s been crying. No one says anything.

Not least because the scent that enters the room with her is utterly, confoundingly intoxicating.

It’s ocean breeze, coconut, jasmine. It’s everything.

It permeates me. I don’t so much as sit back in my chair as my arse lands in it, like all the willpower has drained out. I can’t turn away from her, standing there in a long camel-colored wool coat, half-unbuttoned so I can see the curve of her breasts in a clingy jumper beneath. Her lithe legs peek out in sheer leggings.

An instinct draws my head forward and I inhale like you do when you’ve just arrived at the beach. It’s not a perfume, a hair product, or some air freshener Ash’s got plugged in out in the hall that’s chosen now to kick in. It’s like a wave cresting and crashing straight into all of my senses.

And my cock decides now, of all times—while I’m wearing black track suit bottoms—to grow uncomfortably hard. Blatant hard-on really goes with the socks and sports slides on my feet.

Motherfucker.

I risk a sideways glance at the others. Ash is standing behind Briella, oblivious but irritable, hands on his hips and a,Well, you started this shit-storm,look on his face, thin lips pinched together.

But Enzo and Grayson are pale. Enzo’s fingers clench the arms of his chair. And Grayson stands, his mouth slightly open.

Briella is our scent-match.

I don’t know why we didn’t know this before. But oh, my sweet soul, she is our match.

What have we done?

CHAPTER 15

Briella

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