Page 86 of Protect Your Queen

“You and your man work things out?” Phoenix’s smiled broadened, showing me a row of perfect white teeth. “How delightful.”

He then took my hand and bowed over it. Thankfully, he didn’t let his lips kiss my skin because that would have made me shudder.

“May we all be so lucky as to have the person we love acknowledge us to others.” His voice was so sad. I felt for him. I squeezed his hand, and he straightened.

With that, he walked past me, our shoulders brushing as he went. All the while he didn’t look at Stasia once, even as she stared longingly at him.

I watched him go, and so did she, until he turned out of view.

“Well, Jestiny?” Stasia’s voice caught my attention, and I looked at her with tired eyes. “Let’s hear that song, shall we?”

She pointed the way to the studio, to where we had just recorded everything. My heart throbbed in my ears again. I couldn’t speak. I just followed her because what else could I do?

Chris turned down the hall, his eyes scanning until they saw me. Lea appeared a moment later, the two of them in step as they walked right towards us.

Chris took one look at me and his expressive brows drew together. I wanted to say something. But did he have a right to know what two consenting adults did? It wasn’t like what Michael Dryden had tried to do to me.

Was it?

Certainly, she was a person of power. A person with a lot of sway in the industry. But wasn’t I also Chris’s employer? What did that make me?

Fuck. I didn’t know what to think anymore. All I knew was I walked into the booth behind Stasia and sat there quietly as she listened to the song. Chris didn’t come in behind me.

It sounded like I was some kid in my living room, playing for a recital. It was so stripped down, so different from what I normally did. No beats, no effects. Nothing to hide every little breath or unintentional vibrato.

But the song went on. When it ended on the long, simple fade out, Stasia leaned back in the ergonomic chair and spun around on one expensive shoe, the other leg crossing gracefully at the knee.

“Do you have 11 more songs like this?” She asked as she steepled her fingers in front of her.

I shook my head.

She took a deep breath and let it out through her nose. “Well, I think this one is good enough. Let’s take some of your other songs, and strip them down the same way. Make them sound new.”

She tilted her head, her sharp bob swaying with the movement.

“And I think we have something special here.” She tapped the sound engineer’s mixer. “We can let Loïc and Simon go. I don’t think they’re right for you. This flow, with Gavin, is working better for you, no?”

I wanted to fucking die, in a good way. Her words sounded perfect to me. Exactly the kind of album I wanted to make.

The only question was… what would it cost me?

Chapter thirty-two

You Get Nothing

Chris

The door into the engineer’s area wasn’t fully soundproofed. I could hear the faint traces of our melody. Were they listening to what she recorded? Or was she singing it again? I couldn’t tell. All I could hear was that it was brilliant.

I had walked away to find Lea. I told her that Jes wasn’t giving up whatever she had on Dryden, but that I was sure more than ever that she did havesomethingon the man.

I also needed a moment to calm down. To take the sting of her rejection and put it in its rightful place.

She didn’t mean it. I knew that. I had hit on a pressure point, which meant that I was getting closer to the truth. A truth that she didn’t want me to find. A truth I needed if I was to fulfill my promise of keeping her safe.

“She needs to tell us, or we need to find out,” Lea said, as she leaned back against the opposite wall. “Either way, we can’t leave her alone with any of them again.”

“I’m on board with that.” Hell, if she was never alone with anyone but me for the rest of her life, that’d be fine too.

---