Page 18 of Concerted Chaos

“Ridiculous. All that for an assistant?” Xander mutters. Of course he wouldn’t understand that kind of relationship. He’s never been able to keep an assistant longer than six months, though that could be because he hires based on cup size in lieu of more appropriate qualifications.

As anticipated, most of the estate goes to Jace’s foundation, the one he set up years ago to bring music education to underfunded schools. Devon will be assuming the role of a board member and assisting with managing and distributing those funds. Devon also gets control of Jace’s interest in their duo’s music, and all of Jace’s shares of Last Barons royalties. Xander’s face turns purple when he hears that. I suspect he thought Jace’s share would return to the collective pot and they’d all get one fourth instead of one fifth. He was probably counting on that money. He spends way more than he earns and then has to make desperate and awful appearances at club openings to cover his bills.

Mason is next. Jace left him two Rolexes, with a message: Use these so you can show up on time for once. The bequest brings Mason to tears. He’s gotten better about being on time over the years, but his tardiness was legendary. I can remember him sprinting down halls and diving on to the stage while the rest of the band glared at him and the crowd was on the verge of violence.

Powell inherits a car. The smallest of smiles briefly makes an appearance on his face before turning into a frown. Powell loves his collection of cars, but he’d rather have Jace than another vehicle. And, from a logistical standpoint, where’s he going to park it? He might be forced to sell something else off to make room. Or worse. I can anticipate the loud sounds of construction if he decides to add another garage somewhere on our lot.

Xander’s name is called, causing him to sit up straight on the edge of his chair. His hopeful face makes me hate him more than I already do. Jace left him ... wait for it ... his closet full of sneakers, mostly unworn. The collection is a massive assortment of limited-edition shoes, so it’s quite valuable. Great, right? Especially since Xander has much larger feet than Jace. Disappointment radiates from him, but he laughs anyway. I guarantee those shoes are going to be on AuctionNet soon enough. I’m sure Jace knew how badly Xander needs money, so he set up a posthumous prank to make him work for it.

My name follows Xander’s, and the lawyer searches the faces around the room. I raise my hand to show my presence, and he nods and begins to read. Here it comes: my bequest. Given the value of what he left his bandmates, I’m now afraid he’s leaving me something expensive but, in keeping with his sense of humor, something frivolous or unwieldy. Like a boat. Please don’t let it be a boat.

“To the beautiful and charming Cassidy Blaine-Corbitt, the one true love of my life, in honor of what we had together, I leave all rights to my works First Kiss and Holding Back.”

A silence falls over the room, unusual with so many outgoing personalities gathered in one place. They are all looking at me, some with sympathy, most with confusion. And then there’s Xander, with outright surprise and envy.

“I’m sorry, what?” I ask politely. I have no idea what that means. It didn’t sound like a joke though. But it must be, right? Why else would Jace make such an absurd statement?

Devon leans on the table so he can see me from that end. There’s sympathy in his gaze and I sense that he knows what’s going on, even if I don’t. “Cass, those are the two albums Jace wrote but never recorded. There are some demos though. They’re all yours now.”

It’s hard to know what to do in a situation like this. Nobody wants to celebrate after such a terribly long day, because then we’d be celebrating Jace’s death, but we’re not ready to go our separate ways yet. When Mason loudly declares he needs a drink, we all troop down the street to a bar. The manager—thrilled at the patronage of the post-funeral Last Barons—kindly lets us take over a side room for some degree of privacy, though plenty of other customers pause in the doorway to snap photos. I’m sure the bar will want to use this for advertising as well, and the manager will come up with a way to discreetly ask for a group picture.

Brixley takes charge of everything. She excels under pressure, and she’s been doing an amazing job handling everything for Devon throughout this process. She negotiates with the bartender for bottle service and a dedicated waitress to run back and forth. The waitress, I can tell, is thrilled. After the first round, she disappears for a few minutes and when she returns, she has redone her eye makeup and apparently traded someone for a more revealing shirt. It’s working; Xander can’t seem to stop leering.

Powell makes sure my glass is full. “What do you think?” he asks as he steers me over to a table in the corner.

“About what?” My mind is still trying to process Jace’s words for me.

“Road tripping home, obviously.” Powell has clearly already moved past the whole me getting albums thing and is busy figuring out how to transport his inheritance back to Arizona.

“Depends. Do I get to drive?”

He has the nerve to laugh at me. “You drive like a grandmother. You don’t deserve to sit behind the wheel of a $200k Lambo. It’s wasted on you.”

Ha! He should aspire to drive like me. Of the two of us, I’m the one who never jumped a curb, or sideswiped a tree, or had to go to traffic school as a penalty for ‘seeing how fast this thing can go.’

“Maybe I’ll fly back, then.”

He relents quickly. “Fine, we’ll switch off. Want to test out the car first? Follow Highway 1 all the way up the coast?”

We’ve done that journey a few times, most recently when he was depressed after receiving a negative review from a famous critic and needed time to moodily stare at the ocean and ruminate on his failings. That’s also the trip when he wrote his popular hate-anthem, You Can’t Judge Me.

“How about you take Devon instead, do some male bonding,” I suggest. I love Powell, but I’m not in the mood. Honestly, I just want to go home, sleep in my own bed, work out in my own gym. Los Angeles wears me down. And a road trip could benefit them both, give them a chance to talk and privately mourn together.

“I’ll ask him. That could be fun,” Powell muses, but then winces at his choice of words. “Why is this so hard, Deedee? Every time I feel the least bit happy about anything, I’m hit with this guilty feeling that I don’t deserve it. I’m the one who should have died.”

“Nobody should have died,” I correct him. I’m still hoping that Ethan was wrong and it proves to be a tragic accident and not a murder.

Devon joins us then, pulling out a chair and dropping bonelessly into it. I’ve always liked him—there’s a kindness about him that is lacking in many celebrities of his caliber. He doesn’t ask for credit for any of his good deeds, either. I know for a fact that over the years he has paid for at least forty special needs accessible playgrounds in low-income areas, and he built them all entirely anonymously.

“He was planning to tell you,” Devon says. His skin is practically gray from misery and exhaustion. The drugs must have worn off. Given the way he’s drinking, I hope they have. This can’t be good for his liver.

“About what? The joke he put in his will?” I still haven’t figured out the point. Maybe it was an apology for the way he treated me all those years ago, back when he was twenty-two, immature, spoiled, and so full of himself. But we talked everything out later, and I forgave him. There was no need for additional apologies, and I certainly didn’t expect a strange tribute like that to be memorialized after his death.

Devon shakes his head. “You’re so blind. It wasn’t a joke, Cassidy. As far as Jace was concerned, you were the one who got away. He’s loved you for years.”

My stomach is sinking. That can’t be true. Surely he would have told me, right? Jace used to make jokes all the time, but he never meant any of them. “When we’re married . . .” he would say, or he’d look deep into my eyes, confess his love, and turn away laughing. But those were all jokes.

“His music, those songs,” Devon continues, “he wrote them for you. About you. He always thought you’d end up together someday.”

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