Page 123 of Next Time I Fall (Excess All Areas 2)

But thirty minutes later, the grin had well and truly fled.

Parker Moseley looked stone-faced next to the owner of the label, Dexter Lewis, whose face didn’t reveal anything at all. “The theme of the album is definitely more raw than we anticipated. I didn’t realise we were getting an autobiographical album for a start.” He huffed and looked over to Jimmy. “Even the song that brought them to the attention of listeners has been worked over.” He tossed his pen down onto the large boardroom table they were all seated at.

Moseley pressed pause before the next song could kick in.

“I hear you on the changes, they are what they are, at this point. Let’s just keep listening.” Bexter folded his arms and leaned back in his chair.

Jase watched as Cerys put her hand on her father’s arm. “Mr. Moseley, this is the best album the five musicians in this room could have possibly presented you with. You’re only halfway through the arc of the story. You need to let it play out. To see where it goes.”

Jase felt a flicker of pride at her words. While Jimmy had merely reassured Moseley that his concerns were heard, Cerys had given them a reason to keep listening.

Moseley pressed play and “Fantastic Distraction” blasted to life in the room. Jase looked at the others in the room. People he’d never met, with names and roles he probably wouldn’t remember. Each of them relating to the music in their own way. The bob of a head, the tap of a foot, the tap of a pen on the edge of the table. Music. It had a way of weaving through a person’s consciousness and bringing forth a reaction that was spontaneous.

It caused strangers to fall in love on dance floors. It caused people to cry at funerals. It caused people to get off their fucking heads with friends every Friday night, only to repeat it again on Saturday.

The only one not moved by the music was Moseley, who sat with his arms folded tightly across his chest and his lips set in a thin line. He wasn’t allowing himself to hear what they’d done, because it wasn’t exactly what he’d asked for.

And where did he get off dictating to them how they should sound.

It wasn’t like he was in any position to judge what they ...

Waves.

The word came to him in a flash, and he rubbed the heel of his hand over his tattoo. He looked across the table at Cerys, who winked at him, as if she knew the turmoil starting to build inside him. He smiled at her and then stood. “Can you pause that, please?”

Jase waited until the room was silent.

Ben raised an eyebrow.

“Jase,” Matt said, an undercurrent of warning in his tone.

“Listen. I know I’m usually the one to fly off the handle, the one to storm out of the room, but I’ve been working on that. I get this isn’t what you were expecting. But what you were asking for was a trend. You were asking for a nameless, faceless band to become the soundtrack for a video clip generation, and that isn’t us, and it certainly isn’t what you sold us when we sat in this room to see if it made sense for us to work together. But you got us, Parker,” he said, tugging on his T-shirt.

“You got me and my brother. And our cousins and friend. We aren’t nameless and faceless. We’re Manchester. We’re not polished New York, we aren’t sophisticated London. We’re grafters. We have a story. We love our nan, and football, and I happen to be particularly in love with a woman who taught me how to stand here and not get mad that you basically trashed our album because you are so attached to your own fucking idea that you can’t see what we’ve given you. We’ve put our lives to song. Written the soundtrack to years of struggle. Not a three-minute video clip. We’ve told you our stories. We’ve bared our souls and dug really fucking deep inside ourselves to do it. And we’ll keep doing that, for as long as you’ll let us. Put your feelings about what you were expecting to one side and focus on the magic you’ve got. Everyone else in this room gets it. You only had to look at them instead of your damn laptop to see they felt it. Ask them.”

Parker huffed out a breath. “When it comes to our lineup, you don’t get to dictate who—”

“Give me a moment, Parker,” Dexter said. He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table and steepling his fingers. “I think I agree with Jase. Yes, it does leave a gap in our roster. But it doesn’t mean this isn’t gold. I like that nothing about this is manufactured. I liked its rawness. You can feel the earthiness of it, its grit and glitter.”

Jase dared not look across the table to Cerys.

“A very wise woman once told me not to polish the roots off the band. She was right,” Jimmy said.

Dexter looked to Jase. “Unpolished Roots. That would make a better album title than the one you picked.”

Matt huffed a laugh. “I picked the title. But I happen to agree with you.” Matt looked over to Cerys and winked at her, and it made Jase’s chest tighten to see his brother and girl have a moment.

Parker Moseley sighed. “You might be right. I don’t like being caught out, and that was getting in the way of listening to it. It is a fucking brilliant album. Congrats, guys.”

“So, what’s next?” Ben asked. “Where do we go from here?”

Jase sat back down in his chair and looked across the table at Cerys, who gestured a wave with her hand. Jase grinned and bit his lower lip, and thoughts of what he was going to do with her when they got back to their hotel room washed out everything else Parker Moseley had to say.

“I think we stick with the plan to get this out,” Dexter said. “Leave the roster problem to us. You’re hot right now. Doesn’t make sense to stall anything.”

Two hours later, they were seated in the Mexican restaurant across the street that Jase had watched the band from all those months ago. The table was littered with empty Dos Equis bottles and the debris of a late lunch. Jase had his arm slung over the back of her chair; his fingers teasing the ends of Cerys’s hair as he debated the football results with Matt. Chaya muttered something to Ben that made him laugh raucously. Alex had made their male server blush twice just by looking at him, but then, he’d done the same to the host when she’d seated them. Luke and Iz seemed to be arguing about something.

Jimmy stood and made his way to the toilets, and Jase knew it was now or never. He squeezed Cerys’s shoulder. “Back in a sec.”

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