Page 77 of The Déjà Glitch

Nick exhaled a sharp breath and balled his fists. A vein pulsed in the side of his neck. Gemma knew the look on his face; he was not going to give up easily. Despite the favors he’d been granted, tenacity ran thick in his blood like any artist fighting for a shot. “Well, what are they going to do, stop us from going onstage? There are thousands of people out there. They’re going to leave a gap in the lineup?”

“The first openers are extending their set,” the man who had been poked in the chest said. He had to be the event organizer, Gemma reasoned. “They were told after the last song to run up until nine p.m. for Nigel.”

“Oh, well, that’s perfect,” Nick spat. “People came here to see us! You can’t—”

“People came hereto see Nigel Black,” the first man said, sternly cutting him off. He folded his arms and gave Nick anasty, exhausted glare. “You’re just an interchangeable appetizer who thinks he’s a god like every other small act piggybacking on a big name. It’s not happening tonight, so I suggest you leave. Don’t trash the room on your way out.” He pivoted on his heel and walked away in the direction Billy had come from.

Nick stared after him, fuming. Then he yanked free one of the drumsticks sticking out of his drummer’s folded arms and hurled it down the hallway after him. It bounced off the wall, then the floor, clanking. The man didn’t even flinch or stop walking.

Gemma had never seen Nick behave violently, but somehow the scene did not surprise her at all.

Nick combed a hand through his hair and gestured after the man. “What the fuck, Billy,” he repeated, evidently out of ways to express himself.

“Nick, man, calm down,” Billy said. He tapped his phone with a thumb as if he was messaging someone.

“No! Not until I get some answers. Who would do this to us? Who even has the clout to pull strings like this at the last second?”

Billy looked up at him and took a breath. His eyes grew serious. “The same person who pulled strings at the last second to get youinthe lineup, Nick.”

A heavy silence settled over the hallway, save for the music from the stage reverberating through the walls.

Gemma could not believe what she had just heard. She knew who had pulled strings to get Azalea in the lineup, but her mind could not make sense of how that same person could have also done this.

Billy put a hand on Nick’s shoulder and squeezed it. Helooked him in the eye like a coach instructing a player. “Nick, listen to me. This is a very small industry, and there are people who you don’t want to piss off. Roger Peters is at the top of that list. I don’t know his motivation here, but all the same, let this one go.” Billy patted his back and turned to take a phone call.

The rest of the band headed back into the dressing room, and Nick looked like he might punch the wall. He even made a motion to do it but thought better of it at the last second and dropped his hand. Instead, he crossed the hall to pick up the chair he’d thrown. When he bent down, right before his golden hair tumbled into his face and he left the chair alone, he saw Gemma.

For the past several moments, she’d felt like she had been watching a movie play out in front of her; something she wasn’t truly a part of. With his eyes suddenly on her, she was pulled into a spotlight she did not want to join.

She ducked her face and quickly turned around.

“Gemma?” he said, disbelief evident in his voice. “Is that you?”

The sound of him saying her name felt like an old wound flaring up in cold weather. The memory of something powerful pulsed under her skin, and along with it, a reminder of the pain it had caused. But still, it was Nick. The once-keeper of her heart. A bond that strong took a long time to die.

She was going to turn around and allow herself a moment of poisonous indulgence in his magnetic presence, but a tone slipped into his voice and stopped her.

“Wait,” he said as if something had dawned on him. “Didyoudo this?”

The accusation snapped her out of whatever delirious and short-lived relapse she’d had thinking he was worth her time. And it served as a plain reminder that he knew exactly what he’d done, how he’d used her. To think she could have influenced her father’s decision to pull his band from the lineup said clearly that he knew he deserved something of the sort. That Gemma had reason to use her father’s influence the same as he had done to get where he was.

“Seriously, Gemma. Did you tell him to do this?”

She hadn’t turned around, but she knew he was coming closer. She sensed the heat of him. The power and allure he wielded radiated in waves. It was part of what she had fallen for—what his fans fell for. But in that moment, it bounced off her like it had hit a shield.

She hadn’t told her father to do anything, not explicitly, but clearly, she’d finally gotten through to him on some level, so, in a way, the gesture was her doing.

She turned to Nick, subconsciously bracing for the brunt of his raw appeal, but when she saw him straight on, his eyes, his lips, that perfectly messy golden hair she used to tangle her fingers in, all she felt was satisfaction at his frustration.

He, on the other hand, nearly did a double take at her in Lila’s romper. His eyes traveled up her bare legs and lingered on her chest with what looked like a pang of regret before finally meeting her angry gaze.

“So what if I did, Nick? Are you going to stand here and tell me you don’t deserve it?”

His jaw clenched. He still looked shocked to see her there at all, but he clearly hadn’t been expecting her to say what she had. “This is mylifeyou’re messing with, Gemma.”

Back when they broke up, there hadn’t been muchceremony to it at all. One day soon after his band had signed their record deal, Nick told her he didn’t have time for their relationship anymore. When she realized she had been but a stepping-stone, a necessary ticket for admission into the world he so badly wanted to enter, her heart had been too crushed to fight back. She’d surrendered out of self-preservation and kept her emotions close. She’d never really told him how it had affected her.

But after the day she’d had, the revelations and confrontations, seeing him face-to-face felt like it was up next in a line of things a long time coming.

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