My body feels like I just swam a hundred laps.
Then ran a marathon.
The kicker is, the second I meet her gaze, I’m ready to go again.
“I always thought this was creepy,” Haley murmurs, trailing her fingers through the thick fur rug on the floor.
I manage a half laugh. “Me too.”
I take in her body—flushed, naked. I could stare at her all night.
Somehow she’s even more beautiful than I remember. Every inch of skin begging for my hands, my mouth. She’s like a forgotten language, and I want to learn her all over again.
I swallow the impulse.
“The custodian’ll have a field day if they find a condom in my garbage,” Haley says under her breath.
“I don’t give a shit if people talk. But you do.” I realize as I say it it’s true.
Haley’s expression clouds as she pushes a hand through her hair. “My relationship with Derek and the other executives is complicated now that I’m not a majority owner. Finding out about our history wouldn’t help.”
I roll onto my side to face her. “Then they won’t find out we fucked each other’s brains out in your dad’s old office,” I decide.
Her mouth tugs up at the corner as if she thinks I’m sweet or cute or some other totally inappropriate thing given the circumstances.
I clear my throat as I cast my gaze around the office. “Speaking of. That was unexpected.”
“Yeah.” She wraps her arms over her chest, which only drags my eyes down. “When you said that thing, about how you loved me… I guess I got caught up.”
“Me too.” I rub a hand over my jaw, and Haley’s gaze follows the movement. Interest stirs in my groin again because attraction’s never been our issue. “It’s been eating me up inside how we left things, Hales. I keep thinking how much I fucked up our ending.”
The green flecks in her eyes dance. “You didn’t fuck it up. I made a choice, and you made one too. I’m not broken, Jax.”
“I know. You were always strong. Even when I met you on tour.”
Her mouth curves. “We had some good times.”
Just like that, she has me remembering those times. The bowling alley. Making out on my bus. The night she sang on stage next to me. That first day, sitting in the back of my limo. Me tossing her a bottle of water out of my bus.
My heart squeezes.
“It’s in the past.”
“Mostly.” My fingers strokes down her arm and she lets out a little sigh.
“Mostly.”
A noise in the hall has us both freezing.
“Tell me Tyler’s gone for sure.”
She snorts. “He is.”
“Good.” I stare up at the ceiling, counting the pot lights there. “Listen. I’m tired of regretting. What if we had another chance.”
Her hesitation nearly kills me. “With each other?”
“At an ending.” I turn toward her again, and those chocolate eyes deepen with the need to understand. Something I’ve always loved about her. “It’s like a three-minute song. The first half’s full of possibility because you’re just getting started. The second half’s building to the end. You know it’s coming, but you don’t have to dread it. You can enjoy the third chorus, the bridge, because it’s all part of it.”
“Okay,” she says slowly.
“So maybe doing this album together is a second chance at a first ending.”
“The second chance at a first ending,” she repeats, and her hesitation nearly kills me. “I like that. Deal.”
For two years, I’ve been sure the chapter of my life with music, with Wicked, was over.
Now I know that’s not true.
I wrote four songs this week. With a little work, they’ll be damned good.
More than that, I feel alive. Like I’m part of something again.
Whatever battle Todd wants to have, I’m all in.
Because this album is me. My truth, for the first time in a long time.
It’s a different truth than before, because I’ve lived ten lives in the decade since I wrote that first album.
Not all pain or joy can be experienced by a teenager. When you’re grown, it has more shades, more nuance. All of it’s in those songs.
As far as I’m concerned, Haley and I have unfinished business too. Whatever time we’re not working on the album, I’ll use to prove to her our last ending wasn’t the right one. I won’t leave her that way.
What if don’t want to leave her at all?
The disturbing though lingers in the corner of my mind.
I’m heading over to the studio the next day when I get the call that the principal wants to see me about Annie.
I park outside of the expensive private school and find my kid. She walks with me to the office.
“You seriously don’t know what she’s going to say?” I ask.
Annie shakes her head, looking nervous. “No.” Annie starts to wait in the hall, but I motion her in with me. Her brows rise. “You want me to come?”
“Yeah. You might as well hear what they’re saying about you.”
She swallows her surprise, sticking to my side.
“Mr. Jamieson.”
The principal, a sixtyish woman who looks like a poster for Newport living, welcomes us in. We take our seats across a cherry desk which I now know from my construction projects would cost a lot of textbooks.
Desks. That’s what the tuition money goes to in these places.
The woman clears her throat. “Anne has put some inappropriate material in her locker.”
“What kind of inappropriate material?”
She shifts. “Photos. Of men.” My back straightens. “The other girls’ fathers. Most of them are shirtless. I think she found them on social media feeds.”
I turn to Annie, who’s looking at me with big eyes.
“I don’t know what kind of lifestyle you support, Mr. Jamieson,” the principal goes on stiffly, “but I’m concerned this is unhealthy. We are very particular about the environment we put our children in.”
My instinct is to lose my shit but some impulse has me holding it at bay. “Annie, whose father is it?”
“I forget. I put a few of them up.”
She’s being vague, but the expression on her face is strange. Like she knows the answer but doesn’t want to say.
She’s not afraid. More like…embarrassed.
This isn’t adding up. “Do you…” I clear my throat. “Are you having feelings for other kids’ fathers?”
Annie scrunches up her face. “Of course not. They’re old. That’s weird.”
Now I’m more confused. “So why would you do it?”
A light bulb goes on and I swallow the groan.
“Annie,” I start, shifting back in my chair, “do any of the other girls have dad photos in their lockers?”
“Yes.”
“Whose dad?”
“Mine. And they remind me of it every damned day,” she mutters.
“I see.”
I nod to the principal, who’s looking perplexed.
“Are you punishing the other girls?” I ask.
“But—that’s different, Mr. Jamieson.”
“How so? Just because I’m in entertainment and the other kids’ dads are investment bankers makes it okay for them to tease my kid about me?”
Her mouth tightens. “We do aim to ensure positive and healthy social relationships. But we also have discretion to assign punishment for behavior that doesn’t fit our school’s values. As a result, Anne will do four weeks’ community service filing books at the library every day after school.”
Normally I’m all for teachers keeping kids in line, because I think they have too much latitude to get into trouble.
But she picked the wrong day and the wrong kid.
I shift in my seat and I swear her gaze flicks down my body. Over my T-shirt. Hell, maybe it even reaches the jeans but I’m looking at her face.
“Maybe you know how difficult it is to be a single parent, but if you don’t, let me help you.” I lean across the desk I probably paid for, keeping my voice deliberately measured. “It’s really fucking hard. I’ve traveled to sixty countries. But nothing about selling out stadiums or managing media prepares you for the day your kid glues tampons to someone’s books. Or comes home with some teenaged Smurf. Or asks you if you think she’s a lesbian.” I think I hear Annie snort beside me. “But you know what? We do okay.
“Now let me get this straight. You’re telling me my honor is threatened and my daughter’s crime was defending herself, and me, from a bunch of hormonal teenagers with a thing for thirty-year-old abs. If you try to punish her for that, I will not only put a stop on her tuition checks and take her to the second best school in the city, but I will buy her a pony, an ice cream cake, a damned locker full of tampons and dad pictures and anything else she wants along the way. Do we understand one another?”
The principal stares at me in shock for the better part of a minute before recovering. “Given the gray area of the circumstances, I think we can let this go.” She turns to Annie. “But you will stay out of trouble the remainder of the semester.”
Annie nods dutifully.
We walk out of the office together and get six steps down the hall before I lean back against the wall, my head hitting the plaster as I shut my eyes.
“Are you okay?” Annie asks tentatively.
My shoulders rock. “You got them back by posting picture of their dads?”
“Yeah. Some pretty nasty shirtless ones from trips to the Hamptons. They haven’t talked about you all week. But I guess they tattled on me.” She swipes at her eyes. “You were amazing in there.”
My chest tightens until it’s hard to breathe. It’s the best moment I can remember, and it doesn’t have to do with money or lawyers or regret or our past. It’s just…
Now.
She glances down at her phone.
“Who’s that?”
“Tyler.”
Which reminds me. “Haley said you could go to Wicked and play with other kids.”
Her eyes light up. “Really?”
“Yeah. No pressure—”
“I’m so there.”