“I never copied a fucking thing.”
Aish wished he could unspool from his chest the years practicing his guitar and days perfecting a song and the endless hours spent in the studio. Shove them into the face of anyone who doubted him.
“And John?”
Aish turned to look at the vines again. “John’s dead,” he said, shutting down the conversation. Devonte had been the one person who’d been cleaning up his mess all year, the one person beside his parents he’d let into his house. He didn’t want to punch him. “John didn’t do anything wrong.”
Aish had wanted to prove it by recording a fourth album that cleaned the muck off Young Son and made John’s legacy gleam. Young Son was a duo, with studio musicians filling in for the other instruments, and all songs were credited as Hamilton/Salinger, with no preference given to who actually wrote them. Aish didn’t plan on changing that for the fourth album, fuck everyone who demanded to know who wrote what when.
Rumors of plagiarism had always circled them like flies. He’d ignored them, drowned them out with the songs in his head and the roars of the fans in his ear. He had relied on Devonte and the label to manage the rumors while he and John made them millions, focused on writing and recording and performing the perfect harmonies that helped define their sound, their voices so similar because of the years spent at each other’s sides.
But when John’s death caused Young Son to go quiet after a decade of ceaseless chart topping, the plagiarism rumors gained volume. Now, several performers—bar bands and street musicians and the kinds of people who’d fling CDs at them as they raced on to their tour bus—were claiming that chunks of their original songs had appeared on Young Son’s albums. The media was pointing at Aish as the person to blame. And the fourth album, the best way to resurrect his career and John’s reputation, was an empty file on his studio computer.
“You know her,” Devonte said. “You think the Princess really has something she can use against you?”
Aish closed his eye to block out this place that was drenched with her. “I thought I knew her. But I don’t. Not now.”
What had he thought when he’d arrived yesterday? He thought she’d heard his songs. He thought she’d seen his tattoos. He thought she knew. She’d made it clear that she didn’t know, hadn’t seen or heard, that although Young Son had hit the number one spot in thirty-eight countries, she’d kept herself in the dark and hadn’t cared whether Aish was alive or dead.
He’d hoped that because everyone else had effortlessly loved him that Sofia had held on to a little love, too. That with the distance of a decade and the understanding that he’d been young and stupid—because who isn’t at twenty-one—she’d forgiven him although he’d never picked up the phone to beg her for it.
He’d believed that after a good talk and a better grovel she would set aside her rules and open her arms and let him rest. Let him get a decent night’s sleep for the first time in a year.
Instead, shame had him tossing and turning in his high-thread-count sheets. For a decade, he realized, he’d clung to the childish idea that Sofia wanted him back.
In reality, she hated him. She hated him and hated that he’d intruded on her life. And if he didn’t stick to the rules keeping her away from him—away from a woman he had an addict’s need to touch—she would use whatever proof she had to destroy him.
His depression over the last year had nothing on the oppressive weight holding him down now.
“Let’s go back,” he said to Devonte.
“What?”
He reached out to tap the driver’s shoulder. “I wanna go back to the—”
Devonte grabbed his hand and shoved it back at him. “No. You gotta show up.”
“I can’t,” Aish said, shaking his head, his shoulders bending. “She fucking hates me and I can’t—”
Devonte pushed him back against the seat, jolting the breath out of Aish. “Yeah, she fucking hates you. And you’re gonna take it because she fucking needs you. If you abandon her, you’ll ruin her. The cameras will leave, the interns will go home, and everyone’s gonna laugh at her for being rejected by a rock star who sleeps with anything with a pulse.
“And you. This’ll be it. The label’s not giving you another chance.”
His last chance to resurrect Young Son. His last chance to rescue his best friend’s reputation. But Sofia...
“I don’t know if I can stand it, man. She looks at me like I’m shit she stepped in. I shouldn’t be here. And I don’t know how’re we supposed to look romantic with her scripts and her rules and...”
Devonte took off his sunglasses. “You let me handle that. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other.”
He’d been good at putting one foot in front of the other—writing his music, singing his songs, smiling his trademark dimpled smile—while he let his parents or Devonte or John clear his way.
Would Devonte still be as loyal to Aish if he knew the truth about John’s death?
Aish shied away from that hammering thought as the Jeep crested a rise and he saw a Mercedes bus parked on the side of the road. Beyond it, the interns were gathered at the edge of a vineyard. The cameras in the press area swung on Aish as the Jeep parked.
Devonte had arranged for their own transportation so Aish could have time to read over the scripts. When they got this morning’s packet, however, they realized an extra ten minutes was not going to be enough time to memorize the choreography Sofia demanded.
Glad he was still wearing his sunglasses, Aish followed Devonte up the gravel road.
Calling the nineteen adults gathered near the vine row “interns” was ridiculous—Aish had been surprised last night
