“What the fuck?” she snarls, her face twisting with uncontrolled anger as soon as she sees me. “No! Go away!”

As she screams this last word she puts her hand on my chest and shoves me as violently as she can. I stumble back, and she storms toward me.

“Just fucking leave already! Get out of my life!” she screams, her voice breaking up with how loud she’s screaming. She shoves me again, putting all of her strength into it.

“Don’t you fucking get it already? I don’t want anything to do with you!”

This time I grab her biceps and hold her before she can shove me again.

“Stop it!” I shout, my voice so loud it seems to swallow hers, to boom off the surrounding mountains. “For fuck’s sake, Haley! Stop.”

We glare at each other, chests heaving, jaws clenching. Two animals in a fight to the death.

“I’ll never forgive you for what you did,” Haley hisses, her voice as sharp as a blade.

“I’ve done a lot of dumb things, Haley. Made a lot of mistakes. But that wasn’t one of them.”

“Fuck you!” Haley says, shrugging my hands off her, rage pouring off her in waves.

Something in me snaps. “No, Haley. Fuck you! I didn’t come here to beg. I didn’t come here to apologize. I’m sick of fucking apologizing. This whole tour I’ve been twisting myself into knots over you. Praying you’d give me another chance. Wondering how fucking long you were going to stay mad at me. And then for a whole month before that I didn’t even leave the house. I felt like I’d give anything to see you again, and it still wasn’t enough.”

Haley glares at me even more fiercely.

“And for what, Haley? For what? A stupid bet that I didn't care about from the second I realized how good you really were. A stupid bet that I won, and still feel like I lost. A stupid bet that I'd make all over again, because it's the best damn thing that happened ever happened to me - and maybe to you, too. I'm not the one hung up on the bet, Haley, you are. You keep treating me like I’m an asshole – and maybe I am, but not for the reasons you think. The only mistake I made was feeling the way I do about you. But I’m done. I’m done being the nice guy. I didn’t come here to apologize. I didn’t come here to beg you for another chance. I came here to tell you.”

“Tell me what?” Haley spits, her voice even harder and tighter.

“That I fucking love you.”

The words seem to light a fire in her face, her eyes flickering over mine, her lips opening in an angry scowl, trembling with anger. Her cheeks go hot red like I just slapped her in the face.

She leaps at me again, even more aggressively, even more fueled by her hot-headed temper, even more out of control. Only this time it’s not to push me. It’s to kiss me.

Chapter 14

Haley

On the drive back to LA I have to struggle to stop myself from smiling. I hang my arm out of the window and watch Brando as he focuses on the road, feeling weird in a happy kind of way. He notices me watching and laughs.

“You look pretty happy to return to LA,” he says

“I’m just happy right now. Take the 1.”

“Why?” he says, frowning. “It’s longer.”

“Yeah. But I like the ocean view.”

I lean toward the window and let the wind caress my face, stroke my hair. When I open my eyes I see Brando, notice the lines of his arm muscles, the Italian nose in profile, the way he looks like he’s dreaming when his face is at rest.

He glances over at me and notices me staring again.

“I feel like I should be charging you when you look at me like that.”

“I hope I can afford it,” I giggle, as I lean over to turn on the radio.

We listen to the tail end of a half-decent song, both of us only half-listening, until the two DJs start talking.

“…an interesting story. Rex Bentley – you like Rex Bentley, Sara?”

“Who doesn’t? ‘Put on your red shoes…’”

“Well his daughter, apparently. Haley Grace Cooke: The girl who just supported Lexi Dark on her tour and is set up to be even bigger.”

“She’s his daughter?”

“That’s what people are saying.”

“I can believe it.”

“What do you think? Is this just one of those publicity things? Or you think she really didn’t want people to know?”

Brando presses the off button so hard he nearly breaks it. We drive on in silence for a few minutes, but the sense of something wrong hangs in the space between us.

“What do I do?” I finally ask, turning to Brando. “What do I do about this?”

Brando focuses on the road, sighing deeply before he speaks.

“Rowland wants to use this, of course. Play up the connection. Milk the publicity, really drive home the ‘estranged daughter of the musical legend is just as talented’ angle. He’s already talking feature pieces about how you always knew the music was in your blood. Me: I want this to go away. Disappear. You can stand on your own talent, you worked your ass off for this career, and you’ve got no reason to want to be associated with a scumbag like him. If it were up to me, this story would be dead and gone yesterday.”

I nod. “Me too. But how? Is that even possible?”

Brando’s lips press together as he thinks of how best to let me down.

“I don’t know. Worst case scenario, this thing catches fire – more than it has – and the fans turn against you. They find out the truth, you get branded a wannabe who rode her daddy’s coattails, and nothing you ever do is judged fairly. If you even get the chance to make another record.”

“And what’s the bad news?”

Brando smiles.

“Best case scenario: The story gets buried in all the other garbage people write about, and in a year or two is nothing but an urban myth. I’ll be honest, that one’s unlikely. This is the juiciest thing in the news right now. Unless the Pope decides to streak at the Cubs game tomorrow.”

I look out at the view over the rocky cliffs, the ocean below looking a little more overwhelming than I remember it.

“Do you have his number?”

Brando drops me off at my apartment before zooming off to perform damage control. I check the time and groan when I realize Jenna is still on her shift and won’t be back for another four hours. When I get inside, I drop my duffle bag to the floor, toss my leather jacket to the side, and head straight for the refrigerator.

I’m eighty percent of the way toward deciding I should order Chinese when there’s a knock at the door.

“Who is it?” I shout, as I slam the refrigerator closed and walk over to the door.

The knock comes again, loud and impatient. I swing it open.

“Hey, babe!”

“Lexi?”

“The one and only,” she says as she strides right on past me into the apartment. Impossibly confident in just a pair of white cut-off jean shorts and a pink tank top.

“What are you doing here?”

“Just checking up on you,” she says as she glides around the room, looking around casually as if she’s considering buying it. “How’s your throat?”

I touch my throat as if remembering it was supposed to hurt suddenly. Despite the shouting match with Brando, the stress of crying all night on the plane, and the fact that I’ve been doing anything but resting since fucking Brando at Lexi’s show – it feels way better than it should.

“Fine … I guess?”

Lexi laughs wildly. “Oh! What a surprise,” she says with open derision. “I suppose that strange, unnamed, random doctor was wrong.”

I step toward Lexi, and she moves sideways.

“What do you mean by that?” I ask, making it clear from my tone that I don’t appreciate hers.

She grins menacingly as we circle each other around the furniture like wrestlers before a bout.