Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 129207 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 646(@200wpm)___ 517(@250wpm)___ 431(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129207 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 646(@200wpm)___ 517(@250wpm)___ 431(@300wpm)
“Woah,” Jett says, gaping after her. “Who the fuck was that? Is she the new marketing chick?”
“Sure is,” Rock says proudly.
Jett whistles low in appreciation. “Fuck me. I call dibs. Bet I can have her bent over that desk by the end of the day,” he says with a cocky laugh that has my teeth grinding. “She looks like a wild one. Bet she’s a screamer.”
Fucking silence.
Eyes become shifty. Dylan looks at me. I look at Rock. They look at each other and back to me again. Dylan subtly shakes his head, warning me not to do anything, but Rock is nodding, warning me that if I don’t put this fucker in his place now, then he will. And while I was happy to let it slide yesterday, today he’s taken it way too far.
As if knowing he’s lost this one, Dylan sighs and makes his way back toward the stage as I turn toward Jett and put Dylan’s guitar down. I take two purposeful strides toward him, and just as his brows furrow, I grip his shoulder with one hand and use the other to sucker punch him right in the gut.
He goes down like a sack of shit. “What the fuck was that for?” Jett roars, clutching his stomach in agony.
“Do you have any idea who the fuck that was?” I demand as his eyes water with pain, looking up at me from the ground. He shakes his head, and I don’t waste a second filling him in. “Raleigh Stone. Axel’s little sister, and the woman that every fucking song I’ve ever written has been about, so watch your fucking mouth when you speak about her.”
His eyes widen, realizing the severity of the situation. He didn’t just fuck up. He almost ended his career before it even began.
“Fuck, man,” he grunts, still clutching his stomach as he tries to get back to his feet. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”
“Let me make myself clear,” I growl, not giving a shit that Rae could turn around at any moment and see exactly what’s going on out here. “You don’t touch her. You don’t breathe near her. You don’t even fucking talk to her unless she talks to your first. Raleigh is mine. Always has been.”
He visibly swallows and quickly nods as real fear flashes in his eyes. “Yeah, I mean, I wasn’t serious. I was just . . . I wasn’t going to touch her.”
I hold his stare for a long moment before finally turning away, more than ready to get this rehearsal underway. There’s a lot to go through today. The dancers should be here in the next hour with the pyrotechnics team to confirm the final arrangements, the wardrobe team will want final confirmations as well as the sound and lighting team, despite all of this having been sorted out weeks ago.
Grabbing the neck of my guitar, I settle in front of the microphone. “Let’s take it from the very beginning,” I tell the guys, knowing they have the set list memorized, and with that, Rock counts us in.
The moment we start playing, Marley excuses herself from the office, leaving Lenny and Rae to talk, and as I sing the very words I wrote for her, I watch their conversation quickly morph into a heated argument, but from where I’m standing, it looks as though Rae is the one with the upper hand.
Hands fly while Lenny paces back and forth, and when Rae turns around in anger and goes to storm for the door, Lenny dives after her, begging her to come back. I watch as Rae lets out a heavy sigh and clearly accepts whatever Lenny is saying, but the subtle smirk on her lips tells me she just played him and got whatever it is she was hoping for.
They talk for another twenty minutes before Lenny strides out of the office, leaving Rae to do whatever it is she needs to do, and as I continue playing, I watch her stride around my office, making the desk her own. From her new position at the desk, she now has the perfect view of the studio, and I know without a doubt, it’s her stubborn nature that has her refusing to look up.
Marley comes back in a moment later, holding a brand-new laptop still in its box and delivers it to Rae, who doesn’t waste a moment diving in and getting herself set up. As she works, I can’t help but be thrown back in time to the days we would practice while she worked on her laptop, doing homework, putting together the flyers for our gigs, and pushing us on every social media account she created for the band—accounts we still use to this day. Only now we have a whole team responsible for posting, and we don’t have to lift a finger.