“Screw you and screw your money,” she yells viciously, standing violently to her feet. Towering over my seated form, she leans across the table and practically spits the words at me. “I hate to be the one to break it to you, King Devlin, but music means more to some people than just money. You probably wouldn’t understand that. Your band’s not about the music, is it? Sorry, how foolish of me. You’re all about dollars in the bank and butts on seats.”
“Music meanseverythingto me.”
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“Likewise.”
“I’ve worked my ass off to make it in this industry. Don’t think for one minute I’m just going to stand by and let you take that away from me.”
“You did this to yourself!” Brinley suddenly turns and bolts for the door. “I don’t care what your song is about or why you wrote it. You stole it from me, and until you can prove otherwise, this thing between us isn’t going away.”
She gives me what I’m guessing is her meanest look, and I stare straight back at her, unimpressed by her fucking little schoolgirl tantrum.
“Fine have it your way,” I grumble as she moves across the room. “See you at mediation. And maybe try to show up on time.”
“Fuck you!”
“Yeah, you wish.”
My smirk must look every bit as bitter as it feels on my lips because she turns around slowly. Too slowly. The scary kind of slow. Someone else in the room says something, but it goes straight past my ears. Voices are raised. There’s an argument of some kind playing out around us, but it all goes unheard because as far as I’m concerned, there are only two people in this room right now.
“You are unbelievable,” she hisses through perfectly straight teeth. She laughs just once as if she can’t believe the sheer audacity of my last comment. “Could you be any more cliché? You’re really that used to women throwing themselves at you?”
I smile the cockiest, most self-absorbed smile I can muster. “Absolutely.”
She pretends to gag, somewhat violently, and then she storms out of the room, slamming the door closed firmly behind her.
Silence ensues.
Complete, stunned silence.
I glance across at Nick. “So… that went well.”
Brinley
Alist of the bluest, filthiest words known to man, words that would make my poor, sweet deceased grandmother roll over in her grave, explode from my mouth as I push through the glass doors at the front of the Lincoln Building.
Reed Devlin is absolutely impossible.
I should have known today would go like this. I was kidding myself to think otherwise, but fuck a duck, he’s insane. He’s such an arrogant prick, and that smile of his is so annoyingly smug that I want to rip it off his face and stomp all over it.
Everything about him is annoying, in fact.
His hair is annoying. It’s long on top, shaved on the sides. What kind of grown man wears his hair like that anyway? And his lip ring is annoying–a slim silver hoop on the right side of his bottom lip, which he kept fiddling with. On purpose, no doubt.
Gross.
I storm across the extensive concrete entrance to the building and look up just in time to see a tow truck pulling away from the curb, with my car attached firmly behind it.
How can this day get any worse?
“Hey!” I scream at the top of my lungs, turning heads as I run out onto the sidewalk. I chase after the tow truck, waving my hands and jumping up and down. “Hey, wait! That’s my car!”
This day totally sucks. You know what else sucks? Rain. I look up and realize that it’s now raining again. Fat raindrops spill from the dark sky, splattering onto the sidewalk, staining the concrete in messy patterns. Men in suits scurry for cover under nearby awnings, and women try desperately to dig umbrellas out of their handbags, finding shelter in shopfronts and narrow alleyways between the towering office buildings.
Well, isn’t this just great?