Page 81 of Goode to Be Bad

He shrugged. “It’s just organized enough to let me put out Myles North records. I’m not set up to take on outside acts. And I guess I assumed you wouldn’t want my help.”

“But I…I don’t know who to trust. What’s a good offer? What should I be wary of?”

“Why ask me? You don’t trust me any more than you do anyone else.” He sounded so…bitter.

“That’s not fucking fair, goddammit,” I snapped. “I do trust you. I mean, you did this without my permission and I’m absolutely furious with you. But I also recognize you didn’t do it out of, like, nefarious motives.”

“Of course not. The exact opposite.”

“I just…” I felt my eyes mist over, panic bubbling up. “I don’t know how to navigate this.”

“You take your time. You don’t commit to anyone or anything.”

I snorted bitterly. “Yeah, well, that’s easy.”

He seemed to physically bite down on a response, the gist of which I could guess. His phone rang. “Mick, what’s up?” He listened, gave verbal affirmatives, and hung up. Back to me. “Mick has his top four picks for agents for you. All women, best in the field. He’s emailing me the info and I’ll share it with you. You pick from there, sign a contract, and let your new agent deal with everything. She’ll call the labels and tell them she’s your agent and to bring her any offers. You ignore all other calls except those from your family.”

“Do I have to sign with an agent?”

He shrugged. “It makes life easier, if nothing else. It’s a complicated world out there, in the music industry. She’ll be your guide through the murky, shark-infested waters.”

“I mean…what I…what if I don’t want to—to do this?”

He ground his teeth. “Don’t bullshit me, Lex. You’re scared, angry with me, and overwhelmed. I get it. But don’t act like you don’t want this.” He leaned across the table and took my hands. “Lex, think back to the times you’ve performed. Remember how you felt.”

I closed my eyes, and I was on that stage again in Tokyo, fifty thousand peopleacceptingme, loving my music. Alive. Nothing else had mattered, in that moment.

“I remember,” I whispered.

“Deal withthis,” he wiggled my phone, “and you getthat. It’s why I put up with signing autographs and taking a thousand pictures with strangers, becausethey’rethe reason I get to do this. I deal with press and media and attention and endorsements and money and managers and agents because it lets me be on stage doing the thing I love more than anything else in the fucking world—which is performing. It’s what I was born to do. I’ll die on stage when I’m a hundred years old, because it’s who I fuckingam.” He poked my chest. “And it’s whoyouare, if you can summon the fucking courage to let yourself have it—the courage to believe in yourself and your abilities.”

“I don’t know if I have that courage.”

“Look deeper, Lex.” His voice was low and rough. “Youdo.”

“My own father didn’t believe in me.”

“And he was a damned fool. He waswrong.” He squeezed my hands so hard it hurt. “I fucking believe in you more than I’ve ever believed in anyone or anything, Lex.”

“I don’t deserve that.”

“Not for you to decide. I decide that.”

“You decide what I deserve?”

He laughed. “No—I decide what I feel for you, and howyoufeel about howIfeel is irrelevant.” He sucked in a slow deep breath, let it out. “I accepted the end of us—the end of whatever us there could have been—when I put that video out there. I did it for you, because I believe in you and because I love you.”

I rocked backward. “I…I can’t. I can’t handle this.”

I shot out of the booth and bolted for the suite in the back. Shut and locked the door, and sobbed—out of sheer, overwhelmed confusion, if nothing else.

The plane landed,and I didn’t leave the cabin. Couldn’t.

Hours passed and what did I do in those hours?

Cry? Rage? Sleep?

No, I drank.