Page 100 of From Me to You

“Yes, we have a good following. We could try with other big labels—they would be stupid not to want us.” Katy nodded to herself. “I am still not sure what Pacific’s problem is. It seems weird that they cut us short when they were the ones who actually wanted us.”

I looked at White—her eyes widened the slightest bit, but her mask came back on.

“Yeah, they signed us with the same deal, and we got to recording soon after. Our album sold great, and they signed us for real.” Will shrugged.

“It’s okay. We can go with someone else. I am sure someone will want us,” Katy declared.

White stood up abruptly. Her tight white pencil dress looked perfect, and her face and hair were impeccable. She certainly didn’t look like someone who had been crying just a few minutes ago.

“Katy,” she started softly. “You guys signed an exclusive deal with us that lasts for three years. That means during that time you cannot sign or record for another label. I am so sorry. If I knew something like this was going to happen, I would never have suggested it to you guys.”

“Fucking hell,” Mikey hissed, kicking the air.

“Cece, isn’t there a way out? The songs are all ours. They can’t possibly do this to us.” Katy looked helpless, and all her previous determination disappeared.

White’s eyes shone with fake tears. Some even streamed down her cheek. “I am so sorry, Katy, but you guys have no other choice other than to stay with us for the next three years.”

I was baffled by this woman. She had planned all this way ahead of time, and I knew it. She didn’t really care about their music. All she wanted was Jay. She was obsessed with my man.

The band made a mistake by making a deal with the devil. I was sure they could have landed a better deal from someone bigger.

Everyone looked dejected. The whole group hugged each other.

Jay and Katy assured them that they would somehow find a way out and that three years were nothing.

But they all knew what three years meant. It was supposed to be the prime time of their career. If the label kept sweeping them under the rug, soon they would become a long-forgotten band that no one listened to anymore.

I met White’s gaze, which flashed to pure evil for a second while she mouthed ‘I told you’ but quickly transformed back into her angelic façade.

I was too heartbroken to even react to her—all I cared about was what Jay was feeling. I just wanted all this to have never happened. I just wanted to go back to the days when the guys were playing at Red Rock Hall and having the best time of their lives. I just wanted to scream to everyone in this room that this was all White’s fault, and if you guys even wanted to make an album, she asked me to do the unthinkable. She asked me to rip my own heart away and leave it here in L.A.

“Strawberry milk.” I handed it to Jay while we holed up in our bedroom later that night.

His gaze softened as he met mine. “What if I need something more than strawberry milk?”

I swallowed as my breath hitched up my throat.

“Anything you need,” I whispered before his lips crashed into mine.

We lay in bed, lost to each other, as we put aside all our worries and made love for hours.

“I don’t know what to do.” Jay slurped his milkshake as leaned against the headboard, the sheets pooled on his lap, revealing his gorgeous abs.

“Three years is a long time,” I said softly lying on my side as I looked up at him.

He shook his head. “Three years under a label that doesn’t want to produce us will be the death of the band, Evy, I know it. I thought they really wanted us, which is why we agreed. It’s rare that labels do this, and they only do it when they know for sure that a band is going to fail. We have a massive following, and our single has been charting up slowly, so I wasn’t sure why they wanted to destroy us.”

Jay had a far-off look on his face. “I promised my uncle that I would make it somehow. Now it seems I can’t.” His beautiful voice cracked with emotion.

A sense of deep moroseness settled over me as I watched his sad, sad face. A lump too hard to swallow settled over my throat, and my heart sank completely to the heaviness that it felt.

“Jay, who is your favorite person in the whole wide world?” And I knew it down to my bones that this would be the last time I asked him that. The melancholy of it wrapped around me like pricky, thin roses, each thorn digging deeper into my flesh. Killing me alive.

Jay turned toward me and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “You.” He gave me the smallest smile before a vacant void overtook his eyes as he refocused his gaze on the empty wall.

It dawned on me then that Jay was never going to recover from this. Music was his soul. Nothing compared to how he felt when he played his songs on stage in front of a crowd that screamed back the lyrics that he wrote. He came truly alive then.

I remember when he told me during our first date that his biggest dream was to create music that would stay in people’shearts forever. And all of that was possible with me out of the picture, forever.