Backstage Romance with the Popstar novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Severance
Devon hands his assistant a severance check at the party. She gives back his key and learns, alone, that she is the label that paid for it.
The rooftop of the Marlowe Hotel was lit gold for Devon Ransom's platinum plaque.
I had spent six days planning it, down to the lemon tarts nobody would eat.
At nine-fifteen, Devon walked up to me with a white envelope in his hand.
Hank Dorsey, his manager, stood two steps behind him with a glass of whiskey.
Lexi Rotherhithe stood next to Hank, wearing my green silk scarf.
I had left that scarf in Devon's car on Tuesday.
"Laurel," Devon said. "Can we talk for a second?"
He had never asked me that in front of other people.
For two years he had only touched me behind closed doors, and I had only called him Devon when the lights were off.
"Sure," I said.
He held out the envelope.
"Five thousand dollars," he said. "It's a good severance. Hank had it checked."
The music from the DJ kept going, but the people near us went quiet.
A photographer lowered his camera, then raised it again.
I looked at the envelope, and then at his face.
"You're firing me," I said.
"I'm letting you go," Devon said. "The next tour needs a different kind of team."
Hank swirled his whiskey.
"Someone who understands the brand," he said, in that soft voice of his.
Lexi smiled at me.
It was a bright, helpful smile, the kind you give a waitress who got your order wrong.
"No hard feelings, Laurel," she said. "You were really great at the little things."
I waited for Devon to say something else.
I waited for him to look at me the way he did at two in the morning, in my kitchen.
The way he looked at me over a bowl of cereal, when nobody was watching.
He looked at the envelope instead.
"I need you to take it," he said.
"Why now?" I said. "Tonight, at your party, with a photographer standing right there."
"Because it's time," Devon said.
He did not say it cruelly.
That was what made it worse.
I put my hand in my bag and took out my key ring.
I slid his house key off it, the brass one with the blue tag.
I set it on the envelope.
Then I took out the work phone he had given me three years ago, the one with four hundred and twelve unread messages.
I put it on top of the key.
"There's a calendar in there," I said. "Your dentist is Thursday at ten. Don't miss it again."
Somebody behind me laughed, and then stopped.
I picked up the envelope, held it over the nearest drink, and let it go.
It was a tall glass of champagne belonging to a man I had never met.
The white paper went dark and sank.
"Laurel," Devon said.
His voice cracked on the last syllable, and for half a second I almost believed there was a man in there.
"Don't," I said. "You made your choice in front of all these people. You can live with it in front of them too."
Hank's eyes narrowed.
Lexi's smile slipped, then came right back.
I turned around.
The crowd opened for me.
I took the service elevator, because I had always taken the service elevator.
In the lobby, a valet handed me my coat without being asked.
I waited until the cab door closed before I let my hands shake.
I let them shake for two blocks.
Then I took out my own phone, the old cracked one that nobody at that party had ever seen me use.
I had one new message, from a number saved as M.
"Boss, we have a problem," it read. "Hank Dorsey just filed Lexi Rotherhithe's tour contract with our label. In your name."
I read it twice.
The party behind me had been paid for by the label.
The plaque on that rooftop had been cut at the label's cost.
Every dollar Devon Ransom had ever made came back to a company called Lantern Holdings.
I was Lantern Holdings.
I typed back with a steady thumb.
"Don't sign anything," I wrote. "I'm on my way."
Then I opened the other inbox, the one with the single word Echo above it.
I was Echo.
Devon's three albums sat in its folders, every stem and every note.
He had called Echo a genius in four magazines.
He had never once guessed the genius had been sitting in the front seat of his car, holding his coffee.
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