Every Song He Stole Was Mine novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Third Verse
Dax divorces Joanna at his album party and Kiera sings Joanna's unreleased song in her dress; Joanna walks on stage and sings the rest, and the label boss says nobody touches her.
My husband divorced me at his own album release party.
Four hundred guests stood in the ballroom with champagne in their hands, and he did it where all of them could see.
Dax Kingsley pulled me away from the dessert table by my elbow.
He sat me down at a small round table near the stage.
A platinum record stood on an easel beside it, gold letters shining under the spotlight.
Paper Sparrow, his name across the top.
My name was nowhere on it.
"Sign here, Joanna," Dax said, and slid a folder across the white cloth.
"I want this done before the toast."
I looked at the papers.
He had flagged every page with a yellow tab, ready for my signature.
"Dax, it's your night," I said. "We can talk tomorrow."
"There's nothing to talk about."
He smiled for the cameras behind me and kept his voice low.
"You were a phase, Jo. I've moved on. Be a grown-up about it."
A phase.
I had written every word and every note on that record at our kitchen table.
I wrote them on a legal pad, with a cold cup of coffee at my elbow.
Six years of marriage, and he had sung all of it without once saying whose it was.
"Is it Kiera?" I asked.
I already knew the answer.
Kiera Lund was his backing singer, twenty-six, and the warmest person on his whole team.
That afternoon she had hugged me in the dressing room.
"Please let me borrow the green dress for one hem fitting," she had said. "I'll bring it back tonight. You're a lifesaver."
I had told her to keep it as long as she needed.
Dax did not answer me.
He only looked past my shoulder at the stage.
The house lights dropped.
A spotlight came up, and a woman walked out in a long green dress with a silver zipper down the back.
My dress.
My mother had helped me pick that fabric.
Kiera came to the microphone and laughed, two fingers touching her collarbone, and the crowd laughed with her.
"This one hasn't been heard by anyone," she said. "I hope you like it."
The band played four soft bars.
I knew them before she sang a word.
It was the third verse of Paper Sparrow.
I had written it the night my father's funeral ended, and I had never given it to anyone.
The one that was supposed to be in my notebook, in my handwriting, in the cabinet of the studio at our house.
She sang it well, and the crowd believed every line was hers.
The ballroom went silent, and then it started clapping.
Dax squeezed my wrist under the table.
"Sign it," he said. "Smile, and sign it."
My hands were steady, which surprised me.
I picked up his pen, flipped to the last yellow tab, and signed my name.
Joanna Ellery.
He had not read the papers to me and I did not read them either.
I stood up.
"Where are you going?" Dax said.
I did not answer him.
I walked between the tables with my back straight, past the easel.
The photographers stopped shooting the stage and turned their lenses on me.
Kiera was starting the bridge.
She reached for the high note and her voice thinned out.
The bridge sits a half step higher than the version she had rehearsed, and she did not know it.
She did not know it because I had never written the last line down.
I stepped up onto the stage.
The guitarist stopped playing.
Kiera turned, still smiling, and her smile slipped.
"Jo," she whispered. "Jo, please, don't do this here."
I took the microphone out of her hand.
It was warm from her grip.
"Thank you, Kiera," I said, and my voice came back at me from every speaker.
"You got most of it right."
Somebody in the back laughed, then went quiet.
"My name is Joanna Ellery. I wrote this song at my kitchen table, and I'm going to finish it."
I nodded at the drummer, who had worked with me on the demo.
He nodded back and brought in two soft beats.
At the back of the room, my best friend Tilda Brooks had her hands on the sound board and a grin on her face.
She slid my fader up.
I sang the last line of the bridge, the one Kiera could not have known.
It turns the whole song upside down.
My second note came out flat, as it always does when I am trying a tune for the first time.
Four hundred phones were up.
Dax was on his feet with his chair thrown back.
"Cut the mic," he shouted. "Security! Get her off my stage!"
Two men in black jackets started up the steps.
I kept singing.
Then a chair scraped at the front table, and a tall man in a rumpled charcoal jacket stood up and buttoned it.
I knew his face from the back of the album.
He was Jude Ransome, the owner of Gold Line Records, the label that had paid for this whole party.
He did not look at me.
He looked at the two guards, then at Dax.
"Nobody touches her," Jude said, and the room heard it.
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