The Ex-Change novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Terms and Conditions

Callie learns that quitting the show costs the $60,000 advance that already paid her mother's bill, pours her ex's peace offering onto the carpet, and Jude shows up at midnight with a proposal.

The backstage stairwell smelled like cold concrete and somebody's cigarette.

I sat on the third step with my coat bunched in my lap and my hands shaking so hard I had to sit on them.

"You did that very well," Jude said from the landing.

"I did it very badly. I used the word pen."

"You said you clung to a pen. Millions of people will be repeating it by breakfast."

He sat down two steps below me, with the whole width of the stairwell between his knees and mine.

Up close he looked tireder than he did on posters.

He kept reaching for my coat collar, then stopping and putting his hand back on his own knee.

"You're doing it again," I said.

"Doing what?"

"Fixing me with your eyes."

His mouth twitched.

"Your collar's folded under. It's driving me insane."

I flipped it out.

"Better?"

"Much." He gave a small grin. "I'm sorry about the kiss. I looked at your earpiece cord and my hand just went. I've been fixed by tech crews since I was twenty. I do it to the barista, I do it to my driver."

"Your barista has been kissed on the head by a pop star?"

"Once. She was very gracious about it."

I laughed. It came out wet and surprised, and it was the first real sound I'd made all day.

Then the stairwell door banged open and Lowen Quinn came through it with her headset around her neck and a tablet pressed to her chest.

Her glasses were pushed up into her grey-streaked hair.

"There she is." She looked at me the way you look at a car you've just discovered is worth money. "Callie, that was spectacular. Forty million views in the first hour. I'm not exaggerating."

"I wasn't performing."

"That's why it works." She tapped her tablet. "But I'm going to be honest with you. The network is nervous, and you've just made yourself the story. If you want to go home tonight, I'll say you were ill, and nobody will fault you."

For a second I couldn't breathe.

Home meant my studio in Dayton and the twelve small kids who came on Thursdays, and a very large quiet.

"What does going home cost?" I said.

Lowen hesitated, which was an answer.

"Page nine of your contract. The advance is returnable if you leave before the finale."

"Sixty thousand."

"Sixty thousand," she agreed, gently, and I thought of my mother's hospital bill and of the check I had already sent.

I didn't have sixty thousand dollars.

I had a piano, a lease and a stubborn streak.

"Then I'm staying," I said.

"Wonderful." Lowen was already walking backward through the door, thumbing the tablet. "Rest. Tomorrow is the first exchange date."

She left.

Jude looked at me for a while.

"You didn't tell her you'd already spent it."

"She knew."

"Then she let you think you had a choice," he said.

I didn't answer, because I was too tired to argue with a true thing.

My hotel room was on the fourth floor, and I had just finished pulling the pins out of my hair when somebody knocked, two soft taps and one more, the way he always had.

I knew that knock.

I opened the door on the chain.

Colton stood in the hallway in his navy suit with a bottle of sparkling water.

"Hi, Cal."

"Don't call me that."

"You were incredible tonight." He smiled the dimple smile. "Really. I almost clapped."

"You told two thousand people I couldn't let go."

"I know. And that wasn't personal." He lowered his voice, warm and reasonable, the voice that had talked a thousand reporters into liking him. "The audience wants a hero and a heartbreak. If you fight the edit, they'll cut you worse. Be the sad one. People love the sad one. Trust me, it's better for everyone."

"Better for you."

"Better for you, too." He pushed the water bottle through the gap. "Don't fight it, Cal."

I took the bottle.

Then I poured it out into the hallway carpet, slowly, an inch from his shoes.

He stepped back.

"I'm going to fight everything you've got," I said. "Goodnight, Colton."

I closed the door and slid down it until I was sitting on the floor.

Down the hall an elevator dinged.

I got up, wiped my face and drew a long breath, and another knock came, different this time.

Two hard knuckles.

I opened it on the chain again.

Jude stood there with his jacket over one arm and the staff tattoo showing on his forearm.

He looked over his shoulder at the empty hall, and then at the dark wet patch on the carpet.

"I just passed your ex in the lobby," he said. "He looked like a man who'd been told no for the first time."

"He was."

"Good." His voice dropped. "Callie, I have a proposal."

"At midnight?"

"I need a partner who'll say no to me on camera," Jude said. "Someone who won't just smile when the show tells her to. Let me in, and we'll write terms."

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