“Interview is over. I have to go.” I don’t get out from behind my desk before his too-calm voice stops me.
“That’s too bad. If you go, I can’t tell you what you need to know to keep Cas safe on the set.”
A helpless feeling washes over me as I stare at him.“What have you done?”
Kit shrugs. “Just enough to ensure that I finally get what’s mine. I never asked you for a thing. You chose not to credit my name. Not to give me any royalties and that’s on you; on how you treat your biggest fan.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” I grit out, hands painfully fisted at my side. My voice rings off the walls, before I even know it is raised.
Kit just smugly quirks an eyebrow, calm and cool — not even moving from where he is sitting.
Suddenly, I remember where I have seen him before. He’s the guy that walked in on me and Jack in the back of Black Diamond. That thought makes my blood run cold.
“I have a cabin out in the woods, far from town,” Kit says. “We are going to go there, and you are going to give me the scoop on you and Cas. Exclusive access. Exclusive pictures.”
My jaw tightens. This is exactly the sort of selling of our relationship we wanted to avoid.
Kit tilts his head, looking at me like I am a specimen, not a man.“It’s the least you could do, isn’t it? All the letters? All the stories? My little warning to Cas already on set? Come on. You weren’t going to do anything without a little push, were you?”
I watch as he digs into the bag at his feet, stepping back automatically from whatever he pulls out, but it’ s the gleaming Billboard music award. The one from Cas’s house.
“That doesn’t belong to you,” I tell him as he sits it on my desk.
“Well, it doesn’t belong to Cas either, does it? I co-wrote that song with you,” he says, this time his voice going high and demanding. “That song was about all the things I told you in those letters. And you used it. From the beginning. Since you were writing songs on the backs of napkins in sketchy bars.”
“That song was about me!” My voice booms out, anger and fear driving it louder than I ever get. The scary kind of booming that large guys like me need to avoid. But I can’t help it.Midnight Bluewas an open wound, bleeding into words on paper. It was my love of Cas captured in lyrics that said so much I didn’t even get understand just how much at the time. Writing that song was like digging barbed spikes out of my skin that I didn’t even know were there and letting the pain manifest.
That song was what made me realize I was in love with Cas. It was the Master’s Thesis that laid out the research I had done to figuring out my feelings for him.
It was real, and that’s why people loved it.
It was too raw, actually, when I was done with it. But, after all the bleeding, I couldn’t bandage the words into something finished. That was Cas. He took the mess and cleaned it up. He’s the one that spun the bloody lines into gold.
I have never felt I earned any award, any recognition, any paycheck, as much as I earned that one. And so did Cas.
Midnight Blueisn’t just the song of my love for Cas. I realize, for the first time, it’s also the song of his love for me, too.
He bandaged the wounds he thought someone else had inflicted, emotions he thought someone else had brought out in me.
And he wanted it to be him. All those songs, he wanted to be the one I had loved. That’s what he’s been trying to say since he got here.
The magnitude of Cas’s love for me slams into my consciousness, like some great and divine revelation. I’m Buddha under the bodhi tree, disarmed and overwhelmed by knowledge.
“What do you need me to do to keep Cas safe?” I ask Kit, words no longer booming, but dripping now with ice.
“You come with me, and when we are out of Bear Valley and headed toward my place, I will make some calls, and all will be fine.” Kit is still as calm as ever. His flat brown eyes don’t even flinch. “Of course, there are other things that could be set in motion too. So, you give me what I want, and I will keep making sure disaster is adverted.”
“Fine.”
“You will have to be blindfolded.”
I pause. I know there are security cameras around here. Maybe when my brothers see the footage and my truck is still here they can do something. But, getting out of this situation seems secondary and much less a priority than getting this guy what he wants and keeping Cas safe.
Even if it means doing the one thing I don’t want to do.
“Not until we are in your car.”
Chapter 25 – Baylor
