“You don’t have to shit on him to make me feel better.”
She cocks a thin brow. “Is it working?”
I laugh, which surprises me. “Maybe a little.”
“Good.” She ties her hair back. “If you want to stop thinking about him, we can get back to work.”
“That’ll work.”
She looks back at the screen. “Discretion in public,” she says, like she’s writing a rule. “Honesty in private.”
“Exactly.”
“We don’t pretend,” she says. “We don’t perform for strangers. But we also don’t lie to each other.”
“It doesn’t have to be a problem.”
“It won’t be if we don’t let it. I’m not interested in burning my work down for a man again. Or in this case, men. And I’m not interested in hiding either.”
“Good. Neither are we.”
“But for now, I’d like some discretion. Until the heat dies around that picture of Salem.”
“Agreed.”
She sits back, thinking. “You and your brothers have done this before? Sharing someone, I mean.”
“Shared nights. Never more than one or two. It was simple. This is not that.”
“Because?”
“Because I click with you,” I say, and don’t try to soften it. “So does Houston. So does Salem.”
She breathes out like that lands somewhere she keeps locked. “Okay.”
“We don’t have to name it today. We’re just figuring things out, you especially. We just have to not lie about it.”
“Deal.” She glances at the clock. “You have to get back downstairs.”
“Soon,” I say, but I don’t stand yet. The quiet between us feels workable, not fragile. I close the laptop. “Quincy thinks this record lives or dies on how we carry ourselves and how fast we cut.”
“He’s not wrong.”
“He’s also not the one in the room when the take falls apart. That’s us.”
“You thrive under pressure,” she says, throwing his words back at me with a small smile.
“We endure under pressure. Thriving is the press release’s wording.”
She laughs. “Fair.”
I gather the papers. “You’ll get a contract. Sign it. Send me the W-9. I’ll have accounting pull your vendor profile. We’ll set deposits so you’re not floating us.”
“Look at you taking care of me without making it weird,” she says, half teasing, half not.
“It’s logistics. It’s what I live for.”
We stand at the same time. She tucks her pencil behind her ear. The gesture is small and does something big inside my rib cage. I ignore it like a professional.
