“Yeah.” Letting out a breath, Raine looked down at her hands, clasping them together on her legs, deciding maybe she could tell Quentin the truth—the entire truth. Whether it belonged in a song was another story, but she had to start somewhere.
Quentin’s eyes narrowed, but she couldn’t read them. He said, “If it’s part of your story and you need to tell it, then tell it as honestly as you can. Be as honest as you can in the song—it doesn’t mean we have to put it on your album.”
Raine clenched her fists in her lap. He was right that if she was going to tell it, she needed to lay it all bare.
But she also knew that, once she opened that door, there would be no closing it again.
Chapter 12
The studio felt eerily quiet until Quentin’s soft voice broke it. “Is it something you want to talk about?”
The silence filled the room again like a physical entity pushing against them. As Quentin waited patiently without saying a word, Raine knew she had to tell him the story.
Looking up from her fisted hands, she asked, “What do you know about Mal?”
“I don’t really. I just met him over Zoom when we were negotiating terms of me working with you.”
“I…don’t really know how to begin.” Quentin didn’t say anything, but his dark eyes were warm, kind, and encouraging. God—she could use a hell of a lot more of that in her life, but as she looked over the future, she knew real friends would be few and far between. Even though she wasn’t a megastar, she had plenty of sycophants and toadies who sucked up to her daily, always telling her what they thought she wanted to hear.
Quentin felt like he might be the real deal. She thought he might actually care about her, not what he could get from her.
And, as she processed all the roiling emotions swirling inside her body, she knew that letting this shit go would help, even if it never appeared in a song.
So she began without another thought.
“I started writing songs as a kid when I started playing musical instruments—but it wasn’t till I was in high school that I started recording and sharing them online. When I was seventeen, I had one song in particular that went viral and, all of a sudden, the algorithms were pushing me into everyone’s feeds. My follower counts jumped astronomically overnight and all kinds of people were commenting, leaving me DMs, and asking where they could find more. To me, a poor kid from Tulare, it felt surreal. And it was something I’d needed for a long time: validation, like I was being truly seen for the first time.
“That was about the time Malachi Storm entered the picture. I can’t remember exactly how he contacted me, but he did. One of the first things he asked was how old I was and, when I told him I was seventeen, he said that any contracts I signed would have to be signed by a parent or guardian as well. So he contacted my mother.”
Pausing, she looked up from her hands to Quentin’s face—and his dark brown eyes were like a sea of calm to her, supporting her, not urging her to continue but telling her it was safe if she wanted to.
And she did. “My, um, mom. She was…” Raine blew out a breath. This was harder than she would have thought—and yet there was something that told her she needed to get all this shit out. “She wasn’t a bad mom, but she was kind of a kid herself. She had me when she was sixteen and I never knew my dad. I knew he died when I was really little, but my mom never told me anything else. It was just her and me.
“And it wasn’t long before Mal was at our house, filling both our heads full of dreams. Actually, no, that’s not true. He was speaking my mother’s language, sometimes acting like I wasn’t even in the room. Did I like the idea of becoming a star? Of course, I did. What kid wouldn’t? But he kept telling my mom that I was special and I needed to be in Los Angeles to make it big. At first, my mom thought that meant the two of us.
“But he meant me. Just me. And when my mother put up the tiniest protest, he promised to protect me like family—and he told her she didn’t want to hold me back, that this might be my only shot at making it. So she signed all the paperwork without another moment’s thought. I’ve sometimes wondered if she did it so she could live her life without having me as a burden. There were a lot of times when she’d work two or three jobs just to make the rent—and, without me, she could just live her life without maternal obligations. I…tried to tell her something about it all didn’t feel right, but she said Mal knew what he was doing and we had to accept it. She repeated his words…that this might be my only chance.
“So…it wasn’t long before I was in L.A. I finished high school online, half-assing it, of course, but getting it done and, while I was doing that, it felt like Mal was just dicking around. He told my mom that he’d take care of everything but, when we got to the city, he put me up into a hotel, not an apartment or anything. It was nice enough, but things seemed to be moving too slowly. And when I asked why I wasn’t immediately recording an album, he blew me off, telling me the labels wouldn’t want someone who seemed desperate. We needed to really wow them and that would take time and lots of practice.
“But hadn’t I already done that, impressing people with my videos? I’d wowed the world and I thought the world wanted me. I don’t know if he knew I was doubting him, but it wasn’t long before I was finally in a studio—but it was an indie studio, low-rent, kinda sketchy, and I recorded a demo of three of my songs. And even though it seemed suspicious, it was exciting because it was fucking real. Before I knew it, Mal was my only lifeline in a big city where I didn’t know another soul. He was with me every waking moment, telling me how talented I was and how he would protect me from the industry. He’d say things about the industry chewing up pretty girls like me for breakfast and spitting them out by lunchtime. But he would also say things that made me feel bad—like how a shirt I wore made me look fat or how my hairstyle was unflattering. Most of the time, he gave me an uneasy feeling, but it wasn’t anything I could put my finger on. Except…the one thing that made me feel super uncomfortable was when he'd talk about my body and he did it a lot. I just…should have known then that he wasn’t really looking out for me or my best interests.
“But I didn’t figure it out back then. It was after I’d recorded the demo that we had a lot of meetings with different labels. He’d have me sing without any accompaniment for them—and they had nice things to say, but we didn’t get anywhere with that approach. They’d say things about how I needed a little more work before they could sell me—even with the demo. And I wanted to scream that I already had an audience. But…”
Quentin nodded but didn’t say a word.
It helped her push through.
“Finally, we signed a deal with Crushed Velvet. They’re still my label, but that first contract…wow. I signed it myself because by then I was eighteen and my mom was kind of out of the picture. The advance was small and everything was kind of vague and, in retrospect, I blame Mal for that. He was supposed to be some big hotshot but my deal was pretty shitty, and the label could have dropped me at any time.” That was, of course, a big part of why she was here in Quentin’s place in Joshua Tree. They still had a lot of control over her.
Glad that the tears had dried up, Raine took another cleansing breath. “So when I finally got into a real studio, I was terrified. It was intimidating and ridiculously expensive and getting my songs just right took forever. I recorded my first album knowing they could replace me with someone else whenever they felt like it, and it weighed on me every damn day. But Mal kept encouraging me while telling me this was how it all worked, that I was doing the right things. And, before you know it…” she said, swallowing a lump that had solidified in her throat, along with noticing her eyes were growing wet again, “I was sleeping with him. It never felt right, but…I don’t know how to explain it. He didn’t rape me. He never forced himself on me and I guess you could say it was consensual…but somehow I felt like I had to, like if I didn’t, there would be trouble. Like I could kiss it all goodbye if I didn’t, like everything I’d done up to that point would have been for nothing, and then where would I be?
“And so we were like a couple. Like. Because we really weren’t. He was the guy calling the shots and I was the obedient little girl doing whatever he told me to. Well, you probably already know that my first album far exceeded the label’s expectations and they signed me for a second. Mal controlled all that shit too—and that was when I started feeling like I’d been manipulated and like I had no agency. I was almost twenty by that point and had had a lot of time to try to figure out what I wanted. By then, I wasn’t talking with my mother anymore, so…I felt like I couldn’t really trust anyone other than him.
“Recording my second album was a lot harder. I felt so much pressure to get it right and I wanted to get rid of Mal, but I didn’t know how. I had a contract with him and I didn’t know what to do about it—and by then he was the only reason why I got what I wanted from the label. I, uh, started drinking a lot then, taking Xanax, kind of numbing myself. And when the reviews for that album came out, they didn’t help my emotional state—you know, the reception for that album were pretty mixed. I mean, it sold really well, but I could already hear some of the whispers that maybe I was a one-hit wonder. And there was even a lot of talk that I was difficult to work with. I mean…I know why. I’d earned the reputation for being a bit of a bad girl—but that shit was mostly onstage. Still, I realized that I needed to take control of my life but it was spinning out of control. The only thing I was able to do was tell Mal that we were over relationship-wise—and the only way I was able to get him to agree was by letting him stay on as my manager. I moved into a one-bedroom apartment that had plenty of locks.”
Quentin still kept his silence, but she felt validation from him simply from the fact that he continued to sit there, occasionally nodding his head slightly—and not flinching from the ugliness of her past. And that gave her the courage to finish her story.
“Even though I’d kicked Mal to the curb…the way I felt inside didn’t change. I mean…I’d allowed him to control and manipulate me, and I could sense that he still had some sway over me. It wasn’t like I could just turn that off. I didn’t know how. And, by then, I wasn’t necessarily addicted to drugs and alcohol, but it would be fair to say I was dependent upon them. They helped me through the day.
