“Whoa,” he says with a chuckle to the crowd. “Someone’s excited to see me.”
This earns him all the laughs he wants.
And the second we’re past the canvas flap, it also earns him a punch to the shoulder.
“What the heck, bro?” I ask. “How about a heads-up next time?”
He rolls his eyes—ignoring my punch completely—and drops down to a black folding chair. He cracks a water bottle, drains it, and then crushes it flat while I try to burn holes in him with my eyes.
He tosses the water bottle into a nearby trashcan. “I told you we needed to talk.”
“Yeah, so next time,call me.”
He shrugs and throws his arm over the back of the chair. “What does it matter?” he asks. I sit in a chair across from him and cover my face with my hands. “Oh, shoot. Is this about the TikTok kid?”
“Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Scot, I’m not trying to mess things up for you. You guys can do whatever you want … as soon as Agent says we’re good to call it quits.”
I’m trying not to cry into my hands. The tent is meant for privacy, and even with the fan in the corner, it’s stuffy. My hands over my face make me feel claustrophobic, but I can’t let Jake see me like this.
“It’s so lame that you call him ‘Agent,’” I say. “He has a name.”
“Yeah, and so did the last four. I thought they were all gonna be on my side, and they had no problem selling me out or dropping me when I went off script. Calling him Agent instead of ‘Todd’ makes it easier to remember he doesn’t care about me.”
I drop my hands with a sigh. It’s not enough that Jake had neglectful yet predatory parents; he’s had a string of agents who only cared about money, at the expense of Jake’s happiness. Jake seems so tough, like he doesn’t care about anything, but he’ll roll over for the first father figure who says hi to him, let alone so much as hints that he’ll look out for him.
Agents aren’t all bad—Lucas and Logan have a great one, I’ve learned in the last couple of weeks—but Jake attracts predators. He’s insanely talented, but he’s also loud and unpredictable, and certain kinds of agents know how to spin that to make money.
He’s basically shark bait for bloodthirsty agents.
Like Todd Finch.
“Are you okay?” I ask. “That guy at the charity event sounded a lot like your dad.”
His laugh cuts like broken glass. “Yeah, you know who else does? My actual dad. He called last night, high out of his mind, begging me to bail him out of jail.”
“Oh, Jake. I’m sorry. What did you do?”
“Hopped on the first plane to Arizona.” He gives a loud huff. “If you can’t clean up a mess, avoid it. Isn’t that what you told me?”
“I just repeated it. My parents told us that during one of their ‘life skills’ lessons on Sunday nights before family movie night. Do you remember?”
He gives a slow nod, smiling. He really is handsome when he forgets to be a jerk. Broad shoulders. Long light-brown hair that always falls into place. Perpetual stubble along a sharp jaw—the kind that makes women think they can fix him.
I’m not one of them.
I stopped thinking I could fix Jake years ago.
Now I’m just his cleaning crew.
“Man, your parents took those lessons so seriously,” he says. “Gave us those notebooks and made us write what we were committing to that week.” He laughs. “I wrote ‘stop teasing Scot about her acne and braces’ one week, and your dad lit me up. He said a real man doesn’t tease girls and that he’d keep me home from practice for a month if I didn’t treat you better.”
“What?” I blink. “Mydadsaid that?”
“I think your mom pulled the strings on that one, but yeah.”
“Now I know you’re making this up.” I snort. “She was Team Jake before I was even born.”
