“You won,” Braxton said to me the moment we were back on the bus.
Loren, Rich, and I crowded the door because she hadn’t allowed us a step further. She stood there with her head high and shoulders back, but it was the coldness in her eyes that bothered me. Braxton looked at us as if I’d never been inside her, as if she’d never felt Loren’s touch, and her clothes weren’t torn from fucking Rich mere hours ago.
She even bore all of our marks.
Staring at the spot where mine was starting to fade, I forced myself to stay put. No question she wouldn’t welcome my mouth on her right now.
“What are you talking about?” Loren demanded. He shoved past me to get closer to Brax as if he could stop her from saying or doing whatever came next.
“From this point forward, I’d like to keep it about the music.”
Loren stilled while Rich shifted next to me. My reaction was also nonverbal. I let my suspicion show as I regarded Braxton. I never took her for a schemer. It had to be a ploy to get us under heel because the only alternative was that she was completely fucking serious.
“When has it not been about the music?” Loren pushed through gritted teeth. Brows dipped and nostrils flaring, his breathing turned heavy from the exertion not to grab Brax and shake her until she was pliant. He’d calmed down on the drive home and even looked like he wanted to take it all back. He didn’t count on Braxton deciding for everyone that it was too late.
I toyed with the possibility that she meant every word. What I didn’t expect was for it to piss me off more.
“Since I let myself cross too many lines with you,” Braxton said with too much passion to be faked. Her gaze slowly met each of ours. “All of you.”
Fuck.
She was serious.
“You don’t want to accept me,” she continued. “It was wrong to think I could make you. I’m temporary. It should never have mattered.”
Braxton turned to me, and I read the confusion in her expression when I didn’t immediately agree. Victory had always tasted sweet. At the moment, I had a hard time swallowing my nausea.
“Houston?”
I held her stare, but I didn’t respond. I was afraid of what might come out. I’d wanted this, and now that I had it, I—
Doesn’t matter.
Her mind was made up. Braxton wasn’t looking for me to change her mind. She wanted an ally, at least in this. Rich and Loren wouldn’t accept a strictly business relationship—not when it was three against one. And if I gave even an ounce of fight, my best friends would immediately pounce. Braxton could hold her own against one of us, maybe even two. She stood no chance if all three of us decided we wanted everything she had to give. Every. Single. Thing.
“Appreciate ya,” I finally spoke. I heard the words, but I didn’t feel them.
Braxton, however, did.
In the split second it took for her true feelings to show, she recovered, saving me from taking it back. Something inside of me shifted though at seeing her so crestfallen. The wheels in my mind were beginning to turn, and there was no stopping them. Braxton nodded, but before she could speak the gratitude I read on her lips, Rich exploded.
“Wait, so that’s it? The two of you get to decide for us?”
“I’m in charge,” I reminded him, “and it’s what she wants, so…yeah.”
Rich and Loren stared at each other, then Brax, and finally me. I’d never been one to wear my thoughts, and right now, it served me well. Betrayal, confusion, disappointment, anger—it was all there in their eyes. There was a time when I’d walk through fire just to bring them an ice cream cone. Back then, I never said no. I never left them behind, and I never left them wanting. It wasn’t until we signed with Savant that I failed them and have ever since.
I couldn’t dwell on the past anymore, though. It meant wasting the chance I had in the present to right my many wrongs.
Starting with Braxton.
Sometimes pissing off the people you love is how you do them the most good in the end.
