Page 121 of Never Sleep with the Enemy

Knox blinks. The rest of us look at him in confusion.

“You want to talk about thatnow?”he asks.

“You wanted to talk about it at my bachelor party.”

“No, I wanted to talk about it later, but you pulled it out of me.”

“And I’m pulling it out of you now.” Jonah stands an inch taller. “Go ahead, Knox. Make your pitch.”

“What pitch?” Jordan asks.

We all fall silent, waiting. Knox shifts under the weight of our eyes, his glare flickering with nerves.

Jonah tilts forward, waiting.

Finally, Knox exhales. “I want to start a record label.”

No one says a word.

“I’ve given it a lot of thought,” he says. “Well... nota lotof thought, but I’vefelta lot of feelings lately, and it’s all pointing me toward this.”

“Toward…” Jordan leans in, eyebrows raised, “starting our ownrecord label?”

Knox nods. “Yep.”

“Do you have any idea how much work that is?”

“When has hard work ever stopped us?”

Jordan raises a brow. “Is that a serious question?” she asks, dry as sandpaper.

“Fine, whatever. It’ll be hard! But… aren’t you guys tired?” Knox asks. “Because I’mexhausted. I’m sick of guys like Monroe. Of assholes like the ones over at Sugar Sound who thought they could shove us aside to make room for their shiny new band. That’s not gonna stop. There will always be someone newer, hotter—oryounger.Sooner or later, we’ll be like Dade Connery. You know? Just another old legend clinging to the glory days, trying to stay relevant in a world that’s moved on.”

He looks at each of us. Even me.

“I don’t want that. I don’t want to go away. And I think the best way to stop that from happening—the only real path forward—is to lay the bricks ourselves. To build a foundation no one can take from us.”

“But…” Addison’s voice comes quiet. “What about Criminal Records?”

“Yeah,” Jordan says, hesitant. “Do you want to…” She goes quiet, unable to say it out loud.

“What?” Knox asks. “Break up?”

We all go still. The superstition in those words turns my stomach and I swallow hard, feeling wretched.

“No, I don’t,” he says. “I want to do this until the day I die.”

“So do I,” Jonah says. “And I doubt there’s anyone in this room who feels differently.”

No one disagrees. No one moves. It’s the air around us that shifts; charged with new possibility. It ripples between us, a pulse of something being born.

Start our own record label?

It sounds insane. Itisinsane. But…

We could keep making music our way. We could support new voices, like Harvey. Like Harmony. Whoever we find along the way.

We could make damn sure no one does to them what Paul Monroe did to us.

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