Page 105 of A Ballad of Betrayal and Beauty

He holds up his ring-covered fingers and backs up. “I don’t. Joel, I swear I don’t.”

“He must have done something,” I say. “Logan . . . he forged those papers, or—” I pull at the roots of my hair. “Or he forced him to write out those songs.”

Dave and James both bow their heads. “What do you mean?”

“Key’s brain is like a safe. He’s always been like that. Even stuff that we wrote at that fucking Academy after Logan was gone. It was never on paper. He always just remembered. It’s like he has a photographic memory.”

“What’s your point?” Dave sighs.

I groan. “My point, assholes, is that you’ve never seen him write a song or chord or lyric down, but this douchebag is trying to convince everyone else that there are seven perfectly written copies of songs he happened to write at seventeen years old while at an extremist Christian military academy?”

Dave shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

My jaw drops. “How can you say that?” I hiss.

“Because,” Dave continues on quietly. “We can believe him all we want, but that means nothing unless we canproveKey’s side of the story is true. And we don’t even know what that is, because he’s not here to tell us! He ran away and left us to clean up his mess and I for one am fucking pissed.”

James shrugs and adds, “He shouldn’t have left, man. He’s fucked us over.”

I close my eyes and try to take a deep calming breath but I can’t help it. I’m pissed too. In fact, I’m fucking furious. I’ve never been madder at Key and more desperate to see him in the eight years I’ve known him. What the hell was he thinking?

“The judge said we have two weeks,” I say, looking at them again. “Two weeks to prove those papers are fakes. Two weeks for Key to come back and tell us what really happened. To make this right.”

There’s an echo of laughter, and the three of us turn to see Logan and his two lawyers exiting out of the conference room, massive grins plastered on their faces. My body tenses, my knuckles cracking as I ball them into fists.

“Joel, don’t,” James whispers as he steps in front of me. “It’s not worth it.”

His eyes meet mine, those dark brown eyes begging me to be sensible. How did the youngest of our group become the wisest?

“Yeah, man,” Dave says, joining James. “He’s got lawyers with him. You do anything, they’ll use it against us.”

But I don’t care, and all I want to do at this moment is finish the job I started at seventeen.

“All right, Thanger?” Logan says with a grin as he and the lawyers stride up to the elevator next to us. “Sorry it had to go this way. I was really hoping we could have handled this without the suits,” he says, gesturing to the high-priced lawyers at his side.

My jaw clenches, and it takes all of my willpower not to push Dave and James aside to smash his face into the wall.

“Oh, and no hard feelings about that mess at Samson. After all, you putting me in the infirmary is what got me out of there.”

His lips twitch up into the barest hint of a smirk, and I’m shaking with restrained violence.

“When you see Keith, tell him I say thanks.”

The elevator dings, then the doors open, and the group disappears from sight.

“You okay?” James asks.

“No,” I reply honestly.

“Yeah,” Dave admits. “I don’t think any of us are.”

* * *

“Here,Joel, I made you some coffee,” Izzy says, pushing the steaming cup into my hands.

I try to smile at her, if only to ease the worry from her brown eyes. But I can’t manage it.

“Thanks,” I say, instead.

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