Page 32 of Home Coming

I hope you both just die.

Alone.

At home.

Just me.

But maybe… that’s how it’s supposed to be.

I drown.

The clown.

You burned it all down.

You said you loved me and I was so quick to believe…

“Holy shit,” the producer said after the last word faded away, reminding Bailey she wasn’t alone.

Bailey opened her eyes and glanced up past the microphone. Her gaze collided with Quinn’s before she yanked it away and found the producer.

“How was that?” she asked, her voice sounding breathless to her own ears.

“Fucking amazing. Girl, where have you been all my life?” the woman asked.

She smiled as she swiped the tears she hadn’t realized had fallen on her cheeks. “Do we need to do it again?”

“I’d like to try it once with you on the guitar this time instead of the piano. I’m thinking for the crescendo, I can mix the two instruments. Give it a little more depth. Then to bring it back down, have the last line be acapella. What do you think?”

All she could think was how this was starting to feel really real. This was no longer something she was noodling with for fun in Josie’s bedroom on Quinn’s old guitar. This was a real song. Her song.

Holy shit.

“Um. Yeah. Good.” Nearly incapable of speech, she stood and moved to the stool next to where a guitar was braced in a stand.

Two hours later she had a song. A real song, professionally mixed so that it sounded like something she’d hear on the radio—which the producer assured her would be the case very soon.

She was still in a daze when Quinn paused just inside the door of the studio and asked, “Ready to head to your apartment?”

Bailey nodded.

She was exhausted. Nothing sounded better than being in her own home, safe because Quinn would be there with her. She had no doubt he’d lock it down and keep her secure. No one was getting inside tonight.

“Maybe by way of some Chinese take-out?” she asked.

He grinned. “You got it. I could go for some of that myself—” Quinn stopped as he opened the door and the darkness of the November early evening turned bright with flashes. “What the fuck?”

“Paparazzi,” she answered, not that he would be able to hear over the photographers calling out her name and yelling questions over each other.

Keeping her at his back, Quinn took a single step toward them and said in a tone that left no doubt he expected them to comply, “Back. Off.”

The barrage of shouting continued, the paparazzi undeterred.

“Bailey! Were you cheating on Axel?”

“Is this your new boyfriend?”

“Bailey, are you sleeping with your bodyguard?”

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