Page 1 of The Oscar Escape
Chapter1
ARIA
Aria Paige-Grant read an alert on her phone, clicked the link, then gritted her teeth and saw red. “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to fucking kill him.” The bitter rasp of the words tore through her throat like she’d swallowed glass. She flinched, and her hand went to her throat as the pain returned with a brutal vengeance.
With the roar of the crowd fading and her body coming down from the adrenaline rush of knocking out a solid two-hour set for thousands of screaming fans, most singers would be popping the champagne to celebrate another successful night on tour. But Aria Paige-Grant wasn’t your typical star. No corks would be popping this evening—at least, not in celebration. She had far more to prove, and there was no time to waste partying.
And it wasn’t only her throat crying out for relief.
She rubbed at the tender skin on either side of her ribs. When the record label suggested she take the stage from the air with the help of a freaking crane and one damned uncomfortable harness, it sounded like an exciting, theatrical way to start her concerts. What she hadn’t expected was the toll it took to complete the maneuver night after night, like she was a load of timber on a construction site.
She exhaled a sharp breath and pulled herself together.
Nobody wanted to see the ugly side of rock star life.
Her crew was good about giving her a private moment to center herself after she left the stage. Although she was grateful to have found a dim, somewhat secluded spot, she couldn’t take a second to decompress. She had to deal with the bullshit du jour on her phone.
Truth be told, her cell was the last thing she should be looking at seconds after exiting the stage when her emotions were running high. But she couldn’t help it. Too much was on the line. Over the past eleven months, she’d been killing herself to keep her music front and center. From sunup to well past sundown, every minute of her day had been spent chasing one goal: sell two million copies of her latest album to go double platinum in less than a year—and time was running out. She only had a handful of weeks left to prove she was the real deal and not a pop music imposter riding on the legacy of her famous musical family.
And there wasn’t a damned thing she wouldn’t do to prove she’d earned her success.
After a grueling one hundred and twenty minutes on stage, belting out tunes and switching between the piano and the guitar, she’d performed her heart out until her throat burned and the tips of her calloused fingers nearly bled. But she never let on that she was in pain. Like the consummate artist, when the stage lights bathed her in a golden glow, she stopped being Aria Paige-Grant, the woman, and played the part of the star. She’d ignored the searing pain and biting anxiety. Her singular objective was to give her audience the show of a lifetime. The concert had ended after a double encore, but she couldn’t let her guard down yet.
Among the busy stagehands and frantic PAs skittering this way and that, she had to hold it together a bit longer. Smiling through the pain, she nodded to a few of the roadies taking down the scaffolding.
“One more stop,” a well-meaning crew member said.
“One more,” she repeated through a plastic smile as a sharp pain cracked like lightning and struck her throat.
Tonight, they were in Boston. It was a miracle she could remember where she was. The pace of the tour had been exhausting. Forty US cities and seventeen worldwide stops that had brought her to every continent, save for Antarctica. Thank God she had a bit of reprieve coming up. They had two weeks until the tour concluded with a livestreamed performance in her hometown of Denver, Colorado. As much as she wanted to crawl into bed for the next fourteen days, she couldn’t waste a second. She not only wanted to earn the coveted double-platinum status. She wanted to announce it at the concert in Denver.
Her ego demanded it.
She was close to hitting that goal but wasn’t there yet. The tour was supposed to be the event that sparked enough buzz to get her over the coveted finish line. Since she’d signed on with her label, she’d fantasized about reading these words:Aria Paige-Grant surpasses her rock star family’s accomplishments and hits double platinum in under a year.
Only then would she know that her fame came from her talent—her blood, sweat, and tears. Hitting the milestone would prove to her critics that her achievement wasn’t simply a result of her last name. But first, she’d have to deal with the catastrophe on her phone—also known as her boyfriend, Justin Jamison. The garbage on the screen was the stuff of gossip rags and tittering online celebrity chatter mills that lived for scandal.
It was pure pseudo-sensational foaming at the mouth.
It was a pack of lies.
Or maybe it wasn’talllies.
A shiver spider-crawled down her spine. She glared at the image of her boyfriend cozied up in some nightclub with a pair of scantily clad blondes.
“Not again,” she bit out in a hoarse whisper. She touched her throat as the fiery, sandpaper sensation intensified.
“Here’s your cold medicine, Ms. Paige-Grant.” A PA handed her a bottle, then zipped past her.
She unscrewed the cap and took a long pull of the syrup. Was that an advisable way for a twenty-four-year-old woman to medicate herself? Oh, hell no! But she needed relief, and she needed it now. She took another swig, then set the bottle on top of a table piled high with snacks and drinks. It was where she’d left one of her most precious possessions. She picked up her treasured notebook—the one thing that had brought her peace during the last eleven months. She opened it to the first page and spied the lettersdedicated toGMscribbled at the top. She peered at the musical notes dancing in a sea of highlighted color. This piece had elements inspired by her favorite composer—a composer she’d studied in college. Did her current musical catalog sound anything like this? No, she’d played it safe and crafted songs that followed the latest trends. That was what the label wanted and what she’d hoped was the quickest way to earn her place in music history. Her notebook was her escape from her cookie-cutter pop-star life. When she composed, she could hear the symphony of sounds in her head. She could feel the piano notes carrying the melody as the cello and violin wove a rollicking tune across the page.
She nearly cracked a grin when the pain returned.Dammit!She’d need to get something stronger to mute the pain. She surveyed the table and spied a bottle of whiskey. Filling a Styrofoam cup with an ample helping of the spirit, she downed it in one gulp. For the moment, the sting of the alcohol calmed the burning ache.
She went to pour another shot when her phone lit up.
Was this the news she’d been waiting for? Had she hit two million sales?
She read the alert, blew out a frustrated breath, then abandoned the cup and took a long pull of whiskey straight from the bottle.
