“Another album?” Nate asked, not quite believing what he was hearing.

“Your contract—”

“My contract was for four albums,” Nate said. “I’ve produced four albums.”

“But the last two brought in less than impressive numbers,” Gina said, “and there is a clause in your contract that if your sales don’t reach the threshold, then you need to make up the difference.”

“So what you’re telling me,” Nate said, trying to keep his voice even, “is that because you fuckers messed with my image and caused my sales to be shit, I owe you another album?”

“Or the money to make up the difference.”

These fuckers had him by the balls. He had been a naive kid when he’d signed with them and hadn’t thought to get his own lawyer or agent. He had no one in his court advising him. He had no one on his side.

“Even though it’s entirely your fucking fault?” Nate growled.

Gina shrugged. “We did what we thought best at the time,” she said.

“And killed my fucking career.”

“It was a risk,” she said, still unconcerned. “We took a huge risk on you, Nate. You were playing dive bars in Nowheresville USA when I discovered you. You owe us.”

“I owe you? Seriously?” He shook his head.

“Look,” Gina said with a resigned sigh, “I’ll admit that maybe we were a little heavy-handed—”

“Ya think?”

“Okay so, yes, we made some mistakes with your image and the songwriters we used on the last album. So we are willing to give you complete creative control for this record.”

“You won’t interfere at all?”

Her lips thinned, but she didn’t answer.

“Look, Gina,” Nate said, “I’d rather not produce another note of music than do another record with you, but I may be persuaded if I had an ironclad agreement that said that you and your ‘advisors’ keep your fucking fingers out of my image, my sound and my songs. I want zero input from you and your cronies. The only way you’ll get me to produce another album is if you step away, completely, and leave me to write and record on my own.”

He watched her jaw clench and worried she was going to crack a tooth.

“Fine,” she bit out.

“And I want Derek to produce it.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes,” he said, an idea forming. “I want you to make sure that any collaborators that I request say yes. If I want goddamned Elvis Presley to sing on my album, you’ll make it happen.”

“Would you like rainbows and glitter to shoot from your ass as well?”

He grinned for the first time in far too long. “I can make the rainbows and glitter shoot from my ass all on my own sweetheart.” He stood. “Are we done here?”

“Don’t forget who gave you your chance, Nash. Don’t forget that I made you a star.”

He pulled out his phone and pressed play. Stevie’s voice filled the conference room.

“Hear that? You made a big mistake all those years ago, Gina. This girl, she’s the real star and you passed on her. You chose me over her and, if I’m honest, I know you chose the wrong person. I was just too young and too damned stupid to realize it at the time. She’s about to tour with Lily Ames and she is going to be a fucking megastar, and you missed it. You could’ve had her and instead you chose me.” He laughed. “You got the raw end of the fucking deal, Gina. I was never the star of Jacks & Nash, it was all Stevie. It was Stevie’s songs. It was her voice. Her heart. Instead of a genuine diamond in the rough, you got me and I am a very poor substitute. So next time you try and tell me that you made me a star, just you remember that if you had picked Stevie five years ago, you’d have had four hit records instead of just two.”

He turned and walked from the room, leaving Stevie’s song playing until he got in the elevator. He turned it off and slipped it into his pocket. If he was being forced to make another record with Rocksteady, then it was going to be done his way. His songs, his sound. He could already feel his muse stirring. He heard Stevie’s voice and it had set something alight inside him. His fingers itched to feel the strings under them, his throat felt tight and his skin felt like it didn’t fit him. He needed to play. To sing. He needed to write. For the first time in three years, he felt the music inside him.

He played Stevie’s album on repeat all the way home and then put it on his home stereo, blasting it through every speaker in his apartment. He marinated in it, pacing his living room, running on the treadmill, lying on his couch and then, when he felt he was ready, he turned it off and basked in the silence. Then he picked up his pen and began to write. The words came first, pouring out of him like a fountain. He was manic in his scribbling, the words forcing their way out of him and onto the page. It had always been feast or famine with him, and right now it was feast and he just had to hold on for the ride.

Somewhere around two in the morning, the words dried up. He put his pen down and picked up his acoustic, the same one that he’d had since the early days with Stevie. He worked on the first song, strumming chords, humming the melody, making notations on the paper above the words. It was messy and probably illegible to most people, but he had to get it out of him before he lost it. The songs told a story. This was his comeback album, an apology letter to his fans, an ‘I’m sorry’ to the people he had let down, and a big ‘fuck you’ to Rocksteady. But most of all it was a way to make amends with Stevie. He just hoped she’d see it for what it was and maybe, just maybe, they might be able to find the friendship they’d lost.

“Derek.”

The big man turned slowly in his seat, a big grin splitting his face as he took in Nate.

“Nate Nash,” he said, “I didn’t think I’d see you back here in my studio again.”

Nate looked at the floor sheepishly and ran his hand through his hair. “That last album was pretty bad, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” Derek replied. His voice was a deep rumble that hit Nate right in the gut.

“You know that I was under the label’s orders?”

“I do,” he said, “but you could’ve stood up to them.”

Nate slumped into the chair beside Derek, “I know.” He took a deep breath. “I heard Stevie’s new album. It’s good.”

Derek smiled again. “She’s good people Nate. I’ve been working with her for a few years now and I’m glad she finally got her chance.”

“Yeah, me too. God, I’ve made so many mistakes.” Nate shook his head.

“Yeah, man, you have. But it’s never too late.”

“Do you think she’ll work with me?”

Derek laughed. It was a big, rich, full belly laugh and it didn’t give Nate much hope.

“Fucker,” he breathed.

Derek continued to grin at him and Nate shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“She was pretty pissed at you.”

“I know.”

“She really hated your last album.”

“She listened to it?”

“Oh, yeah,” Derek said with a shake of his head. “She stomped around in here for days afterward calling you every name under the sun.”

“Shit.”

“She couldn’t believe you would sell out like that. None of us could.” Derek was serious now and Nate couldn’t look at him. He was ashamed of the way he’d let himself be compromised.

“Fame got to me,” he said. “I know it’s a weak excuse. Gina was filling my head with bullshit and the fans were throwing themselves at me and the money. Shit, I gave in to it all. I’m a weak son of a bitch, I know, and full of my own importance. I was on top of the world after my second album and I didn’t think I could do anything wrong. But, man, I fucked up and I’m here to make amends.”

“Rocksteady wants another album out of you?”

Nate blew out a breath. “Yeah. Because my last two albums didn’t sell enough.”

“And you’ve got complete creative control?”

“I do.”

He nodded slowly, his eyes not leaving Nate’s. “Okay,” he said finally, “what’ve you got?”

Nate breathed a sigh of relief and pulled out his phone, handing it over to Derek so he could hook it up to the monitors. They listened in silence as the sound of Nate’s acoustic guitar and his lone voice filled the studio. Each of the songs were raw, no mixing, no harmonies, no bass or drumbeat. Just his battered guitar and him singing his heart out. It was who Nate was before Gina and Rocksteady got a hold of him. This was the real Nate Nash, heart-on-his-sleeve, open and vulnerable. He watched Derek for some sign that the guy liked what he was hearing, but his expression was blank, giving nothing away. With the last chords of the last song fading into silence, Nate waited with nervous impatience for some sort of sign that he hadn’t just made a complete fool of himself.

The silence hung in the air, palpable, but Nate kept his mouth shut, not wanting to rush in. If Derek hated it, he wasn’t in a rush to hear the criticism. He’d rather just slink out and go lick his wounds in a dark bar with a couple of strong whiskeys to dull his pain.

Finally Derek turned to him and nodded. “I like it,” he said and then he grinned. “I like it a lot.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” the other man said nodding. “They’re good, man, real good. Have you thought about who you want to play on the album?”

“I want Stevie,” he said.

Derek rolled his eyes. “Stevie’s got her own band now,” he said. “You can’t ask her to walk away from that and she’s touring in a few months—”

“I know,” Nate said, “I don’t want her to give it up. I’d be happy to make a deal with her band so that it’s their song with me as a by-line, you know, ‘featuring Nate Nash’. I just want the opportunity to sing with her again and I want to tell her how sorry I am about the way things went down between us. I was an arrogant asshole and I just want to make things right with her.”

“It’s going to be a tough sell,” he said. “Stevie doesn’t forgive easy and she’s not likely to forget.”

“I am well aware of Stevie’s ability to hold a grudge,” Nate said. “She hasn’t spoken to me in five years.”

Derek chuckled and then sobered, thinking. “I can ask her,” he said. “She’s still doing some work for me and we’re friends. Let me talk to her, feel her out and see if she’s interested. There is so much going on in her life at the moment, she may be too distracted to even give it any serious thought.”

“I heard Carson won the seat in the senate.”

“Yeah,” Derek said, eyeing him, “what are you getting at?”

“I know they were together for a long time…”

“Are you fishing Nash? You want to know if Stevie and Carson are still hot and heavy?”

“Yeah, I do,” he replied.

“He asked her to marry him,” Derek said and Nate felt a sharp pain pierce his chest. “She turned him down.”

“What?”

“She turned him down. He didn’t think that a senator’s wife should be touring the country with her band.”

“He wanted her to give it all up?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit. That’s cold.”

Derek raised an eyebrow at him and he blushed. “Okay, I was cold too. But I did think I would be able to help her. I got her this gig with you, didn’t I?”

“No you didn’t,” Derek said. “You showed me a video that someone sent to you. All you did was give me her phone number.”

He was right. All this time he’d been deluding himself, justifying his actions because he thought he’d done what he could for Stevie. But he hadn’t done shit for her.

“Fine,” he said. “You’re right. But can you help me with Stevie or not?”

“I’ll help you,” he said, “but you’re going to owe me.”

“Stevie,” Derek said as she slid into the chair beside him. The big sound desk in front of him was lit up and he had headphones on, those big, over the ear ones, but only one ear was covered.

“What’s up Derek?” she said. “What’re you listening to?”

“A client’s rough draft. They’re looking for someone to sing a duet with them.”

Stevie raised an eyebrow. “You want me to sing with them?”

“No, well, yeah, but they asked for you specifically.”

“Back up?”

He shook his head. “No, a duet. They’re even prepared to give Court’n Jacks the song credit.”

She rolled her lips together thinking it through. It was a good opportunity to sing with someone else, especially if they were a well-known artist. And getting the credit to boot?

“Let me listen,” she said.

He took off his headphones laying them on the desk and flicked a switch so that the sound filled the room. A single guitar began to play and she closed her eyes as she listened to the intro. She liked it so far and then a voice spilled from the speakers, a voice she knew as well as her own. Her eyes flew open and she glared at Derek but he held his finger to his lips in the universal ‘shush’ signal and tipped his head to the side to get her focus back on the music.

It was fucking Nate Nash and it was good, really good. It was classic Nash and she could already hear how their voices would blend. It would be good. It had the potential to be a hit and it would relaunch his career in a big way. It probably wouldn’t hurt hers either. Jacks & Nash, singing together again. How many times had she wanted that?

“No,” she said, standing up and sliding her hands into the back pockets of her jeans.

“No?”

She shook her head. “I can’t do it, Derek. He screwed me over. Who’s to say he’s not going to do that again?”

“I think he knows he made a mistake Stevie and I think he wants to make amends.”

“Why are you on his side?”

Derek sighed. “I’ve known Nate for five years, I mixed his first two albums. I did a bit of work on his third but refused to touch his fourth. He knows that he let Rocksteady have too much control and this is his way of getting back to his roots.”

“You feel sorry for him?”

Derek shrugged. “I don’t know about feeling sorry for the guy, but I know that this is coming from his heart. You can’t write like that without getting in touch with yourself. He knows he did wrong and he wants to put things right.”

“I’ve got Court’n Jacks now,” she said. “I don’t need Nate. I made it in spite of him.”

“You did,” he said slowly, rocking back on his chair. “Did I ever tell you how I came by your YouTube video?”

She folded her arms across her chest and looked away from Derek. “Nate showed you?”

“He was here in the studio, struggling to come up with material for his second album. Things weren’t going well. Someone sent him the clip and I heard it. We put it up on the monitor and listened again. I asked if he knew you and he gave me your number. Told me not to tell you where I got it from because he knew if you knew it was from him that you’d turn me down flat.”

“Shit.” She slumped into the spare chair and leant her head back, squeezing her eyes shut. Fucking Nate, she couldn’t even have her success without him having a hand in it.

“Now, don’t you go giving him credit where none’s due. He was only the conduit, everything else you’ve done, that’s all you Stevie. I called you because I heard something in your voice that I knew I could use. Your work ethic and your blood, sweat, and tears have gotten you to where you are now. The only reason I’m telling you this is because I want you to know that he didn’t walk away and forget about you. He’s been keeping track of your career too.”

She stomped a foot. “Fucking Nate Nash,” she growled. “I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do it because I know it will help him, I know that if we sing together, he is going to get back the career he trashed and I am just spiteful enough to not want him to have it back.”

“I hate to tell you this, Stevie, but whether you sing with him or not, this album is going to go a long way to restoring his career. Rocksteady has given him complete control and I’ve heard the other tracks. He’s found his way back and whether you are a part of it or not, he is going to climb back out of the cesspool his last album dumped him in.”

“Shit.”

“You can choose to be part of it and use him to further your own career. You could maybe even get back a little of what you think he stole from you. Or… you can walk away from a solid gold opportunity because of your pride.”

“I hate you,” she growled and he laughed.

“You love me, sweetheart, and you know I’m right. Think about it, I know there’s a whole truckload of unresolved crap between the two of you, but it’s been five years. Don’t you think it’s time you dealt with it? You need closure and maybe this is your opportunity to get it.”

Stevie stood up again and paced around the control room. “I need to think about it,” she said. “When does he need an answer?”

“He’d prefer to have the track laid down before you go on tour.”

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll think about it and talk it over with Jace and the girls. If we do it, it needs to be a group decision and it needs to include all of us. I won’t do to Court’n Jacks what he did to Jacks & Nash.”