Chorus (Six)

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"Are you sure you don't want me to drive?"

Kade's question echoed through the interior of my small car, making me realize just how cramped the space really was. 

His scent permeated the air and invaded my senses until all I wanted to do was open the driver's side door and fling myself out onto the pavement just to get some air for myself. 

But I would most definitely be out of a job—and possibly my life—if I started propelling myself out of moving cars on the interstate all willy nilly. 

"Yeah, yeah I'm sure.  Just—don't make fun of me for being a bad driver.  I had a busy night, thanks to you."

Kade chuckled deep and low and the sound resonated somewhere in the yawning pit of my stomach where a few butterflies were hatching from their cocoons and taking flight inside of me.

"I said I was sorry, twice now.  I can say it again a third time if you really need me to?"

"No, no, it's fine.  I'm just complaining because I knew you were going to insult my driving."

"Well...you did swerve to miss a pot hole and almost land us in a ditch, so—"

"What do you expect?  This is New York, land of the pot holes."

"Right."

Kade's dry answer was pure sarcasm.

My fingers flexed on the steering wheel as my heart pounded relentlessly against my ribcage. 

"So, where to?  Penthouse on Fifth Ave?  Back to the Waldorf?"

"Actually...I was kind of wanting to see if you wanted to go do something.  I don't really feel like going back to an empty hotel room right now."

"You want to go do something with me...in public?  I hope you realize I'm wearing pajamas."

"And a hoodie."

"Pajamas and a hoodie.  So chic for a night on the town with a celebrity who isn't even trying to blend in."

"Hey, I never said we had to go out on the town—that was all you."

He didn't seem like he was ready to let this one go.

"Alright, so what did you have in mind for this outing?  Mini golf?  A nice movie at our three screen theater back in my dad's town?  Bowling?  Karaoke bar?"

"Yes."

"...yes?"

"Yes.  To all of them."

"Not sure how we're going to do them all in one night.  What about just picking two.  Or one, actually.  That'd be nice."

Quickly changing lanes in order to exit the interstate and follow the correct road to the town I'd lived in since my father came to get me from Arizona, Kade pulled out his phone and began furiously typing away.

"Everything okay?"

"There, look," he said, moving the small phone screen in front of my face while seemingly not understanding that a bad driver plus looking away from the road meant an even worse driver, but I wasn't going to point that out to him. 

"What am I supposed to be looking at, instead of the road?"

"It's girls night out at the karaoke bar.  You get in free."

"Yeah, because it's a week night.  It's going to be so dead there.  How did you even find the right town?  I didn't tell you where my dad lived."

"You didn't really think you'd be able to come to Corbin's home studio without at least a little bit of looking into you, did you?"

My heart jumped into my throat.

"You ran a background check on me?"

"Well, I didn't, but Jackie did.  I only got to know the basic things that I kind of already knew—like where you're going to school and who your dad is and all that.  I let her vet you.  It felt like an invasion of privacy to try and find out more."

"Right.  So you didn't...you didn't, um..."

My lungs weren't pulling in enough air. 

"Ivy?"

"You didn't read about like my mom or like...my personal life or..."

Bright yellow headlights shone directly in my eyes as Kade swore and grabbed hold of the steering wheel. 

"Jesus Christ, Ivy.  Are you trying to get us killed?  Pull over."

Mechanically, I maneuvered the car to the shoulder of the road. 

I didn't even realize I'd put the car in park when Kade opened the driver's side door from the outside. 

One look at my face and he kneeled down, ignoring the cars whizzing past us in a flurry of color and motion. 

"What's wrong?  What happened, Ivy?  What did I say?"

The lights were too bright and too dull all at the same time.

I was hearing the sounds around me like I was underwater.

Kade's face came into focus, and he didn't look worried.  He didn't look scared or repulsed or annoyed. 

He looked...peaceful.  Calm.  Patient. 

All the things I wished my father could've been when dealing with me. 

"I didn't look through anything about your past, I swear.  I respect your privacy.  I wouldn't do that to you."

So, he didn't know about my mother.

Where she was. 

What she had done. 

Caleb. 

The pictures.

I wondered how gruesome my life looked like to someone else, on the outside looking in. 

I wondered if they would pity me.

"Ivy?"

My eyes snapped to Kade's and suddenly the rest of the world came rushing back into screaming focus. 

His dark brown eyes met mine and set my world on fire. 

"Shit.  I almost crashed the car, didn't I?"

"Yeah.  Yeah, you kind of did.  Don't worry, I have good reflexes.  Scoot over, I'll drive."

I didn't question him as I practically launched myself into the passenger seat. 

"Was it something I said?" Kade joked as he tried to lighten the situation. 

A few cars honked as they passed us, probably upset with how terrible of a job I'd done at pulling over.

"No, no it wasn't you."

It was everything else that was the problem. 

"My sister used to have anxiety attacks...but that wasn't one, was it?  You were just like...frozen, or something.  Looking at nothing, not even blinking.  Does that happen a lot?"

It didn't feel like I was staring off into space.  It felt like one blink and then the next; the space between one breath and the next. 

One moment I was pulling over, the next Kade was there. 

"I don't...um, not really I guess."

I couldn't face him. 

This was too much, taking too much out of me.  

The idea of someone I was working with—let alone someone as high up and powerful in the industry as Kade—knowing the personal details of my life was enough to send me down a spiral so damaging I hadn't even realized I was there until I felt the effects of the fall. 

It was embarrassing.  

I was humiliated that anyone could look into my background for just a split second and know anything they wanted about my past. 

It wasn't just about the pictures Caleb had circulated.  

He had taken my pride away from me, and that was something I, as a stubborn woman to begin with, had a hard time parting with. 

Curling my legs up and wrapping my arms around them in order to make myself as small as possible, I rested my cheek against my knees and stared out the window. 

He turned the radio on at some point, playing one of his playlists from his phone. 

I knew it had to be his phone, because no popular radio station had ever played the song currently trickling softly through the speakers. 

"You like Hozier?  I took a guess and assumed you'd like his lesser known stuff."

"Love him.  I listen to a lot of his music.  Amber Run, too.  Dermot Kennedy, Bon Iver, Novo Amor, Freya Ridings—"

"Kade Hendrix."

I couldn't help but to turn to him and spot the smug little grin on his lips. 

"Well, I thought that was a given."

"What, no Taylor Swift?  Ariana Grande?"

"Obviously.  You didn't let me finish my list of who all I listen to."

"Your music taste explains a lot about how you write, the way you use your metaphors in the lyrics to compare something to heartbreak in one way or another."

The song Kade had turned on hit a crescendo and Hozier's dark and smoky vocals flooded the speakers of the car.

"This is my favorite part."

Kade's voice matched the singer word for word, only when the song went low, Kade went high and harmonized until chills slid up and down my arms. 

When the song ended, my heart was in my throat and my hands were slick with cold sweat. 

He was so close. 

One reach across the console, and my hand could've been in his. 

His fingers flexed on the steering wheel, the veins on his hands shifting and rolling beneath his skin. 

When the song ended, the atmosphere flooded with silence until another song started up, a new Lady Gaga power ballad I'd been obsessed with since it had come out. 

I reached forward to turn the dial up, wanting the music to drown out my voice as I sang along unabashedly to the lyrics. 

The surprise was plain on my face when Kade started belting right along with me. 

We sang together in comfortable stillness, laughing when one or the other got a lyric wrong. 

And when it ended, something inside me lightened. 

"I'm sorry I freaked out on you.  I guess the thought of someone knowing about my past before I had a chance to even explain what happened kind of terrifies me."

There.  A perfectly good explanation to why I'd gone crazy on him.  

Maybe he'd let it go.

"I'm sure you've heard by now, but in case you didn't...my sister was in an abusive relationship.  She tried to kill herself right before we met.  The label was sending someone to the concert to make sure I was on track with my album when I hadn't even written a single song because of everything I'd been dealing with.  And then when I tried listening to demos?  Terrible.  Every single one of them.  Until I heard yours."

I had never expected for Kade to actually have a valid reason for such a poor decision. 

That didn't make what he did okay, but it made me understand his state of mind, at least. 

I knew all too well about suicidal family members. 

"Your song was the best demo I'd ever heard.  Maybe not production wise, because you should fire whoever recorded that for you—but the lyrics?  The melody?  It was one of those songs that you come across once in a career, and my label already wants me to record it.  Someone must've recorded it at the concert and posted it.  It went viral last night."

I forced myself to turn my head to his slowly, cautiously, even if everything within me wanted to jump up and down on my seat and slap the roof of my car and roll the windows down and holler out the window with my tongue hanging out like a dog on their first car ride.

"How viral?  Because there's a few thousand views viral, and then there's millions of views, viral."

"Viral viral.  Youtube views just hit ten million."

"Holy shit."

"We're recording the track tomorrow instead of working on songs, since we've already got three down.  Your two that you came up with and then the one I helped on.  I was wondering if you wanted to record the backing vocals and harmony for me?"

"Me?  I'm not a singer."

"Could've fooled me.  You sure sounded like a singer just now."

A sardonic laugh bubbled up in my throat. 

"Yeah, but that's just for fun.  I wouldn't be able to follow you around to performances and keep doing the backing vocals.  Just pick someone else.  A professional."

"Who says I can't keep you on for the backing vocals?  I'm only doing local shows right now.  No tour until at least another year and a half for the album to be finished and released.  Think about it.  You'd be performing your own songs, Ivy.  Isn't that a little enticing?"

Kade turned on his blinker, and I suddenly realized he'd input the address to the karaoke bar into his phone.

"How much you paying me for this, then?"

"Whatever you want.  Name your price."

There was a mischievous sparkle in Kade's eyes. 

"Name my price, huh?"

"Anything you want."

Interesting. 

"Literally yesterday, you couldn't stand me.  Now you want to take me on performances?  Who are you and what have you done with the guy who basically called me a crazy stalker fan earlier?"

"I punched that guy in the face and realized I was being a complete asshole.  Look," he paused, pulling the car into a nearly deserted parking lot and shifting the gear into park. 

He turned his entire attention on me and the effect was dizzying.

Having the full weight of someone's gaze pinned on you, especially considering the fact that I'd admired said person for most of my life, was overwhelming at best. 

Terrifying at worst. 

"I know we got off on the wrong foot.  I've been dealing with my own trauma, and I took those things out on you, even after I stole your song.  I'm sorry for being such an asshole.  Will you forgive me?"

What once were eyes that swirled with smoke and temptation were soon filled with genuine light and concern, sincerity dripping from his words. 

"So long as you keep your promises and uphold your end of the bargain, then yes.  We're good.  I forgive you."

His answering smile was blinding, and I had the sudden urge to just lean forward and close the gap of distance between us. 

To fill the electrifying air between us with my body and just let go.

Just as I inched forward just the slightest bit, though, Kade turned his head toward the establishment in front of us and pulled the key out of the ignition. 

"You think you're dressed well enough for this place?"

Glancing down at the loose hoodie and cotton pajamas with cloud print embellishments, I heaved out an exasperated sigh. 

"What the hell.  Let's go in.  But you're buying all my drinks tonight."

"You're not even old enough to buy them yourself."

"That's what fake ID's are for, superstar."

He couldn't hold back the chuckle at my over exaggerated wink that I threw his way. 

"Come on, let's go."

We walked inside the karaoke bar side by side, and no one noticed him.  

The rest of the world faded away in a blackout buzz after my second shot of tequila. 


***


I woke up in a dizzy haze, hair plastered to my face and an uncomfortable pillow underneath my cheek. 

A cheek that felt more like human skin than a pillow. 

I cracked an eye open and had to suppress the scream building in my throat. 

Kade Hendrix was in my bed.  At my father's home. 

"Ivy!  Come down for breakfast!  I've made you and your guest breakfast if you want to come down!"

Kade's wide and sleepy eyes met mine after Catalina's voice from downstairs woke up just as I squeaked out in surprise and hid underneath the covers....

until I realized he was only in his underwear.

What had we done last night?!

Kill.  Me.  Now.



***


Author's Note:

What did Ivy and Kade get up to last night?!

Find out next week in Kade's POV!

Or maybe sooner...;)

What did you think of this chapter?

What do you think will happen next?

Caleb revenge theories?

Plot twist ideas?

Let me know what you think!

Until next time my lovely readers,
Kristen :)



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