Encore (Stereo Hearts Book 2) (8 page)

5

Sunlight beamed through the skylight in the vaulted ceilings, shining off the marble floors of the expansive lobby at Sony Music Los Angeles. Picture frames covered the walls in varying shapes and sizes, each housing a different musical artist represented by the label. Aria’s eye had zeroed in on the photo of Whitney Houston, right above the welcome desk, where the receptionist who’d signed them in was busy accepting calls from a phone that never seemed to stop ringing.

Aria drank in the photo. Whitney had a beaming smile, clutching a microphone and gazing out into what Aria presumed was a sizable crowd of adoring fans. There was true joy in her eyes. Aria hoped, more than anything, that Yoshi would have that joy in his eyes one day too. She hoped this meeting would do that for him.

Looking down at their hands clasped between their thighs on the plush waiting room couch, she squeezed his. Their fingers were entwined, and though it wasn’t the first time they’d held hands, it was the first time it felt like this.

Now, they held hands after the spine-bending kiss in her hotel room the night before. Now, they held hands after strumming up all their willpower to stop themselves from moving to the bed after Yoshi had taken her to her toes against the wall. Now, they held hands with a flurry of what-ifs, a ton of unanswered questions waiting to be acknowledged, and a sublime understanding that, after last night, nothing would ever be the same.

Aria tightened her fingers and watched him tightened his in return, lifting her gaze to him.

He had his head thrown back on the wall, and when he looked down at her with a tight smile, she saw a lump move down his throat.

“Don’t be nervous,” she said.

“I’m good.”

“I can feel your heart.”

He lifted his head, pulling their clasped hands onto his lap. The movement made the detergent he’d drowned his clothes in for this meeting float into the air and permeate her senses. She wondered if he’d dumped the entire bottle of Tide on himself.

“How can you possibly feel my heart?” He licked his lips while letting his eyes fall to hers.

“I can feel it through your palm.” She noticed where his gaze had gone and licked her own lips in response. They hadn’t shared another kiss since the night before, not even on the six-hour plane ride to Los Angeles, but she noticed his eyes were on her mouth more than they’d ever been before, and that they had no problem lingering there for as long as they pleased. “Plus, I can see it on your face. Your nostrils are doing that constricting thing they always do when you’re nervous. Can you even breathe through those tiny things?”

He looked away from her, falling back into his seat while covering his nose. “No, they aren’t. Shut up.”

“They are,” she giggled.

He leaned forward on his knees and shot her a look over his shoulder, a deep crimson taking over his cheeks. It had been a long flight from Miami to LA, and the sunglasses shading his face were necessary to hide the red eyes he’d earned on their red-eye.

“I am nervous,” he admitted. “But not about the meeting.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Last night…” He pulled her hand deeper into his lap, forcing her to sit forward a little. “Did you only let me kiss you… to get me to stay with the band?”

She inhaled. So he’d finally decided to address the elephant in the room. They’d done a spectacular job avoiding it until then. “Did you only kiss me… to get me to leave the band?”

He didn’t answer, and she had a poignant urge to rip those sunglasses off his face, but the receptionist called across the room before she could.

“Yoshi?” She smiled, standing and displaying her svelte figure in a steel gray business dress. “Mr. Brady will see you now.”

Yoshi went to stand but stopped halfway, falling back onto the couch and facing Aria, still clutching his fingers around hers.

“Thank you for coming with me,” he whispered. “Seeing you hugging Adam in the lobby… You knew it was good-bye, but he didn’t….”

Aria breathed deep as she was rocketed back to the lobby of the Miami hotel, six hours earlier. They’d packed their bags in a hurry and were on their way to a waiting cab, but Adam had surprised them in the lobby. Yoshi told him that he and Aria were taking advantage of the few days the band had off with an impromptu flight to Disneyland. Though incensed that he hadn’t been invited, Adam had hugged them both good-bye without much fight.

When he’d held his arms open for Aria, she’d lunged at him, slapping her arms around his waist, biting back tears. Adam had taken her heartfelt embrace as an apology for leaving him out of their Disneyland plans. He’d laughed into her fluffy hair, massaging her back and telling her there were no hard feelings, that Disneyland would still be there when The White Keys’ tour hit Los Angeles. He’d made her pinky promise to buy him a churro once they got there, as a way to make amends.

The moment Yoshi and Aria climbed into the cab for the airport, she hadn’t even closed the back door before she’d burst into tears.

“I know it wasn’t easy for you.” Yoshi’s lips tightened. “Shit, it wasn’t easy for me. But I swear to you, Aria, nothing is going to change. I mean…
everything
is going to change, obviously.” He laughed softly, tightening his fingers around hers. “Everything but us. I told you I would take care of you forever. I meant it five years ago, I mean it now, I’ll mean it for the rest of my life, and I won’t sleep until I get what I came for. I won’t let any of this be in vain.” He brought their clasped hands to his heart, pressing the back of hers to his chest, confirming that it was, indeed, beating out of control. “Do you trust me?”

She swallowed and nodded.

Yoshi brought the back of her hand to his lips and kissed it before standing and crossing the room to the receptionist, his hands deep in his pockets.

Aria watched them disappear around a corner, and that time, her heart raced out of control as well.

--

Yoshi followed the receptionist, who was kind enough to make small talk on the long walk to Simon Brady’s office. The building was circular, so the hallway seemed to go on and on. Yoshi found himself peering into each office they passed. Each one was encased with a large window that looked out into the hallway, and most of the executives kept the windows open. He found himself intrigued by the different design layouts each executive chose.

The reception came to a stop at a door, swiped her keycard, and began leading him down another circular hallway. He noticed the offices and the surroundings were even more opulent.

Red roses lined the walls and the ceilings like they were sprouting from the concrete. The offices became fewer and father between, but most still had open windows that allowed those in the hallway to see inside. Only the most illustrious of Sony’s artists had earned a picture on these walls—Michael, Prince, Britney, Mariah. The kind of single-name celebrity Simon had promised he could make Yoshi.

Yoshi felt his fingers crossing, the warmth of Aria’s hand present on his palm. His heartbeat picked up as he thought of her tiny fingers entwined with his, how it felt so different holding it that day than it had even a week ago. Now, when she put her hand in his, it was after their passionate kiss in her hotel room. It was after he’d let her feel his erection searing into her stomach without pulling away—as he had many times before. It was after she’d given up everything, including the most important thing to her—her loyalty to the band—for him.

Him. The responsibility he felt was incredible, and he knew if his sheer will alone wasn’t enough to make him a star, proving to Aria that he was the man he’d always promised definitely would.

The receptionist’s heels clicked against the marble floors, and he thought her feet must be killing her. They’d been walking for quite a while. Sometime during their trip, she’d stopped forcing her small talk on him and allowed him to trail behind. He imagined she was used to that. There was simply too much to see for virgin eyes like his, and he needed to take his time drinking it all in.

His eyes hardened behind his sunglasses as he gazed into the window of the next office he passed.

What he saw stopped him in his tracks, even as the click of the receptionist’s heels continued on without him.

Peering into the window of the office, Yoshi’s mouth fell open, and his heart—which had felt like a battering ram in his chest a moment before—ebbed to a complete stop.

In the office, bent over a stainless steel glass desk, was a caramel-skinned goddess. Her sizable naked breasts were smashed against the desk, her bright red lips parted, revealing a hint of straight teeth. Yoshi couldn’t hear her, but he knew she was moaning. He could see it in her hooded green eyes as a man twice her age pounded her from behind. With every trust, a hint of her nipple peeked out from where they were suffocating on the glass desk. Yoshi’s eyes fell, taking in her long brown legs, naked as well, leading a flawless path all the way down to a pair of red patent leather heels.

His dick instantly stiffened, and when he looked back up, it bounced when he found her eyes riveted to his. A Cheshire Cat grin crossed her face, and she raised her eyebrows at him as the man fucking her from behind pulled out, shoving his dick back into the zipper of his business suit, stepping out of the way. A moment later, another older man in a business suit appeared. The woman’s ‘come hither’ eyes remained on Yoshi even as this man entered her, fucking her more recklessly than the last.

Yoshi’s eyes flitted to the rest of the office, and his dick went soft once more. Lounging in four chairs, all facing the desk, four more executives watched her with the same rapture Yoshi had a moment before, some of them with their hands out of sight, disappearing into the zipper of their slacks as they pleasured themselves.

Yoshi looked back to her.

The shorter layers of her waist-length blonde hair tumbled into her green eyes just as they grew cloudy, visibly enjoying this new executive’s feral abandon, trapping her bottom lip between her perfect teeth.

She winked at him.

But Yoshi’s flaccid dick didn’t rebound.

He knew what he saw in her eyes. In that office.

He’d seen it, time and time again, in that house in Brooklyn. Whenever a new foster girl moved into the house. He’d seen that look in almost every new girl’s eyes the moment they looked at him. That secret gleam from their deepest depths, even when they were smiling, that wondered when he’d finally sneak into their bedroom and….

Many times, Yoshi had seen the look in that blonde woman’s eyes in the house he’d burned down five years before. The house he’d begged Aria to leave behind with him.

Yes, the beautiful woman before him, naked, breathtakingly beautiful, was getting the shit fucked out of her and loving it.

But in her eyes, Yoshi saw her.

And there was nothing sexy about it.

--

Yoshi lagged almost a hundred feet behind her, but the receptionist never called out for him. It was as if she’d been expecting him to catch sight of that office, anticipating the delay, because when Yoshi was finally able to tear his eyes away and race after her, she was waiting for him, holding open the door to the very last office in the hallway.

She presented him to Simon, sitting behind his desk in a tight white T-shirt.

Simon dismissed her, and she was gone.

“Yoshi!” Simon greeted him with his arms held out high. The floor-to-ceiling windows of his office had a perfect view of the Hollywood sign. “My boy, come in and close the door. I have to be honest; no one has ever kept me waiting a whole week after I offered them a contract. I hope you’re here to tell me that you’ve made the right decision.”

Yoshi closed the door to the office and made his way over, taking a seat across from Simon’s desk. Again, he drank in various photos of artists who needed no introduction, as well as the dozens of platinum albums, lining the walls.

The blonde girl in the office vanished. The White Keys vanished. Everything vanished as the truth became crystal clear to Yoshi.

This was what he wanted. He wanted a spot on that wall. A name on those platinum plaques. A name with a legacy.

“I had to have a lawyer look the contract over,” Yoshi said.

“That’s what I love about you, huh?” Simon wagged a finger at him. “You’re sharp.” He snatched up a pen and leaned across the desk, offering it to him. “We’ve got a beautiful mansion ready for you up in the hills. Completely ungraded, gated community, pool, Jacuzzi, and a recording studio on the second level. That’s where you’ll finish the album with Phillip Gold and Ari Lawrence. Phillip hasn’t signed yet, but he heard ‘Kings and Queens,’ and loved it. I have no doubt we’ll lock him down.”

Yoshi recognized the names of the biggest writer and producer in town, but he still didn’t take the pen. “Aria sings backup on my first tour, no exceptions. I want it in writing.”

“I’ve already had the contract amended to include a clause that guarantees Aria remains by your side. And by your side, I mean in the background. At all times. You don’t say her name. You don’t acknowledge her. The world does not know she exists outside of her being that one-eyed girl who sings behind you sometimes.”