staff surrounding him all the time, no less than six people waiting on him at any given moment. He liked his shoulders massaged while he ate. He needed his feet rubbed between rehearsing songs. Despite the pretty young thing he called his wife, he still managed to leer at every woman he encountered. He yelled at his assistant, he belched out loud, and he constantly reminded everyone of how many hits he had written, and how many Grammys he owned.
Worst of all, he was stinky. Sour, sweaty, rotten beef kind of stinky. He was a vile, mean, sexist man pig and Jolene had never wanted to tell off someone so badly in her entire life.
Instead, she had to force herself to say politely, “What would you like me to do differently?”
“How the hell should I know? Anything but that, that’s for damn sure.” Wayne was sixty-five and well advanced for his age into crotchety old man territory. It had been too long since he’d been hungry for success. He no longer remembered what it was to want.
It made him highly unlikable.
Jolene never wanted to act like that. Frankly, if she ever did, she hoped someone would knock her butt back into the dirt. Success did not give you a right to be a shit to everyone around you.
She knew what it was to ache with the need for something better for herself. As a kid, no one had ever expected much from her and her siblings. When she was thirteen, she’d heard one of the salad serving ladies at the church social murmuring to another that given her messed-up family and her looks, it would be a miracle if Jolene Hart wasn’t knocked up by fifteen. It had stung like hell, but Jolene supposed in retrospect she owed that woman a thank you. It was her spiteful voice that had kept Jolene a virgin until her early twenties. She had been determined to prove to everyone that her wants were legitimate. She had wanted respectability. Admiration. Success.
As a kid, she had wanted food, comfort, more wood on the fire. She had wanted quiet. Peace. Christmas.
When she had made her way to Nashville, she had wanted a chance, had wanted to sing, had wanted a job. Any job.
Now she wanted security.
It was what had made her take this job with Wayne. She had wanted a guarantee that she could retain her status in the industry. Never turn down an opportunity. It hung over her like a desperate and urgent ghost, reminding her of what happened when you settled. When you gave up. You got trapped in a life like her mother’s. A good woman beat down by reality.
Jolene had scrapped and clawed after her dreams so she wouldn’t meet the same fate.
But not all wants are necessary. Not all wants guided her in the right direction. She understood now that craving security wasn’t a want so much as it was a fear.
Staring at Wayne Rush, sprawled out on a couch in all his arrogant glory, she realized that she had done the same thing with Chance. She had responded out of fear, because sometimes when a want grows so great that it’s frightening, you either cling to it or push it away. She had pushed Chance away, and she couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t sing. She was a hot damn mess and the festering pain wasn’t decreasing. It was growing and growing until she felt like she might go crazy or suffocate if she didn’t do something about it.
She had to listen to the right ‘want.’
After an hour of attempting to please Wayne, he dismissed her and she left, eternally grateful to be away from him for the weekend. Wayne didn’t work Saturdays unless he was getting paid at least a million bucks. If she had a million, she’d pay him to leave her alone for a week, but she didn’t, so she’d have to make do with two days off. She had to do the duet with Wayne, there was no way around it. She’d signed a contract. But they were still in tour negotiations, and now she knew without any doubt whatsoever that she could not tour with Wayne.
It just wouldn’t be worth it. The duet single would give her gobs of exposure to new listeners and that’s all she really wanted. She could have Ginny, who had calmed down and not fired her, to smooth over Wayne’s feathers by making it clear she and Chance had