“Oh shit,” Melody breathed, nearly doubling over. “Oh my God, Mom.”
Trina stopped pacing. “What?”
Telling Beat’s secret was wrong, but Melody did it anyway, because the truth was going to tear her in half if she didn’t let it out. “Beat has been getting blackmailed for five years. By his biological father. He wouldn’t tell me the man’s identity, but that’s him. It’s Fletcher Carr.” Her entire body was starting to shake—for so many reason. Chiefly among them was denial that Beat had been confronted with his emotional captor live on the air and he’d been reeling from that blow all by himself. Without her. Ridiculous that she should leap to worry for him while in the midst of her own torturous pain, but that was love, apparently. Putting someone’s well-being in front of your own. He would have done it for her . . .
He would have done it for her.
Melody lunged into a standing position, then had to use the arm of the couch for support so she wouldn’t topple over on her shaky legs. “That man. He must have said something to Beat. He must have . . . something to do with me, maybe? I don’t know.”
She was so lost in the shock of her realization that she didn’t notice her mother had gone white as a sheet. “Melody Anne . . .” Trina closed her eyes, swiping a wrist across her brow. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but take me to Octavia, please.”
Chapter Thirty
If Beat didn’t get out of his apartment, he was going to tear the walls down with his bare hands. The live stream had gone black half an hour ago and Danielle was no longer answering her phone. He’d been calling the producer nonstop for the last three days to assure himself of Melody’s safety, living in frozen fear that Fletcher Carr would show up on her doorstep looking for money, despite Beat’s efforts to throw the drummer off the trail—and the fact that staying away from her was eating him alive, bite by bite.
Now, his last image of Melody was of her sitting on her couch with Trina, shadows under her eyes. So delicate and strong and perfectly Melody, refusing to talk about him on camera.
Checking the live stream was slowly torturing him to death, but he couldn’t stop himself from sneaking into the bathroom to watch it where Ernie couldn’t film him. At this point, the cameraman thought Beat was a compulsive showerer, but Beat couldn’t sever his last remaining connection to Melody. In between distracted bouts of working, he hunkered down on the tile floor of his bathroom and watched her walk around Brooklyn surrounded by teeming throngs of people, seemingly oblivious to their fervor and sending his blood pressure shooting through the roof every single time.
What if they’d gotten past security and into her apartment and that was why the live stream had gone dark? With the arrival of Trina, it wasn’t that far-fetched. He couldn’t simply take the train or hop in an Uber and go to her apartment, though, could he? No. No, because he would kneel at her feet and beg for redemption. Fletcher would see it happen live and Beat’s actions would once again throw her right back into the line of fire. The last three days and all the endless days ahead would be for nothing.
He would have hurt her for nothing.
Beat shoved his feet into a pair of loafers, yanked on his coat, and blew out the door of his apartment, dialing Danielle again as soon as he got in the elevator. Just before the metal doors could smack shut, a foot inserted itself into the elevator and they reopened, allowing Ernie to follow him with the camera. When a man forgets he’s actively filming a reality show, things have officially taken a turn for the worse.
“Sorry,” he muttered, squeezing his gritty eyes closed. “Pick up the phone, Danielle. Pick up—”
“She’s fine,” Danielle chirped in his ear. “The stream crashed. But I can’t talk, we’re on the move.”
Relief clattered in his chest. “On the move to where?”
“Talk later, Beat.”
The line went dead.
He stashed the phone into his pocket and fell back against the elevator wall. Okay. Melody was fine. And he . . . was most definitely not. He needed to get a grip on himself. For better or worse, Christmas Eve was two days away. Without a reunion—or the million dollars—in sight, he’d instructed his accountant to secure the loan. Come hell or high water, by Christmas morning, the terrible pressure would be off his back and that should have afforded him a small sense of comfort.
But it didn’t.
In fact, he only felt worse.
Keeping his mother’s reputation intact and his father’s heart from breaking had always been enough to keep him motivated to appease the blackmailer. Now? Those things were still more than worthy of protecting, but he needed to start acknowledging the cycle.
This was never going to stop. It would continue forever.
He was guarding a secret that took shape before he was even born. Over thirty years ago, when his parents were in their twenties. Octavia had been a rock star, constantly on the road—who was to say that sleeping with the drummer while in a relationship with his father was the only mistake she’d made? Maybe there was more and Rudy was aware of it all. Loved her despite everything?
Beat couldn’t know because he’d never asked.
He didn’t know how his parents would react, because he’d locked up the truth and decided to manage the blackmail situation all by himself, when it could have been over years ago. If he’d just trusted the people he loved enough to be honest with them . . .
Trust.
That was what it came down to, didn’t it? That was what Melody had taught him.
He needed to come clean to Octavia. Now. Today. His silence had cost him Melody, and the loss of his mental well-being was nipping at his heels. Octavia wouldn’t want that, especially over a secret that involved her. And he couldn’t carry the burden alone anymore. Another piece of straw added to the weight would break his back.
Or maybe it already had.
He was walking down the sidewalk to his parents’ building in a T-shirt and slippers in twenty-two-degree weather—and feeling none of the cold. None whatsoever. There was only the yawning canyon in the middle of his chest. Cars honked on the avenues as they passed, people changed directions to follow him on the sidewalk. By the time Beat reached Octavia’s high-rise, he was flanked by dozens of pedestrians, all of them wanting to know one thing.
Where is Melody?
Why weren’t they together?
Why was he doing this to them?
Every time someone asked one of those questions, a steel-toed boot stomped on his heart. Why weren’t they together? Because in his brief time with the most stunningly incredible woman in the world, he’d learned nothing from her. It was time to fix that.
Beat stared at his reflection in the elevator mirror on the ride up to his mother’s penthouse, finding himself unrecognizable. He’d be lucky if Octavia didn’t call security.
The doors opened and he entered the foyer, stopping short at the wall of silence, Ernie nearly mowing him down from behind. “Octavia?” There was no one in the opulent living space or the home gym, so he took the staircase to her office.
The moment he stepped through the entry, he knew something was wrong.
Octavia sat at her desk staring straight ahead, her face white as a sheet.