Page 53 of Brown Sugar
“Sweetheart, how about you worry your pretty little head about what’s important? Your tour practice?—”
“I’m in no shape for tour practice!”
“Will you let me finish? Sheesh!” He yanks off his sunglasses for a stern glare. “You’ve got the rest of today and tomorrow to recover. Then we have to look at picking up practice again. This tight of a schedule, we don’t have any more room to slide. That’s just the way things are.”
I’m hollow, listening to Tommy go on and on about how inflexible the schedule is. Like I should be happy and consider myself fortunate I’m being given an extra day and a half because of how tight the schedule is.
It’ll never end. It’ll never stop with him. Nothing will ever be enough…
I’m not a person in his eyes. I’m a commodity. A product to be sold to the masses.
As he rambles on about how he’ll be hiring new security and they’ve offered Shawn a new PR relationship contract, I realize what I have to do.
I can’t last another second like this. I can’t keep giving up control, no matter what consequences I’ll face.
“Anyway, darling, you sit tight,” Tommy says. He pushes his sunglasses back onto his face and pulls at the lapels of his velvet suit. “I’m going to go check with the nurses if it’s alright for you to head out.”
I give a nod of my head to signal I understand and then wait for him to leave the exam room.
The second I’m certain the coast is clear, I’m climbing down from the exam table and yanking on my clothes. My neck isn’t the only part of me banged up, my knee sustained some bruising too, which has turned my walk into a slight limp.
I make my escape as quickly as I can given my injuries.
No one sees a thing. I slip out of a side door that leads into one of the hospital’s courtyards, and then I make my way off the premises.
Once I reach the streets, I raise my arm up in the air and hail a taxi.
“Where to, sweetheart?” the taxi driver asks, hardly looking up in the rearview.
“The airport.”
18
TYSON
Amari shows up for our meeting wearing sunglasses and a sun hat. A decent enough disguise considering we’re on the streets of downtown LA.
She slides into the chair of the table I’ve chosen. The café itself, she chose. Some Starbucks knockoff that charges seven bucks for a cup of coffee I can make better—and cheaper—at home.
An aspiring designer in the industry, I get it’s the domain she knows. Making her come out to see me when I was the one who requested to meet would be inconsiderate.
“Thanks for meeting,” I say.
She cuts furtive glances around us. “No prob. But you know I’m not supposed to.”
“The label?”
“If Tommy knew I was meeting you…”
“And we always care what Tommy thinks.”
She reaches up to lower her shades enough so that I can see the defiant glimmer in her dark eyes and the way her brows arch. “Trust me, I don’t give a damn what Tommy Tocha thinks—or I wouldn’t if he couldn’t blacklist me and my sister.”
“He’s too powerful. We can both agree on that. Thirsty?”
“Caramel macchiato with almond milk.”
I give a nod. “Coming right up.”