Graceful Deception

Chapter 5

I know you probably all want to kill me for updating this one and not RP or DN but I kinda had some of this written and lying around so I figured, hey, why the hell not.

Chapter 5

“You’re sitting tonight out.”

I stared at my father in confusion. We were backstage. The band was preparing to go on and I was doing warm up exercises with my vocal coach, Tia.

“What?” I asked, pausing my la-la-la’s to frown at my dad. “What do you mean?”

“I’m going to tell them you’re sick.”

“Why?”

“We’ll talk about it later.” Blake glanced down at his watch. “Time to go on,” he said, turning his back on me as if the conversation was over.

It was so not over.

“Just a second,” I said, my voice low and controlled. He didn’t recognize it because he’d been MIA for so long but it was my “don’t fuck with me” voice. “Will this conversation later have anything to do with my continued presence on the tour?”

He didn’t turn to look at me but he did pause, his shoulder’s stiffening as if it were an unpleasant topic.

Well, I suppose firing his daughter from his band might be a tad...unpleasant.

“We’ll talk later.”

“Just tell me,” I ground out.

“Fine,” he said, his tone annoyed. “This morning, you weren’t ready. You looked like you’d slept in a gutter when you knew there would be paparazzi and that it’s part of your job to play the role of my daughter. I agreed to let you come with us because you seemed good at this but you haven’t even been here a week and you’re already screwing up.”

Funny, him telling me that I’m a screw up.

“It won’t happen again,” I said as calmly as possible but inside I was livid.

Livid and scared.

I needed this money. I needed it.

He cast a doubtful look at me over his shoulder. “You’re not getting better at singing. You used to be good but it’s obvious that you aren’t anymore. You were good with the reporters at the press conference but you need to be good all the time, to be ready for anything.” He shook his head. “I don’t see that happening.”

“So that’s it?” I asked, in my “don’t fuck with me” voice. “I’m out?”

He gave me a supremely irritated look. “I told you, we’ll discuss this later.”

Then he left.

What a surprise.

I stood from the chair I’d been lounging in to pace the length of the dressing room I was in with Tia who looked very uncomfortable at having listened to my little argument with my charming father.

“You know,” she said after a moment, her voice soft and lyrical even when she was just speaking. “You really are improving.”

“Yeah right,” I muttered, rolling my eyes at her.

“You are,” she said firmly. “You have a beautiful voice. You just...don’t want to sing.”

My eyes sliced to her and narrowed. “I want to sing.”

She shook her head and gave me a stern look. She had white hair and a round body, her face was wrinkled and kind and she looked like a grandmother when she squinted her eyes like that. “You don’t. You don’t even want to be here.” Her eyes slid to the closed door that my father had just walked out of. “I can see why you wouldn’t.” She turned back to me and her forehead wrinkled in speculation. “So why did you agree to go on tour with him?”