Page 9 of Not Your Golden Boy

“Call me Dean, please.”

There was no way Nikky was going to call the imposing man sitting across from him Dean.

“To be honest,” he tried again, “I’m hoping to take an entirely different path. For one thing, I compose my own music, I always have.”

“Right, right,” Albion said with that sort of carelessness that hinted he wasn’t listening to a word Nikky was saying.

“Also,” Nikky went on, the knot in his gut that always appeared when he needed to say something contradictory forming, “I’m really trying to get away from the golden boy image. I’d like to form my music career around something more authentic, grittier.”

“Gritty?” Albion spoke the single word with a mouth full of doubt.

“Yeah,” Nikky said, smiling and inching forward on his chair as the excitement of the things he imagined for himself took over. “Maybe not full nineties grunge, but I have a darker sound than people think. I put a lot of passion and pain into my writing. I, well, I come from a sort of difficult background, and I’ve processed a lot of emotion from my early life into my music. It’s not the stuff of a golden boy image, but it’s who I am, and I’d like a chance to be myself.”

“Sure, sure.” Once again, Albion seemed to agree on the surface, but Nikky knew he was talking to a brick wall. “But I think you’ll love these songs Charlie’s written,” Albion said, proving Nikky’s fears true almost immediately. “Why don’t we shift to one of the studios and you can try them on to see how they fit.”

“Okay,” Nikky said, deflating.

He stood when Albion did and followed the man out of the office and back down the hall to one of the recording booths, not really listening to the words of enthusiasm for what would almost certainly be terrible songs, wishing he had the balls to say something. He had to say something. He couldn’t stay silent if he wanted to take charge of his own life and make all his dreams come true.

But how did you naysay a man like Dean Albion? It had been hard enough for Nikky to tell his foster parents that he didn’t really like tomato sauce on the frequent occasions when they served up spaghetti for dinner because it was an easy dish to make for their large family. He’d always just eaten the pasta with a smile on his face, somehow choking it down, even though he thought cooked tomatoes were disgusting.

He would do the same thing with Albion and choke down frothy pop songs about falling in love on a summer’s day, because you didn’t say no to the best producer in the business when they thrust sheet music for what they swore would be a career-making hit into your hands.

The song Albion played the demo for and then got Nikky to sing was exactly the sort of catchy tune that would turn into the soundtrack for a perfect teenage summer. It was upbeat and pretty, and totally wrong for him. But Nikky sang it anyhow, doing his best to sound good, because he didn’t know what else to do.

The only thing that stopped the whole experience from being completely miserable was when Harry was shown into the room on the other side of the glass from the recording booth where Nikky was singing away his soul. Harry seemed to know his way around a recording session and stayed near the door, hands in his jeans pockets, a slight frown on his face. To Nikky’s mind, he looked tense and disapproving, but also gorgeous and powerful.

Harry was the godsend that Nikky needed to make it all the way through the song without falling into complete despair that his career was in danger of flying off in a direction he didn’t want.

“That was great. You can come on through,” Albion called to him through the speaker in the booth and gestured for Nikky to join him once the song finished.

In response, Harry said something that Nikky couldn’t hear as he removed his headphones and headed for the door separating the studio and the booth.

Albion turned to Harry with a jerk, and his face went dark. “—you doing here?” Nikky heard the end of the sharp question as he joined the two other men.

“I’m a friend of Nikky’s,” Harry answered without even a hint of intimidation, scowling at Albion, “and I’m telling you, that song is completely wrong for him.”

Nikky’s eyes went wide. Harry agreed with him, and he’d only heard the tail end of the stupid song.

“That song is a hit, and your friend Nikky is about to be a major star,” Albion snapped back at Harry.

Anxiety raced through Nikky with every fast beat of his heart. He hated conflict. Despised it. It was even worse when the guys fighting were both so important to him and his career.

“Nikky is already a major star,” Harry said, shifting subtly closer to Nikky and touching a hand protectively to the small of his back. Like a boyfriend would.

Albion huffed a laugh. “So now you think you know what makes someone a star?”

The way Harry’s expression darkened hinted Albion wasn’t questioning whether Harry had been following Nikky’s career progression, but rather that he was questioning Harry’s own celebrity.

“I know what you think makes someone a star,” Harry countered, holding his ground in a way that made Nikky green with envy…and hot with desire. “I also know what you tend to do with the stars you make when they decide your way is not the way for them.”

Again, Albion huffed. “Your career went nowhere because you didn’t have the talent to hack it,” he said. “Not because of some nefarious, behind the scenes shenanigans on my part.”

“Really,” Harry said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “That’s not the way I remember things.”

“You know what they say about memories being biased and how people always remember things wrong,” Albion said with a smirk.

“There’s nothing wrong with my memory,” Harry said in the darkest, firmest tone Nikky had ever heard.