When the Music Stops (Mason Brothers Book #2)

Chapter 36

PARKER

Jolie curls up closer to me and I kiss the top of her head. I know that she’s stressed at the idea of telling me what happened to start this downward spiral in her life, but I think this is a crucial part of our relationship. Can she trust me with her demons?

“Just promise me, Parker.”

She needs more assurance from me, so I squeeze her hand and kiss her again, “This changes nothing, Red, I promise.”

“The first couple of classes were fine. We got to know each other, he was a little weird, but being a musician and in the musical theater world I thought that was just him, you know?”

“Escentric?”

“Exactly.”

She tucks herself into my body closer and I wrap my arms even tighter around her.

“It started with comments. He’d say that he liked the clothes I was wearing, say my voice was beautiful, and that he could picture me performing on stage. Then maybe in the third or fourth class he started getting really close to me, put his hand on my lower back, and would be super close behind me.”

“I told my mom that he was making me uncomfortable and she told me I was overreacting. I didn’t want to keep going, but she made me because she paid for a dozen classes and she wasn’t going to waste money.”

Hearing that just pissed me off. “You told her the things he did, the way he touched you and stuff?”

“Yeah, she didn’t care. I was so young though that I believed what she said, I was blowing it out of proportion.”

I shake my head, “So then you had to go back?”

“Yeah, the next week I went back and it just got worse.”

“Did he...shit Jolie I don’t even know how to ask you this…”

I couldn’t even ask the full question, but she knew what I was asking. “He did. I don’t even remember how it all went. I do remember that he’d start rubbing himself while I was singing. He said that he was so full of emotion that he just had to.”

“Fucking sick bastard,” I clench my fist.

“I went to my mom again. I was in tears. I begged her to not make me go back. I didn’t know how to tell her that he was touching himself around me and putting his hands on me. I tried my best, but I don’t think she believed me. So rather than be a mom and involve my dad and shit she called the guy.”

“Did she at least rip him a new one?”

“I wish! He told her that I had been acting up and giving him an attitude. She actually believed him over me! She said that my little lies weren’t going to get me out of the classes. I still had to go. She didn’t believe me. Then HE was mad, so it got worse.”

“I don’t even want to know what worse could be.”

Jolie begins to cry and she has to reach for a tissue before she can keep going. “It was too much. The extra touching, he’d kiss me, get naked and press his body against me, put his hands down my pants. When he told my mom I had been messing around, she even made me go to extra lessons to make up for wasting his time.”

“Fuck, baby I am so sorry. Nobody should have to go through that. Oh, babe.” She was talking through her tears and I wish there was something more I could do besides rubbing her back.

“I called my dad, I thought being a lawyer he’d listen to me. He’s tried people like that before, you know?”

“He’s an ADA, right?”