All or Nothing: The Black Lilith Series #2 Read online

  Hazel Jacobs

  All or Nothing

  Black Lilith Series Book Two

  Hazel Jacobs

  Copyright 2016 Hazel Jacobs

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real events, real people, and real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the Author’s imagination and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, organizations or places is entirely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved. This book is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the express written permission of the Author. All songs, song titles and lyrics contained in this book are the property of the respective songwriters and copyright holders.

  ISBN13: 978-0646962573

  Editing by Swish Design & Editing

  Formatting by Swish Design & Editing

  Cover design by Jesh Designs

  Cover Image Copyright 2016

  You left in peace, left me in pieces…

  -Selena Gomez

  Sersha Walsh is a gifted lyricist. She learned her craft on her mam’s knee back in Galway, Ireland. After years as a successful freelancer, she’s ready to take on her first big client—Black Lilith—the rock band making waves around the world. But the band’s bass player and current lyricist, Tommy, is less than thrilled to hear that the production company has hired Sersha. He’s moody and distant, but there’s a haunted look in his eyes that has Sersha dithering between wanting to kill him or kiss him.

  Living out of a suitcase in the heart of Manhattan may sound romantic, but it’s the sort of thing that can drain a girl, even one as bubbly as Sersha. Thankfully, Black Lilith’s manager, Mikayla, seems determined to make Sersha feel at home. All the while, Sersha and Tommy grow closer, weaving poetry into music and sharing flirtatious looks over his battered notebook.

  Just when things seem to be looking up, a ghost from Tommy’s past surfaces, threatening to tear down the careful equilibrium that Black Lilith has built. Sersha will need to decide who to believe and who to trust when the time comes.

  Thank you Karl for the inspiration, never ending coffee, sleep ins on Sunday & willingness to eat out.

  I must say thanks to my children, Jacob and Hazel, for their continuing understanding and sacrifice in support of my writing. Mummy loves you both so much.

  My gratitude to editor Kaylene Osborn for her guidance and hard work on All or Nothing and the previous book Black Lilith. Without her, I would have been a rambling mess and lost soul in the publishing process. Thank you so much, Kaylene!

  I’m incredibly grateful to all my readers and supporters that I’ve had the utmost pleasure meeting in person and online! You’re all amazing and have made this whole experience incredible!

  To my Instagram supporters and new author friends, you have all blown me away with the amount of love! As we always say “I FLOVE YOU” <3

  Dedication

  Blurb

  Acknowledgments

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Connect With Me Online

  About the Author — Hazel Jacobs

  Sersha stuffs headphones into her ears to drown out the screaming baby cradled by his mother at the back of the bus. The Manhattan landscape passes outside of the window.

  Her eyes scan the gray buildings wrapped in scaffolding like lollies wrapped in paper, thinking that if anything in the world is more interesting than New York in the winter she needs to find it, and write a song about it. But she probably wouldn’t be able to do it justice.

  Of course, the scenery from Galway in Ireland is lovely, but she’d looked at that scenery her entire life. And it isn’t nearly as exciting as all of this—the homeless men and women bundled in layer upon layer of battered clothes, the street vendors standing close to their grills to keep the cold away, and the children in jackets so puffy that they look like multi-colored marshmallows.

  The Hamilton soundtrack plays in her ears and that, combined with the sights and smells of the city, makes Sersha grin. She loves this music, the way that Lin-Manuel Miranda marries hip hop and history in his lyrics makes her both elated and envious. Elated because nothing excites her more than a well-written album, and envious because she knows that she will never write anything as good.

  Someone taps her on the shoulder. Sersha tears her gaze away from the wonderful view and looks at the man sitting next to her. He has an offensive mustache and a smarmy smile that makes her heart sink.

  He waves and gestures for her to remove her headphones. Reluctantly, she does.

  “What are you listening to?” he asks.

  “Hamilton,” she replies. She concentrates on getting her accent nice and clean because Americans have a terrible time with it.

  Sure enough, the man frowns in confusion. “Sorry, darlin’… I didn’t understand that.”

  “Hamilton,” she repeats slowly.

  “Well, whatever that is it must be good. You were smiling. You have a nice smile.”

  “I know,” Sersha replies. She certainly isn’t smiling now. She’s been told by well-meaning exes that she has a pretty nasty resting bitch-face, and she hopes that it’s enough to get this man to leave her alone so she can go back to listening.

  He looks confused again. “You know?”

  “You’re not the first man to tell me I have a nice smile,” she says.

  Now he’s frowning in earnest. “You could at least say thanks, darlin’. I’m just trying to be nice.”

  “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know,” she replies.

  He shakes his head at her, looking faintly disgusted. “Darlin’ if you’re gonna talk like that to guys for giving you a compliment you’re gonna wind up all alone.”

  “As long as I’m alone right now, I’m okay with that,” she says wryly, stuffing her ears again and looking back out the window.

  Who tries to start a conversation when a person has headphones in anyway? Isn’t that the universal sign of ‘Don’t talk to me?’ Normally she wouldn’t have minded talking to a stranger about music, she loves music, she’ll talk about it for hours if her seat mate will let her. But if all he’d wanted to do was hit on her then she could do without. The seat shifts and she knows without looking that the man who tried to compliment her has moved on, probably to annoy some other poor woman trying to go to work in peace. She can see the ghost of her reflection in the window. Her lips are in a murderous pout, made brighter by blood-red lipstick, and her blonde hair frames her elven face.

  Sersha is starting her new job today. She’s dreading it.

  She hates that she’s dreading it because she was so excited
when she got the call. Her entire life she’d wanted to write lyrics for songs. She’d thought that it was the sort of job that young kids say they want but will never actually achieve, like wanting to be an astronaut or a bank robber. But she’d actually done it! After years spent on her mam’s knee in the studio, learning from some of the best men and women in the Irish music industry followed by a few years killing herself going through uni and running a freelance songwriting business on the side, Sersha is on a bus in Manhattan heading toward Bass Note Productions. She’d been chosen to help write the lyrics for Black Lilith’s next album.

  And the band hates her.

  Well, the handsome bass player hates her. He’d made that perfectly clear at the lunch where they met. He’d just glared while their manager, Mikayla, had introduced her to the rest of the group. Sersha doesn’t know what’s worse, the fact that he clearly had it in for her, or the fact that one of the reasons she’d been so excited to take the job was because she admired his work. She’d been so looking forward to working with him.

  The young man, Dash Todd, had seemed on the fence about her. The same with the drummer. Slash? She can’t remember his name but it’s something ridiculous, but he’s beautiful and he knows it. The lead singer seemed to be in Sersha’s corner, and the manager is a wonderful woman and would probably end up being Sersha’s best ally in all of this.

  She sees the Bass Note building and presses the stop button. Slinging her backpack over her shoulder and pushing her hair out of her face, she heads for the door while glancing down at her watch. She’s a few minutes early.

  “Organized or desperate?” she asks aloud. Then she pulls her phone out and starts a new note, typing the words ‘organized or desperate’ because she thinks that will make a good premise for a song. All while Phillipa Soo sings beautiful words into her ear.

  Sersha walks briskly toward the door. She’s dressed like a college student in jeans and joggers. She’d been tempted that morning to go full hipster because she knows that Black Lilith’s bass player had called her ‘some glorified poet with a man bun and a goatee’ when he’d thought that she couldn’t hear. But she doesn’t own any skinny jeans or black-rimmed glasses, so she’d figured that she’d just go with clean and casual. Nobody expects a lyricist to look like a high-powered business woman. Hell, she wrote half her bloody songs in her underwear.

  Inside of Bass Note, some guy in a suit escorts her through the faux-old-school halls toward a meeting room on the third floor. Mikayla is inside, typing away on a laptop with her brown hair in a braid and a suit that looks like it was designed with her in mind. Every time Sersha has met the woman, she’s been perfectly put together. Sersha wonders how she does it. Her own hair turns into a fluffy, blonde mess within moments of leaving the house.

  Whenever anyone asks, she tells them that it’s part of her aesthetic. But it’s not. She’s just never figured out how to tame it.

  “Morning,” Sersha says, finally taking out her headphones and shoving them into her pocket.

  Mikayla flinches at the sudden sound. But when she looks up, she smiles. “Sersha,” she says, standing and offering her hand for Sersha to shake. “It’s good to see you. Did you have trouble finding the place?”

  “None at all,” Sersha replies. She takes a seat at the table. “Is the band late?”

  “Usually,” says Mikayla. “They’ll stumble in soon. I sent a group text.”

  Sersha pulls her own laptop out of her bag. It looks battered and bruised next to Mikayla’s brand-new MacBook, and it’s covered in stickers. She feels her shirt dip over her shoulder, and she knows her tattoo is showing—the sheet music for the opening bars of ‘Galway Girl.' She dithers a bit over whether to reach up and cover the curve of her shoulder and obscure the tattoo because she knows that some people have problems with ink, and she doesn’t want to get on the wrong side of Mikayla so early. But then she remembers the tattoos on Mikayla’s boyfriend, the lead singer of Black Lilith. They were pretty cuddly at the lunch, and he has a full sleeve of Van Gogh-style designs on his forearm.

  Mikayla’s eyes flicker toward the tattoo, but she doesn’t seem to disapprove.

  “So did Tommy get a hold of you?”

  “The bass player?” Sersha asks. “No, should he have?”

  Mikayla purses her lips. “He was supposed to email you what he’s working on right now so that you can get a feel for it.”

  “Oh. I already listened to all of the songs that Black Lilith has released,” Sersha says. And she’d adored them. The lyrics were powerful without being obtuse, and no matter how many times she listened to them she kept finding new meaning.

  “That’s good,” says Mikayla. “At least you’re prepared. I can send you the demos for the next album… that’s the one they’ll be releasing next month. You and Tommy will be working on the one that they’ll be releasing after that.”

  “That’s thinking ahead,” Sersha says.

  Mikayla shrugs, though there’s a soft grin on her lips. “Bass Note is pretty proud of Black Lilith. They’re expecting a long career from the band.”

  Pride practically drips from Mikayla and Sersha smiles with her. It’s good, she thinks, that the band is successful. It’s always exciting when musicians can make enough money to support themselves. Though, it does put some pressure on Sersha to write something perfect for the next album, or else she’ll wind up with rabid fans down her throat. The bass player would probably lead the charge.

  “So what were you listening to just now?” Mikayla asks, gesturing toward the headphone which is trailing out of Sersha’s pocket.

  “The Hamilton soundtrack,” replies Sersha.

  “Oh, I love that soundtrack!” Mikayla says. “I wish I could see the show, but it’s impossible to get tickets.”

  “I know, right? It was easy before the bastards won the Pulitzer.”

  They talk for a while about their mutual love of musicals about American founding fathers. Logan, the lead singer, arrives and quietly slides into the seat next to Mikayla, kissing her on the temple and settling in to listen to the conversation. He’s tall and lean with brown eyes that look like they could melt the hearts of a million fangirls. Sersha finds herself smiling at the pair of them so clearly in love that they could inspire dozens of songs. When she starts drafting songs in her head, Sersha looks down at her fingernails.

  It’s weird that she keeps composing songs about strangers, isn’t it? It’s probably weird.

  The drummer, bass player, and guitarist come in a few minutes later, bursting into the room in a mess of limbs and raised voices. When Tommy the bass player sees her, his smile instantly fades. His rumpled flannel shirt clings to his thin chest and falls loosely on his arms, and he’s got a look of sadness in his eyes which, Sersha hopes, was there before he met her. Slate, the drummer, slings his arm over Tommy’s shoulder and guides him to the other side of the table, leaving Dash—the young man with the Iron Man shirt—to sit with Sersha.

  “Good to see ye all again,” she says, smiling around as if the bass player weren’t glaring daggers at her.

  “That’s a nice tattoo,” Dash says after a brief awkward silence.

  Logan leans over so that he can see Sersha’s shoulder. “Oh, that’s ‘Galway Girl,’ isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is!” Sersha says, surprised. She slides her top down just enough so that he can see it more clearly. “You’ve got a good eye.”

  “Logan can sight-sing,” Mikayla says, still dripping with pride. It doesn’t escape Sersha’s notice that she and Logan are holding hands under the table.

  “Impressive,” Sersha says.

  Logan shrugs as though it’s no big deal. Maybe it isn’t to him. Sersha has found that the best musicians are usually the ones who are completely unaware of how special they are. They see music everywhere. It’s in their blood. So it doesn’t really compute for them that other people can’t do what they can do.

  She feels more eyes on her and turns her chin to catch Tomm
y across the table. His blue eyes are trained on her shoulder, following the pattern of the notes in a way which tells her that he can understand what the tune is supposed to sound like. But the intensity in his gaze catches Sersha off-guard. She fleetingly wonders if that’s the look he gets in his eyes when he’s about to kiss someone.

  “Can you sight-sing too?” Sersha asks him.

  He meets her eye and the glare comes back in full-force. “I don’t sing.”

  “But you can read the notes?”

  “Of course I can,” Tommy says. “You think I could write music without being able to read it?”

  “Cap the sass, grumpy. I’m just asking a question.”

  Tommy looks away. There’s something really petulant about his body language that makes Sersha want to laugh at him. He’s acting almost like a toddler that thinks he owns the sandpit, and now he’s pissed that other kids are playing in it. Beside him, Slate is hiding a grin and looking at Tommy like he’s thinking the same thing that Sersha is.

  Mikayla is looking between Tommy and Sersha, but she’s not appearing nearly as amused by the situation as Slate does.

  “Tommy—”

  “I know,” he mutters.

  Mikayla gives him a stern look, but he avoids her eyes. She types something into her laptop, and the band shares some looks between them as she pulls up an agenda. “Right, so this meeting is mostly to get our shit together for the album launch. And to organize some songwriting sessions with Sersha.”

  “Why do we have to do that so soon?” Tommy asks suddenly. “I mean… shouldn’t we be focusing on the album launch and not on creating new content?”

  Slate snorts. “This from the man who wrote twenty-four new songs when we were on tour.”

  Tommy shoots him a glare. Sersha is impressed. He must have the energy of a hundred songwriters if he can put that much creative juice into writing while he’s traveling and performing on a tour. Sersha couldn’t imagine pulling that off. But that’s why she’s a writer and not a performer.