Broken Strings

One

Jay nodded slowly. Swallowed the bite of pizza he'd been chewing. "Shit, man. I'm sorry."

Brock shrugged, trying to play it off even though he felt like crap. "It's fine. I mean, we weren't together that long and it wasn't serious."

It hadn't been. Not really. Brock hadn't had a serious relationship maybe ever, though not for lack of wanting. He'd always hoped that with fame and fortune would come freedom but ever since he'd gotten famous from his music, he'd felt more in chains than ever.

No one had told him that it was difficult to be gay in the country music industry. He should have expected it, really, since the whole genre was about homegrown, classic small towns with pie, trucks, and a pretty girl to bring home to your mama.

But Brock wasn't even from a small country town. He'd just been blessed to have a deep, rich voice that came out when he sang. Over the years, he'd tried other genres – alternative, pop, and rock – something that was more indicative of his L.A. roots. That was where he'd been raised by his divorced parents, Owen and Summer. Neither of them had cared when he'd come out – especially not his mom who, after separating from Brock's father, had announced she was bisexual and later remarried a lovely woman named Eloise.

The only ones who had seemingly cared were the record label he'd signed with when he'd been the frontman of Tallahassee. They'd sworn to drop the band from the label if the media ever caught wind of it. That was signal enough to Brock that being gay in country music was definitely the wrong thing to be.

So, he'd bottled it up. Kept it quiet. Only one of his bandmates had known – Trace Strickland. It was part of the reason that Trace was pulling Brock back into this media hellscape. He knew that Brock would never say the one thing that could clear his name because it would likely mean the death of his career as his fan-based jumped ship for more conforming artists who fit neatly into the homegrown box that country music was based in.

Brock hadn't told anyone famous about it. Hadn't spoken of it in interviews or on talk shows. In his eyes, he was out to the people who mattered – his family.

He hadn't even told Jay, though the bastard had guessed it within a few weeks of living with Brock. And then proceeded to try and set Brock up with a special effects guy on one of his movies for about three months. Jay had never breathed a word of it to anyone, a fact for which Brock was grateful. It meant that he didn't need to hide in his home. He could be whoever he wanted to be within the confines of the apartment's walls.

He'd figure out the rest one day.

He hoped.

"Anyways," Brock sighed. "Lewis leaving was just the icing on top of the cake today."

"What else happened?" Jay asked, clearly picking up on Brock's dark tone.

"Frontier sold my contract to Eclipse Records. Apparently, they're close to bankruptcy so they're offloading artists who aren't making them money. And that includes me."

Jay stared at him. Blinked twice. "I thought your last shows sold out completely?"

"Yes," Brock affirmed but he bit his tongue to keep from refraining on how small the venues had been compared to the large stadiums he used to perform in during his Tallahassee days. "They did. But that doesn't mean shit when you factor in everything I'm costing them because of this whole Trace Strickland scandal that I didn't even play a role in."

He drank deeply from his beer. Finished the bottle and reached for a new one. Brock twisted the cap off and chucked it onto the coffee table. For a second, he watched the screen where one of the mobsters was standing over the other one, a smoking gun in his hand as a pool of blood blossomed on the pavement around his dead adversary.