"I can cut another album, if I want," Shane said, her tone defensive. "I’ve got the material –"

"Oh yeah? Where? Where is it? You gonna show me? You gonna show me all those notebooks where you’ve got all your brilliant shit written down?" Tim asked, eyebrows shooting up as he aimed a dubious look at her. He stared for a beat and then scoffed. "You don’t have shit and you know it."

"I could! I could have a whole entire fucking album written by now, if you freaks would get off my case!" She snapped, retreating to an armchair across the room and dropping her lanky self into it, slinging one leg over an arm as she nursed her drink. Resting her elbow on the other arm, she tented a hand up over her eyes, grimacing. She had a hangover and all the yelling wasn’t doing much for her pounding migraine. "Fuck."

"So are you gonna do it?" Tim asked, his tone edgy, impatient.

"What?" She asked, sounding defeated.

"Go into rehab," he reminded her, lips thinning.

"After the tour –"

"No, no — no more of this ‘after the tour’ bullshit. You could keep touring with this album for the next five or ten years, if I let you, Shane, but I’m not going to," Tim said stridently. "You’re gonna get your ass into rehab and when you get out, I’ll talk to the guys at Capitol and see what they can do."

"Like you know anybody at fucking Capitol Records," Shane muttered, snickering bitterly into her glass.

"I still have some old buddies in A&R down there, not that it’s any of your goddamn business," he replied with a frown, drawing himself up and puffing his chest out.

"Right," she murmured, not looking up at him.

Tim scrubbed a hand through his hair with a sigh. He knew he wasn’t getting anywhere and he probably wouldn’t, not when she was in one of these moods. Of all the artists that he’d worked with, Tim Haspell had never encountered anyone who was as difficult and cagey and fucking infuriating to work for as Shane McCutcheon. Contrary to what he’d said, though, he did believe she was a song-writer and a genius one, at that, but he’d be damned if he was going to tell her that – fill her alcohol- and drug-addled head with more ideas than he could effectively deal with by himself. Keep her a small fish in a small pond and coach her, hone her skills and her talent and her charisma to razor-sharp points and then unleash her on the mainstream. If she didn’t overdose or die from alcohol poisoning, first, that is.