The Ghostwriter's Cut

My name is Wren Halliday. For six years I was the songwriter behind Beau Calloway.

Every track on every album he ever cut — the radio hits, the CMA winners, the platinum singles people streamed at their weddings — came out of my session files.

No one outside the publishing side of the industry knew my name.

Then he started sleeping with my best friend, Tessa Lark.

To celebrate the soft launch on Instagram, he handed her a demo I'd burned three months building. She dropped it as her debut single. It went to number one overnight.

At the release party, with one arm around her in front of the entire label, he told me, Without you, she'll be just fine. And you — you're nothing.

I finished my drink. I smiled. Then I walked across the room and accepted a job offer from his biggest rival.

Everyone there thought I'd lost it.

What none of them knew was this:

The song I let him take was never meant to be a hit. It was bait.