by Abby Jimenez
I looked moodily at her on her bike. She wore four-inch red heels and shiny black pleather skinny pants. Her nipples pressed into the red ribbon of fabric that she considered a shirt. She’d actually ridden here in that shit.
She took off her helmet and her red hair tumbled out to the screams of fans behind the line stanchions followed by a strobe light of camera flashes.
I let out a controlled breath, making sure to keep my face neutral.
Pia put a hand on my arm. “Ready?”
“I will do as I’m told,” I said unenthusiastically, looking away from my nemesis posing on her Harley.
Pia had coached me extensively on today. She knew all about my issues with Lola. My relationship with my publicist was a little like a relationship with a doctor or lawyer. I had to be honest, or she couldn’t help me.
“Just remember to be diplomatic,” Pia said discreetly. “You can’t undo photos. If she touches you, don’t react. Smile and look relaxed. Don’t give them anything to speculate with. And don’t let her work you up.”
I nodded, my clenched fists the only thing revealing my mood.
Ernie finished his phone call and made his way back over. He was beaming. “Do you love me? Tell me you love me.” He rubbed his hands together.
“What,” I mumbled, watching Lola climb off her bike with a shaky coordination that told me I was not witnessing a moment of sobriety.
“I just got off the phone with your record label.”
My head snapped.
“She’s off the ticket.”
It took me a second to process what I was hearing. “What? What does that mean? She’s out?”
“I made the argument that she causes you undue stress and you’d be out with a stomach ulcer two weeks into it if they forced her on you. I may have also suggested that I’d hit her with trespassing for coming onto my property uninvited the other night if they wanted to push the subject. She’s already knee deep in Kanye fallout and they need her to stay out of jail.”
I stared at him for a solid ten seconds before I started to laugh. I couldn’t even fucking believe it. It was the best news I’d had in years. I hugged him and he slapped my back.
“But listen,” he said, putting an arm around me, his voice low. “And I need you to pay attention because there’s stipulations. They said as long as you put asses in seats you can go it solo. But I had to agree that if you’re struggling, they get to bring her in, no complaints from you, no questions asked. And I couldn’t get them to bend on the fog machine and pyrotechnics. Those guys really like fireworks.”
“Yeah, yeah. Not a problem.” I beamed.
I was going to ask Sloan to come on my tour as soon as I got home. I’d plead with her. Fuck, I’d kidnap her if I had to. Everything was different now. Everything. The tour I had been dreading like a stint in a foreign prison suddenly looked like a fourteen-month dream vacation. “I’m asking Sloan to go with me.”
Ernie eyed me. “So you’re really doing this girlfriend thing, huh?”
I grinned. “Oh yeah, I’m doing it.”
He let out a long breath and nodded. “Okay. Kinda thought you might. Well, I like her. She’s a good one, you were right.”
Pia spoke over her cell phone without looking up. “A girlfriend on tour? Not easy.” She shook her head over her text. “Have you seen your media packet?” She looked up at me over her glasses. “They’re keeping you busy, young man. Your attention is going to be extremely divided.”
Ernie waved her off. “There’s no talking to him. Isn’t that right?” He slapped my back.
I grinned.
Lola saw me looking at her and she shoved a paper she’d been signing into some poor fan’s chest and sauntered over to me. Her bodyguard, personal assistant, stylist, and long-suffering publicist followed close behind.
“Jaxon,” she said, giving Pia and Ernie a cursory glance and then sliding her cat eyes back to me.
“Lola.” I gave her a shit-eating grin. I couldn’t help it.
“Jason, we need to start heading over,” Pia said, checking her watch and nodding to the photo backdrop.
Lola fell in beside me as we made our way down the carpet toward the photographers, hooking her arm in mine. I didn’t know how to shake her off without it drawing attention and fuck it, I didn’t even care. This was the last time I’d ever have to deal with her. I couldn’t stop smiling.
I wondered if she knew yet—probably not by how she was acting. I couldn’t imagine she’d be taking the news with grace. It was better she didn’t know. She’d probably just cause a fucking scene over it.
We came up on a crowd of supporting actors from the movie waiting for their turn in front of the cameras. A makeup artist I recognized from a GQ photo shoot earlier in the week swooped in and started dabbing at my face, and I took the opportunity to liberate my arm. Lola hovered over the woman’s shoulder to watch me, looking bored.
“Hey, Jaxon. Long time no see,” the makeup artist teased, talking to my forehead as she powdered it with a quick swipe of a brush. “So where’s your girlfriend? Didn’t bring her?”
Something almost predatory flashed on Lola’s face.
“Couldn’t make it,” I mumbled, staring at Lola, trying to decipher the flicker I’d seen in her eyes.
“Aww, too bad,” she said, finishing up. “All done, handsome. Have fun.”
She moved, and Lola closed the gap in front of me. “A girlfriend, huh?” She bit her lip and ran a hand down my lapel. Her eyes raked down my body and then came back up and narrowed. “Have fun while it lasts.” She yanked me to her by my tie, crushed her lips to mine, and slid her other hand over my dick.
I jerked back and smacked her hand off me. “Jesus Christ, Lola!” I shot a look over my shoulder. We stood in the huddle of our teams. Thankfully nobody seemed to have been paying attention. The photographers were focused on the backdrop, and even Pia and Ernie had their heads down over their phones.
I looked back at her and glared, wiping my mouth with my sleeve.
Her face had gone flat. “You’re welcome.”
* * *
I’d missed Sloan like crazy last night. In the theater, when my voice soared over a sunrise as the movie opened into the first scene, all I’d wished was that she’d been there with me.
I wouldn’t have been able to handle it if things had ended at the start of my tour. There was no fucking way. My relief over the news I got from Ernie was a thousand-pound weight off my chest.
Pia and Ernie had stuck close to me all night. I’d grabbed a swag bag for Sloan at the after-party and taken pictures of the buffet because she’d asked for them. I rubbed shoulders like I was supposed to, stood for selfies, shook hands, signed autographs, thanked people, and stayed just as long as necessary to meet my contractual obligation.
Lola stayed away from me after the red carpet. In fact, I didn’t see her for most of the night, much to my relief.
I’d gotten to Sloan’s at around 2:00 in the morning and I’d climbed into bed with her and passed out. I’d slept like the dead. It was like I hadn’t truly relaxed since our breakup conversation. In reality, I probably hadn’t.
When I woke up and glanced at my phone it was almost 9:00. Sloan was sitting against her headboard, staring at her cell. I smiled, looking at her, and scooted up and put a kiss on her thigh. “Hey, I wanted to ask you someth—”
“Jason, what is this?”
She turned her cell phone to me. My breath caught in my throat.
TMZ. A celebrity gossip site.
Sloan stared at me, confusion etched into her brow. I sat up and took her phone.
Someone had gotten a picture of Lola kissing me on the red carpet, with her hand squarely on my dick. It was like a camera had been trained on me, taking burst shots from somewhere behind the photo backdrop.
Another photo had us arm in arm like we’d come together and me grinning like a fucking idiot.
But that wasn’t even the worst part. Not by a mile.
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A grainy photo had me holding Lola by the elbow in front of my trailer last week. The angle made it look like I’d been leaning in to kiss her. A small blurb under the photo read, “Lola Simone and Jaxon Waters getting intimate in front of his home last week in Calabasas.”
She must have had paparazzi following her. Fuck.
My heart pounded as I scanned the article.
Jaxon Waters and Lola Simone were extra close at the premiere of The Wilderness Calls last night with the two recording artists seen canoodling for much of the event. But the real buzz started after Lola was seen grabbing the Minnesota native’s canoe paddle right on the red carpet.
Ever since their collaboration on the soundtrack for the movie, rumors have been flying about the pair, especially after Lola Simone released her single “On the Water,” a thinly veiled track about her sexual relationship with the northerner. While Lola will neither confirm nor deny that the graphic song is about Jaxon, last night’s hands-on approach certainly does give us something to talk about during their upcoming joint international tour.
My mouth went dry.
“What a load of fucking bullshit,” I breathed.
“Oh, I agree it’s some bullshit. Especially the part about you lying to me and sleeping with another woman behind my back.”
Her tone rendered me mute for a solid ten seconds and I stared at her. “Sloan, you can’t actually believe this. It’s TMZ.”
I reached for her hand and she yanked it from me like my fingers burned. “Are you kidding me? There’s photos. You kissed her, Jason. I’m looking at this with my own eyes.”
“Wha— I wasn’t kissing her in front of my trailer, it’s the angle of the picture. And I didn’t kiss her last night either. She kissed me, and she did it just to piss me off.”
“She’s going on your tour? And you took her to the premiere? Is that why I couldn’t go? She was at your house? The night we went to Kristen’s? And then the next day you just took me to Minnesota with you like nothing happened?” Her chest was heaving.
“I got home from your house and she was there,” I said carefully. “She was wasted and she wouldn’t leave. I didn’t tell you what happened because I didn’t want to upset you. Sloan, I would never cheat on you.”
She shook her head at me. “But you hid her from me. You hid all of this from me. There’s like seven lies in this one article.” Her stare drilled into my face. “Have you actually had sex with that woman?”
And here it was. I closed my eyes and puffed air from my cheeks. “Once. A long time ago.”
Her disappointed expression gutted me. “Please tell me you’re kidding.” She let out a shaky breath. “You’re kidding, right? You don’t think this is something you should have told me about? My mother texted me to tell me that my boyfriend is sneaking around with his ex and I didn’t even know what to say!”
Fuuuuck. Fuck, fuck. “Sloan, I’m sorry. I didn’t know about the article until just now, or I would have gotten ahead of it. Lola was just a one-time thing and it was a mistake. Frankly, I’m embarrassed about it.”
She pressed her lips into a line. “Great. Just a booty call mistake with Ernie’s gate code. Even better.” She threw the blankets off her and stormed to the bathroom.
“I didn’t give her the gate—” She disappeared around the doorway. I got up and followed her into the bathroom. “I didn’t give her the gate code,” I said, coming around the corner. “I don’t even know how she knew where I lived.”
She scoffed and yanked a piece of toilet paper off the roll with her back to me and wiped at her eyes. “Right.”
I threw up my hands. “Sloan, what did you want me to do? I have no control over what they write and how she behaves. This is what she does. She’s famous for this shit. She does it for the attention.”
She whirled on me. “This isn’t even about her, Jason. This has absolutely nothing to do with her or them. This is about you. How about you have a little respect for me? Tell me when another woman has kissed you in front of dozens of cameras, so I can at least be ready for the TMZ article. Tell me when someone shows up at your house in the middle of the night for a booty call! This is humiliating, Jason! You lied to me!”
“I never lied to you,” I said calmly. “I just didn’t tell you about it. I didn’t want to come to you with this until I had a solution for what to do about it. I didn’t want it to give you any unnecessary grief. She’s given me enough for the both of us.”
She stood by the sink, glaring at me. “Lying by omission is still a lie. You’ve had some woman you have history with, who I didn’t even know existed for you, showing up at your house in the middle of the night, writing songs about you, going with you to movie premieres. They’re putting her on your tour and you let magazines write about it before you bothered to give me a heads-up about this double life you’re leading. And you seriously have nothing to say about keeping this from me other than you were doing me some favor by lying to me about it?”
I looked her in the eye. “She’s been kicked off my tour, and I was trying to spare you.”
Her eyes flashed. “Okay. How about this? How about the next time an ex-boyfriend shows up here to have sex with me and grabs my ass I’ll spare you and it’ll just be my little secret.”
Jealousy pulsed through me like an instant shot of adrenaline, and my temper ignited. “If anyone ever puts their hands on you, you better fucking tell me.”
She gawked at me. “Oh, so now you get it, do you? That’s not okay, but this is?”
“It’s not the same thing,” I said through clenched teeth. “She’s a fucking mess. She’s not worth any of this. You need to get over it.”
She blinked at me. “Get over it?” She laughed dryly. “Wow. You’re right. I should just ‘get over it’ so you don’t have to be accountable for anything you just did. How inconvenient for you to have a girlfriend who demands honesty. I guess you’re happy we’re breaking up in two weeks so you can continue on with your double life without anyone nagging you about it!”
“That was you who wanted that! I don’t want to break up, I never fucking did. It kills me that you don’t want to be with me!”
We stood there across from each other, both of us breathing hard.
I combed a hand through my hair. “Look, I understand this is upsetting for you. I’m not thrilled about it either. This whole thing with Lola has been a fucking nightmare. She’s been harassing me for months. She kissed me. This tabloid shit is going to happen. It comes with my career, and I can’t do anything about it. None of this went down the way they said it did, and even if I told you every single thing, all the time, I cannot possibly prepare you for every story they might make up. They spin things, it’s what they do. You’re going to need a tougher skin and you’re just going to have to trust me.”
She let out a mirthless laugh. “You know, I was actually considering what you said the other day. That we should wait for each other.”
I blinked at her. “You were?” I breathed.
“Of course I was. You think it’s any easier for me to lose you? You think I want to see other people? I thought maybe you were right and we could just agree to focus for a year on our careers and stay faithful to each other and wait.” She scoffed. “But I can’t live like this. I don’t even know what you’re doing here and you wanted me to stay behind and wait for you while you do God knows what out there? You want trust? You don’t even talk to me.” Her chin started to quiver. “Jason, I think you need to leave.”
My heart plummeted. “Sloan—” I took a step toward her and put out a hand. She smacked it away from her.
“I need you to leave before I say something to you that I’m going to regret.” She hugged her elbows to her stomach and her eyes filled with tears.
Alarm bells went off inside me, all systems responding. I swallowed. “Sloan, let’s just talk. Please. No fighting, let’s talk.”
“Jason, I want you to listen to me. I do not want to see you right now. I d
o not want to talk to you. I want you to leave this house. And you should know that if I’d understood how little respect you were going to have for this relationship, I would never have dated you.”
Chapter 28
Sloan
♪ A Moment of Silence | The Neighbourhood
Jason: Sloan, can we please talk?
I stared at the vertical blinking line in the empty text box. I set my phone facedown on Kristen’s kitchen island and put my forehead in my hand.
“Was that him?” Kristen asked, leaning on the counter.
Josh stood by the sink, giving Oliver a bath. He’d sculpted the baby’s hair into a Mohawk and Oliver was giggling.
I had Stuntman Mike in my lap wearing his EMOTIONAL SUPPORT LUNATIC shirt. Tucker lay curled at my feet. Jason had called his dog to him before he left my house two days ago, but Tucker hadn’t budged from the bed, so Jason had left him.
“Yes, that was him.”
“What did he say?”
“What he’s been saying.”
“He wants to talk?”
I nodded. My eyes filled up again and she ripped off a paper towel and handed it to me. “Sloan, why don’t you just talk to him?”
“About what? He doesn’t get this, Kristen. He seriously thinks there’s nothing wrong with any of this. He lied to me. He let my mom—my mom—be the one to tell me about Lola. He just stood there shrugging like, ‘Well, nothing I could have done to prevent this. Sometimes famous recording artists show up to fuck me, I didn’t want to bother you with the details.’” I pressed the towel to my eyes.
“Well, he is a rock star…”
I did a laugh-cry.
Josh rinsed the baby’s hair with a cup. “Nah, he’s not a rock star. I didn’t get that vibe from him. That guy’s pretty grounded.”
Kristen peered at me. “Do you think he cheated on you with her?”
I sniffled. “No. I believe him. But he should have at least told me about her.”