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.
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.”