Lola had said I’d asked her to come. That I’d snapped my fingers and she’d come all the way down there. I didn’t think much of it at the time, she was so fucking wasted. But now…
They lied to her.
They sent her.
My mouth went dry.
“My own fucking label,” I whispered.
It wasn’t Lola. It was never Lola.
The whole room started to spin.
It was them all along. My personal life was an agenda. Something to sell—and Sloan didn’t fit into the narrative. I’d put her in danger. I’d put her in danger because I’d made a deal with the fucking devil.
And Lola…
Trapped on this merry-go-round since she was sixteen years old. Exploited and manipulated, nobody to protect her. No Ernie or Zane to watch her back. Sick and no one to help her get better.
She wasn’t the enemy. She wasn’t out to get me. She was a pawn.
Just. Like. Me.
I got up and ran past Jessa to the bathroom in her room. “Lola?” I tried the knob. “Lola, let me in.”
Nothing.
I pounded. “Lola, I need to make sure you’re okay. If you don’t open the door, I’m breaking it down.”
Silence.
I looked over at Jessa. She stood there, chewing on her lip.
“Stand back.” I backed up and slammed my shoulder into the door. It took four hard hits until the lock gave out and the door swung into the bathroom.
My stomach dropped.
Lola sat by the toilet with her knees drawn up to her chin. A bloody pair of scissors lay on the white tile next to her. Her hair was hacked to pieces, all the way down to the scalp. Spots of blood soaked through the white sleeve of her sweatshirt on her left arm. Jessa darted to her friend, and I crouched in front of Lola among half a dozen tiny empty vodka bottles from the minibar scattered around the floor. “Hey,” I said softly.
Her puffy eyes stared straight ahead, and long streaks of black mascara ran down her cheeks and met under her chin.
She let me take her wrist and carefully pull back her sleeve. A slew of thin, inch-long cuts raked up her arm. They were superficial and already scabbing over.
I looked at Jessa. “She’s okay.”
Her eyes were wide. “Jason, I can’t do blood.”
“All right. I’ll take care of it. You get her a coffee and a water bottle.”
She nodded and disappeared.
I turned back to Lola. “I’m going to clean this up, okay?” I said gently. “Let’s get this off you.”
Her green unfocused eyes settled on me, like she was just realizing I was there.
She let me remove her hoodie like a tired child being undressed for bed. She wore a tank top underneath, and I took off my flannel and draped it over her shoulders. Then I took a warm washcloth and dabbed at her wounds while she sat there, dazed.
She wouldn’t answer my questions, so I worked in silence. It was a couple of minutes before she said anything to me. “I have nothing,” she said quietly.
My hand stilled and I looked up at her. She stared out blankly into the room. “I have nothing to show for anything. I don’t even have a place to live.”
Fuck. So it was as bad as Jessa said.
I couldn’t imagine suffering through all this work to end up empty-handed in the end, without even the money to console me.
No wonder she’d tried to climb onto my tour.
Tours were where you made the money. And Ernie was right, she wasn’t capable of her own. Hell, I was barely capable of it, and I had my shit together. There was no way her label would make a tour investment for her in her condition. But latching on to me? That was easy. Three duets on my set and she was done for the night. And if she bailed, the show went on.
It was the perfect solution to her problem. It was probably the only solution. What other choice did she have? She couldn’t even quietly slip into obscurity, get a job doing something else. She was Lola fucking Simone.
“Have you eaten today?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Okay,” I said. “Why don’t we get you into bed and order some lunch.”
She studied me with those fractured green eyes I barely recognized, like a beaten dog, bracing to flinch.
I stood and put my hand out to her. “Ready to go?”
She looked at my outstretched palm, my small white flag, and her chin quivered. Then she folded over, put her face into her knees and cried.
I sat next to her and wrapped an arm around her. “Hey, it’s going to be okay,” I whispered. “You just start over again. Start now.”
She sobbed uncontrollably and I sat there, holding her on the cold tile.
Jessa came back in with a coffee and a water and sat on the other side of Lola until she calmed down.
“Lola, look at me.” I waited until her glassy eyes held mine. “I will do whatever I have to do to help you. Do you understand? If we can get you into rehab, will you go?”
She paused a long moment before she nodded at the floor. Then she blinked up at me with wet eyes. “You can’t tell them where I am. They’ll send cameras. Will you take me?” The question was so childlike it made my heart constrict.
“Of course I’ll take you. And I won’t let them know where you are. I promise.”
I ordered her a sandwich and sat with her while she ate it wrapped in a blanket while Jessa made a call to a private rehab center she recommended.
There was still no word from Sloan. Courtney came back empty-handed. Sloan wasn’t at the airport and we were all still going to voicemail.
I got my clippers and buzzed the rest of Lola’s head for her. Then I handed her off to Jessa and Courtney so they could clean her up before we left for the rehab, and I went back to my room.
As soon as I sat on my bed, someone knocked on the door. I ran to open it without checking the peephole.
Sloan stood in the hallway with Tucker.
I grabbed her in my arms and dragged her inside without a word. The second I had her, I was instantly whole again.
“I’m sorry,” she said, crying. “I was so upset and I didn’t know what to do and then I thought about it and I knew you’d never cheat on me…”
My fingers raked into her hair and I clutched her to my chest. I felt like I was collapsing at a finish line. Tucker whined and cried, jumping at my legs. I put my forehead to hers with my eyes closed. “Sloan…”
“I drove halfway to Kristen’s and then I drove back because I knew you had to have an explanation. I’m sorry, Jason, I should have trusted you.”
“You didn’t finish your painting,” I whispered.
She shook her head. “I’m not going to. I’m staying to be with you.”
Every breath I took of her, I held. I broke away to look at her. Her red nose, her puffy eyes. The most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. The woman I was supposed to marry but never got the chance to ask because my job had robbed us of romantic evenings and perfect moments and finally a life worth sharing. My soulmate.
And someone I needed to let go.
It was going to take everything I had in me to do it. But I would do it. The price for being with me had officially become too high.
She wasn’t safe. I knew that now. It would only be a matter of time before they tried to separate us again. There was no telling how they’d do it, and I couldn’t protect her. Maybe next time their warning would be a violent one. They’d break her hand and she’d never paint again.