Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Deacon
I holed up in my apartment, not answering calls or responding to messages for a week . . . not that that meant I was entirely unreachable. Luca had his own key, and I’d suspiciously find the liquor cabinet restocked and that my piles of laundry had disappeared when I woke up each morning. I didn’t like it. I would’ve preferred the squalor around me to reflect the dimness in my heart.
“What’s the point?” I asked the ceiling aloud, rubbing a hand over my aching forehead.
I clutched the neck of a half-drunk bottle of whiskey in my hand as I paced across the shined floors of my apartment.
“What’s the point of anything if I can’t be with her?”
Fame was a cruel beast. It had given me access to the things I loved most and taken them away from me in one fell swoop. Now I had everything I could ever want apart from one thing—the only thing that mattered.
I had money, fame, adoring fans, a career with enough open field ahead of me that I could make the projects I wanted to and pivot in any direction I saw fit. But the mountain of benefits of this life were so easily dwarfed by one simple truth: Dove Lachlan wasn’t in it.
My phone started ringing, and I stared across the apartment in the direction of the Rusty Sky Reverie song emanating from the speakers—their first number one single. I could’ve sworn I’d put my phone on silent, but Luca must’ve turned the notifications back on again.
Great. The media was still in a frenzy over the Dove news, paparazzi camping at every entrance in and out of my apartment building, hoping to catch a glimpse. I’d hired a private team to patrol the waters around Prickle Island. Evelyn was the only one who knew, and I made her promise not to tell Dove. Even if Dove wanted to be out of the equation, I was still always going to protect her.
I stumbled through the apartment and fished my still-ringing phone out of my sweatpants pocket. “What?” I barked.
“D-money!” Zeke greeted. “You’ve had a week to be in your feels, my brother, but now we need to talk.”
“No.”
“Wait! Don’t hang up,” Zeke said, his tone changing from the normally smarmy, bro-y one to something more like what I imagined his real voice to be. “Listen, the new PR firm has been all over the zookeeper stuff. Very respectfully and without dragging her name, they’ve been putting out new stories of some of their other clients who are very excited to be splashed across the front pages. The story is going to be dead before you know it, m’kay? The news is a fickle mistress,” he added with a chuckle. “They’ve scrubbed the worst of it and redirected attention from the rest. All that stuff is going to be long forgotten by next month, so hang tight, bud.”
The tension in my shoulders eased a little. “Good. I’m glad.”
“Good. So . . . Ivy’s in New York,” Zeke hedged. “And they think it would be good if the two of you went to dinner or something. The best way to get over a breakup is to distract yourself, my man. Get back to the plan, you know.”
“Zeke,” I groaned.
“Deacon, brother, you’ve got to let her go,” he urged. “Either you need to be with this girl, and we can figure out how to make that work for you and your career, or you need to move on and get back to the original plan.”
I rubbed my fingers in my swollen, red eyes. How could I ever let her go? I needed to but couldn’t. Never would. My tight grip on what the future could hold for Dove and me had calcified that way. I didn’t want anything else. Even if she’d never take me back, I couldn’t go on the way that I had been. My life had changed forever when she’d walked back into it.
“New plan,” I said to Zeke. “This film with Ivy is going to be my last for a long time, Zeke, maybe forever. I want to go back to making music.”
“Okay.”
I practically dropped the bottle from my grip. “Okay?”
“Yeah,” Zeke replied. “I was wondering when this news was coming. Cody was the one who was hell-bent on getting you Batman, not me,” he said. “Even though it’s literally my job. I’ll be honest with you, Deacon. You have made me a shit ton of money and I know you will continue to do so whether you’re movie star Deacon Harrow or musician Lucky Role, okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed, still disbelieving that I had his support. “I guess, yeah. That’s the new plan then. I’m taking a step back from acting, working on new music again.”
“Great,” he said. “Have Luca organize a call for us with the new team later next week. Time for a new game plan, bud.”
“Time for a new game plan,” I echoed, and Zeke hung up.
The phone buzzed only a split second later and I picked it up, assuming it was Zeke again. “Forgot something?”
“Is this how you answer your phone now? ‘Cuz it’s weird,” Faith answered flatly.
“Faith, hey,” I choked out, emotions suddenly constricting my throat. Everything that had happened between Dove and me came flooding back.
“You sound like shit.”
“Yeah, well, I feel like it too,” I replied. “What’s up?”
“Mom called me,” she started, and I groaned. “Not that she needed to. I’ve seen all the news and already knew something was up. I’m sorry about D?—”
“Don’t, please.” My voice got thicker. “I can’t handle your kindness right now.”
She snorted. “Well, that’s too fucking bad because I’ve got something I need to ask you.”
“There she is,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Open your door,” she told me.
“What?”
“Open your door,” she repeated like I was a disobedient dog.
I rolled my eyes as I unlocked my front door. “I swear to God, if you sent me a fruit basket?—”
But when I opened it, I found my little sister standing there, looking up at me. “Who sends a fruit basket? That’s so lame.” She lifted a plastic bag of snacks, and I spied a packet of Skittles and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos amongst it. “I brought you something that isn’t boiled chicken and broccoli.” My eyes welled, emotions I’d been battling to keep at bay brimming over, and then she landed the killing blow when she said, “I thought you might need a hug.”
I let out a half laugh, half sob, and she dropped the bag of snacks to hug me so tightly she might’ve cracked a rib. And I cried my heart out into my sister’s shoulder in the threshold of my apartment.