Chapter 20
Twenty
Hayden
I call and call with no answer. When I try again, I’m blocked. I try his email and any other outlet to him that I can. When I show up to his apartment, no one answers the door. I keep trying anyway, and the last time I stopped by, a neighbor came out, telling me he no longer lives there.
How can I show him the truth when he won’t give me the chance to?
All it took was me looking over the footage my camera caught the last two days we were there.
The only people to enter Sterling’s dressing room those last couple of days were me, Sterling, and Justin.
I was fucking livid when I saw the asshole moving his camera and looking around as he did it. Why, is the real question?
Was it jealousy? Did he want to be the one flooding the front of magazines and online headlines instead? He wasn’t that great an actor, so he was wasting his time if that was the case. Sterling didn’t hold him back. He held himself back. Or was it something else?
I look in the rearview mirror, watching Sterling leave a coffee shop with two guards following him and paparazzi being told to step back.
He’s getting out of his house again. It’s taken him weeks to go anywhere, while taking me only days to find out where he moved to.
It was only twenty minutes away from his old place.
He can’t stand to be away from his family.
I want to believe he stayed for other reasons too, but I’d rather hear it from his lips than assume.
I drive away when his driver does, going in the opposite direction to return to my house.
When I do, I pace the living room and then the basement while one of our movies plays.
If he won’t listen to me, I’ll give him no choice but to.
I’ll make him hear me out. I didn’t want it to come to this but he’s giving me no choice.
I open the storm room hiding behind a black curtain, tugging on the metal chains and shackles on the wall.
I don’t know if I’ll need them, but they’ll be there in case I do. Or maybe when Sterling finally sees reason, they can be one of his new props. My lips curl into a smile and I lift my phone, bringing up an app showing Sterling sitting alone in his living room, staring at a blank TV screen.
I touch my phone and swipe a finger over his face. “Don’t worry, my little idol. You’ll have something worth watching again soon. You and I both will.”