Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
THIS NEPO BABY B-LISTER’S SMALL BIRTHDAY BASH TURNED INTO THE EVENT OF THE MONTH. HIS RISING STAR IS BURNING brIGHT AND FAR FROM AN… OLD FLAME.
TRIPP
ONE MONTH LATER…
Ihate them.
Standing on the flat roof of the short building, I took another swig straight from the bottle I’d stolen from behind the bar.
I hadn’t been subtle.
I’d hopped the gleaming wood, grabbed the unopened bottle, and jumped back over.
The party down in Golden had grown beyond the small get-together I’d wanted with my closest friends.
People had brought people who’d texted more people.
I didn’t know most of them. And they clearly didn’t give a shit about me beyond being able to brag that they’d attended my birthday party.
Because despite the packed room, no one had noticed my bottle swipe.
No one had asked where I was taking it. No one had paid attention.
As long as their drinks were flowing for free, no one gave a shit.
I didn’t blame them.
I didn’t give a shit, either.
I set the bottle on the ledge before lifting the camera I had in my other hand. I aimed the lens out across beautiful Los Angeles to the Hollywood Sign in the distance. I should feel… something. I was in the land of glitter and dreams. The land of fakes and plastics.
The few A-lister haves and the many Z-lister have-nots.
But all I felt was dull antipathy for all of it.
There was something about the toxic town that sucked all the happiness from a person’s soul, leaving it an empty shell of dried nothingness. And then it took that, too.
And for what?
More money, of course.
A bigger house when most of it went untouched already.
More kiss-asses and hangers-on to pile fake praise on me every time I wiped my own ass.
Ones who tell me how amazing I am to my face but would literally stab me in the back for even a quarter of what I have.
Ones who hadn’t even noticed or cared when I snuck out of my own birthday party.
Golden had been shut down to the public for the night to accommodate the event. The attached sex club that was hidden behind locked doors and guards was also closed to its elite members for the night.
Not that it being closed had stopped Easton—my lawyer and friend.
He’d waited until the party was in full swing before steering his woman toward that locked entrance. They would undoubtedly be occupying one of the private rooms for a while.
Lucky fucking bastard.
Had he been at the bar, he would’ve cut off my escape. He was always doing his best to save me from myself.
Cohen also would’ve noticed, but he hadn’t been able to resist jumping in to help his staff with the food and drinks.
His brother—who co-owned Golden and Gilded—was out of town chasing a bounty.
And that was it.
End of my pathetic list.
Three whole people who would’ve noticed me leaving.
Who would’ve asked if I was okay.
Who actually would’ve cared about the answer.
And I would’ve cared enough to laugh it off and lie.
Because the truth was that I wasn’t okay.
I was wallowing in my woe-is-me, poor-little-rich-boy bullshit. Drinking away my… pain? No, that wasn’t right. I didn’t feel pain. Or pleasure, for that matter. Even the bump of blow I’d done hadn’t brought me a thrill or a buzz.
I was numb.
I was drinking away my numbness.
Deciding to get a better view, I climbed up on the rough brick ledge.
And fell backward onto the roof, landing with a hard bounce that knocked the air from my lungs.
Oh shit.
I stayed on my back for a minute to catch my breath as I checked my camera to make sure that it hadn’t hit the ground. It took my sluggish brain a few long moments to even consider how easily I could’ve tumbled the other way.
The three-story building was much shorter than the high-rises in the area, but those three stories would be enough to do damage to my body and my camera.
That would’ve sucked for Atlas and Cohen’s insurance premiums if I’d fallen the other way.
That passing thought was all I gave the possibility. My heart didn’t start racing with fear or adrenaline. No sweaty palms. No clenched gut.
I was only concerned with my camera and the ramifications for my friends.
Pushing onto my unsteady legs, I sat on the ledge instead of attempting to stand.
I hung my legs over the side and lifted my camera to my face, clicking random pictures of shitty Christmas lights I wasn’t even sure I was seeing correctly through my blurry haze.
I aimed the lens toward the street and scanned before stopping on a couple on the sidewalk.
I moved my focus from the viewfinder to watch on the little screen as they paused at the corner, their heads bowed together, and their faces illuminated by the light from the phone screen. My lip curled as they bickered, each pointing a different direction.
Yes, strangers, my disdain extends to you, too.
Strangers or not, I could probably nail their whole story with at least seventy-percent accuracy.
I didn’t need to be able to see the map that was undoubtedly on that phone to know they were tourists. Their clothes made it obvious. They were decked out in beachy coastal outfits that they thought would make them fit in, but only other vacationers wore that shit.
Mid-to-late forties.
Likely from the Midwest.
Three kids at home. Probably all boys, much to Mom’s secret resentment.
She’d dreamed of tea parties, beauty pageants, and shopping dates.
Instead, her boys all played football, and her life revolved around getting them to and from practice, cheering them on, and handling the fundraising, the politics, and the uniforms. Plus, the countless other thankless tasks that came with raising kids and keeping a home.
The things a good mom did.
Dad helped by telling the boys the same glory day stories about how he would’ve gone pro had it not been for his damn knee.
The trip to see the big lights of Hollywood was her reward for putting her own life on the back burner. For putting her family first. For letting her body go soft because she had to do everything for everyone else and didn’t have time to think about herself.
His body had also gotten soft, but it was because he sat on his ass and drank beers with his boys all the time. That was how a man lived in his world.
She stressed over how she looked. She tried to find more hours in the day to get her steps in, but she was just too tired, dammit. She would stand in front of the mirror, turning all around to inspect her widening ass as she worried whether he still found her and her new Costco blouse attractive.
Meanwhile, he could barely get it up on his own—let alone with her—but he never doubted his sex-god appeal.
I hated them both.
I hated the knowledge that if an LA-four threw a wink their way, they would ditch each other and whatever semblance of apple pie happiness they had.
Not that I would blame her. I bet she would even struggle with the decision.
But then that hidden resentment would bubble to the surface, and her sexually repressed and neglected body would remind her that it’d been years since her husband had given her more than a half-flaccid, three-minute pounding.
He was the same as most men. He already had it better than he deserved, but he wouldn’t hesitate before leaving her for the first set of fake tits that bounced his way.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe they were effortlessly devoted to each other. Maybe he helped around the house, and she was the envy of every housewife in their little neighborhood.
I doubted it.
They were all the same.
We were all the same.
Because I wasn’t any better than they were. I mean, I was, but not because I was a better person. I wasn’t more honest or humble or charitable.
No, I was superior because of dumb luck and good looks. Or was it good luck and dumb looks?
Either way.
They started walking again, and I took a picture of them, blurry from the distance.
Or maybe that was just my vision.
I sat for a few stretching minutes, scanning around for something to distract me from all the nothingness. I’d nearly hyped myself to return to the party when the heavy metal door clattered open and shut.
Too soon to be Easton.
At the approaching footsteps, I pressed the camera to my eye and lazily spun my head to the side. I expected to see Cohen’s smile.
The strained one he gave when something was pissing him off, but he was working to keep his easygoing, Southern vibe.
A smile he would follow with a forced joke about how the media coverage of me plummeting to my death would make it hard for them to keep Gilded a secret club.
And then he would give me shit for using the off-limits stairwell that led past his floor and Atlas’s floor to the roof.
Only it wasn’t a zoomed-in closeup of my friend. It was the prettiest eyes I’d ever seen. The light brown was mixed with green and a bronzy gold.
Wow.
Without thought, I snapped a picture. I wasn’t sure why. She was clearly an illusion caused by mixing coke with too much liquor. The clicking shutter echoed in the heavy silence.
“Did you just take a picture of me?” my hallucination asked in a sultry voice.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I didn’t owe my delusions an answer, so I rotated the lens to zoom out.
Fucking.
Wow.
It made sense that her eyes were mesmerizingly beautiful because so was the rest of her. Her sparkly black dress showed off her toned legs and tanned skin. Most of her light brown hair was pulled back, but some pieces framed her stunning face.
Men had it easier than women in… Well, in all fucking aspects, but especially with appearance.
Online comments and gossip blogs loved analyzing every bad picture of me, and even still, women got it far worse.
With all that criticism, I had nothing against the shit people did to their faces and bodies to look the way they wanted.
Botox. Filler. Lifts. All that was their own business.
But other than some makeup, the woman on the roof didn’t seem to have any of that—or it was just quality work. Either way, she was beautiful.
Fucking evil of my shitty brain to present me with perfection that’s not real, but I guess I had it coming for doing my best to kill its cells.
Maybe if I promise to stop trying to ferment it with whiskey, it’ll ditch the dress and make my hallucination naked.
I settled for taking a photo of what was likely nothing but empty space.
“Did you just take another picture?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips.
“Yes,” I repeated as I pressed the shutter button in time to catch her glare.
Disapproving scowl?
My subconscious isn’t playing it subtle.