Page 3 of Tattoos and Heartbreak
And a whole lot of the time, I hated myself for playing along with it.
Not that I ever changed my behavior in response to that feeling.
I let a smirk creep across my face and made my way to the mini fridge in the room, jerking it open and looking for my favorite drink. Johnny Walker Black Label. Perfect. I jerked it off the shelf, busting right through the tape the hotel had put there to secure it, and unscrewed the cap. Then I paused long enough to eye the can of Coke sitting on the next shelf.
Any civilized person would take a moment and mix a drink. Put some Coke and ice in a glass to gentle the whiskey a bit.
But I’d never been civilized.
I threw the cap to the side and held the bottle to my lips, tipping it and letting the fire of the whiskey flow down my throat. The same way I’d been doing since I was fourteen years old.
Then I sent the bottle flying toward the wall and made for the phone. I was going to need a whole lot more than that little sample of Jack to forget the mess of an interview I’d just been through. All those pointed questions about the girl I’d been seen with last week. The not-so-subtle insinuation that my reputation might be harming my band’s chances at hitting it big. The even-less-subtle note that Olivia and Connor had done the Writers a favor by taking us on tour, and that they might drop us if I didn’t clean up my act.
Fuck them. Fuck that bitch reporter. I’d been doing this for ten years now—since I was fourteen and pop rock’s brand new Golden Kid—and I was thinking I knew a thing or two about how the industry worked. The fans wanted excitement and drama. They wanted someone with a great voice who could entertain and scandalize them on the pages of the magazines.
They wanted someone who walked a line they’d never have walked on their own.
The bad boy. The damaged, brooding kid who wore ripped blue jeans and cowboy boots, drank and swore too much, and left them all swooning.
And that was exactly the role I played for them. Every single day, every single hour.
No matter how much it was killing me.
“Room Service,” I snapped into the phone.
We’d been in this town for two nights, so I knew they knew my number down there. Hell, they probably already had a bottle of Jack waiting for me. Probably a brand new one, too, as I’d gone through a bottle a night since I got here.
And I was guessing they’d realized that I was going to keep going through it until we got on the road on the first tour the Global Writers had done in three years. God love them.
* * *
I wasthree drinks in when I got the text from Taylor.
Taylor was, for those who might be wondering, my agent. Taylor James, agent to the stars—or at least one of them, since Olivia Johns had been one of her first clients. I’d signed with her just after Olivia did, and Taylor had made the two of us her pet projects. She’d won Olivia a temp contract with Atomic Records, and then negotiated a bigger and better contract with Avery Dawson’s label.
And two days later she’d arranged for my band to go on tour with Olivia and Connor Wheating when they went on the road again.
I’d never met Olivia before that day, but she and Connor had quickly welcomed me and my band mates into the fold, and now that we were in the same town, waiting to head out on the first branch of the tour, we’d been hanging out on a daily basis and starting to build the the chemistry that all good tours got. I’d learned that Olivia was both delicate and fiery, quiet and strong. She looked like an angel but had the determination of a freaking bull, and never passed up the opportunity to remind people that she was stronger than she looked.
She’d sell her own soul to save the people she loved, and I respected the hell out of her for it.
Connor was… a lot more easygoing. I guessed he probably had to be, to put up with Olivia’s fire.
Still, being on tour with Olivia meant Taylor was also on tour with us—she had to look after her investment, after all—and that meant Taylor had eyes on me. And all my antics. She evidently hadn’t missed the girls I’d been bringing back to my room after practice. And if her text was anything to go by, she was well and truly over it.
Rivers, here’s the deal,the text read.I’m not going to sugar coat this. You’re in trouble. Your reputation is a wreck. You look like hell. You’ve got to do something to clean it up. Stop with the girls and the drinking and get your life together—or at least do something so it looks like you’re trying. Olivia and Connor are as wholesome as they come and you…
You’re not.
Fix that.
I pressed my lips together, frustrated beyond belief, and slammed the phone down. So it wasn’t only the reporters who were noticing that.
Or rather… Wait, Taylor had known about my reputation from the start. This wasn’t news. I’d always been this guy, and she’d still signed me. Why was it suddenly a problem? Could it actually be Olivia and Connor’s reputation? I didn’t believe it. If it was, why hadn’t they said something to me?
Probably because they were too fucking nice.
I launched myself up off the bed and started pacing again, trying to get past the alcohol fog in my mind and into the problem. I couldn’t exactly change things at the drop of a hat, and I didn’t even know if I wanted to. I didn’t necessarily like the person I was, but how was I going to suddenly alter that? No one would believe it if I did.
