Page 75 of Dirty Rock

I needed just one… more… hit. I was totally in control.

Totally.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The night passed.

Another day, too.

By the time I’d spent three nights in that hotel room, I began to go a little crazy. Room service was starting to bore me, and I was pretty sure one of the concierge guys had tipped off a few fans. I’d definitely heard female, youthful giggles outside my door once or twice.

Fucking arseholes.

Come ten o’clock the following night, and with no news from Julia, I had to get out of the room. Wearing my grey sweatpants, a baggy black hoodie, and a black baseball cap, I threw on some old trainers and stuck my earphones in before I hit play on some of my Slipknot favourites. Corey Taylor blasted it out like only he knew how as I made my way down the corridor and into the hotel lift. A guy Dicky had hired was standing there, dressed in a suit. I had no idea why he needed to be formal to protect my arse. He never spoke, like some kind of Queen’s guard who’d been trained solely to push a button and stare straight ahead when I got in the lift.

“Heading out for a run. I don’t need you, so stay here,” I told him, only for him to respond with a curt nod.

The dude was living his life in a coma, and I couldn’t imagine anything worse as I made my way to the foyer and pushed out of the lift, offering him a grunt of thanks, to which he just nodded again in response.

Pulling my hood up over my baseball cap, I glanced side to side. The coast looked pretty clear, even when the doormen opened the glass door and nodded their ‘You’re welcome,’ before I’d even offered a thanks.

Everyone in this hotel—everyone in this part of London—was stiff. That’s what money bought. It bought respect and class. Rigidity. Boredom. Fake pleasantries. Fake happiness. Fake smiles. Fake cheeks, lips, foreheads… even arses. They were all in comas, too, and they had no idea about any of it.

The world, it seemed, was too dull for me again.

All I wanted to do was run. I hadn’t wanted to run since high school, but that night, I wanted to step out into the rain, watch my breaths fall from me in clouds of white air, and I wanted to tear through the streets of London like I was nobody. Burning off some of this energy I had building up was the only thing on my mind as I listened to Slipknot scream through their emotions on‘Til We Die.

It rained and rained, soaking me through to the bone, but I started to run, and I kept on running. I thought about home, where Ma and Caleb would be sitting around the kitchen table, drinking coffee and reading their books. I thought about Presley and Tessa, snuggled up together, planning a wedding. I thought about Big D, Hawk, Coops… and Julia. I thought about her seaside home. The beauty of it all.

I thought about the repercussions if people found out I was chasing the fucking publicist.

If people found out that I… what? Cared? I guessed so.

I’d smoked too many cigarettes over the years for my lungs to handle this sudden burst of exercise, as well as the cold, wintery nights of London, but I kept on pushing, even when I became so out of breath, I was convinced I was about to have a fucking heart attack. It quietened my mind, and it made me feel free. The paparazzi weren’t around in that weather. No fans were going to stand outside the hotel staring up at a window during this kind of cold. Everyone on the streets was hiding under umbrellas or behind steamed up glasses. Dicky wasn’t barking orders. The rest of the band weren’t telling me what to do. There wasn’t a schedule to stick to. I had no expectations to live up to. Right there on those streets, I was just… Rhett.

I’d always thought that success would make me happy. That knowing I’d dreamed, worked, and achieved would silence any doubt I’d ever had in my mind about why I was here, and what I stood for. But I was beginning to realise that success never fixes us. It doesn’t heal the shit inside we can’t reach out to hold and rub better. Success isn’t the cure; it’s just another disease. One that puts us under the microscope, dissects who we are, and breaks us wide-fucking-open. Success doesn’t lighten the darkness. It shoves us down into those deep black holes we’ve been avoiding, and it forces us to look at what’s within.

Inside me had somehow become… empty, and while running through one of the busiest capitals in the world and dodging black cabs and red buses as the rain poured down on my body, it dawned on me that, despite the fame, I was alone.

That wasn’t how things were meant to be. It wasn’t how things were supposed to go. I’d done everything right, and I’d made it all come to fruition, yet it still wasn’t good enough.

The dream had sold me a lie, and that made me really fucking angry.

As I ran through Piccadilly circus, I glanced up at the famous giant screens and saw an advert for Youth Gone Wild’s Devil’s Doormat Tour that was being screened on Channel 4 the following weekend. Now it was over, the whole world was going to get a backstage, exclusive sneak peek into life with the band, as well as the tour itself—different clips from different arenas showing one consistent thing: just how fucking good we were at what we did.

I saw the image of me up on that screen, sweaty, ecstatic, projecting that I had it all as I sang to the crowds. My eyes crinkled at the corners on every close up, and there were several shots of me laughing with the guys, joking around as the fans screamed for more. That version of me was within, but he’d gone to sleep, and I had no idea how to be that guy again.

I watched as my face shone out over London. I was the British musician’s dream… so why the fuck did I still feel like something was missing inside? What more would it take to keep me satisfied?

The public couldn’t get enough of us.

Yet Julia had had enough of me.

It stung like a bitch, and by the time I came to a breathless stop outside the hotel, I was about ready to set my rage free. I ripped my earphones out, not even acknowledging the doorman who let me back into the hotel with a friendly welcome. I didn’t look at the coma guy in the lift. I didn’t even say thanks.

All I could feel was this out of breath, out of control annoyance surging through every part of my body.

This sober anger that made me wonder why? Why hadn’t she fucking come to me? What else could I do for her, too?

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