The first time I found true intimacy wasn’t when I shoved my cock into Laura, the lorry driver’s daughter, on a bench at age fourteen at Cassiobury Park. It was when I stood in front of thousands of strangers and sang to them. Asked them to love me. To believe in me. To support me. And. They. Did.

You feel stark naked on the stage.

Even with Waitrose behind me on the drum set and Alfie walking around with his bass guitar, it was mostly just me. And them. And the lights. And the fame.

The sweat dripping down on the guitar. Sex .

My muscles flexing, straining to produce that perfect harmony. Climax.

They see me, feel me. They hear me. Bliss.

But having sex with ten thousand people every night was not what you called a laid-back job. Which was why I’d needed a little pick-me-up to ensure my performance was up to par with my own unreachable standards. I used to get on stage with more coke in my bloodstream than platelets. I was high, and when you’re high, you can’t see how fucking low you’ve reached. Ninety days of rehab, and I’m clean now. Physically, mostly.

I gave my audience an encore. “Poison Poetry” was inspired by Fallon, who’d torn my heart out and fed it to the tabloid wolves. It was also one of the last decent songs I’d written before becoming too dependent and fogged by narcotics to produce anything real and substantial. Now that I was sober again, I wondered if my creative side hadn’t washed out along with the drugs.

I got off the stage, and the first face I saw was New Girl’s. She and her big eyes and narrow, Cupid’s bow lips and purple flared dress that made her look like she’d stepped out of a film noir straight into the imperfect arms of this industrial arena. Her clothes felt like a statement. One that made my cock stiffen in my jeggings, and I wondered if wanting to fuck my chaperone was my way of trying to get rid of her, or claiming her by making sure Lucas didn’t do it before me.

She wore her usual expression of annoyance, so I bypassed her, heading for my dressing room. Adrenaline simmered beneath my skin, making me roll my neck and cup the back of my head. The gig had been solid. No, fuck solid. It had been grand. I knew that, because I had been there—really there, not like when I was coked up, riding an invisible cloud of fake confidence.

I wanted to write.

I needed to write.

Alone.

Blake, New Girl, two groupies who’d sneaked in, and the local PR bloke all trailed behind me to the dressing room, but I slammed the door in their faces, not bothering to stop and explain. When the muse hits you in the nut sack, you crawl back and ask her to hit harder, faster, stronger.

Make me bleed. Make me gasp for it, live for it, then die for it. Make me lose my mind and find my soul. Do your magic, Muse. But don’t leave me hanging like you did before. Howling for you to come rescue me in an empty room. Waiting for you to show up unannounced like an indecisive lover.

“Winslow.” New Girl knocked on the door several times, and not gently. “Open the door or I’ll have to call Ms. Holden.” It didn’t escape me that she’d dropped the word ‘please.’ Shame she was starting to adapt to her new environment, because I wasn’t keeping her. I tipped my head back and squeezed my eyes shut. I needed solitude to write. My best words were usually found in silence.

“Go away,” I barked.

“Trust me, spending time with you is very low on my to-do list. Unfortunately, it’s part of my job description to be around you. You’re not allowed to be alone with the door locked.”

“Can you be any more annoying?”

“Can you be any more of a jerk ?” She slapped her palm against the door. “Open. Up!”

“Oh, you’re using periods between words. Now I’m really in trouble,” I roared from the other side, kicking the coffee table to the other end of the room and watching it crash and lose a leg against the opposite wall.

Fuck, okay. I didn’t need any more shit with Jenna.

I sighed, pushing to my feet and swinging the door open. The groupies, Blake, and a few sound technicians were standing behind New Girl, curiously peeking over her shoulder. I stepped sideways, giving her a sliver of space to come into the room, but she had to fucking work for it.

“She’s addicted to the D. I need to accommodate that shit twenty-four-seven.” I smirked tauntingly as she rolled her eyes and squeezed past my body. “Don’t touch anything. Don’t look at anything. If possible, don’t even breathe. Actually, that’d be ideal.”

I signed albums, posters, and tits, then slammed the door in Blake’s face after the fans and technicians were gone. He’d mumbled something about not checking the Internet and dick pictures, but I tuned him out. I appreciated the concern, but who the hell cared? My knob was community property at this point. Every willing body that wasn’t a fan or underage got a free ride and a complimentary selfie.

I walked back to the sofa, picked up the notepad and pen, and frowned at the blank page. New Girl was standing by the window overlooking the harbor, her back to me. I tried to remember the last time I’d been in a room with a bird who wasn’t my mum or sister without having my cock shoved so deep down her throat she had to heave, and couldn’t. I scowled some more. Stared at the paper. Mentally paced the room and punched the walls.

The muse was gone.

New Girl had fucking killed it.

Bollocks.

I sat back, watching her blue-silver hair, no longer in a braid, cascading all the way down to her small, round bum. Way I saw it, if I wasn’t going to get any writing done, might as well burn the time reloading my spank bank. Though I knew I could go to one of the many after parties my bandmates were probably hitting, this was a big, fat no. A) New Girl was going to accompany me, and that’d be entirely too embarrassing to endure, and B) I recognized that in order to rein in my desire to get all coked up and drink myself into a stupor, I had to stay in. My agent was going to cut my balls off, drain them, and use them as mini purses if I got anywhere near alcohol or cocaine.

“Take a picture. It lasts longer.” New Girl threw my words back at me from her spot by the window. The sharp-edged crescent moon winked behind her shoulder. “I can see your reflection through the glass,” she explained as an afterthought, a sad lilt in her voice.

Our eyes met in said reflection. Time stood still.

I still hated her.

I still wanted her gone.

But for the first time since she tagged along, I was starting to suspect she might not be as useless as I’d originally viewed her. It was that curve between her neck and her shoulder that did it. I wanted to bite that spot, produce blood, and write the lyrics of my next song with it. And the fucked-up thing about it was that this was my train of thought when I wasn’t using.