The scent of expensive, steaming hot coffee swirls under my noise, and I gladly take the mug from Patrick with a sigh.

“I don’t know if this is still a good idea.”

My agent, and friend, sits down in the lounge chair next to me, the view of the Hollywood valley from his backyard sprinkled with sunlight.

Patrick sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, the lines next to his eyes becoming more prominent with age. “I thought we discussed this.”

“She’s just so cold, Patty, I feel like I’m trying to coax a deadly snake into listening to me.” The warm breeze brushes past my face.

He snorts, but I can tell his patience is wearing thin. When you’ve repped artists for twenty years like Patrick has, you don’t have a long rope when it comes to their belly aching.

“I didn’t ask you to charm her, that’s not why we wrote up the contract and put this plan in place. The mission is to get you off of a rape charge that you didn’t commit, if you’ve forgotten.”

I take a sip of my coffee and take in his words, remembering last night. I was stupid, taking that kiss from her.

But I hadn’t taken it, had I? She’d been more than willing, once her body had gotten over the split second of shock. She’d grabbed my hair, yanked at me, bit me and gave it back as good as she got. I was foolish to not talk to her about it, to wake up the next morning and pretend nothing happened as we sat around the island both chatting with Skylar. And that had been that, we hadn’t discussed it then, so the rest of the week went on in this weird, awkwardly friendly walking-on-eggshells thing.

“I just don’t know that when it comes time, which is right around the corner, that she’ll put that ring on. That she’ll stand up next to me and say the right things. Hell, it’s hard enough to get her to smile and kiss me for the paparazzi photos … imagine when she has to give interview answers about our engagement? I just feel like everything with her is one step forward, eight steps back.”

Patrick nods, sipping his coffee like this is no crisis at all. “In the end, she’ll step up when the time comes. If there is one thing I know, it’s that that girl loved you once upon a time. No one who had the kind of love you kids had would let the other person burn, no matter how long it’s been since you jumped into the sack. You forget that I picked you up off many a bar floor at the early stages of your career, when she’d broken your heart.”

I didn’t forget that, but rather tried to lock it in a different part of my mind never to be opened. While those early months with Patrick, and the label he brokered my deal with, had been damn exciting, I’d also been a miserable fuck. Broken-hearted, reeling from Kara essentially leaving me … I was a mess. He’d been the father I’d never had at a time when I didn’t even know I needed one.

“We have a trial date, by the way.” Patrick broaches the subject without looking at me, and I nod, signaling that I’m listening even if I don’t want to be.

He continues, “Hannah Lockwood is one vengeful woman, and a damn good actress because she’s been running around town to every advocate magazine and group who will listen. You’re going to end up in front of a jury, Dean, so you need to get used to the idea now. I’ll do everything I can to protect and help you, bring in the best lawyers. We’re going to fight this and win. But it’s going to be nasty. In the end, though, you’ll walk away without a scratch on you, I’ll do my best to ensure it. Fuck her. Fuck any person who would falsely accuse another. Everyone who knows you, knows that you could never do this.”

I’ve never heard Patrick so impassioned, and he’d closed every record deal for me in the past eight years. It makes me weary, and my stomach drops to my feet thinking about having to stand up in front of a jury to be declared innocent or guilty.

“Enough about me … distract me. What else do you have going on right now?” I lean back in my chair, letting the steam from the expensive dark roast waft into my senses as I drink it.

Patrick sighs. “Fucking pop princesses, up to my elbows in them.”

It was a deal he had with Prism, my recording label. He could pick a certain number of acts to bring to them and they agreed to listen. These acts were always aligned with Patrick’s taste, rock or folk. But he was so good at his job that the tradeoff was that he had to also represent the pop and bubblegum groups or solo artists they brought to him. Sure, he made most of these girls stars, but some of them could barely even sing, much less count to ten.

“Who is it this time?” I chuckle.

He waves his hand over his head, signaling he’s already forgotten. “Brittney, Brandy, Jessie, something equally as nauseating. On her rider, she demanded that there be a bowl of unwrapped, red only Starbursts, six different kinds of the same blue Essie nail polish, and every season of The OC set up in a DVD player. I want to blow my brains out.”

Listening to Patrick’s complaints about riders are some of my favorite moments. The request lists made by other celebrities for their dressing rooms can be outrageous. One singer I knew demanded a gigantic liter bottle of Maker’s Mark in every stadium he played in, while another wanted two snow white Huskies in her dressing room at all times. The most I’d ever asked for was a six-pack of Heineken and maybe a book or two. I was a cakewalk by comparison.

“Just look on the bright side, at least you’ll be on tour with Neil and I soon.”

He nodded. “Speaking of that, we need to have a meeting to go over tour dates, travel and expectations. And I need to know if your Miss Kara will be going on any of the legs?”

I was so jacked up for the sequence of shows we were about to perform that I could barely contain myself. More intimate venues, time on the road … it was just what I needed to clear my head. Thinking about Kara accompanying me brought mixed feelings; while I knew she said she wanted nothing to do with me beyond our contract, that kiss had changed a lot. But on the other hand, maybe it was for the best if I didn’t push it, if I just let things drop like I had been for the past couple of days.

“Set the meeting up, me and the guys will be there. I’m not sure about Kara yet, although I don’t see her coming to Europe at the beginning what with work and all.”

Thinking about being on the road with my band again was enough to make me jiggle my leg up and down. Musicians always bitched at the end of a tour, but it was my life blood. The uncertainty of how each show would go, the absolute high from being up on stage, singing your heart out. The antics that went on behind the scenes. I was ready.

“Well, just make sure you set ground rules of what she should be seen doing then. And same goes for you. If she is out shopping with friends, you need to be photographed doing the same in London. No being seen with members of the opposite sex. You should be tweeting each other while you’re away so that the public knows how much you miss each other. Sappy Instagram posts, that kind of stuff. And you should be ‘caught’ buying an expensive present or two for her.”

It was sad that I’d made it to the point in my life that I had to stage intimacy. That I had to play at being in a relationship with a woman I would have never let go in a million years. And yet I did, I let her walk out. And now we were here.

My head was still so foggy with anger at her for believing I’d cheated, and the ache of my heart knowing that it still only beat for her.

My body was at war with itself, as it always was. The battle between good and evil dragged on, and I didn’t know which would pull me under first.