It was almost like I had gone back in time.

There I was, sprawled out over the couch, a bottle clutched limply in my hand and God only knew how much booze coursing through my veins. I stared at the ceiling, having completely surrendered to the void of sweet oblivion. Everything was exactly like it had been before I’d ever gone to Vegas, just like the days when I would spend weeks at a time in a drunken haze. But it was exactly that that had me so… dissatisfied.

The sight of those e-mails still haunted me as I lay there, rereading them over and over again in my mind, still trying to come to terms with how any of this could have been true. I could almost convince myself that all of it had been a dream, that I had only just woken up from a week-long torpor and that somehow, whatever fantasy had danced through my unconscious had turned so horribly sour. But deep down in my heart, I knew that it wasn’t a dream, wasn’t something that I would forget before I took the next sip from the bottle in my hand, or even something I’d forget a week from now.

Or a month. Or a year. Or, hell, a lifetime. I took another pull from the bottle of Jack. Bottom’s up, eh?

I had been betrayed. Betrayed by the woman that, for the first time in my life, I thought I might have a chance—or even wanted a chance—with! These were the kinds of things that people wrote tragedies over, the loss of trust in love and the slow march into utter loneliness. Even my impressive level of intoxication couldn’t guard my heart against the toothy memory of those messages between the woman I had begun to care so much for and her best friend. The messages that had been used to plot out how the two of them would take me for a complete and utter fool and use me to finance the rest of their lives.

I felt rudderless again, like I had before I’d met Liz, and couldn’t help but marvel at the irony that the one time I felt like I had a purpose in my life, it had only ever been a ruse to line someone’s pockets. Was that all I was good for, being taken advantage of and consumed like something you’d buy at the grocer’s? Was I just a tool to be used and then thrown aside once I had served my purpose?

I couldn’t blame Liz entirely for it, I supposed—after all, the plan had been to use her for practically the exact same thing—or rather, that had been Tessa’s plan. But so much had changed since I’d met her, seen her as something more than a woman I’d fucked in a hotel in Vegas, or even the accidental future mother of my child. I had begun to see her as the woman I wanted to ensure didn’t have her life ruined because of me. But instead, it had been her plan that both Tessa and I had played into. It was ironic, to say the least.

And it was something Tessa had warned me about since the beginning. Oh, why hadn’t I listened to her? She might have been a right cunt half the time—really, only half? I wondered to myself—but she was rarely, if ever, wrong. And she’d never double-crossed me, not like Liz had. It was a damn good thing Tessa had found those e-mails, because as smitten as I’d been with Liz, there was no way I’d have believed her if she merely told me.

Yet despite how all of the evidence pointed toward her using me without any damned remorse, I couldn’t bring myself to be angry with Liz. No—instead, all I could bring myself to feel was utter despair and loneliness, crushing my ribs like a vise whenever I tried to take a deeper breath.

Ever since the press conference, I had just felt so damn empty, walking along in a daze. And damn, too, the idea that I was meant to be more than just some fleeting star, burned out before I got my chance to truly shine. If there ever had been any anger inside of me, it had been snuffed out before it had even gotten any air to breathe—extinguished by the knowledge that I would never have someone I could truthfully call my own.

The idea of a family had only been mine for a moment before it got snatched away from me like bait on a line. That was what I had become—the rock star that bit the hook and got reeled right in like the sucker I was.

I should have never left London, I thought, shaking my head as I brought the mouth of the bottle to my lips once again, taking a long, slow pull from its amber contents. I should have never even entertained the thought of going to Vegas. What a stupid idea that’d been.

But then I remembered that Vegas had been Tessa’s idea, really—she’d booked the gig and had practically demanded that I go. She had been so damned determined to get me a bigger following in the States, and I hadn’t been in enough of a mood to tell her no. Who would I have been to tell her she didn’t know her own business? If she said that it was a good move, why wouldn’t I have believed her? Shit, it might have worked out fine, had I actually shown up to the concert.

I attempted to set the bottle down on the floor beside the couch, but only ending up tipping it over and spilling some of its precious contents onto the marble tile.

“Shit!” I shouted, jumping up as quickly as I could, only to suddenly realize how much of a mistake that had been. I slipped on the puddle that had poured out from the bottle and busted ass, a bolt of pain searing up my spine through my tailbone.

“My God, man, you look like a mess,” came Tessa’s unusually chipper voice as the door swung open. Just the sound of it made me dread whatever it was she had come to my flat to say. “Why’re the curtains closed? It’s wonderful outside!”

I groaned and laid down on the floor—fuck getting up, though the clicking of her heels across the tile made me want to crawl into my bedroom and shut the door, a feeling only compounded by the sudden burst of light flooding into my living room as my manager flung the heavy blackout curtains wide.

“Jesus!” I cried, covering my eyes and turning away from the light. “Could you not?”

“Oh, settle down, Jules,” she said, an infuriatingly pleasant smile on her lips. “You should be pleased! You’re in the clear!”

“Oh, yeah, I’ll start doing a dance any minute now,” I grumbled, glaring at her as my eyes slowly started to adjust to the offensive amount of daylight streaming in through the windows. “What do you want, Tess?”

“Is that any way to talk to the woman who’s practically just saved your career from the rubbish bin?” she purred. “I mean, I did just make sure that you’re the most talked about person in the whole country, after all.”

“What in the hell are you on about?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her as I hoisted myself carefully from off the floor. “My career is over, Tessa. We both know that, don’t we? There’s no way I’m coming back after what happened.”

“That’s where you’re so wrong, Julian,” she said, beaming at me as she withdrew a newspaper from her purse and handed it over to me. “You’re the talk of the town, love. Everyone’s looking for an exclusive about how you were taken advantage of.”

“And why the hell would I want to tell the world all about that?” I asked her. “Hell, I don’t even want to think about what happened over there, much less relive it after that circus you put together before we left. All I want is to be left well enough alone.”

The headline of the paper read Bad Boy Rocker Can’t Be Tied Down, and it was accompanied by the most horrendous side-by-side of me at one of my old concerts juxtaposed against one of Liz, her makeup streaking her face in the middle of the hotel lobby. Just the sight of it was enough to make my stomach lurch and tighten. Suddenly I felt sorry for her. Even after all that she’d done to me, I still couldn’t stand the sight of her in tears.

“That is not an option,” Tessa said, her voice suddenly serious. “You’ve got an interview with three different late night talk shows and a charity event to perform for in a few weeks! Everyone’s eating this up—your love-life has got the whole country talking. You’ve never been more popular!”

She pushed the paper into my hands. “I honestly think that this fiasco might end up being the best thing that’s ever happened to you,” she continued, tapping the headline with one of her well-manicured nails as if I hadn’t seen it. “Women are all commenting on the Internet about how sorry they feel for you. You’ve never been sexier!” A grin split her face wide. “This is fantastic, and we haven’t even dropped the date-rape-drug bombshell yet! That’s going to be making news for months!”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, my jaw sagging as Tessa kept going on and on about how the sales figures for even my older albums had jumped through the roof since this scandal had hit the air. I could feel my chest starting to tighten, heat rising at the back of my neck with every word out of my manager’s crimson lips, her stupid cat-that-ate-the-canary grin growing wider and more disturbing with every syllable. What in the hell was happening with my bloody life? Was this all I was now—some pathetic knob people took pity on?

“Get out,” I said, my voice barely audible even to me, though apparently loud enough to give Tessa pause.

“Excuse me?” She squinted at me and the smile dropped from her lips. “I’m sorry, I must have misheard you. For a second, I imagined you’d said—”

“I said to get the hell out of my flat!” I growled, taking a step toward her that made her almost stumble back against the wall behind. “Fuck right out of here, Tessa. Now.”

Much to my surprise, she didn’t argue. She only snatched the paper from my hand before she made her way out the door, though I could tell from her expression she wasn’t at all pleased.

But what the hell did I care? What did I care about any of it? After losing what I’d never known I’d wanted all this time—love I’d found in the place it wasn’t supposed to be—what the hell did some publicity matter to me anymore? I was so tired of all the stunts and the interviews. All I wanted was what I could never have: someone who cared about me for more than my financial worth.

I picked the bottle back up from the floor, a little over half its contents still streaming through the grout. I couldn’t even muster the effort to give a damn about cleaning it up. It could sit there for the rest of my damned life, for all I cared. The only thing I wanted to do now was drink the rest of that bottle, or however much it took to blur my thoughts into a blue haze. Plenty of rock stars had drank themselves to death, guzzled and guzzled their way into an early grave. What did it matter if there was one more?

“You’re nothing but someone else’s paycheck, mate,” I said to myself, putting the mouth of the bottle to my lips once again before I took a long draught. “And sooner or later, they’re going to try to get everything they can from you. Take every last bit of you, chew it up, and spit it out. Once you’re not good for anything else, they’re going to leave you to rot on the side of the road.” Then I chuckled mirthlessly as a set of rather iconic lyrics came to mind.

“It’s better to burn out than to fade away.”

Ah, Neil Young. Now there was a rocker who knew the score.

I threw the bottle, watching it shatter against the far wall. To hell with it. To hell with everything.