“Are you…” The woman sitting next to me in row 8 leaned in, her teeth catching her lower lip as she studied my face. She shot a look at the phone she held, then looked back at me. After a nervous laugh, she rolled her eyes. “Okay, this might sound crazy, but are you Jacen Barbour?”

“I am.” I wasn’t surprised when she showed me her phone, but it was a bit of a surprise to see a recent picture of me on E’s website. Usually it was something from the club, a grainy shot of me taking off my clothes, but I hadn’t been on a reputable site in a while.

It wasn’t a big deal, having her ask for an autograph, and thanks to the warning from Adelina earlier today, I wasn’t caught off-guard when she started gushing about me and Adelina, asking if we were serious, blah, blah blah.

The questions that segued into dancing, without even a pause for me to answer, were nothing new. I’d fielding those back when I first gave the media fodder when I’d made the switch.

No, the biggest surprise was how bored I was with all of it.

Me. Jacen Barbour, who thrived on attention, was bored shitless. Not just with the attention, but also with this pretty, brown-eyed woman who stared at me with obvious interest.

That was new.

“I hope you’re not letting it get to you.”

Her soft voice caught my attention.

“Excuse me?”

“You know.” She shrugged, her smile a bit wobbly. She squirmed a little in her seat and lifted the little plastic flute of water that she’d gotten from the airline attendant earlier. “This is just water for a reason. I read all about how you had a drinking problem…me, too. All that bullshit about how far you’ve fallen and all that. So what if you dance for a living. It’s an honest living.”

“Yeah.” With a smile that reflected absolutely nothing of what I felt inside, I grabbed my own glass of just water and toasted her. “Here’s to an honest living.”

And a boring flight.

She chattered in my ear the whole time, and I smiled and nodded since any sort of rudeness would’ve made things even worse. Plus, it wasn’t her fault I wasn’t in the mood. Any other time, I would’ve been charming and probably taken her to a hotel for a quickie – or maybe just done it in the bathroom here. But when I heard her lament that LA was just a forty-minute layover for her, all I felt was relief. If I’d needed to keep up the polite chatter any longer, I might have gouged my eyes out. Then the news rags would really have a reason to talk about how far I’d fallen—straight into the fucking looney bin.

How far I’d fallen.

I was sober, and I was a stripper.

Mum would turn over in her grave.

First because I had to consider being sober as a blessing. She’d smack the utter shit out of me for turning into a lazy drunk to begin with, then she’d likely shake her head at the fact that the best I could do was take off my fucking clothes to earn money.

Oh, sure, I could do other things, but I didn’t want to work in a damn restaurant, and the only other thing I might be good at was a bartender. That wouldn’t be a good idea, not with my history.

There are other things you could do if it bothers you so much. The voice of my common sense, my patience, both, snorted in the back of my mind, disgusted with me. You just took the easy way out, the lazy way. Just like you did in school, because you’d always counted on sports being your way out. And now you’re counting on something else instead of putting your brain to use. Maybe you drank it away after all.

I knew there were guys who enjoyed dancing, stripping. They liked the women, the money. I didn’t think poorly of them because of it, but that didn’t mean this life was enough for me. Not anymore.

Now completely irritated with myself and life in general, I rubbed the back of my neck and stepped onto the closest escalator to head to the lower deck to claim my baggage. The guy in front of me ended a call in French, then answered a second call in English. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but he wasn’t exactly speaking quietly as he berated someone named Ian for ‘not doing his fucking job’. From the sound of it, this guy was middle management at some big company, and the place was falling apart without him.

As he stepped off the escalator, he shoved his phone into his pocket and said, “I’m on fucking vacation, you know that?”

Without waiting for an answer, he started for the baggage claim, his carry-on already stuffed with two laptops and at least a dozen file folders that I could see.

“Some vacation,” I muttered.

I looked down at the single backpack I had. It carried half my clothes, my phone and a laptop that I may or may not use. When I reached the baggage claim, the businessman was on yet another phone call.

Abruptly, I laughed.

I was jealous of him and he couldn’t go twenty feet without a phone call.

Jealous.

I’d gone and lost my mind.

I had a decent life, one that was a damn sight better than it had been a couple of years ago, back when Kaleb had pulled me out of a hole.

Kaleb…I thought of him and grimaced. He was my closest friend, even if we didn’t talk all that often. We had that sort of friendship that we could go months without talking, but if one of us needed help, the other would drop everything. Kaleb had done that for me.

Still, since I’d gotten clean, I hadn’t talked to him as much as I probably should’ve. I hadn’t even made it to his wedding, something that still bugged me because I knew I’d used work as an excuse. I could have pressed the issue. I brought in enough money as the headliner that I could’ve demanded the time off. But I hadn’t, and I didn’t need a shrink to tell me why. He’d gone through more shit than I ever had, losing his parents so young and having a sister to look out for, and he hadn’t fucked up his life. Even stripping, for him, had been a means to an end.

I should look him up while I was here in LA.

And it didn’t have anything to with Camry, either.

I hadn’t seen my friend since he’d jumped ship in Vegas last year, and I’d never met his wife. And Camry had said he had a kid. I hadn’t said anything to her about how it didn’t seem weird, thinking of Kaleb as a dad, because he’d had to be one to Camry since he was sixteen. Even though their uncle had been legally in charge, Kaleb had been the one to care for her after their parents died. That old goat had loved both her and Kaleb, sure, but he hadn’t known how to take care of a couple of kids, especially two going through that kind of grief.

I’d call him while I was here. I owed him that much, at the very least. Besides, I’d missed talking to him, and I’d be an idiot if I passed up the chance to see him again.

And I wouldn’t even mention Camry.