Just a song.
Just a coincidence.
And yet my hands won’t stop shaking.
ChapterTwo
Nathan
“Nathan,I’m sorry, but the label is going to drop you.It’s been too long between hits.”
Trish says it calmly, clinically, like she’s reading the weather report.
Sunny skies, light wind, career implosion by noon.
I pinch the bridge of my nose.I already knew it was coming.Hell, half the industry probably knew it was coming.
Still, hearing it out loud still lands like a punch to the ribs.
“I know,” I say quietly.“It’s fine.I just, fuck, I need to regroup.Need some time.”
But even as I say it, something unhinged and electric starts to stir in my chest.
A wild idea.A reckless one.
I turn slowly, taking in the disaster zone that is my LA mansion.Ingrid—my now ex-girlfriend, Russian supermodel, shallowest human in the world—left like a hurricane with cheekbones.
She hadn’t even lived here officially, but somehow managed to scatter half her wardrobe across every available surface.
It took an entire moving crew to get her crap out.
And still, fragments of her linger—thick lipstick on a wineglass, a shattered picture frame, a perfume bottle rolling on the marble floor.
Her parting words had been something insane about how if I wouldn’t marry her, she should at least get the house as consolation.
Jesus Christ.
Why the fuck would that ever happen?
We hardly dated for three months.
I drag a hand through my hair and exhale.
“Look,” I tell Trish, “I’m going back east.I want this place locked up like Fort Knox while I’m gone.Let no one in.I mean no one.”
“Nathan—”
“In fact,” I cut in, feeling the idea bloom fully now, “fuck it.Put it up for sale.Everything in here—box it up, put it in storage until I tell you where to send it.”
There’s a long pause.
Then she shakes her head, like she can’t believe what I’m saying.
“What?Nate, that’s, look, that’s a lot to unpack.Losing your record deal and your girlfriend doesn’t have to mean all this?—”
Jesus.Christ.
“I fucking know,” I snap, then sigh and soften my voice.“I know, Trish.But I need a change.I don’t give a fuck about Ingrid or the label.I just—I need something different.”
