“I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars,” Iris insisted.

Oh no. This time Roger raised both eyebrows. Ladasha’s mouth dropped as she jumped into the conversation. “Roger I swear if you get rid of Andrea, I will walk out with her.” He lowered the brows. He couldn’t lose us both. I could have kissed Ladasha for standing up for me the way she did.

“Twenty-five thousand to fire both,” Iris sang.

She must have sung the right tune because the next thing I knew, Ladasha and I were walking home, jobless, boxes filled with bras and costumes, with no form of income to support us.

“So, we have a few choices for tonight,” Ladasha said as we walked in the snow to our apartment. “We can track down Cooper and kick his ass, we can go cry in a corner and realize we won’t have a place to live soon, or…we can watch Pretty Woman and get wasted.”

I smirked at Ladasha. Her whole life was about taking it one step at a time, never knowing where she would be the next day. I somewhat envied that. So the idea of finding a new place to live didn’t come off as a life or death situation to her. At least she didn’t show it as one. I linked my arm with hers, we walked in our ridiculous heels and rested my head on her shoulder.

Although the idea of kicking Cooper’s ass did sound promising, I secretly knew if I were to see him again, a part of me would want to melt into his arms. And by this point, crying seemed to be useless. I’d cried so much these past few months that I wasn’t certain I even knew what the point of it was anymore.

So that made the choice quite easy. We were getting wasted and watching the hell out of Pretty Woman.

WALKING TO OUR apartment, there appeared to be a strange man sleeping next to a suitcase. Ladasha’s eyes shifted towards me. “Do you…?”

I shrugged. I couldn’t tell who it was, so we approached with caution. The man’s head was resting in his lap as Ladasha got closer and poked him with her heel. My heart got stuck in my throat, noticing the old, scuffed up brown shoes…I knew who it was.

“Hey, freak. This isn’t a homeless shelter. Get the hell out of here before we call the cops, assho—” Ladasha’s voice trailed off as she stared into eyes that were now slowly waking up.

Oh no. “What are you doing here?” I asked, watching him stand.

“Well, after going to the diners that didn’t have any clue who the hell you were, and calling your cell phone one hundred times, I tracked down your apartment. And I’ve been waiting here since six in the afternoon to find you. And clearly now it’s…” He brought his watch to his eyes and looked back to me. “It’s two in the morning.”

I choked back my words, shaking my head, “No. What are you doing in New York?”

“Looking for you, Anders! Mom is freaking out! You didn’t come for Thanksgiving, she said you weren’t coming for Christmas, and we haven’t heard from you in weeks!” My older brother Eric was here, in New York City, in front of my apartment. And I was holding a box with bras, whips, and chains. This had the possibility of getting extremely awkward.

His eyes landed on the box, they traveled to my fake nails, heavy makeup, and then they shifted back to the box. “What the hell is going on, Andrea?!”

Chapter Twenty

HEY, WHAT’S UP? I typed into the message. No. Delete, delete, delete. We should talk. Talk? Talk about what? How my wife was blackmailing me to never talk to Andrea again? How her secret would be world news if I were seen with her in public? It was two in the damn morning and I couldn’t stop pacing this hotel room. I really needed to get my own place as soon as possible.

I fell onto my bed, blankly staring at my cell phone. Son of a bitch. I needed to call.

“Hello?” the tired, but deep, voice said on the other line.

“Kyle. I need advice.” I was desperate, so I reached out to the one person who I knew wouldn’t hate me for calling at ridiculous times during the night.

“I f**king hate you,” he whined. He didn’t mean it.

“Seriously. I don’t know what to do. Iris is blackmailing me. I can’t see Andrea and she has no clue why. And I can’t tell her because Iris is threatening to expose her darkest secrets. And I f**king miss her. And I don’t just mean the sex. I mean her, Ky.” I ran my fingers over my eyebrows, allowing realization to set in. I missed Andrea more than I have ever missed anything.

“You know what you need?”

My ears perked up, ready to hear his advice. The last time he gave me advice, I ran into Andrea. So I was anxious for some of his knowledge.

“You need to be single for awhile. Clearly you can’t f**k and leave it at that. You get all twisted in emotions like a little bitch.” He was extra harsh today; he must have been really tired. “You need to deal with your issues with Iris. Deal with your dad issues. And I mean really f**king deal. Stop burying that shit and stop thinking that finding a second choice will make it better. Listen, I was up late helping a friend out of a sticky situation. I’m tired, all right? I’m going to sleep, asshole.”

I sat in my dark hotel room again. With my thoughts. Fuck my thoughts. I didn’t want to be thinking about her, but she wouldn’t get out of my head. I sure as hell didn’t want to be thinking about him, but there he was, in my mind. I wanted everything about my past to disappear, but the memories started to resurface.

I’D STOOD BEFORE my father after he returned home from a heavy night of drinking. He stumbled into the living room, where Mom had fallen asleep waiting for his arrival. He walked past me, shoving me in the shoulder. “Get the hell outta my way, kid.”

I had enough; I couldn’t stand the hollowness of his words. I shoved him back, telling him that I would be better than him. I would never lay my hands on a woman, never drink, and I’d be a better father than he could ever be.

His laughter was dark when he looked me in the eyes. I could smell the rum on his breath as he whistled a tune. Grabbing me by the chin, he pulled me close to his face, and his voice lowered. “You see what you’re looking at right here, Cooper?”

My body tensed up and I narrowed my eyes, wanting to knock the jerk to the ground, but even as a drunk, he was ten times stronger than me. “Look real close, real f**king close into my eyes, son. You see what’s there? That’s your damn future.”

“No it’s not.”He was wrong. He was wrong. He was…

He shoved me again, chuckling in a wicked tone. “Yup, it is. You’re exactly your father’s son. You can try your hardest to run from it, but the apple don’t fall far from the damn tree, kid.”

I SPENT YEARS proving him wrong, being a better person, giving back to the community, and loving my wife the best way I knew how. And when she became pregnant, I knew I would be better than him. I was ready to be a dad. A damned good one at that. I just didn’t plan for what happened next.

The first time she had a miscarriage, I wasn’t there.

I’d been doing voiceovers for our reality show. Iris had finished her voiceover work earlier that day and headed to her doctor’s appointment. She kept calling me on my cell phone, but I didn’t answer. I had to get the work done so the editing process could begin. The world of television worked on a time schedule, and if you didn’t show up and do your job, you could cost the network a shit-ton of money. My wife could wait, seeing as how she’d dragged me into this f**ked up world of reality television.

The calls kept coming, and I kept ignoring. It wasn’t until she texted me ‘911’ that my eyes shot up and I removed the headphones from my ears. Everything slowed down. I was sure I was running, but it felt as if I were going nowhere. When I arrived at the doctor’s office, Iris was sitting in the waiting room, drained, but not tearful. She must have cried before I arrived. The doctor told us a bunch of bullshit I didn’t understand. I started hollering at him, tagging him as the cause of my newfound suffering. My eyes shifted to my silent wife. Our suffering.

I demanded a real reason. “Y’all better fix this! Do you know who we are!? Your ass better make this right!!” He’d f**ked up and he should have been able to fix this. Fix him or her.

Fix our baby.

Iris stood up and started to walk away from me, nearing the exit. I narrowed my eyes at the doctor— eyes filled with unwarranted hate— and informed him that this wasn’t the end of it. I rushed over to Iris and wrapped my arm around her. “We’ll fix this, all right?” I whispered over and over again, stroking her hair.

By the time she fell asleep, I’d had a drink. Or three.

The second time it happened, I wasn’t there.

I’d been out having a drink with my manager when I got the call. I looked at her in the hospital bed and her shoulders shrugged. She looked away from me. We didn’t speak a word. When she was released from the hospital, I offered her my hand to hold, but she refused it. I was slapped with a feeling that things would never be the same. As we stepped into the apartment, Iris went to the living room couch and allowed the cushions to soak her in. I asked her what she needed. She whispered a harsh reality. “A husband.”

I wanted to reach out to her and wrap her in my arms, but I couldn’t.

“Can you change the bed sheets? I want to go to sleep.” She rubbed her puffy eyes and rested her hands over her face. She must have cried in the hospital before I arrived. She’d never cried in front of me. Not even on our wedding day. I wandered to our bedroom, willing to at least fill one of her requests. If I couldn’t be the husband she needed in that moment, I could change the sheets.

The red stains on the 800 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets reminded me of how I hadn’t been there. A vexatious amount of guilt washed over me as my tongue tasted the whiskey still upon my lips. My wife had lain in bed by her lonesome, while our second unborn child cried out for her to notice. Cried out for Daddy to wake Mommy before it was too late.

But Daddy hadn’t been there. And Mommy had to wake to excruciating pain. Mommy probably reached out for Daddy but only found his pillow.

A week later, we were on a red carpet, showing up at a charity event for some celebrity ‘friend’ of ours. “Save the whales. Save the goldfish. Save the goddamn fruit flies.” What a f**king joke. None of these people were our friends—they didn’t know the shit we had been through. We hadn’t even had time to mourn, but that evening on the red carpet, I wrapped my arm around Iris’s waist and she smiled, my hand almost touching her stomach. I flinched at the thought and moved my hand closer to her side.

That was the closest connection we’d had in weeks, and it was all an act. An image for the paparazzi and media to relish in. Season three of our reality show was about to premiere in a few weeks, so of course we had to hold up our appearances.

No, we didn’t find time to mourn, but I found a few moments to have a drink.

Or six.

After we’d gone through the two previous miscarriages, it had been really hard on the both of us. She never spoke of it, but I knew it ate at her spirit. It sure as hell ate at mine.

I couldn’t think about it anymore. I forced myself to go to sleep, to shut my mind down from all the issues I refused to face..

Chapter Twenty-One

“YOU’RE A STRIPPER.” A ghost-faced Eric sat across from me with his head resting in his hands. He couldn’t look at me. But I couldn’t blame him. His baby sister. A stripper? I could tell he was having a hard time connecting those dots. To be honest, I could hardly connect them myself. The room was filled with a dirty air neither of us was interested in breathing. The moment Ladasha realized it was a family affair, she and Freckles disappeared into her room. Dangit. I could have really used her help trying to explain.

I needed to say something. To somewhat give him some level of comfort that it wasn’t as bad as it looked. I wasn’t as bad as he was envisioning me. I bit the bullet and opened my mouth. “I know what it looks like.”