The way his silver eyes look almost warm, an impossibility due to their shade alone, but they do. Warm, liquid, molten silver eyes looking at me as if he wants me to understand. “They all think it’s about the sex and the booze. It’s not.” He drags a hand over the top of his head. “It’s about the loneliness of the road. The girls, the sex. The clusterfuck of singing what you feel but having no one to fill the void, and the ache of wanting to feel something.”

He stuns me speechless.

I curl my hands at my sides to keep from reaching out as he waits for a reply. I can tell he wants some understanding from me, for he smiles and laughs. “All right. Nice chatting with you.”

I want to hug him so bad. If he were a little smaller, I would. If he seemed a little tamer, I swear I would.

But he isn’t small, or tame.

The energy around us crackles like a live wire as he waits for me to do—to say—something. Anything. I want to be his friend, to have the sort of relationship where I might high-five my ex-boyfriend. But fat chance that’s going to happen. It’s like the Berlin Wall is between us, and even if he wants to let me into his own walls, I’m not dropping my own ever again. So I say nothing and just nod, wryly saying, “Nice chatting with you too.”

He laughs to himself, a laugh that actually lacks happiness, and whispers, “You’re unbelievable.” He winds away, leaving me with a sick feeling in my stomach. I am alone, but maybe I’ve wanted that. I’ve been surrounded by people, but I’ve let no one in, and despite his fame, maybe he’s alone too. I judge him because I hate him, but what do I know of what he goes through?

What has he been through in the last six years that I don’t know?

Whatever it was, it wasn’t what you went through when he left you. . . .

Angry all over again, I stand and try to quell it as Mackenna waves a peace sign out to Lionel. “Be back at the hotel later,” he yells.

Lionel nods and turns to offer an explanation to the nearest camera. “Going to see his dad.”

“His dad is in jail,” I blurt out.

“Not anymore. He’s out and living in the vicinity.”

At my blank look—I thought he’d gotten almost twenty years?—Lionel walks over to me. “You don’t look so good.”

“I medicate to fly.”

“Oh. Well then, you can ride to the hotel with me.”

“Wow, thanks for the respite.”

“Miss Stone,” he says. “Tomorrow the director and I would like for the choreographer to see you. We’d like you to learn one of the dances—the one where he sings your song. Our plan for the Madison Square Garden concert is for you to wear a mask and dance with Olivia, then remove it at the end of the dance so he realizes it’s you—then you’ll kiss him.”

“You’re kidding.” I gape. “I don’t dance!”

“As of tomorrow, you do. You signed a contract.”

“It didn’t say I was going to—”

“It said you were to follow our guidance and support the filming in any capacity we saw fit. Trenton and I see fit that you dance, with Olivia, around Jones. Be ready by morning.”

EIGHT

THE PAST DOESN’T ALWAYS STAY IN ITS PLACE

Mackenna

Father looks a hundred if he looks a day. He’s just ditched the supermarket and now clambers over to where I stand with my hands jammed into the pockets of my jeans. “Hey, Dad. You look beat.”

Dad grumbles something under his breath. “Packing vegetables all day. It’s killed my soul, it has,” he complains as we walk to the corner cafe.

“Hey, it’s honest work. Honest,” I emphasize.

The guy used to give me a good life. Anything I wanted. I can give that life to myself now, and to him. Any guy worth his salt has gotta take care of his folks.

“See, Dad? Good view. We can eat here without you having to lift a finger, not even for the check.”

He looks at me, and I pull something from my pocket. “Speaking of checks.” I hand it over to him, a check for a hundred thousand. “I’m not sure if I’ll be back to visit you until we’re done with the movie. But I’m trying. I’m trying to get time out to spend with you.”

“Why the fuck you’d want to do that?”

As if on cue, people start whispering and pointing at me, and for the next half hour I’m signing autographs on my table. By the time I’m done, my meal is cold. I push it away and tell him, “Let’s get out of here.”

We ride to his apartment in the hotel car that brought me here. The apartment is a place a guy who bags groceries could not afford, but he’s my dad. He wouldn’t let me get him anything near to what we used to live in, but this place was a compromise that both of us were comfortable with. He’s been laying off the booze, drugs, everything that used to make him a miniature Wolf of Wall Street back in Seattle.

“How the mighty have fallen,” he mumbles as he watches me look at his place.

“You weren’t mighty.” I laugh and slap his back. “And you fell. But the point is you stood up. That’s how a man measures himself, right?”

“I’m standing only because of you, otherwise I’d still be in that . . .” His mind drifts off, and I can only wonder what horrors he saw there, in jail.

“Dad, do you remember the girl . . . the one I used to like?”

“Like?” He snorts. “Mild word for what that was.”

“You remember her?”

“The daughter of that fucking DA? Of course I remember.”

“She’s with the group now. Leo wants her in the movie.” I scrape one hand down my face. I don’t expect any advice, but I guess I just had to talk to someone about her. Someone who’d take it seriously. Not Jax or Lex, who find it amusing, or Lionel, who finds it financially wise. Dad finds it serious. He scowls and explodes.

“Stay away from her, Kenna! She broke you once.”

“She didn’t fucking break me,” I scoff.

“The day you came to see me in prison telling me you were no good for her . . . I don’t ever want to see that hurting boy again. Ever. Joneses don’t do that.”

My pride rears up in me with the urge to defend myself, but I got nothing. Because she did break me. I flex my jaw.

“You still like her,” he gasps.

“Purely sexual. I plan to bang her brains out ’til she can’t walk. Hell, you can’t blame me for that!”

He looks at me like he can see right through me, and with the worst expression possible in his eyes.

Pity.

“I’m sorry, son. I know you lost her because of me.”

“Never lost her. Never had her to lose her, really.” I shrug and stare outside, my mind in the past.

Is this a promise ring?

What are you promising me?

Me.

Fuck, we were so stupid.

What did I think I was promising her? My dad was being tried for dozens of counts of drug trafficking. I had nothing to give her but that ring and a promise she ended up flinging back in my face.

I swing around then. “But that’s over. We’re making changes, you and I. You’re becoming a better man. Let the good things in, right?”

With a dreary sigh, he drops down on a couch and signals to his surroundings. “Don’t know, son. Not sure this life of honesty is for me. It’s so fucking boring.”

“Dad, you be honorable. Let the good in. All right? I’m fucking proud of you, Dad, I really am.” I go slap his back, and he snorts and continues scowling like I’m asking him to shovel shit for the rest of his life.

“I’ll tell you what,” he then says, pointing at me. “I will let the good in, embrace this life of honor . . . if you work her out of your system, then forget you ever laid eyes on her. You want me to stay clear of dealing? Then you stay clear of toxic girls like her. No fucking DA’s daughter bitch is gonna break my son’s heart twice. No such thing as love, remember that. The only love I’ve ever known . . .” He trails off as he looks straight at me. “. . . was my son’s love.” His eyes go red, and, like a pansy, I can’t take it.

“Be good, Dad. I’ll try to visit when the tour’s over. I’m working on Leo to get some time off. We can hang.”

“No such thing as love—remember that! At least, no such thing as a woman’s love.”

I stand by the door, battling with myself. Battling with the memory of a girl, and an angry woman who wants me inside her like she needs to breathe—even if she hates her body for wanting me.

No such thing as love . . .

“I’m a rockstar, Dad,” I say, the words bitter in my mouth. “Clearly, I sing about that shit because I believe in it. I just don’t believe in it for me.”

Outside, though, I’m morose as shit as I pull my cap over my face, slide on my aviators, and slip into the back of the waiting car.

I drum my fingers on my thigh and stare out at the windows of all the buildings outside.

I used to climb to her bedroom window. It’s not as simple as it looks in the movies, but I managed. One particular night, I’d wound through the thorny, spiky bush, up the damn trellis, onto the window ledge, then up to her window—which had the tiniest fucking ledge in the history of ledges—hanging by one arm and knocking until she opened. Then I swept inside, both of us plucking the thorns from my T-shirt.