The phone rang and I dove for it. It was Ernie. “Did you really stomp a fucking fog machine to death last night? What’s next? Trashed hotel rooms?”

“Ernie, I can’t find Sloan.” I dropped into a chair and put my palms to my eyelids trying to catch my breath. I told him the whole story. I hadn’t thought to call him, thinking there was nothing he could do, but he offered to track down Kristen and go over there and look.

At least I felt like something was happening. I didn’t even know if Sloan was texting me or leaving me voicemails because I didn’t have my cell.

I was afraid to move in case someone got a lead on her, so instead I paced like a caged animal, dialing her number, hoping one of the calls wouldn’t go straight to voicemail.

I was pulsing with anxiety. It was almost unbearable. I had a deep, gnawing claustrophobia about the walls around me.

She had no house, no job. She could disappear into the world without a trace, and I wouldn’t know where to find her.

Two hours later and nothing.

I was sitting in the desk chair just waiting when someone pounded on the adjoining door from Jessa’s room.

I got up quickly, hoping it was news. When I opened the door, Jessa looked up at me wide-eyed. “Jason, Lola’s in the bathroom and she won’t come out.”

I stared down at her. “Are you fucking kidding me? Do you think I give two shits about what she’s doing at the moment?” I went to close the door.

She threw herself against the knob. “Jason, I know you’re pissed, but you seriously need to come. Like, it’s bad. Just come on!”

“No.” I pushed again.

She braced herself against the door. “Jason!”

I gave up and let go, throwing out a frustrated hand, and Jessa stumbled into the room.

This was all I needed. I didn’t even have the patience or the energy to process what it meant that Lola was here in the first place. Was she on my tour now? Was this how they were letting me know? Just dumping her in my damn lap to babysit without so much as a fucking phone call?

I couldn’t even care. All I could care about was Sloan. That was all I had in me. “Have somebody else deal with her,” I said, dropping tiredly into a chair. “I can’t fucking do this right now.”

She bounced nervously. “Jason, come on, stop being a dick. That court thing with her manager happened yesterday. She’s totally triggered.”

I rubbed my brow. “What court thing?”

She huffed impatiently. “It was all over the news? He stole all this money from her? Yesterday they ordered him to return it, but it’s already gone. He had like a gambling addiction or something. She’s never going to get it back. She’s all broke and bankrupt and she’s totally fucked. I left for like twenty minutes, and I came back and she was locked in the bathroom. And look.” She darted into her room and returned a second later with a handful of long red hair. “She cut her hair off. Like, all of it.”

I scoffed. “A publicity stunt. What’s new?”

She scowled at me and smacked the hair onto the TV stand. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

I glared up at her. “What’s wrong with me? I don’t know, let’s see, she wrote a fucked-up song about me and then set me up for paparazzi photos, groped me on a red carpet after harassing me for months, and now this shit with Sloan? She’s tried to ruin my life a hundred times over. She can go fuck herself.”

Jessa snorted indignantly. “A song she never once said was about you? And what, you don’t write about real life? I didn’t see you complaining about those red carpet photos when you were trending on Twitter. She made every woman in the universe wanna know what your name was. She was trying to help you.”

I laughed mirthlessly. “So I’m supposed to thank her for grabbing my fucking dick?”

She shook her head at me. “She likes you, Jason. Does she have a fucked-up way of showing it? Yeah, she does. She needs help. She’s relapsed and off her meds, and nobody’s trying to do anything about it but me. The asshole who was supposed to be taking care of her screwed her over and did his best to keep her like this because it made it easier to do it. She’s broke, her label’s two seconds from dropping her, and you kicked her off the tour. She was here to ask you if you’d let her come back. She wouldn’t try to piss you off.”

I clenched my teeth. “If she thinks that she’s coming on this tour after what she fucking did to Sloan before we left—” I growled. “Never.”

“What?” Jessa blinked at me. “She didn’t do anything to Sloan.”

“Bullshit. She smashed her car windows, popped her tires, had people leaving fucked-up voicemails—”

She laughed. It was so out of nowhere it actually surprised me. Little tinkling bells of amusement.

“What?” I asked, irritated.

“Get over yourself. She doesn’t care about your girlfriend. Seriously. It was them.”

I shook my head at her, annoyed. “Who?”

She waved her arms around. “Them. This. This industry. These people. It’s a thing. They run off your girlfriends. Or boyfriends. Whatever.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

She rolled her eyes like I was an idiot. “Why would they want you with Sloan? How does that sell records for them?” She cocked her head. “Once, on her second tour when I was opening for her, Lola was all in love with this backup dancer Matthew? They didn’t like that. They wanted her with someone who would boost her career. Lil Wayne or somebody. First they offered Matthew a better job. He didn’t take it, so then they threatened him. And when that didn’t work? He ended up ‘accidentally’”—she put her fingers in quotes—“getting his knee shattered in a mugging in Moscow. He’ll never dance again. She hasn’t seen him since. It’s what they do. They don’t want their up-and-coming superstars with some nobody they can’t sell. You and Lola?” She leaned forward. “Think about it. Everybody wants to read that story. The free press alone.”