I stared at her. “No.” I shook my head. “They wouldn’t.”

She smirked. “Uh, yeah, they so would. These industry people are shady. You have no idea how gross they are. I’ve been with Lola since the beginning. You don’t even know what I’ve seen them put her through.” She ticked off on her fingers. “Starvation diets at sixteen until she got an eating disorder, they leaked her sex tape to the tabloids, bullied her into plastic surgeries, gave her shitty agents and managers so they could control her. They even had her own assistant calling the photogs on her. And you think they wouldn’t vandalize a car?”

I held Jessa’s serious stare for a long moment.

“I didn’t know about this or I would have told you months ago.” She shook her head at me. “You should know that unless the public suddenly wants you and Sloan together more than they want pictures of you dating celebrities, she’s always going to be a target. You’re worth too much money to them now. Honestly, I’d break up with her. Just saying. No offense to Sloan.”

I stared at her before I looked past her toward her room, where I knew Lola was barricaded in the bathroom.

Was it possible?

Then something occurred to me. It clicked in my brain like a clock striking midnight. Something so painfully obvious I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it right out of the gate.

Lola was crawling with paparazzi. All the fucking time. How would she have vandalized a car in broad daylight without paparazzi catching the whole thing on camera and it ending up all over TMZ?

She was capable of drunken acts of vehicular destruction. No fucking doubt about it. But she wasn’t organized. Lola was impulsive. Careless and reckless. Spoofing dozens of phone numbers to harass Sloan anonymously wasn’t something she’d even know how to pull off, especially in her current condition.

And something else…

That night at my trailer.

I knew my label had been the one to give Lola the gate code. But all this time I’d thought she was in on it. That she’d set me up for those paparazzi photos, or at the very least showed up to harass me. But now I remembered something.

Lola had said I’d asked her to come. That I’d snapped my fingers and she’d come all the way down there. I didn’t think much of it at the time, she was so fucking wasted. But now…

They lied to her.

They sent her.

My mouth went dry.

“My own fucking label,” I whispered.

It wasn’t Lola. It was never Lola.

The whole room started to spin.

It was them all along. My personal life was an agenda. Something to sell—and Sloan didn’t fit into the narrative. I’d put her in danger. I’d put her in danger because I’d made a deal with the fucking devil.

And Lola…

Trapped on this merry-go-round since she was sixteen years old. Exploited and manipulated, nobody to protect her. No Ernie or Zane to watch her back. Sick and no one to help her get better.

She wasn’t the enemy. She wasn’t out to get me. She was a pawn.

Just. Like. Me.

I got up and ran past Jessa to the bathroom in her room. “Lola?” I tried the knob. “Lola, let me in.”

Nothing.

I pounded. “Lola, I need to make sure you’re okay. If you don’t open the door, I’m breaking it down.”

Silence.

I looked over at Jessa. She stood there, chewing on her lip.

“Stand back.” I backed up and slammed my shoulder into the door. It took four hard hits until the lock gave out and the door swung into the bathroom.

My stomach dropped.

Lola sat by the toilet with her knees drawn up to her chin. A bloody pair of scissors lay on the white tile next to her. Her hair was hacked to pieces, all the way down to the scalp. Spots of blood soaked through the white sleeve of her sweatshirt on her left arm. Jessa darted to her friend, and I crouched in front of Lola among half a dozen tiny empty vodka bottles from the minibar scattered around the floor. “Hey,” I said softly.

Her puffy eyes stared straight ahead, and long streaks of black mascara ran down her cheeks and met under her chin.

She let me take her wrist and carefully pull back her sleeve. A slew of thin, inch-long cuts raked up her arm. They were superficial and already scabbing over.

I looked at Jessa. “She’s okay.”

Her eyes were wide. “Jason, I can’t do blood.”

“All right. I’ll take care of it. You get her a coffee and a water bottle.”

She nodded and disappeared.

I turned back to Lola. “I’m going to clean this up, okay?” I said gently. “Let’s get this off you.”

Her green unfocused eyes settled on me, like she was just realizing I was there.

She let me remove her hoodie like a tired child being undressed for bed. She wore a tank top underneath, and I took off my flannel and draped it over her shoulders. Then I took a warm washcloth and dabbed at her wounds while she sat there, dazed.

She wouldn’t answer my questions, so I worked in silence. It was a couple of minutes before she said anything to me. “I have nothing,” she said quietly.

My hand stilled and I looked up at her. She stared out blankly into the room. “I have nothing to show for anything. I don’t even have a place to live.”

Fuck. So it was as bad as Jessa said.