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“I just figured someone snooped in your past to find out,” Piper said.
“I don’t know how they could have. No one knew about us. All the pictures from that time are in a photo album in my room. It wasn’t common knowledge. It had to be someone who knew.”
“But none of us told,” Piper said.
And then a dawning realization hit me at the same time a pit formed in my stomach.
“Someone else had to know, right?” Eve asked.
“No,” I siad quickly. Then I paused. “Wait,” I whispered. “Oh no.”
“What?” Annie asked.
I’d been so terrified by what had happened to me with the press in LA that I hadn’t really considered how they’d found out about our relationship. The Campbell Soup girls had dug into my past after they found out we’d had a relationship as teens. They hadn’t done that before because no one else had known.
But one other person did know. Because I’d told him.
“Nate King.”
38
Campbell
Blaire left.
The city.
The state.
Me.
And all I wanted was to get her back.
She’d told me to stay in LA. I had to be in the studio anyway for the rest of the week. I had obligations. But how the hell did they expect me to play the love songs I’d been working on the last couple months? The ones that were about her beautiful face and kissing her perfect lips and wanting nothing but to bind my life to her?
So, I said fuck it to the love songs.
I refused to work on them in the studio. And I wrote as if in a fever dream, of all my pain and heartbreak over her leaving. I wrote five songs in a matter of days. Delirious and desperate, I handed the lyrics off to the band, and we did nothing but burn through the pain. All day, every day, rehearsing the songs that I could already feel would shape the second half of the album.
I had no idea how I’d ever record those love songs again. But it was a problem for another day. Another Campbell.
“Hey, man,” Santi said, clapping me on the back. “Get your shit. We’re going out.”
“I’m not going out anywhere. I have a few more songs in me.”
“No,” Viv said with a shake of her head. “We’re going to go get drunk.”
Yorke nodded. “You need it.”
Even West agreed. “Come on. Getting out of here will help.”
Before I could protest, Viv and Santi looped their arms with mine and tugged me out of the studio and into an awaiting limo. They’d planned this ahead of time. Maybe they were tired of working on my heartbreak songs.
When we arrived at the club, Viv secured a booth for the lot of us, and we sank down into the plush leather seats. She dropped a shot of Patrón in front of my face.
“Drink up, love,” she said.
I didn’t argue. I tossed the shot back and called for another from our bartender. The scantily clad girl hurried over and poured me a second shot. Her eyes were wide as she watched me down it. I called for another. She hadn’t even left.
“Should I leave you the whole bottle, sugar?” she asked with a laugh.
“Whoa,” Viv said with alarm. “Slow down. Have a beer or something.” She snatched my third shot and passed it to Santi. “We want you to be drunk. Not obliterated.”
I glanced up at the bartender. Now that I was here, I didn’t want to think or feel anything. “I want to get obliterated.”
She giggled and poured me another shot. I drank it before Viv could steal it.
Weston leaned back in his seat and observed the scene. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“It’s not a bad idea,” I assured him. I gestured to West. “Pour one for my friend here.”
He held his hand up. “No thanks. I’ll just have a beer.”
“Good for you,” Yorke said with a nod of approval.
Santi crashed into the seat next to him. “No shots, hombre?”
West shrugged. “I try not to overdo it. When addictive personalities run in your family, it’s for the best. Trust me on that.”
“Well, forget it then,” I said. “More for me.”
But just because West wasn’t taking shots didn’t mean I wasn’t. He’d come for moral support. I’d come to forget that the girl of my dreams had walked away.
I’d been so fucking stupid. I’d followed her on social media. I’d known she never had the baby. All this time, I’d thought that she’d had an abortion. It had made sense in my mind. No baby equaled only one thing. But to hear it from her, it was clear that I’d been wrong. So fucking wrong. And she’d had to relive that on a red carpet with a microphone in her face after a week of other anxiety-inducing shit.
Worse yet, she’d called to talk to me about it. And I’d been so deep in my new LA life, working around the clock and drinking when I wasn’t, that I didn’t even remember her phone call. What a worthless piece of shit I’d been.
