around him. It wasn’t Salinger who got you kicked off the show. It was the adults on his team who were willing to let him do whatever he wanted because it was easier to control him that way. As long as he made money for the right people, they were willing to ruin anyone who stood in the way of their profit. Did you forget that the reason you ended up in that mess was because you were trying to help him? You cared about what happened to him back then, and I don’t think your heart has changed that much since then. It’s still too soft and squishy if you ask me.”
It was soft and squishy before Salinger Dolan forced me to wrap it in barbed wire to protect it from the realities of trying to make it in show business.
“You’re asking the impossible, Lennon. There’s pretty much nothing I wouldn’t do for you, but not this. I just can’t.” My voice cracked and my fingers trembled slightly when I finally uncurled my fists.
Finally, after a long, drawn-out silence, she dipped her chin down to acknowledge the line I wasn’t willing to cross. Her disappointment was palpable, and the celebration of losing the weight of one man who forever altered my life was replaced with the unease of remembering another, younger man who’d done the same.
“Okay. I’ll put some calls out and see if there’s anything else in the works that might be a good fit. Don’t worry, you know I always have your back.”
I wanted to believe her.
After all, she’d been my ride or die when I had no one else. However, a little voice inside my head warned that when Salinger was involved, it made things—and people—horribly unpredictable. Lennon had never let me down, but this was the first time in our friendship where I felt like she didn’t understand me and was pushing me toward something I really didn’t want to do.
Once again, I wanted to question everything I thought I knew, and it was all because of that stupid kid. I guess I couldn’t think of him that way anymore since he was grown, but regardless, it was still his fault.
Salinger
“HEY, GET UP. You have a video conference in forty-five minutes with a potential investor. It’d be good if you didn’t look like a zombie who partied all night when you talk to him.”
I grunted as a Converse-clad foot kicked my ass through the comforter wrapped around me. I actually looked more like a mummy than a zombie at the moment, but I didn’t think my younger brother would appreciate the joke. His patience, where I was concerned, was paper-thin. Not that I could blame him. He’d always had to act like the older sibling. He’d been taking care of me—instead of the other way around—ever since my dad married his mom when we were teenagers. The marriage had come and gone quicker than a good rain in California, but the bond I built with my once-scrawny, mouthy stepbrother had proven to be unbreakable.
I groaned and rolled away from his swinging foot. “I don’t party at all anymore, let alone past midnight.”
But I didn’t sleep well. Insomnia was an old friend. A holdover from the days I put so much poison in my body; I either slept for a week straight or stayed awake for a ridiculous amount of time until I collapsed. Now that I was clean, my days and nights tended to be reversed, which proved tricky while trying to do business like a normal person. My erratic sleeping patterns did me zero favors when it came to proving I’d honestly gotten my shit together and valued the life and talent I’d been given.
I didn’t only keep Jeno around because he woke me up when needed. I kept him close because he was the one person in my life who consistently held me accountable. He wasn’t scared of me or what I could do to him. He could be a huge jerk and a total badass. He might be younger than me by a handful of years, but he’d mercilessly kicked my ass on more than one occasion when I deserved it. He was the one who dragged me, kicking and screaming, to rehab time and time again and refused to give up on me each time I failed to get clean. At some point when I’d fired or alienated every single person around me, he’d become more than a brother and caregiver.