The moment she heard her phone swoosh, informing her that the text had been sent and there was no going back, she swiped a shot of tequila from a passing waiter and drained it in hopes it might help dim some of the panic.
In less than a minute she’d committed two regrettable acts she might never live down. Though while her last experience with tequila hadn’t ended so well, Layla was older now. Wiser. Besides, she could pretty much guarantee she wouldn’t be kissing Tommy Phillips ever again.
She turned toward the stage, where Ira was preparing to take the mic, and where just off to the side, Mateo—her Mateo—was kissing Heather Rollins.
Wait—what?
Layla squinted. Blinked. And yet, the view remained stubbornly the same.
Ira was speaking now, but Layla couldn’t make out the words. It was as though everything around her had paused, while Mateo and Heather continued mauling each other in the most gruesome display of PDA she’d ever been forced to witness.
When Heather finally came up for air, Layla couldn’t help but notice the small smile that spread across her face as Heather’s gaze veered directly to hers.
A moment later, Mateo looked too, but Layla couldn’t bear to meet it.
She pressed a palm to her belly, sure she was about to be sick, and glanced around frantically, searching for an exit. But the wall of people made it impossible to escape.
Somewhere behind her, Ira made a joke, and the crowd surged with the usual obligatory laugh, as Layla fought to squeeze free, desperate to make her way to one of the fifty bathrooms so she could lock herself inside and try to make sense of the horrifying sight she’d witnessed.
She’d just found an opening and was about to make a run for it, when someone grabbed hold of her and Layla turned to find Heather’s fingers circling her wrist.
“I have an exclusive for you!” she sang, in her usual giddy, breathless way. “If you’re still blogging, that is. I noticed you haven’t been writing much lately.”
Layla glanced blindly between Heather and Mateo, wondering if she looked as confused, injured, and dazed as she felt. But Heather continued yammering, seemingly oblivious to Layla’s fragile emotional state.
“He has an ad debuting tomorrow,” she stage-whispered. “But if you write it tonight, you’ll still get the jump on everyone else. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Somewhere in the distance, Ira was pushing his tequila. She should be there, standing alongside the rest of the Unrivaled marketing team and supporting him from the sidelines. Wasn’t it her job to check his shirt for lint and laugh the loudest at all his jokes? Maybe. Probably. Undoubtedly. And yet, somehow she couldn’t convince her brain to make her legs move. The sight of Heather and Mateo together had rendered her speechless, useless. It was too much to process.
Heather was grinning, her hands waving about in a dramatic display. “Meet America’s next top model!” She gestured toward Mateo as though he was a shiny new car some lucky person was destined to win. “Obviously, you’ve already met, but I thought you should be the first to know that Mateo is about to become the newest teen heartthrob!”
Layla swallowed past the lump in her throat and turned toward Mateo. The simple act of meeting his gaze was unbearably hard and depleted her strength, but she forced the words anyway. “Congratulations. That’s uh . . . that’s great.” Her voice rang as hollow and wooden as she currently felt.
Last she’d checked, Mateo despised Heather, abhorred Hollywood parties, and had accused her of being changed for the worse thanks to her involvement in such a phony, shallow world. And now, here he was, wearing designer jeans, an expensive T-shirt, and some stupid fucking fedora it was too hot to wear.
Without a word, she turned on her heel.
“Layla . . . ,” Mateo called after her, but Layla ignored him and raced blindly away.
TWENTY-FOUR
DRINK YOU AWAY
Tommy had been dumb enough to invite Tiki to the party, and he was already regretting it. He barely knew her, and he certainly didn’t think of her as a girlfriend or even a potential girlfriend. Truth was, he wasn’t even sure why he’d done it, other than he’d been scrambling for something to say to fill the awkward silence when five minutes into breakfast he’d discovered they had virtually nothing in common and so he’d blurted the only thing he could th
ink of—he invited her to his debut and she’d been quick to accept. He would’ve been better off making the usual halfhearted promise to call, but Tommy had never been any good at that either.
Malina had ordered him a limo, and for the entire ride there, he watched Tiki take selfies as she posed provocatively across the long bench seats, while Tommy mentally rehearsed the playlist. It was only a handful of songs, but the gig was more important than most. He’d be singing for A-listers, tastemakers, influencers with unlimited reach—the kind of celebrities and Hollywood players who had the power to make him if they liked what they saw.
The fact that he had Layla to thank for the gig left him uneasy. When Malina had informed him of her meeting with Layla, Tommy had groaned and figured he was doomed. Malina had raised a brow, but Tommy refused to explain.
“You’re in no position to be making enemies,” she’d told him.
To which Tommy replied, “Then you’ve definitely got the wrong guy. Thanks to the Madison mess, I have way more haters than fans.”
“It’s handled,” Malina had assured him, before going on to inform him of her decision to keep his identity under wraps. Which was how he came to be billed as “Special Surprise Performing Artist.”
Tommy thought for sure the idea would backfire. That sort of contrived vagueness only worked for real artists like Bono or Springsteen or some other Rock & Roll Hall of Famer who people would actually get excited about. Using it for some young, dumb unknown was bound to disappoint.