Owning Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy 3)

“You do,” she snapped. “If you want to become a real star, you need to make it big over here. The music industry is six times bigger here than it is back home. You either break out in America, or you’re just going to wind up some flash in the pan that burned out before he even got started. I can see it already: you, drunk in some pub in Essex telling everyone about how famous you used to be. How great you almost were.”

I heaved a sigh, rolling my eyes as I pushed myself up from the edge of the bed. For a brief moment I tottered there, wondering if I’d actually lose my balance as the champagne hit me full-on.

Tessa wasn’t wrong about me—or my situation—not entirely. Sure, I’d made it big in the UK. Yes, I had some truly rabid fans here in the states… But it wasn’t enough. If you didn’t make it big in America, you were destined for obscurity. I worked too hard to claw my way up from nothing to let it all go to waste.

Yet some part of me just felt… tired.

Tired of having to climb up on stage and start from scratch. I didn’t like being Tessa’s dancing monkey. If she wasn’t so damn good at her job, I would have fired her a long time ago. She was the only one who’d managed to get me booked for anything more than a open mic night here in the States, and that meant she deserved a little latitude… Besides… I was under contract.

“Fine,” I said as I re-established my balance, holding the sheets over my waist to afford myself some privacy as I fought to get dressed. “I fucked up. There, I said it. Let’s just move on, okay? Let’s just go home.”

“Maybe there I can get you a show you’ll actually show up for,” she said, “and do some damage control on this circus you’ve brought down on our heads.”

I rolled my eyes skyward and pulled on my pants. I wasn’t a fan of going commando, but I’d be damned if I was going to walk bare-assed across the room in front of my battle axe of a manager. “Christ, Tessa, you’re so dramatic. It can’t be all that bad.”

“It’s not front page news,” she admitted, “but it made the paper. Your fans—the few you have over here—aren’t pleased with you one bit.”

I grinned at her. “Bet at least one of them is.”

Tessa shook her head, wiping the lipstick stain from her coffee cup. “You’re a pig, Julian,” she said, a note of exhaustion creeping into her tone. “That kind of thing might work with girls who don’t know any better, but it doesn’t work with me.” Her sharp gaze caught my own. She had this uncanny way of making a man feel two inches tall. “I know you better than you think, and the fact of the matter is that lately, I don’t like what I see. I don’t know what’s going on with you, and at this stage, I’m not sure I care to. You need to grow up, Jules. Bottom line.” After another sip from her cup, she sighed and looked away from me. “Just get dressed and we’ll head to the airport.”

I didn’t like hearing how disappointed she was. It made me think of my nan. She was a beast of a German woman with hard eyes, but I knew she had a soft heart underneath all that scowling. Sometimes it seemed like yelling was her natural state of being, so it was never her anger that stopped me from being a twat. It was when she’d get quiet and shake her head and say she’d expected better from me. That always took the wind right out of my sails.

I was a performer, through and through. The notion of not living up to the hype, of falling short of other people’s expectations… that was enough to cripple me. It made me wonder if maybe that’s why my fling from last night had run out on me.

Tessa was right. I needed to do something to get back on my feet. I just wished she wasn’t such a stone cold bitch about it.

It took me just another minute to get the rest of my clothes on, though for the life of me I could never properly manage shoelaces whenever I was drunk. Before long the two of us were on our way down to the lobby. All I wanted was another drink, but for the moment, I’d have to settle for shitty coffee.

“So what happened to this one?” Tessa said as we made our way down the hall to the lifts. She chuckled as she hit the call button. “Did you scare her off? Usually I have to pry them off the chandelier after you’ve had your fun with them.”

The car arrived almost immediately, doors parting with an insufferable chime. We stepped on board and she hit the button for the lobby. I didn’t answer her until the doors were closed again.

“If you can believe it, I don’t know,” I said haltingly, wondering if I was opening myself up to even more humiliation by confiding in someone with all the maternal instincts of an angry crocodile. “She was gone before I woke up.”

Tessa glanced at me out of her periphery. For a moment, an expression flitted across her face that was close to empathy. The piercing nature of her gaze grew just a bit softer. “Probably for the best, really,” she quietly said. “Besides, you’ve got one of those ‘one and done’ rules from what I understand.”

“What’s so wrong with that?” I asked as we reached our floor. We stepped out in tandem. As much as Tessa grated on my nerves, I had to admit that in our time together, we had developed a certain synchronicity—an involuntary rhythm.

“Well,” she said as we hurried through the doors and approached the town car waiting at the curb to take us to the airport, “I’m just thinking that maybe it’d be good for your image to settle things down a bit. Show the world that you’re not just some lush looking to deflower every piece of ass you come across.”

I snorted at the very thought. “That’s ridiculous. Who wants to see the rock star with a stable love life? It’s sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, not flowers and cards and acoustic guitar.”

Tessa sighed and shook her head as we got into the car. She never cared for how I behaved, even though people seemed to like seeing me on the cover of every tabloid. Tessa only looked the other way when my scandal-of-the-day actually boosted my “ratings.” It was all about the numbers to her, never about the music or the lifestyle. That was the whole reason I even got started on this path. I wanted the fame and the recognition and the fucking fun. The money was just a bonus.

For Tessa, the money was absolutely everything. That was why we would never truly get along.

“You’ve got to think about your image, Julian,” she said—just like she’d said a thousand times before. “Maybe think about getting a girlfriend, someone who’s famous or something. Hell, you don’t even have to like her. Just let the paparazzi snap a few photos and then break it off. It’s things like that that generate interest in you, not having a tumble with some anonymous tramp.”

“Do you realize you’re the reason this world is awful?” I asked, lifting my brows. “That little scheme of yours is precisely why people hate hearing about celebrities. It’s all fake. It’s trash. At least when I sleep around, I’m bloody honest about who I am. I’m not manufacturing drama by pretending to be something I’m not.” I looked out the window and muttered, “Bloody hell. Isn’t there anyone who gives a shit about authenticity anymore?”

From the corner of my eye, I watched Tessa give a dismissive wave of her hand. “Have it your way, Julian. But when you start to realize that no one’s interested in a rock star with no scandal to their name, you’ll start to see things my way.”

“I thought the problem was that I was already causing too much scandal?” I said, watching the buildings go by. The neon glow of the previous night had drained out of all the signs. It was rather depressing to see, really—that the glitz and the glamour of this town was just as fake as Tessa was suggesting I should be.

“No, the problem is you’re not embroiled in the right kind of scandal,” she replied, shaking the contents of her coffee cup to stir them. “After a while, a different girl every night is boring and predictable. People want drama—they don’t want to hear the same tired story about you chasing skirts forever. You’ve got to give them something more substantial.” She took a long drink, then added, “You’ve got to give them a broken heart.”

I sniffed at that, shaking my head. Of course that was what they wanted. They

always had. Everyone who got up on stage was just a broken heart bleeding for their approval. But no, the fans needed to make it complicated. Somewhere along the line, this business had become less about the music and more about the misery. I wasn’t sure when it happened, exactly. But sometimes it felt like things had changed right when I’d come along.

I closed my eyes, leaning my forehead against the glass. The champagne buzz was wearing off, and everything was starting to hurt again. The cool pressure provided a very small comfort.

“I guess you’re right,” I muttered. “We are in the business of giving the people what they want.”

Tessa seemed both surprised and satisfied by this. “I know you’ve got ideals, Jules. But trust me—things will turn around if you take my advice. You’ll be seeing things my way.”

Doubtful, that, I thought to myself, but I refrained from saying it out loud. I knew when to pick my battles.

And if I was being honest… I had the sneaking suspicion that Tessa was right. I would never amount to anything unless I ruined someone’s life for people’s fucking entertainment. Even if that life was my own…

Maybe you were smarter than I gave you credit for, I inwardly said to the girl who’d left my side before I had the chance to learn her name. You got out of my way before I had the chance to hurt you… Good for you, love. Good for you.

I only wished that, like her, I had the freedom to steal out of my life and never look back.

Elizabeth

Six weeks later…

Jesus Christ, what the hell did I eat? I asked myself as I sat curled around my toilet wracked with unrelenting nausea. I couldn’t hold anything down! I’d never felt so sick in my entire life, not even when I’d gotten that stomach virus a few years back.

I absolutely hated calling out of work. It wasn’t something that happened often, if ever, but it still made me feel like such an unreliable asshole that I had, at first, tried to tough it out and get dressed. I had prided myself on my attendance and dedication to being the hardest working person there—even if the pay was just barely enough to keep my head above water. With my student loans constantly looming over my head, I knew that I had to put in every single second of my free time into work, otherwise I might just start to realize how awful my life was.

Though I’d managed to mostly get ready to go, I was lucky I’d never made it to the car. If I had, I would have ended up blowing chunks all over my dashboard, all over my nice clothes, and probably getting into a wreck on top of everything else. The last thing I needed was another bill, or for my insurance rates to go up. Ugh, how depressing—I couldn’t even think of my own health or safety without putting money first.