Rock Star Returns: Carlie's Story (Access All Areas 2)

He was right. I'd never said sorry either. When he was working his hardest to establish himself and get his band off the ground, I kept making it all about me. I’d wanted constant reassurances and attention. I'd been a bitch.

The worst was one night, just after the record label became interested in the band. He'd been invited to a party at a fancy bar, a networking thing. I wore the same old black dress that I wore every time we went out. We could barely cover food and rent, and any leftover money went towards rehearsal studios and band costs. There wasn't a cent left for new clothes.

I'd loved that dress when I lived at home but I grew to hate it. I'd worn it to pieces and had even had to sew up the side seam by hand before we got to the party. I knew every other woman there would be dressed in designer clothes or something cool and edgy. All I had to wear were rags.

"Help yourself to drink

s," one of the suits said when we arrived.

I scanned that bar and it was just as I'd thought. I looked like shit compared to every other person. Not Holden, though. Holden seemed to have things handed to him. Some chick from a fancy hairdresser had offered to do his hair for free, cutting off that straggly, long, country boy hair. He wore a tight t-shirt someone else had given him, with his only pair of jeans. He fitted in. He didn't look like some waif who'd wandered in by accident.

While Holden talked to the suit, I went to the bar. I got a vodka for me and a beer for him. But, when I glanced over at Holden, he had his back to me, engrossed in what the suit was saying. I polished off my vodka and his beer too. I didn't want to go back to the bar too soon, so crept around to the bar on the other side of the room and got another order of drinks.

I went back to give Holden his beer, then got another vodka. The barman gave me a wink and put an extra shot in it.

Since I had nothing better to do, I figured scoring as many free drinks as possible was my mission for the night. By the time Holden finished talking, I could barely stand. If I hadn't had the bar to lean on, I'd have been on the floor.

"Get something to eat," Holden told me.

"I don't need food, I need more vodka," I told him. "Vodka is my friend."

"Keep your voice down," he hissed.

I wanted to yell back at him but he'd walked off.

Fine. I didn't need him nagging at me. I was fine with vodka but then the barman refused to make me another one.

A skanky bitch with her designer bag had her hands all over him. I jumped up and ran over to them. Tried to run. My feet weren't working properly. I kind of tripped and lurched at them, knocking Holden's drink all over him.

"Get your hands off him, bitch."

It got blurry from there on. I remember being helped into a cab and Holden telling me he was going back to the party. At the time, I thought he was getting rid of me to hit on that bitch.

“Fuck him," I remember thinking. I'd go back to that party and tell him exactly what I thought. Except the next thing I knew, I was waking up on the kitchen floor, vomit on my dress, and Holden still not home.

Until now, I'd never really thought any further about why Holden had returned to the bar that night. I never questioned my assumption that he was going back to hit on her. Every time I threw that accusation at him, he denied it but I had it in my head that he'd cheated on me that night. I threw it at him every chance I got.

He’d said he hadn’t mauled that girl at Trouble either and, to be honest, he hadn’t done anything to encourage her. He hadn’t at that party either. It’s just that he’d done nothing to discourage them either.

A pain pierced my heart. Maybe I'd been wrong. There was a possibility that he'd gone back because it'd been an important turning point in his career and he had people he needed to impress. Maybe having a messy drunk girlfriend had been an embarrassment to him. That made the nausea in my belly worse.

Sure, he cheated later. That was facts. But maybe, just maybe, he'd figured if he had the name, he might as well have the game. Not that that excused him screwing around on me but I wondered now if that first night, it'd not been about the skanky blonde after all.

I'd been beside him but I'd never supported him. I'd never even given him space for his music. If he was at the rehearsal studio, I'd drop by to make sure he hadn't lied to me about where he was going. If he went to a party, I'd snarl at any woman who came near him. The drinking, the fights, the bitching. All of it. I must've made it so hard for him.

We'd both been so young. And so stupid. I'd been selfish and so had he.

Those were the truths I’d been hiding from myself. I’d never wanted to acknowledge my own part in the break-up but it bubbled to the surface.

I needed to get away and make sense of this mess in my head. The sight of his eyes brimming over with hurt almost made me stop. I couldn't leave him like this but I couldn't make the commitment to stay with him either.

I could punch him and yell at him as much as I liked but it wasn’t Holden I hated. It was myself.

Chapter 27

"YOU'VE BEEN DOWN THE river with Holden King?" Mum said as I walked in the door. "You look just like you did when you'd sneak down there with him in high school."

God, I thought I'd been so careful back in those days.