Page 87 of Every Shattered Note
And now I’m going to ruin her life.
“I’m here,” I say, voice dry and scratchy.“Talk to me, Edgar.What’s going on?”
Eddie exhales on the other end—a long, guttural sound that makes the back of my neck tense.
“This is bad.Fucking bad.Worse than anything you can imagine.”
“Define worse,” I snap, already bracing.
“They’re calling it ‘The Vaughn Files.’”His words come too fast, like he’s trying to outrun the truth.“VH1’s backing it.Someone sold unreleased footage—old studio reels, private sessions, even police file material from ’83.The night at the hotel.”
My body goes still.
Eddie doesn’t stop.
“There’s audio.Victor, talking to the cops.Someone leaked the statements.There’s talk of the coroner being paid off.”
Everything else vanishes.The room, Aly, the sound of the ocean through the cracked window—it all drops away.
Suddenly I’m there again.
The hotel suite.The doors to the balcony are wide open.Chlorine in the air, the reek of cheap vodka still fresh in my memory.My father’s voice shaking as he told me to help him clean it up.I had no idea where the blood came from or what the fuck was happening.He just needed me to fix it.Like it was a spill on a marble floor and not a human life.
And I did.Or tried to.Because I was seventeen and terrified and trying not to drown in a sea I didn’t know how to swim.
“I didn’t do it,” I whisper, the words automatic, instinctual.
“I know, but you were there,” Eddie says, quiet but not accusing.
I press a hand to my forehead.It’s damp.“What are they saying?”
He hesitates.And then: “They’re painting it like you were there when it happened.That you knew.That Victor bought everyone off to save you.That you tried to blame him—when it was the opposite.They’re twisting it all over—again.”
My throat aches like I swallowed sand.“That’s fucking bullshit.”
“I know.But it’s out there.Again.”
Of course it is.It always comes back.We’ve been here before, just with different angles and louder microphones.Some journalist digs up a piece of Victor Vaughn’s past and decides to pin it on me.My face.My name.
Because that’s what sells.This is why I’m always in the headlines.People are morbid and they don’t care if I’m a person.They believe I’m just something to obsess over.
And I’m always the goddamn punchline.
“Those seedy magazines are sniffing.LAPD’s ‘reviewing new evidence.’If this breaks before we get ahead of it—Vaughn Records is done.Artists will walk.Sponsors will drop.This isn’t just your name this time, Dex.It’s everybody’s.We can’t afford for you to disappear again.”
I close my eyes.
Disappear again.
That phrase isn’t lost on either of us.It’s what I do.When things start to spiral, I vanish.I hide in the haze.Old vices.New ones.Whatever it takes to quiet the noise.
“I can’t drag you back from another binge,” Eddie says, softer now.“I need you here.I need you fucking sober.”
Something inside me pulls tight—like a thread stretched too far, ready to snap.My pulse kicks up, heat rising beneath my skin, and I can’t breathe around the pressure building in my ribs.
“Can you do it?”he asks.
Three words, and everything I’ve tried to build since leaving that world threatens to come undone.
