Save Me (Disciples Motorcycle Club Romance)
Copyright © 2014 ABIGAIL STONE
[email protected]
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. All characters are a product of the authors imagination.
This book is dedicated to Adam, for the night in the firebird, the day on the beach, and the evening in jail—keep living the life, baby!
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Present
"Celebrities don't do crack,” she said, her heart shaped lips pursued into a familiar sarcastic grin.
"We do cocaine."
Her words were simple enough but they carried a familiar bite. One her therapist – the acclaimed Starlet whisperer Dr. Laura Sterling – was used to.
Wittiness had never been Layla Carter's strong point. But when you've acted in dozens of films, all before the age of 20 – you get kind of used to playing a character. This one? Well, it was one Dr. Sterling knew well. Jaded child star with a superiority complex and a coke addiction. She visited with dozens of patients every day and Layla was afflicted by the same demons they were. Lack of a childhood, daddy issues, mental illness. It was all there. Dr. Sterling watched from her spot behind her desk as the young woman rummaged through the black leather purse in her lap. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes, shaking one out.
"You can't smoke in here," Dr. Sterling interrupted, pointing to a sign that said just that near the door. They were on the fourth floor – the psychiatric ward – of the St. Vincent Medical Center. Layla’s bright pink lipstick, blood shot eyes and bottle dyed red hair were off putting against the off white scenery. She was better than this and she knew it, but that didn’t mean she wanted to change.
"You're a real bitch, lady," Layla sneered, her words sharp as they tumbled from her lip gloss stained lips. She rolled her big brown eyes. She believed authority was below her. The end of the cancer stick found its way between her lips and she stared at Dr. Sterling, daring her to object. When she didn’t, Layla lit it with a bright pink lighter. It said something on it but it was chipped and unreadable.
Layla with her doe eyes and flawless skin was a sharp contrast to Dr. Sterling. Her meek and weathered appearance was an oddity for a thirty-three year old woman in Los Angeles. It was only a hop and a skip away from Silicon Valley, a place where plastic surgery was more of a common decency than a choice. Sometime in her late twenties, Dr. Sterling had let herself go. Fine lines now covered her forehead – tiny graphs that led down to the crow’s feet she sported on the corner of each eye. Layla scoffed at her. It was obvious that the woman in front of her had been a natural beauty once. But it was true what everyone said about Los Angeles. It could age you if you let it.
Dr. Sterling reached down, picking up a small metal trash can and setting it on her heavy oak desk. Before Layla could protest, she snatched the half lit cigarette from between the Starlet’s manicured fingers, tossing it inside. Layla shot her a piercing glare, her plucked eyebrows raised in surprise. It had been years since anyone had challenged her like that, but Dr. Sterling remained unfettered. Layla’s contempt was all too familiar to her, as was her appearance. The crumbling young woman wasn’t any different than her peers. At least not within the confides of the hospital.
Despite her setting, Layla was dressed to the nines. It was the kind of attire most women would wear to a club on a Saturday night, not to meet with their Therapists. Layla’s soft, toned skin was more exposed than not. From beneath the rise of her bright pink crop top, Dr. Sterling could see a belly ring dangling from her abdomen. It glimmered in the sunlight, which poured through cracks in the blinds that hung in the large window behind them. Everything she was wearing was designer but like most has beens, none of it had been purchased within the last few years. She was pretty, there was no denying that, but it was in a dated way. She was rich, but just barely.
The word ‘bitch’ left Layla’s full lips a second time and Dr. Sterling shrugged. There were worse things a woman could be called. That’s what she told herself anyway.
“So I’ve heard,” she heard herself say, her voice dry and sarcastic. She tapped her ballpoint pen against the evaluation sheet in front of her. On top, Layla’s name was written in delicate cursive. Dr. Sterling recognized it as her boss’s handwriting.
“We’re over crowded here enough as it is,” Erica, Dr. Sterling’s boss had told her just a few hours before. She was a robust African American woman in her fifties, with kind eyes that contradicted her domineering personality, “Look, she's still rich. She's still famous.”
“There are plenty of people who need to be here more than she does.”
Dr. Sterling disagreed. If there was anyone in Los Angeles in dire need of psychiatric care, it was Layla Carter. But Erica was insistent and Dr. Sterling wasn’t in any place to object. In only three shorts weeks, she’d be evaluated by the Southern California Medical Counsel for a prestigious job as a therapist in a new, private facility just outside of town. Her rate of pay would triple if she landed the position.
"I'm not telling you what to do Laura,” Erica finished, “but tread lightly. We don't need any more bad press."
There it was. The reality both Dr. Sterling and Erica knew to be true. She had emphasized the word more for a reason. Three weeks ago, the facility had admitted one of Hollywood’s biggest actresses on a 5150 hold for driving the wrong way onto Interstate 5. When Highway Patrol finally got her to pull over, she was under the influence of so many substances, she couldn’t speak.
“It’s a miracle she didn’t kill anyone,” Erica had said. “Hell, she could have killed herself.”
Of course, she was famous and what that meant was that the backlash – if any – was weighed heavily in Starlet's favor. The media painted her as a victim and the hospital received a cease and desist order within twenty four hours of the actress being admitted by state troopers. Two, actually. One from her agent and one from her production company. She was in the middle of filming a major summer blockbuster and the hospital was threatened with a heavy lawsuit if she was not released immediately.
Needless to say, they cooperated. The actress was released against Dr. Sterling’s better judgment the next morning with a prescription for lamotrigine – a mood stabilizer – and a firm order to attend therapy every Tuesday.
She wouldn’t. They never did. But that didn’t stop Dr. Sterling from insisting.
Erica shot Dr. Sterling a look before she left her office, one that solidified what she already knew. She was to keep the situation from happening again with Layla Carter.
The decision wouldn’t be an easy one. In all Dr. Sterling’s years of diagnosing and treating mood and personality disorders in celebrities, she couldn’t remember a single patient who had needed treatment as much as Layla did. In fact, she was begging for it. Two days ago, on a coke and heroin fueled binge, she had attempted to light her mother’s Mercedes on fire in her driveway. When asked why she had done it, her response was simply – “because I felt like it”.
It was the final nail in the coffin. Police officers admitted Layla into the hospital on a foggy Tuesday morning. She kicked and screamed, insisting that she “wasn’t crazy” but actions always spoke louder than words. Now, she sat across from Dr. Sterling with a bored expression etched across her delicate features. Her slender arms were crossed over her chest in protest of her confinement, but there was a glimmer in her eye. One that held a certain knowledge, making it clear to Dr. Sterling that Layla was aware of the fact that she’d be a free woman in just a few short minutes.
Dr. Sterling sighed. There was no use prolonging the inevitable.
“You are free to leave, Layla,” she said, capping her pen and cl
ipping it onto her breast pocket, “although I’m sure you already were aware of that.”
Layla’s laugh was cruel and intoxicating, the most deadly of combinations. She chuckled as though Dr. Sterling had just told the funniest of jokes, gathering her belongings. She sauntered towards the door, her hips swinging to the rhythm of a nonexistent song as her heels ‘click, click, clicked’ against the tile floor. This entire place was below her. It was evident in the way she moved – her head held high, shoulders back, heel before toe. It was the walk of a model minus the runway but it was all a façade.
The only thing Layla cared about was the tiny dime bag of coke waiting for her. It was tucked away in her mother’s bathroom cabinet, hidden amongst pill bottles and high priced cosmetics. She kept it stuffed in an empty bottle of vitamins.
Maybe I’ll apologize to her. Layla tossed around the idea in her head, trying it on for size. It seemed fair until she began to picture her mother in all her vanity, perched in a lawn chair beside her in-ground pool, tanning oil casting a glimmer against her scantily dressed body. Everything she had, she owed to Layla. The expensive cars, the timeless beauty that only plastic surgery could guarantee, the designer clothing that had been hand selected for her in Paris and Milan. The homes, the vacations and most notably – the star status that came along with being the parent of a celebrity. Emily Carter had hitched onto her daughter’s money-train and she showed no signs of ever letting go.
If anyone deserves an apology, Layla decided, it’s me.
She could feel Dr. Sterling’s tired blue eyes burning holes into the back of her head but she didn’t grace the woman with a reaction.
“We expect to see you back here every Tuesday at 2 PM for therapy.”
Each word carried its own source of amusement for Layla. Dr. Sterling was grasping at the only strings she had left to pull but Layla had no intention of ever seeing her again.
“Celebrities don’t go to therapy,” she said over her shoulder, “they go shopping.”
REBIRTH
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Past
There’s a saying.
If you want to find drugs in Los Angeles, open your front door. Nine times out of ten, they’ll come to you. It was a fact Layla had come to know quite well. One that rang even more true for celebrities. In Layla’s sixteen years in the industry, she had never been to a social gathering, wrap party or gala that didn’t provide its guests, the most elite of the elite, with at least one drug of choice. For perspective – at twelve, Layla tried cocaine for the first time at the launch event for a children’s sitcom. "Just stick your finger in it and sniff," one of her older costars – an attractive boy who would go on to steal the hearts of teenage girls all across America – instructed her. Layla did as she was told by those with more experience than her, never asking any questions.
It brought the prepubescent young girl to life. It made her feel good and alive and attentive, emotions she had seldom experienced in her upbringing. Cocaine was what got her through twelve hour days being carted by her mother or agent from one movie or television set to the next. Hours no seventh grader should have been working. But this was long before the days of strict child labor laws. Anything went, and before long, that was exactly how Layla would come to view drugs.
Cocaine may have been her first love, but heroin was the high school crush she stared longingly at from her locker and never could quite get over. There was something so forbidden about it. It was so off limits that Layla couldn’t resist the magnetism she felt towards it every time it happened to be in a room she was in. The first time she ever tried it, opting to smoke it instead of injecting, she felt as though she was living in a dream. It made her forget about the monotonous cycle that had become her life, something cocaine could only ever gloss over. It was dangerous, but that was exactly what had attracted her to it. Her friends nicknamed it the devils drug. It offered a certain euphoria – an instant buzz that other drugs just couldn’t quite mimic.
By fourteen, Layla was a full blown addict. She was high every waking moment and it started to show in her work. Tabloids began to refer to her as a child star gone bad, the baby faced “bad girl” of Hollywood, and the parents of America took notice. No longer did they want their innocent, unsuspecting children watching TV shows or movies Layla starred in. The fear was a noble one. They didn’t want their offspring ending up like her, a drug addicted teen whose star status was disintegrating. Layla's name had lost its sparkle and her starring roles were revoked without notice, replaced by fifteen minute guest spots on crime solving detective shows. Until eventually, those offers stopped rolling in altogether too.
Layla’s mother did everything in her power to get her daughter better, but it was never for the right reasons.
“Do you want to become a wash up?” Emily would ask Layla, watching her wither and sweat in pain as she’d hole her up in an expensive hotel room, guarding the door until the detox had passed. Sometimes it would only take twenty-four hours. Sometimes days. But the goal was always clear.
“Get better so you can start making money again.”
To Emily, her daughter was a commodity. A good. Something to be bought and traded. She never empathized with Layla the way most mothers would. She never dug deeper, to the roots of her daughter’s addiction and as far as Layla was concerned, the reason why was simple.
She didn’t care.
Layla was seven when her mother began carting her to auditions. She knew enough about the industry and know that there was a spot in it for her daughter, a cherub faced blonde with freckles, dimples and a cuteness factor akin to Shirley Temples.
“You’re going to be a star,” she told Layla as she’d apply her make-up, tying big bows into her hair to secure the look. Emily was anything if not business minded. She knew what she had to do to sell the image of her daughter and it worked.
Layla starred in her very first commercial just a few weeks before her eighth birthday and had landed a leading role in a sitcom – as the daughter of two friends who made a pact to have a child together if they were still single at forty – by age nine. No one ever told her that she was moving too fast, or to enjoy her childhood while she still could. As far as Layla was concerned, she was a full blown adult by puberty. She didn’t even go to school anymore, at least not in the way that other children her age did. Layla’s education had fizzled down to a tutor named Judy who would come and visit her three times a week on whatever set she was working on. They would go over things like spelling, multiplication and history. It was all watered down to its most basic form, but it didn’t matter. Layla was told that she didn’t need “book smarts” to succeed in her career of choice. The problem was, it had never been her choice. It wasn’t that she disliked acting or was even particularly bad at it. Layla had potential but the problem was, it had never been her dream.
It was her mothers.
In her youth, Emily Carter had tried and failed to become an actress. Unlike her daughter, it had been her passion. She studied every aspect of the industry, wanting to perfect the craft in every way possible. The irony was that Emily didn’t seem to have the natural talent that it took to succeed in such a cut throat world. She lacked the certain sparkle that would go on to launch her daughter’s career.
“Work on your smile,” one agent told her.
“Maybe consider a different hair color?” was the advice another had to give.
But most just flat out said no. They offered Emily no pointers on how she could improve her craft and as tough of a pill as it was for her to swallow, she gave up. She resorted instead to focusing on her daughters career. But time and time again, she’d watch some woman with less talent but bigger breasts than her own sky rocket to the top, and she’d drown her sorrows in expensive bottles of chardonnay that she never once was able to buy for herself.
–
Present
As Layla pulled into the driveway of her mother’s large mansion in the hills, her eyes lingered for
just a second too long on the Hollywood sign – a constant reminder of what she had, lost, and then in the most illicit way possible – found again. She was driving a shiny black Range Rover, a gift from the director of one of her adult films. In it, she played a private school vixen punished by her headmaster for having lesbian sex in her dormitory. It would come out in a few weeks and was slated to serve as Layla’s introduction into the world of porn.
She turned off the ignition, stepping out of the vehicle and approaching the front steps of her mother’s home. Emily's Mercedes was nowhere in sight, but Layla wasn’t exactly surprised. She made her way inside the home, punching in the four digit code on the security system. Emily’s dog, a dachshund terrier named Robbie, greeted Layla at the front door. She reached down to pet him, calling out for her mother, but the house was silent and empty. Relief washed over Layla as she began to gather her things. She had left her cellphone on her mother’s coffee table before being admitted to the hospital, and there it sat untouched. She slid it in her purse, making her way into the bathroom. Holding her purse over the sink, she opened the medicine cabinet, stuffing bottle after bottle of pills inside. Robbie barked at her from the kitchen and Layla picked him up, allowing the small dog to lick her nose. She looked out the window, watching as one of the gardeners her mother had hired cleaned out the pool.
Layla and Emily had been having a run of the mill conversation out on her cobblestone patio when the entire ordeal had occurred. The discussion took a turn for the worse when Emily suggested Layla wasn’t making a wise decision by accepting a three million dollar business deal. It wasn’t that she didn’t want her daughter doing porn, either.
“You were once a major actress,” Emily said, “you’re selling yourself short. Three million dollars? That’s an insult.”
Save Me (Disciples MC #1) Page 1
