After Paradise: Book Two • jb

Chapter 18

did you know how amazing you are? you look so beautiful today! I bet your crush totally checked you out...

...here's an extra update I wrote for you guys. There will obviously be an update on Sunday as well! I just love updating for you all, your comments really encourage me! Thank you!

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"You shouldn't drink that much." Scooter complained yet again as he snatched the whisky bottle out of my hand, leaving me as empty handed as my heart. "You were the one letting her go, you shouldn't feel this awful about it."

"I can't help myself." I mumbled, "She was the one. I was so certain of it."

He raised his eyebrows in confusion. "She lied to you."

Diana had done a lot of things to me. Lied was an understatement. I simply got enough with her bullshit but the minute I saw her leaving my home, I wanted her to return and fight for me. She was too easily gone.

Two begging moments wasn't enough for me. I needed her to plead some more and if I could have one wish, it was for her to understand my heart for her has always been big. Too big, in fact. She had always used it to her advantage so she should know better than to leave me the time I tell her to.

I thought she would have put up a bit more of a fight. Perhaps, maybe even stayed without my permission. It sounds more like the Diana I know.

Instead, she did exactly what I told her and left me alone. By myself. The one thing I didn't want. Nor need.

Before she left, she told me the disease was treatable and that she was getting a treatment right now. That was why Zac had been around. He knew this entire time. He knew there was no baby and therefore he made that comment. She didn't tell him because she didn't trust me, she told him because she thought it was unnecessary for me to know since it was treatable and would disappear.

As long as we didn't have sex, it would be fine.

She was wrong. Nothing was fine.

"Give me that," I snatched the bottle back in an attempt to fill up more than just my glass. I needed something to get my mind off things. Get her out of my head, for once. "Call me a hooker, are you nice."

"Absolutely not." Scooter snorted, "I'm watching you, Justin. I'm not letting you go through another time of depression without someone nearby. I'm not letting your past happen again."

I ignored his words, almost laughed at them. He didn't know. He knew what I had told him but I hadn't told him that much. He didn't know, at all, what I had been through. The things I had said and done throughout my previous years before I left for the paradise. The paradise that became my hell and was now coming back to haunt me.

Turns out, FOX had been having this idea the entire time and apparently it was hidden in the contracts everyone had signed when they flew there. If just one person would have read it, brought in a lawyer, I was too tempted by the idea of seeing Diana that I barely read through mine. Now, mine was a little bit different than the others but it was still in there, I still signed that for me, it was okay that they filmed me for entertainment reality TV.

I was going to become a bigger joke than I already was.

I had asked Scooter to cancel the roast. I wouldn't be able to take it after all of this was being released. I told him I would much rather let my career die so I could grieve something more than just my love life running out on me. If I was going to grieve one thing, why not grieve two. Hell, why not bring in some more misery in my life.