Midnight Blue

  “We never thought it’d be that big of a deal,” Carly finally murmured from her place at the table, still staring hard at her hands. “You always deal with them. We thought it would be just another day at the office for you.”

  Blake was saying something on the other line, and Alex sighed and hung up, dropping his forehead in defeat.

  “Is that okay?” His hand cupped my knee, his thumb brushing over it in lazy circles. I didn’t know if he meant his touching me or staying the night at his parents’ house to make sure the coast was clear and prevent them from seeing my black eye. “Sure.”

  “Harry and Hamish should be at the front door at six a.m. to pick us up. The paparazzi will clear up by then.”

  That made sense.

  Louisa opened her mouth again, about to say something, but Alex shut her up, jerking me upward to stand in front of him.

  “Spare me the excuses, Louisa. This is the last time you fuck me over.”

  Uncomfortably close, intolerably far away.

  That’s how I felt about staying at my parents’ house. Stardust and I would sleep in my old room. I didn’t believe in sentimental shit. Not usually. I was too hardened by life, circumstances, and the very people I shared a roof with. But there was no point pretending it wasn’t a little monumental. To have a girl in my room. A girl whom I’d given a black eye to—by accident, sure, but fuck it, it looked so bad, more so since it was tainting her beautiful, olive skin—a girl who was willing to sleep at a strangers’ house for me, without batting an eyelash.

  When Indie went to take a shower, I was still watching the paparazzi swarming under my window. One raised his head and spotted me, and I flipped him the finger. He immediately raised his camera and took a slew of pictures of me, his mates following suit. I shut the holey, twenty-year-old curtain before they got any good shots. Stardust walked in with a towel wrapped around her body. Her hair was wet, clustered into little snakes, dripping water onto the beige carpet. She wiped her chin with the hem of the towel and stared at me, her bottomless blues not dimmed, even by the black eye I’d given her.

  “Hey, you.” She attempted a smile.

  I hated that she was the perfect combination between sweet and tough, because it made letting her go less easy. And letting her go was not fucking optional. I had Fallon to recollect—to punish her for what she’d done—plus, even if Fallon hadn’t been in the picture, Stardust was simply too good. Once we went back to the real world—where days and the weather and family mattered, the world outside this tour—it’d be very easy for her to walk away. And walk away she would, because I was a fuck-up, an addict, and I’d screwed up everything with her before it even started.

  I’d given her a black eye, for fuck’s sake.

  Instead of answering her with words, I walked over to her—towering over her tininess and liking us even more for it—and shut the door behind her back. She looked up; I looked down. I laced our fingers together; she didn’t resist. I’d fucked Stardust many times, in many places. I’d fucked her hard, and then rough, and then lazily, all while shoving my fingers in places that made her eyes widen. But when the towel fell off and pooled at her feet, her freckled, tan skin and toned body bared in front of me, I didn’t want to destroy her like I had all those times in London.

  My hands on her neck. Gentle.

  She flinched at the memory of how I’d held my dad, but melted when I put my lips to her forehead and backed her to the single bed.

  “We’ll need to spoon, you know.” She grinned, catching my lower lip between her fat, juicy ones and sucking. “Bed’s too small.”

  “I don’t do spooning. We’ll be forking instead.”

  “What’s forking?” Her hoarse giggle poured into my mouth, skating right into my dick, making it salute between her thighs.

  “It’s porking, but with an F that stands for fuc—”

  “Crude alert!” She shut me up with a kiss that was far dirtier than my words.

  We tumbled into the bed, and I let her strip me, slowly, the way she’d always wanted to strip me a minute before I kicked my shoes and tore my clothes so I could drive into her like a sledgehammer. She lay down on my childhood bed, and I hovered over her. A demon, destructive and undeserving. Yet still there, despite everything.

  “We need to keep it quiet. Your parents might hear us,” she whispered.

  I pinned her arms above her head and buried my face in her luscious hair. “I don’t give a fuck about my parents.”

  “Well, I do.”

  She did. She gave a fuck about everyone. Every Tom, Harry, and Louisa. And I needed to start respecting that, even if I didn’t respect them.

  I grinded myself on her, bare, feeling her damp, clean flesh against mine. Her skin was gold, her hair silver-blue. Her eyes—her fucking eyes—a dark spell enveloped in a sweet girl who brought so much light into my miserable life. I pushed between her thighs, fumbling for the condom and unwrapping it with my teeth. The scent of latex attacked my nostrils, but not even that took away from the moment. The sheer moment of elation. Of having her, submissive and mine—so utterly and entirely at my mercy—despite her promise to me, and to herself, that we would never sleep together.

  I felt like a flower that had just endured weeks of hail and rain, finally feeling the soft kiss of the sun, and knowing that somehow, someway, things would be all right. Maybe not tomorrow, and certainly not today, but they would.

  I drove into her and closed my eyes, plastering my forehead to hers. She felt so good, so tight, so fucking wet. I moved slowly, allowing her a second or two to adjust. Our eyes were eloquent, our expressions self-explanatory. Hers were the ocean. Mine were the earth. She moaned when I thrust into her, slowly and deeply, biting that lower lip.

  “I don’t want to fall in love with you,” she croaked. It wasn’t a statement as much as it was a plea.

  I thrust deeper, my forehead wrinkling in concentration as my balls tightened.

  “You don’t seem to have much choice,” I answered.

  She moaned louder, looking away from me, at the wall, at The Cure, at Robert Smith, hung above us on a wrinkled poster, eyeliner, lipstick, and ridiculous hair galore.

  After a few minutes, she began to rock into me while I poured into her.

  This wasn’t fucking. This was something else entirely, and if I were a good man—if I were halfway decent, even—I’d stop, flip her over, drive into her from behind, and make sure to bang her head on the headboard for good measure. But I wasn’t a good man, so I let her fall in love with me in that moment, because she was the only person who took my loneliness away.

  “I’m coming,” she said, sinking her short, square nails into my back. I liked her nails. They were the epitome of her. Chipped and clean, always coated with a funky color. “I’m coming so…so…hard.”

  I felt it, too. In my body. In my balls. In my veins. The release wasn’t immediate. Like our sex, it trickled down gradually, from my neck, down my spine, feeling my muscles spasm and slack as she quivered and tightened around me. Robert Smith and Morrissey watched silently as I did to Stardust what they had taught me.

  I put her under my spell, to make sure she was mine.

  Scribbling onto her the notes only I could play.

  Now that Tania was gone, Stardust was my main instrument.

  And it saddened me, because I knew I had to break her, too.

  You.

  I was already a goner.

  By the time you found the rest of me.

  You sought me out.

  And left me to deal with the girl I never thought I could be.

  You.

  You carved your name into my heart.

  Gutted it out like I was a dead fish.

  Held it in your fist.

  And left me to drown.

  You.

  You took my heart and held it in your teeth.

  Then we kissed.

  Then we fought.

  Then we made out.

  You.

&
nbsp; You said you loved to see how we burn together.

  So you took a match.

  Lit us up.

  And now we burn forever.

  I tucked my stupid poem into one of the many compartments of my suitcase, my heart heavy with emotions. Alex was still in bed behind me, sleeping on his stomach, his wild hair blanketing his perfect face.

  The twilight was glorious that morning. The sun nearly kissing the stars. I wanted him to watch it, but I didn’t want to wake him up. I settled for taking a picture with his phone. He’d see it when he woke up.

  Later that morning, we snuck into the Mercedes. Harry and Hamish met us in the living room. Alex’s family stood in line like soldiers by the door—Jim, Louisa, Carly, and the three boys, from tallest to shortest—staring at us through the lens of regret and tragedy.

  Alex patted the boys’ heads and ignored the adults altogether. He bent forward to speak to them, his voice hushed. “Be good. I’ll come back soon and give you stuff. Meaningful stuff, I swear.”

  Sadness pierced my soul as Alex’s house became smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror of the SUV. The silence, choking and suffocating, was loaded with so many words I didn’t want to say in front of these strangers. I took his hand in mine and squeezed.

  “I’m sorry I made you do this.”

  “I’m sorry for thinking with my dick and doing this,” he shot back, his words not malicious or angry, but simply frank. “And also for the black eye.”

  Jenna: I heard Alex had a little accident with your eye. A dozen Ray-Bans will be waiting at the hotel. Make sure you wear them until the black fades. Oh, and don’t worry about the paparazzo who photographed you. We paid him well to destroy the photos.

  To live in Alex Winslow’s world.

  We stopped at a little café and had a full English breakfast, then zipped straight into London. It was close to eight o’clock in the morning—still far too early for the local shops to open—when we stopped in front of a fancy-looking building on Piccadilly Circus. Alex jumped out of the SUV and helped me out, and we both walked under an arched entrance leading to the back of a block. Someone buzzed us inside, and a second later, we stood in a red-carpeted foyer.

  “Close your eyes,” he croaked.

  “Why?”

  “Because everything is so much more beautiful when you can’t see it.”

  I bit my lower lip, allowing my eyelids to flutter shut. Alex took my hand, not gently—the way he did everything, with the kind of coarseness I’d grown to love—and ushered me a few feet until I heard a door opening and closing.

  “Open.”

  I was spellbound before my eyes were fully wide. Fabrics. Hundreds and hundreds of fabrics. Lace. Satin. Velvet. Chiffon. Organza. Colors. So many gorgeous colors, swirling together like a carnival of beauty. Merlot red. Electric pink. Paradise blue. Metallic silver. Rich and soft and inviting, I wanted to roll inside them like a caterpillar. Swim in them. Live in them. Love in them. I ran to a corner where the velvet sat in long rolls, stocked on neat shelves in the vast, old-school room.

  “This is perfect,” I exclaimed. “This is everything.”

  “You’re everything,” I heard him say, still standing at the door.

  I turned around. His hands were stuffed inside his pockets. His gaze was a little warmer than his usual indifferent face. To some, it may look like he had melted and yielded to what we were. But I knew better than that. There was fire in him, and it was going to consume him one day. One day soon. That was why I’d written him the poem that morning.

  The poem I knew I would give him someday.

  Someday soon, when we said goodbye.

  Someday soon, when I’d need to forget.

  The lads didn’t join us until Paris.

  Which was a good fucking thing, because every minute alone with Indigo “Indie” “Stardust” Bellamy, I felt like I could breathe deeper. It wasn’t that I didn’t like my mates. I did, in my own screwed-up way. Despite everything they’d done—and maybe even because of it—I knew they always had my back. But I also acknowledged that I wasn’t in the best state of mind.

  I needed to be tamed.

  So they’d tried to tame me.

  And that’s when the monster inside of me came out.

  Spending time with Indie, the monster was tucked in. Sure, Stardust watched over me, but she wasn’t them. She was fresh, pure. We weren’t stuck between the walls of the past, a foundation that had been steadily crumbling with every hushed phone call and white lie meant to save me.

  By the time we boarded the plane to Paris, after my Cambridge Castle gig, I wasn’t even pissed off at Blake and Lucas anymore. That elusive feeling of contempt, one that cannot be bought, purchased, abused, and monitored with measurements of lethal powder or amber liquid, was strange to me. I was happy, but I couldn’t control it.

  It came to me in small, steady doses, not all at once, with a rolled note and a few sniffs. It came to me as all good things should be experienced—in time, and in effort, and with caution.

  By the time we got to Paris and Stardust’s face glowed like a thousand fireflies, I’d forgotten who I was.

  I’d forgotten my name was Alex Winslow.

  I’d forgotten how it was going to explode in my fucking face.

  And I’d forgotten all the mistakes I’d collected over the years since hitting it big.

  Well, I was about to remember.

  Paris, France.

  How do you know you’re in love?

  For me, it was in the kiss. I knew I was in love when I found myself opening my eyes when Alex and I were kissing. I no longer needed to close them to concentrate, to withdraw the curtain so I could feel the magic, so to speak. Alex was the magic. And every time we kissed with our eyes closed, I missed him. It was corny. Gag-worthy even, but nonetheless true.

  It was under the Eiffel Tower that he’d told me his existence had felt different the past couple of weeks. Like his living and breathing were more significant, somehow. “Remember in Berlin, when I asked you to sit by the stage, where I could see you?” he’d asked. I’d nodded, taking a sip of my foam cup. The coffee was better in Paris. Come to think of it, everything was better in Paris. Alex had jerked me to his body with the collar of my coat, our lips touching as he’d spoken. “The way you look at me when I sing and play reminds me why I started doing it in the first place. It reminds me there’s nothing else I want to do—can do—and even though there’s something tragic in that, a man with one destiny, you take the edge off.”

  “How does your soul feel these days?” I’d smiled.

  “Pure,” he’d answered.

  Had I known this was the last time Alex and I would be this way, peaceful and whole and unassuming, I would’ve spent a few more minutes sipping that coffee. A few more moments kissing him under the perfect blue sky. But I hadn’t known, and we’d had to go back to the hotel and get ready for the charity gala. I don’t know if he’d realized it, but Alex had had a smile on his face the entire time. Even when Blake had forced a disgusting herbal tea down his throat to help his vocal cords. Or when Lucas had sat between us and stared at him with the same kind of pained, pissed-off expression Lucas only produced when he looked at Alex. Hell, he’d even laughed at Alfie’s completely inappropriate jokes.

  The last thing I remember from that afternoon was when we were in the snack room before the limousine came to pick us up for the gala. Alfie had been loitering by the entrance with a few fans, Blake had been on his phone to Jenna, and Alex, Lucas, and I had been sitting in the hotel lobby, sipping orange juice from champagne glasses. I remember the way Lucas had looked at me when Alex pulled me into his lap after I’d paid a quick visit to the bathroom. Alex had circled my waist with his arms and spread his lean thighs apart to accommodate me, his fingers playing with the hem of my dress as he’d talked shop with someone he openly referred to as French Suit Number Three.

  I remember thinking I’d gotten it all wrong.

  I even remember
the sound the penny made when it dropped.

  And most of all, I remember asking—why? How? And—for how long?

  I didn’t know I’d be getting the answers to all of those questions the same night.

  And that as soon as I’d make sense of them, I’d want to forget them. Forever.

  “Do Re Mi” by Blackbear played as we sauntered through the huge double doors of the chateau. Ironic, considering the song was tailor-made for Fallon and Alex’s story. Fallon, the girl whom I hated without even knowing. We hadn’t seen her yet, but she was everywhere. The room was heavy with her presence, and I knew it wasn’t a matter of if, but when. The whole evening felt like a huge middle finger to me, and I didn’t even know why.

  I wanted Paris.

  I craved this ball.

  I was dying to show off my dress. The Paris Dress, as all the guys referred to it.

  Everyone was wearing masquerade-style masks. Silver, gold, black, and blue camouflaged the beautiful faces of the rich attendees. Mine was one of the rare white ones, lace curving over my eyes and forehead. Alex had a simple black Zorro mask that showcased his strong jawline even more. Alfie, of course, had opted for a flamboyant mask with feathers and glitter. His playfulness was growing on me.

  “I’m going to head to the ladies’ room. Let me find Blake.” I put my hand on Alex’s arm, and he squeezed it, prompting me to look up and meet his gaze. We hadn’t spoken about Fallon, or about our very near future, but I didn’t want to let him out of my sight. Which was exactly the reason I should.

  “Perfectly capable of not fucking up for five minutes. Go.” He jutted his face toward the restroom. “Anything to drink?”

  I hesitated for one second. I shouldn’t be leaving him unattended in a place that openly served alcohol, and I was perfectly aware of that. At the same time, I couldn’t treat him the same as before. We were no longer an employer and an employee, and treating him like he was strictly business was borderline inhumane. Especially since he was so much more now.