“And the Grammy for Best Album of the Year goes to…” Bella Jordin is stalling, clutching the envelope, a smug smile on her face. I’d like to believe I’m above punching a woman, but the ball of tension blocking my throat begs to differ. Does she think it’s cute? Does Bella Jordin think any of the fuckers who sit at the Oscars and Grammys and Emmys and have spent their entire year—fuck that, plural, years—working on their albums and movies and shows, really find it adorable, the way she drags it out like a juicy gum? I would like to do the same to her next time she gets checked for an STD.
“Hold it…just a little longer, Bella. Don’t you like the anticipation of it all?”
Jenna, squeezing my bicep, throws a glance at my bouncing foot.
Tap. Tap. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
The bloke in front of me—a newbie R&B producer who probably wrote two songs for Justin Bieber and now thinks he’s God—turns around and shoots me a death glare. I shoot him an I’m-alive glare. Toothy grin galore.
“And the Grammy goes to…Alex Winslow! ‘Harquebus’!” she shrieks into the microphone, and the camera zooms in on me, and I do the usual thing where I feign surprise and point at myself.
I get up and squeeze past Jenna and Blake, who are holding hands. Blake is on his phone—shocker—probably asking the babysitter how their daughter, Cecilia, is doing. Alfie is sitting beside me with his date—some girl from the British Big Brother—and Lucas and Hudson are all but making out behind me. On my way to the stage, I tap Will Bushell’s shoulder, and he gives me the thumbs-up. This doesn’t mean I like him, but I definitely don’t hate him anymore. Mostly, I’m relieved he didn’t steal the one thing that truly mattered.
Then again, if Fallon were Indie, I wouldn’t have fallen so far down in the rabbit hole. I would’ve stayed above water just in case I needed to save her, too.
I climb up to the stage. There’s always this weird notion up there, like the whole world is watching you, waiting for you to cock up. Fall on your arse, burp into the mic, or shit your trousers. The Grammys two years ago was such a disaster. The Prime Minister of England was recorded shaking her head and muttering, “Oh, Christ” when she watched the video of me representing our fine nation. Today, I want to get it over with as soon as possible.
Smiling at Bella and planting the usual, nice-to-see-you-but-please-no-mingling kiss on her cheek, I grab the Grammy and put my lips to the mic. This feels a lot like home. The bumpy metal against my lips. But the only home I’m interested in right now is on the other end of the city, and I’m eager to get back to her.
“Congrats, Alex. I loved your ‘Back to Life’ tour! My personal favorite.” Bella kisses my cheek again. Now I smile my I-heard-your-music-and-I’m-not-sure-whether-to-take-that-as-a-compliment smirk, then turn back to the mic.
“Two years ago, I took this stage and made a fool of myself. I snatched a statue that wasn’t mine from someone who deserved it—yeah, mate, guess your album wasn’t so bad after all.” I shrug and gesture to Will, who laughs softly and shakes his head. His date—a girl he met building a school in Madagascar or something—squeezes his hand as Indie so often squeezes mine. After Fallon finished rehab, she got sentenced to five years of community service, more or less, wrote the Bellamys sincere apology letters, and she is now living with her photographer boyfriend in Georgia and works as a yoga instructor, far away from Hollywood.
“But things have changed since then. For one thing, I checked into rehab.” Pause. “Second time is the charm, right?” People clap, snort, some nod knowingly. “The second thing that happened was that I wrote an album I don’t deserve the credit for. ‘Midnight Blue’ doesn’t belong to me; it belongs to her. And that leads me to the third thing—I met a girl. I fell in love with her, and she fell in love with me. I took her words and her soul and every single original thought and beautiful lyric she gave me, thinking I didn’t owe anything back. But this girl, she became my muse for a reason, and she busted my balls for being a selfish arsehole. This girl can’t be here today because she’s in the delivery room, giving me yet another gift I don’t deserve. Only now I’m going to make sure I come close to being enough for her and our baby. I came here to grab this statue because I couldn’t make it to the last Grammys—I was too busy groveling and rehabbing in order to win the girl back—but now I need to go back to her. You see, my girl is so selfless, she told me if I never showed up to my own party, then she’d leave me, and I can’t let that happen. So, here you go, Stardust.” I raise the Grammy in my hand and look at the camera. “Got us another ugly decoration for the bathroom. Can I come back now? I’d really like to save the therapy money for when our kid finds out I was at the Grammys when she was born.”
The room fills with more laughter, and everybody gets up and claps, and even though it’s nice, I’m done settling for nice. I don’t want anyone to pat my ego, and have no need to prove myself to anyone. I jump onto Craig’s motorcycle—he is waiting for me, double-parked on the curb behind the arena—and we speed through the traffic jams of L.A. and toward the only thing that matters.
Poppy has her father’s eyes.
Brown flaked with green and gold, they stare back at me with a mixture of mischievousness and curiosity, telling me I’m in for a lot of trouble. She curls her fists and yawns toothlessly before closing her eyes again, and I can’t stop looking.
Poppy Elizabeth Winslow is a fresh start. She looks it, she smells it, and she is it. We all eventually experience tragedy in our lives—loss of relatives, friends, and things that are important to us—but not all of us are blessed enough to be given great gifts along with our losses.
I am.
I am that blessed.
I’ve lost my parents and gained a husband and a baby. A family that’s not patchy, like The Paris Dress, but resilient, like Alex and me. Every Friday, I invite Nat, Craig, Ziggy, Blake, Jenna, Cecilia, Alfie, Lucas, and Hudson over for dinner. We laugh and eat and play board games like it’s 1993 and these people are not rock stars. And to me, they aren’t. They’re just…people.
And it will probably be a little sad to leave here and move to our new apartment—or rather, flat, above the Cambridge Castle. But we love the apartment. It’s full of soul, and only five minutes away from the thrift shop I have leased a few months ago and is now getting refurbished.
Alex Winslow asked me to marry him three days after he barged back into my life and into my shitty apartment. I guess I had it coming. After all, everything he does is in spectacular fashion and grand gestures. The proposal happened on the floor of my rundown condo, right after we had kitchen sex. I was letting the cool tiles soothe my sore skin and staring through the window at a tree when he said, “You know, we could be doing the same thing, but on a nicer floor if we just moved in together.”
I threw an arm over my face to muffle the sound of my laughter. “Yeah? You think we’ll be better off living in some fancy hotel in the middle of traffic-central?”
“I’m thinking somewhere gray and grim in the middle of Camden Town. Close to the tube. Buzzing with people and life and music. A flat with double-glazed windows.”
“Why double-glazed?” I whipped my head in his direction. He looked spent, sweaty, and delicious. He ran a hand through his brown locks and hitched one shoulder up. “Don’t wanna scare the tourists with your moans.”
I swatted his chest, and it was his turn to laugh.
“Seriously, half the time it sounds like I’m attacking you with a chainsaw when we’re together. So, what do you say, Stardust?” He rolled to his side, propping his head in his hand. “Move in with me?”
I opened my mouth with the intention of saying yes, because life was too short not to do what you wanted to do, when he beat me to it.
“Actually, forget it. I take it back.”
“You take it back?” I blinked, my stomach churning in disbelief.
“Yeah.” He crawled to me on his knees. “Moving in is not enough. I want everything. And I want it on fucking pap
er. Marry me, Indigo ‘Stardust’ Bellamy. Be my wife. Have my babies. We’ll even circumcise them if that’s what you want. Well, maybe not the girls. That’s a hard limit for me. Or maybe we won’t have children. How do you feel about children? Never mind. I don’t care. I just want to marry you. Make me a happy bastard, Indie. Say yes.”
I didn’t say yes. I giggled it.
I also told him that my middle name is Elizabeth, like Poppy’s—not, in fact, Stardust.
We got married in a rose garden in Kent. The roses were painted blue. I stuffed his private jet with all the people I loved—Natasha, a very sober Craig—who had to take time off from school after enrolling into college—Ziggy, Clara, Tiffany, Ollie, Grayson, and the rest of our tour friends, including Jenna and Hudson. I wore a Bohemian Forest wedding gown, and he wore a shit-eating grin he is still sporting every single day. Getting pregnant wasn’t a decision. It was, rather, a moment of insanity. We’d always used condoms, until one night, we didn’t. Alex said he’d pull out at the last minute, and he did—I had a stomach covered in semen to prove it—but I guess not enough, because a month later, I started getting violent reactions to the scents of coffee and cigarettes.
I quit the coffee.
He quit the cigarettes.
And now we have Poppy.
“Mate, I’m so happy you had her with someone fit. You really needed some beauty to dilute all the fugliness that’s your face. Poppy is gorgeous,” Alfie says now, in the hospital suite, staring at Poppy, who is napping in my arms.
Alex awards him with an elbow to the ribs before stretching his arms toward me. I’m still in bed, but I’m feeling better since he helped me take a shower. Poppy is nuzzling into my neck, and my heart is close to bursting from being so full.
“Can I show her off?” He gives me his magnificent shy smirk. It’s the kind that only makes a cameo once every few months, so I drink it up.
Three.
Two.
One.
“Of course.”
I told you, heart.
We’ve got this, heart.
Look how far we’ve come, heart.
It’s not the first time he’s holding our daughter in his hands and looking down at her like she’s a new world he wants to secure and nurture, but it’s the first time the realization hits me. We found our planet. Our home. The only place we want to be in.
That’s the thing about broken princes. Not all of them have to die. If their soul is whole, they sometimes survive.
Sometimes, they even grow up to be kings.
Mine did.
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“Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it” – Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Angel’s Game.
This book is the fruit of a lot of sleepless nights, hectic days, and also the love and attention of the following unicorns:
To my editing team: Tamara Mataya, Paige Smith and Emily A. Lawrence of Lawrence Editing. You ladies are the very best, and your dedication and eye for detail is absolutely amazing.
To Stacey Ryan Blake for the gorgeous formatting, and Letitia Hasser of RBA Designs for the fantastic cover.
To my beta readers: Tijuana Turner, thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for all the love, hours and attention you’ve given Alex and Indie. You’ve been my rock for the longest time. Same goes for Amy Halter, who has read this book way too many times. Also read (and re-read, and then re-read again): Jade West, Ava Harrison, Kerry Duke and Paige Jennifer. You are my stars!
To my street team members—how sad and happy I am that I can no longer list all of your names without having to use an entire chapter?—you make all the difference in my career, and I’ll continue dedicating all my books to you, one street team member at a time. My rock. My haven. My asteroid.
To my agent, Kimberly Brower. Thank you for your input, expertise, advise, and most of all—for the journey.
To the Sassy Sparrows, my reading group: you push me to grow as an artist with your continued support. So I will. I promise.
To my husband, son, Mom, Dad and best friends, Lin, Sunny and Ella. Hugs.
To all the bloggers who support me—you matter. So, so much.
And to you, my readers.
You’re the real deal.
Love you.
L, xoxo.
Tyed
Sparrow
Blood to Dust
Defy (Sinners of Saint #0.5)
Vicious (Sinners of Saint #1)
Ruckus (Sinners of Saint #2)
Scandalous (Sinners of Saint #3)
Coming Spring 2018: Bane (Sinners of Saint #4)
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Have you met the Sinners of Saint?
My grandmama once told me that love and hate are the same feelings experienced under different circumstances. The passion is the same. The pain is the same. That weird thing that bubbles in your chest? Same. I didn’t believe her until I met Baron Spencer and he became my nightmare.
Then my nightmare became my reality.
I thought I’d escaped him. I was even stupid enough to think he’d forgotten I ever existed.
But when he came back, he hit harder than I ever thought possible.
And just like a domino—I fell.
Ten Years Ago
I’d only been inside the mansion once before, when my family first came to Todos Santos. That was two months ago. That day, I stood rooted in place on the same ironwood flooring that never creaked.
That first time, Mama had elbowed my ribs. “You know this is the toughest floor in the world?”
She failed to mention it belonged to the man with the toughest heart in the world.
I couldn’t for the life of me understand why people with so much money would spend it on such a depressing house. Ten bedrooms. Thirteen bathrooms. An indoor gym and a dramatic staircase. The best amenities money could buy…and except for the tennis court and sixty-five-foot pool, they were all in black.
Black choked out every pleasant feeling you might possibly have as soon as you walked through the big iron-studded doors. The interior designer must’ve been a medieval vampire, judging from the cold, lifeless colors and the giant iron chandeliers hanging from the ceilings. Even the floor was so dark that it looked like I was hovering over an abyss, a fraction of a second from falling into nothingness.
A ten-bedroom house, three people living in it—two of them barely ever there—and the Spencers had decided to house my family in the servants’ apartment near the garage. It was bigger than our clapboard rental in Richmond, Virginia, but until that moment, it had still rubbed me the wrong way.
Not anymore.
Everything about the Spencer mansion was designed to intimidate. Rich and wealthy, yet poor in so many ways. These are not happy people, I thought.
I stared at my shoes—the tattered white Vans I doodled colorful flowers on to hide the fact that they were knock-offs—and swallowed, feeling insignificant even before he had belittled me. Before I even knew him.
“I wonder where he is?” Mama whispered.
As we stood in the hallway, I shivered at the echo that bounced off the bare walls. She wanted to ask if we could get paid two days early because we needed to buy medicine for my younger sister, Rosie.
“I hear something coming from that room.” She pointed to a door on the opposite side of the vaulted foyer. “You go knock. I’ll go back to the kitchen to wait.”
“Me? Why me?”
“Because,” she said, pinning me with a stare that stabbed at my conscience, “Rosie’s sick,
and his parents are out of town. You’re his age. He’ll listen to you.”
I did as I was told—not for Mama, for Rosie—without understanding the consequences. The next few minutes cost me my whole senior year and were the reason why I was ripped from my family at the age of eighteen.
Vicious thought I knew his secret.
I didn’t.
He thought I’d found out what he was arguing about in that room that day.
I had no clue.
All I remember was trudging toward the threshold of another dark door, my fist hovering inches from it before I heard the deep rasp of an old man.
“You know the drill, Baron.”
A man. A smoker, probably.
“My sister told me you’re giving her trouble again.” The man slurred his words before raising his voice and slapping his palm against a hard surface. “I’ve had enough of you disrespecting her.”
“Fuck you.” I heard the composed voice of a younger man. He sounded…amused? “And fuck her too. Wait, is that why you’re here, Daryl? You want a piece of your sister too? The good news is that she’s open for business, if you have the buck to pay.”
“Look at the mouth on you, you little cunt.” Slap. “Your mother would’ve been proud.”
Silence, and then, “Say another word about my mother, and I’ll give you a real reason to get those dental implants you were talking about with my dad.” The younger man’s voice dripped venom, which made me think he might not be as young as Mama thought.
“Stay away,” the younger voice warned. “I can beat the shit out of you, now. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty tempted to do so. All. The fucking. Time. I’m done with your shit.”
“And what the hell makes you think you have a choice?” The older man chuckled darkly.