When Stars Fall

by Wendy Million

  At the door, I contemplate walking in unannounced. If I got this far, it’ll be unlocked. But I don’t live here anymore. I ring the doorbell.

  When the door swings back, I’m surprised. The willowy, dark-haired Italian beauty I once despised in the back of a limo stands poised in the entrance. She’s wearing a shirt I bought Wyatt.

  “Blanca.” The name drips from me.

  “Ellie Cooper.” She takes me in. “What brings the fallen star back to her former home?”

  “I’m here to see Wyatt.”

  “Hmm . . .” She puts a manicured finger to her lips. “I suppose he isn’t busy anymore.”

  I move past her into the house. “Where is he?”

  “His room.” She eyes me slyly. “Rough night.”

  I hate her. Part of me hates myself for coming. My life is coming apart at the seams, and he’s whoring around.

  “Put on a few pounds, huh?” Blanca calls out.

  The living room is riddled with empty pill containers and alcohol bottles from beer to wine to spirits, at varying levels of fullness. A white powder is smeared across the coffee table. I hope Wyatt is alive.

  With my fingertips, I push open the door to Wyatt’s room. The stench of stale alcohol hits me in the face. His sleeping form is sprawled on the bed. His steady breathing brings on a rush of relief, and I release the breath I was holding. So many times I crawled into and out of this very spot. So many memories. Deep within me, sadness stirs.

  “Wyatt.” I perch on the edge of the bed, and I rock his shoulder.

  “Go away.” Wyatt groans and turns away from me.

  “Wyatt.” My voice is even. “It’s Ellie.”

  “Ellie’s gone,” he says. “There is no Ellie.”

  “Wyatt,” I try again. “It’s me. Look at me.” I want to grab his face and force him to see me.

  He rolls onto his back and squints. He laughs, but the sound isn’t normal. “You look like Ellie.” When he sits up, he pushes my hair away from my face to examine me. “But you’re not her. She’s gone.”

  “Wyatt. It’s me. Really, it’s me. I need to talk to you. There’s something I need to tell you.”

  He stares at me like he’s never seen me before. He reaches for the pills beside his bed and pops another one. “I like this combination.” He tries to read the label and shrugs. “If I get to see you, even a fake you, that’s pretty fucking good.”

  The reality of who he is hits me in the chest. My racing heart slows to a sluggish pace. He can’t save me. He can’t even save himself.

  He brushes the tears off my cheeks and brings his thumb to his face. He chuckles. “Real tears. This shit is amazing.”

  Anger rises in me so swiftly I almost slap his hand. He needs to be better. We can’t be the people we were before, and he’s never going to change.

  With renewed determination, I yank open drawers, and I search for things to take. If I can’t have him, I want anything that’ll remind me of him—tokens to give our daughter someday that might mean something.

  “Oh, this shit is good. If Ellie was here, she’d take one too.” Wyatt collapses back on the bed with a sigh.

  “No, she wouldn’t,” I mumble under my breath. “That Ellie loved you too damned much for her own good. But not anymore. Not anymore.” Tears clog my throat, and I have to stop speaking.

  I stuff my purse with photos, trinkets, things I left behind. Knowing him, he’ll think he threw them out or burned them. His impulse control is terrible when he’s wasted.

  When I have everything I want, I stand in the doorway of the bedroom. My chest is caving in on itself. Even though I understand he’s no good for me, the urge to crawl into the bed with him, let myself drown the same way he’s drowning, is so tempting. For the first time, his claim of not wanting to feel whatever emotions drove him to addiction makes sense to me. I don’t want to feel this way anymore either.

  But I won’t lose myself in the bottom of a pill bottle, in a glass of lean, or in a fingertip of coke. We’d never forgive each other if I slid into this world with him and sacrificed our child. She’d be the victim of our reckless love.

  “Wyatt,” I call out into the room. Silence greets me. Maybe Calshae is right. He has a right to know, but he doesn’t deserve a place in her life. Not like this. “We had a baby. I named her Haven. I hope you’re well enough to meet her someday.” I turn my back on him and walk past Blanca doing cocaine in the living room and straight out the door. A shudder threatens to blow me apart.

  Home. Hold it together until you get home.

  I stop at the hut to ask Kyle to keep my visit a secret, even from Wyatt, and then I take the next plane back to the island.

  Instead of going to my house, I go to my mom’s office at the medical clinic. With a deep breath, I knock on her door.

  “Come in.” She glances up from her desk when I enter. “Ellie! What a nice surprise. Did you bring Haven?”

  At the sight of her, I press a hand to my chest, a sob lodged in my throat. Wyatt, lying in bed, too out of it to realize I was there, flashes in my mind. He’ll never get help. But I have to.

  “What’s happened? What’s wrong?” She circles her desk and envelops me in a hug.

  “Help me.” I force the words out with a sob. “There’s something wrong with me. I need help.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Ellie

  Present Day

  I tuck my breasts into my teeny-tiny bikini and hope that nipple-gate doesn’t happen on top of baby-gate. Or, I guess, child-gate? Although my breasts might take the focus off Haven. My brain is fried, and I haven’t even stepped into the glare of the sun, the glare of the cameras. Wyatt’s right. They’ll be there whether I see them or not. We’d better be good enough actors to make our relationship seem authentic.

  I make my way to the water, where Wyatt and Haven are laughing and screaming. Listening to her high-pitched voice paired with his deeper tone is like hearing music for the first time. I want to stand and soak in the sound, imagine every note. For a moment, concealed by the trees, I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and allow myself to pretend this life is normal.

  Wyatt’s baritone laugh reverberates around the cove below. My heart swells. His laugh, his genuine one, wakes up my body. I press my palm to my chest and rub, like the memories are a spot I can scrub out, as if the ache will disappear with enough effort. Ten years of repressed feelings. They won’t go away—nothing and no one makes me feel this way except the man himself.

  When I step onto the rocky shore, he spots me and swims over. He rises out of the water, ripe for the cameras to catch every ripple of muscle, every rivulet down his chest. He scoops me up, and I laugh as he tosses me into the deeper water. I emerge to Haven’s giggles.

  “He’s been doing that to me too, Mom. It’s so fun. He can throw me so far.”

  I stroke my way to the shallows. Wyatt takes Haven, counts her off, and throws her out again. He does make it look easy. He wades to me while she plays in the water, a school of fish looping around her ankles. With his arm around my waist, he guides me to his side. Bending his head, he whispers, “Relax. You’re better than this.”

  Under my lashes, I glance up at him, and he sucks in a sharp breath. Rising on my toes, I brush my lips against his cheek. “Better?” I let our bodies slide together.

  “Almost.” He tugs me flush against him. His blue-green eyes darken, and he places his hands on either side of my face. He kisses my forehead and then my cheek. His attention lingers on my face, the way it once did when we were telling each other secrets in bed. The moment sings with a new kind of tension, and it’s got nothing to do with anger.

  When Haven swims closer, he releases me so quickly I’d have stumbled if we were on land. The water saves me from looking like too much of a fool.

  “Again?” he asks her, grinning.

  “And again, and again, and again.” Haven’s smile matches his. “This is so fun.”
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  He picks her up, and the muscles in his back ripple. After he’s released her, he says to me over his shoulder, “Haven said something about a tube?”

  “Oh.” I’m startled out of my thoughts about his thick muscles, and his toned back. He’s so good with our daughter—a natural, as though the years without him never happened. My mind is going to places, to memories it has no business journeying to. “I’ll get it.”

  He takes my wrist, drawing me close again so his lips graze my ear. “Let me get it. If I seem familiar with where things are, anyone watching will think I’ve been here a lot.”

  “Right.” I stare at his chest, afraid to make eye contact. He’ll realize what I’ve been thinking. Reading me, when he was sober enough, was second nature.

  “Ellie.” His voice dips low, the tone weakening my knees.

  My name from his lips has always sounded so much better than from anyone else. Unable to resist, I glance up, and my heart lodges in my throat. I long to rise onto my toes, press my lips to his, see if the chemistry is still there. It is. Has to be. Parts of me have already ignited at the mere thought of his exploratory hands.

  A knowing smirk quirks up one corner of his lips. “Where’s the tube?”

  “In the little storage shed, on the far corner of the cliff face.” My voice hasn’t sounded turned on like that without me doing it on purpose in years. I could rip his clothes off right here. My eyes half flutter when he dips his head into my neck.

  “Got it,” he murmurs against the sensitive skin. A shiver plays the most fantastic notes along my spine. I clutch his impressive biceps to keep myself upright. The skin-to-skin contact is delicious.

  “Again?” Haven calls out, just before she goes under and comes up next to us. Her reappearance snaps me into reality.

  I step back from Wyatt as though I’ve been stung. He yanks at his swim shorts, which are mostly concealed by the water. I’m not the only one with my engine revving, nowhere to go. He winks at me as he turns to Haven. “What about this tube?”

  “Oh yeah.” Haven jumps around. “The anchor is really heavy, though.”

  “Too heavy for me?”

  Haven turns to me for confirmation. “I’m sure Wyatt will be fine.” Nikki and I always cart out the anchor for the giant tube together, but I doubt Wyatt will have the same trouble. He just came off filming a superhero movie, and if his Instagram pictures are anything to go by, he lifted a lot more weight than the anchor in preparation for the role. I spent far too many nights scrolling through those pictures.

  Haven and Wyatt wade to the shed and then make short work of digging out the tube and inflating it. Wyatt lets Haven drag the tube through the water to me. He follows with the anchor cradled in his arms.

  “Too heavy?” I call out.

  He chuckles and changes his grip to hoist it over his head.

  “Guess not.” Every time his arms flex, my heart pumps heat into areas of my body that haven’t felt this way in ten years. I take a deep breath. Get a grip, Ellie. Lust. That’s all this is. Supercharged lust. He doesn’t even like me right now. But these last few days, when I stare at myself in the mirror, there’s a change in me.

  I’m awake. The hibernation is over.

  For another hour, we jump on and off the tube, float in the ocean, flirt, laugh, pretend. The easiness isn’t an act for me. I’ve almost convinced myself we’ve always been this way when Haven starts to shiver. She’s so petite the cold hits her hard. The sun has disappeared behind some clouds. Wyatt wraps her in a towel and carries her up to the house with me trailing behind.

  When the door to the outside closes, the chill follows us in.

  Haven and Wyatt spend the rest of the day ignoring me unless Haven wants to know where something is, when a particular experience happened, or how old she was when she did something. Sometimes I catch Wyatt observing me, but I’m terrible at deciphering his thoughtful moods. Ideas are bubbling below his surface, but I have no idea what they are.

  Nikki comes into the kitchen as I’m putting items away after Wyatt’s complicated snack. “He’s better with her than I expected.” Nikki takes a seat at the island.

  “He is.” I can’t dispute that. Parenting is hard, sometimes really hard, but he’s taken to it with ease.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “What do you mean?” I stop cleaning, cloth in hand.

  “He leaves tomorrow.” She checks her phone.

  I straighten when Wyatt comes into the kitchen. He grabs a glass and gets water from the fridge without speaking and then disappears out the door.

  “Has he said anything to you since you came up from the beach?” Nikki asks, eyebrows raised at the frosty air that entered the room with Wyatt.

  “Does ‘do you want any?’ count? He was making lunch at the time.”

  “The only person he should be mad at right now is himself. You gave him a choice, and he chose wrong.”

  “Bit of a false choice when I don’t tell him everything, though, isn’t it?” I say.

  “You did go back. He doesn’t remember.” Nikki runs her hands along the granite island. “Says a lot.”

  “I’m not throwing that in his face. I knew he wouldn’t remember. Again, it’s not a real choice when he doesn’t understand what’s happening.”

  “You’re being too easy on him.”

  “I’m trying to be fair. Telling him when I knew he wouldn’t remember wasn’t the right thing to do. Made me feel better at the time, but it wasn’t the right thing to do.” Wyatt and I know each other too well for either of us to accept one visit when he was wasted as being a genuine effort to offer him a choice.

  “Fine. I want you to close your eyes and think about how things might have been if you’d stayed. Tell me about that.” Nikki leans back.

  “So many things. Too many things.” I hold up a finger. “And not all of them bad, Nikki. You see him now. He’s great with her. With very few exceptions, he treated me like the most precious person in the world.” He cherished me, and despite the fame and the women, and everything else that could have doomed us, I trusted him. He never gave me reason to doubt.

  “Getting back together with him when he’s been in your life less than a week is a mistake.”

  “He’s so angry with me right now, he doesn’t want me. He might never want to be with me again.” My voice catches, and I swallow my anxiety.

  “What if he does? What if he tells you he wants it all with you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’d do.” Other than Anna’s presence in his life, I trust him. He’s not the man he was. But I don’t trust her or her habits. I really don’t trust the drug addicts and pushers she likely hangs around with. Maybe Wyatt doesn’t knowingly let her use in the house, but it doesn’t mean she isn’t hiding needles, powder, or pills where kids can find them. I left Wyatt to keep Haven away from the drug abuse, the violence, the unpredictability of an addict. Letting him take our daughter into a situation where those things exist nullifies the ten years I stayed away.

  “He leaves tomorrow. What’s the plan for tonight?”

  “I’ll drive him back to his hotel after dinner, when Haven’s in bed. I don’t want to talk about any custody or visitation things with her around. Sometimes we say things that aren’t always . . . kind.”

  “You’re having those discussions when you take him back to his hotel?”

  “I have to. We’re out of time.” I’d prefer not to get lawyers involved if we can be adults about this. I rub my face. “Haven can’t be around Anna. It’s a hard line for me.”

  “Not sure how you stop that.”

  “If Wyatt takes me to court . . .” I can’t finish my thought.

  “It’ll get nasty,” Nikki agrees and rises to stand beside the island. “He’s led a very public, very messy life.”

  “I’m not sure I can do that to him or Haven—drag him through the mud.”

  “Maybe you wo
n’t have to. You say he’s changed. I guess we’ll see if that’s true.” Nikki walks out of the kitchen and back into the living room.

  Every time my thoughts drift to Anna, I’m not sure how we’ll ever solve our custody problem—if she can’t stay away from drugs, and he won’t abandon her, we’re at an impasse.

  He’s on the back of my bike, and we’re taking the alternate route off my property. The path is too narrow for a car. When I first bought this place, I paid to have this tiny road carved out as an escape route from the paparazzi in case they came calling. They never did, but I’ve kept it cleared in case. Now they are camped out in droves by the security hut. I checked with Jerome before taking the secret exit.

  Wyatt’s dinner reminded me he can make delicious food with very few ingredients. Haven helped him in the kitchen, learning alongside him as he talked about flavors, cuts of meat, spices, ways to cook things, and anything else she asked. My heart melted like butter in a pan. His patience was limitless.

  When he put her to bed, I stood outside the door, listening as he read her stories and answered her questions. I rushed back down the hall when I heard him getting up to leave.

  The rhythm of my life with him is something I could get used to. I have no idea how he’s feeling. He hasn’t said two words to me on the ride back. Not about the path, not about Haven, not about custody arrangements. Nothing.

  When we left the house, I texted Calshae, and she suggested the employee entrance. The fewest paparazzi were there, and she could use her workers as an excuse to move people along without raising suspicion. We’re arriving at shift change.

  Calshae holds open the door as we squeeze through. “I had anyone turned away from staying here who was obviously a member of the press,” Calshae says as soon as we’re in the door. “But my employees aren’t detectives. There could be people here who work for gossip outlets who slipped through the cracks.”

  I nod and glance at Wyatt. His jaw is tight, but he nods too. Out of the corner of his eye, he looks at me. “Are you coming up?”