Page 51 of A Star is Scorned

The ride back to the Garden of Allah was the tensest ten minutes of Flynn Banks’s life.

They were all squished together on the bench seat with Livvy in the middle, acting as a buffer between Flynn and Judy.

She held Judy tight. The poor kid was in shock.

She was shivering and hollow-eyed as if she’d seen a ghost.

When they finally pulled up to the bungalow, he hopped out and opened the door for them. Judy stumbled and he ran to catch her, but Livvy held her up instead.

“I’ve got her. I’ve always got her.” The look she gave him was so cold that his heart got frostbite. Livvy blamed him for this. Somehow.

“Wait here,” she muttered, before helping Judy into the house.

Flynn paced nervously by his car, grinding his foot into a piece of gravel that had come loose.

God, this place had really deteriorated.

Not for the first time, he wished he could help Livvy and Judy find better lodgings.

But it was clear Livvy had only accepted his help today because she’d had no other choice.

She returned out the front door, looking like the weight of the world was on her shoulders. “I put her in bed. Hopefully, she can get some sleep.”

He opened his arms to her, and to his surprise, she fell into them, crying into his chest. He held her and rubbed a soothing pattern on her back, hoping to calm her. “Did she tell you what happened?”

Through her tears, Livvy managed to choke out, “A man tried to, to, to have his way with Judy.” Flynn swallowed, a wave of disgust mounting in his gut. “She fought him off.”

He kissed the top of Livvy’s head. “Did she say who it was? Did she know him? I’ll tear him limb from limb.”

She shook her head against his chest. “Judy doesn’t want me to tell anyone. She wants to pretend it never happened.”

“But—”

Livvy broke away from him, and there was something wild and angry in her eyes. “Stop, just stop.”

He took a step back, her words landing like a physical blow. The fight fell out of her, and she looked more tired than she ever had.

“This”—she gestured between the two of them—“this is over. Real, pretend, whatever it was. I’ll do what Harry asks.

I’ll go on studio-orchestrated dates. Be photographed together.

The bare minimum to make sure I keep my contract so that I have enough money to move us back home when this is done.

But that’s all. I let myself get distracted.

To believe that acting could be a job that would make me happy.

But my only job is to take care of Judy.

Nothing else can get in the way of that.

Not a movie. Not a studio. And certainly not a man. ”

She delivered her speech with steely resolve, as if she’d been practicing it in her head on the drive home. But all Flynn wanted was to help. “You don’t seriously think that if you had come home last night, this would have gone any differently?”

She lifted her chin and glared at him, her eyes swimming with tears. “I do. I would’ve been here to answer her call. To make sure she didn’t spend a night in a jail cell.”

“How would you have bailed her out?”

“I would have found a way,” she snapped.

He cupped her cheek with his hand. “Livvy, why won’t you let me help you?”

She twisted her face away, repelling his touch. “Because none of this would have happened if I’d been paying attention. I should have made Judy turn the job down that first day when she came home with an injured wrist. But I kept ignoring the signs. The twisted ankle. The black eye.”

Flynn involuntarily winced at the mention of the black eye, and he realized a moment too late what he’d done. Livvy grabbed onto it like a dog with a bone. “You knew, didn’t you?”

“Livvy, no, it’s—”

“You told me to let it go. That she could take care of herself. That accidents happen. That I was overreacting.”

“That is all still true. If you’ll let me explain.”

Livvy’s eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. “Explain? Explain what? That you knew my sister was in danger? That you were aware she was being abused in her workplace, and you convinced me to ignore it?” She was practically shrieking now.

He tried to quiet her. “Hey, hey, calm down. You’ll wake Judy up.”

“As if you care,” she spat out. “All you care about is yourself. That’s all you’ve ever cared about. What was last night? Was my acting not good enough for you? Did you decide this whole charade would be more believable if you seduced me?”

He reeled back as if he’d been slapped. “That’s not what happened last night and you know it.”

Tears were streaming down her face now, and her breathing was ragged.

It physically pained him that he couldn’t say anything to make this right.

To make her feel even slightly better. He had kept the truth from her.

Because Judy had asked him to. But more because he knew that if Livvy had known the truth, she would have shut herself up like a nun.

And he couldn’t allow that. Because it would have ruined their charade, yes.

At first, that had been why. But then, something had changed along the way, and it had become about showing Livvy that she didn’t have to deny herself happiness.

That she could go after the things she wanted.

Live wickedly. Whether or not that included him.

But none of that mattered now, it seemed.

She shuddered and drew a shaky breath. “You’re right.

That’s not what happened. What happened is that I believed you.

When you told me she would be okay, I trusted you.

Because I wanted you. I wanted you even though I knew I shouldn’t.

I turned my back on my sister to spend time with you, and she got hurt. Because of me.”

“I don’t think Judy would see it that way.”

She ran her fingers through her hair, turning the already-tangled mess of her curls into a morass that made her look like a madwoman. “Only because she’s too young to know better. I am supposed to protect her. To look out for her. Not to, to, to—”

“Not to what, Livvy? Not to free yourself from something that was never your fault? To live your own life? To fall in love?” The words were out of his mouth before he knew what he was saying.

A look of abject despair crossed her face before it was replaced with a wild fury. “I was going to say, ‘Not to fuck Hollywood’s favorite playboy,’” she snarled.

He reeled back as if she had slugged him. He’d never heard her be so crude. So cruel. As if he didn’t know what he was. As if he hadn’t chosen it. “I’ve never promised a girl more than a good time.”

“All the better for them. If you ever do get married, I pity the poor girl who gets stuck with you.”

“I think it’s safe to say you needn’t worry about that.”

“No, I don’t. Because all I am, all I ever was going to be, was another name in that little black book of yours. Do me a favor and draw a line through mine when you pencil it in.”

God damn that black book. He wished he’d thrown into the ocean the morning Harry had first concocted this deranged PR stunt. “If you think I’m ashamed of my reputation, you’ve got another think coming.”

“No, why would you be? You don’t have any responsibilities. You’ve made sure of it. Flynn Banks, the poor little rich boy whose only job is to spend his father’s money on booze and women because he can’t bear doing something he doesn’t want to do for even a moment.”

“It’s not that simple. It never was. You don’t know what I endured.

What my mother faced. What she almost—” His voice cracked.

But he plowed ahead. “She told me to ‘choose joy’ because she was nearly deprived of the right to do the same. She wanted more for me. So yes, I enjoy myself. I don’t deprive myself of a life out of some misplaced sense of martyrdom.

Refusing to live because you believe you should’ve been the one to die won’t bring your parents back, Livvy. ”

Her eyes flashed in anger, and she ran at him, pounding her fists into his chest. “You bastard! How dare you say such a thing? As if you know me. As if you know what it was like for me. For Judy. For the both of us. We were finally starting to get out from the under the weight of that loss. And now the worst possible thing that could happen to a woman happened to my sister. She’ll have to live with that now too.

Not just the memory of the accident. Of my parents’ lifeless bodies lying there in the moments before she too lost consciousness.

I thought that was the worst thing Judy would ever see, that she’d ever have to endure.

But I was wrong.” Her words descended into babble, and she began to sob, the pounding of her fists turning into a desperate clutching of his shirt. “I failed her,” Livvy wailed.

He picked her up, and she didn’t protest as he carried her into the small bungalow and laid her on the careworn sofa.

He listened to her continued sobs as he went into the kitchen and filled her a glass of water, setting it gently on a coaster on the coffee table.

Not that the table deserved any such care.

It was stained and scratched in at least six different places.

He sighed. Livvy was right. He didn’t know what it was like. To have nothing. To be constantly terrified of what would happen if you let your guard down even for a second. Because he’d never had to.

He’d designed a life where he could always choose joy and freedom.

It hadn’t been all that hard. He was a man, after all.

But he’d seen the alternative every day as a child, watching his mother endure a life under his father’s thumb.

She had almost paid the ultimate price—but she found a way to remake her fate.

He’d come to realize that his mother’s selfishness was brave, because it became the only way for her to be happy.

To live. From the time he’d gone to university, he knew he couldn’t bear to go through life any other way.

But that was a luxury Livvy had never had.

The irony was that, for the first time in his life, he wanted to choose to be responsible for someone else.

To put someone else’s happiness before his own.

And that person would not let him. He bent down and smoothed her hair, running his fingers through it, as her sobs turned to sniffles, and she finally stopped altogether.

“Please go,” she begged in a small voice.

And he did as she asked, because what else was there to do?