Page 7 of The Sun & Her Burn (Impossible Universe Trilogy #2)

SEBASTIAN

I didn’t sleep that night.

The moon, almost as bright as the pale morning sun and full in the sky, was visible outside my hotel window and only fueled the sense of nostalgia that kept me awake.

Between thoughts of Adam and his current plight, running into Savannah with Tate and Jace, and finding Linnea in the city of Los Angeles, my brain was too mired in thought to find rest.

Instead, for the first time in much too long, I wrote.

The story came to me the way remnants of a dream did, in snapshots of scenes and blurry colors smeared behind my closed lids.

But it was so vivid, so tangible I could taste the Cornish Sea in my mouth as my fingers flew over the keys, could feel the hot stage lights on my face.

The title came to me before anything else.

The Dream , I typed out with one finger while sipping grappa, and The Dreamer .

When five o’clock rolled around and it was time for me to get in my car to pick up Linnea from her house for our morning surf, my fingers were cramping, and my eyes were gritty with the sand of exhaustion.

But I had written the rough outline and twenty pages of a new screenplay.

Much like Blood Oath , it was semi-autobiographical, with the truth of my life hidden beneath the layers of a story set in the early 1900s in London and Cornwall.

It revolved around Emerson Bainbridge, a struggling artist who began to dream vividly about a woman who inspired him to create masterpieces that launched his career.

His obsession with the ideal of her was already unhealthy, but when he saw a woman who looked exactly like his dream girl bathing in the Cornish Sea while on vacation with his wife and family, his love turned to a kind of madness.

Freud, I was sure, would have had a field day with the parallels, but I didn’t care.

I was too awed and bewildered that I had felt so compelled to get a story down on the page again. That I could see it so clearly in my mind’s eye, as clearly as Emerson Bainbridge saw his muse in his dreams.

I called Andrea Felice as I stumbled around the hotel room changing into my swim trunks and grabbing my wetsuit.

“ Sebastian, ciao, amico mio ,” he answered warmly. “It is early in America, no? Why are you calling me like this? Not that I am not happy to hear from you always.”

I smiled, as I always did when I was talking to Andrea.

He was one of the only people in my life who knew the whole of my history, every last sordid detail.

Yet he never treated me any differently for knowing about Seamus and his mafia debts, or what happened that year in London between Adam, Savannah, and me.

Andrea was my family as much as Mama, Elena, Giselle, and Cosima.

“I’ve written something,” I admitted, grabbing the keys to the Lamborghini Urus SUV I’d rented for my stay.

Once a driver, always a car lover.

The silence that followed was potent.

“Sebastian,” he said finally in Italian. “This is wonderful. Send it to me immediately. I will go to my computer now.”

There were signs of life in the background, diners maybe, but it was obvious he was not at home by his computer already.

I laughed. “It’s not finished yet. I stayed up all night writing, but I need some more time with it. I finished the treatment, though, which I will send to you. Andrea, I have not felt such excitement about a project in…well, a very long time.”

“What prompted this?” he asked, sounding as eager as I felt. “You have said the well is dry for years. I had almost given up on ever seeing a new Sebastian Lombardi screenplay.”

I hesitated as I shut the door to the hotel and took the stairs to the lobby so I wouldn’t lose the phone connection.

“I ran into Savannah yesterday,” I confessed. “She was with Tate and Jace Galantine.”

Andrea made a noise like an irritated bear. “Well, this is not the first time you have seen them. Though I do not know why you bother with that woman.”

That woman .

The name Andrea saw fit to give Savannah these days.

“I was also doing an interview with Isla Goodspeed, and she told me that there has been gossip about Adam’s sexuality again.”

“Ah, yes. I had heard something of the sort.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” I demanded, slamming my car door behind me as I got into the driver’s seat. “ Cazzo , Andrea, you didn’t think that was something I should know?”

“No, I did not. Why would I tell you gossip about an ex-lover who wounded you badly ten years ago? One you have not had contact with in that time, hmm? Tell me why I should have told you. So you could protect him? Comfort him? That is not your job anymore nor has it been for many years.”

His words slid between each one of my ribs like slim, sharp blades. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe through the pain.

The pain of his honesty.

Because, of course, he was right.

I was nothing to Adam Meyers anymore, if I ever had been.

What was I going to do about his plight?

“Yes, well, anyway,” I said, pausing to clear my throat and input the directions to Linnea’s house in the GPS. “It was a perfect storm. Seeing Savannah, Adam, and then Linnea later that day.”

“The girl from Maui,” Andrea remembered. “The one you write those ridiculous postcards to.”

“They aren’t ridiculous,” I said automatically because this wasn’t the first time he had teased me about them. “Writing by hand is a lost art form. Anyway, I could not sleep because this idea was flourishing like a weed in my mind, and I had to get it all out.”

“I want to read everything you have,” he demanded, as I knew he would. “Send it immediately.”

“I’m on my way to pick up Linnea, but I will send it when I park,” I promised. “It’s rough, Andrea. I told you, I haven’t finished.”

“Honestly, Sebastian, I do not care if it’s one line written on the back of a receipt. I have been waiting a decade to make a film with you again.”

“You’ve directed me three times since Blood Oath . Including Black On , which we just wrapped,” I reminded him. “The LA Times calls me your muse the way Leonardo is for Martin Scorsese.”

Andrea made a noise of derision in the back of his throat. He did not like to be compared to any other director. “Send me the pages. And, fratellione , be careful, yes? The past always seems prettier through the pink lens of nostalgia.”

He hung up before I could respond, which was just as well because I had no response to that.

Probably, he was right.

Still, I knew myself well enough to know there was a large likelihood I would ignore his advice anyway.

No matter how much my head cautioned it, or my gut screamed its concerns, my heart never seemed to listen to either of them.

I was still mulling over The Dream & The Dreamer and how surreal it was to have seen three ghosts from my past in the same twenty-four-hour period when I pulled up in front of a small yellow bungalow in Westwood.

Winter flowers bloomed in tidy beds beneath the front windows, and a robust lemon tree gleamed with bright fruit in the early morning sunlight.

It was as charming and unpretentious as Linnea herself and suited her to a T.

I parked and walked the slightly cracked asphalt path to the front door to knock because my mama had taught me never to honk for a lady.

A moment later, a little curtain over the square window in the door twitched aside to reveal Linnea, wide-eyed and obviously startled.

It was a long moment before she opened the door.

“Sebastian,” she said, slightly breathless, the masses of wavy blond hair mussed into a wild halo around her head. “I thought I said I would meet you at the beach.”

“You also said you unexpectedly had to take your car into the shop. I was not going to make you catch a rideshare. Besides, I rented a Lambo. I like any excuse to drive it,” I allowed with a grin.

Her features softened, but she still stood in a narrow crack between the door and the frame as if she didn’t want me to peer inside.

“That’s sweet of you,” she admitted, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “Okay, if you don’t mind waiting just here, I’ll grab my things.”

“I can help—” I started to say, only for the door to be quietly shut in my face.

Okay.

So she was private about her home. I chose to believe something was charming about that and waited with my shoulder pressed into the stucco wall for her to re-emerge.

But a moment later, a rousing scream sounded from within, followed by a loud crash of something unmistakably breaking.

Without thinking, I wrenched the front door open and barrelled inside.

There was a small entryway that led to a narrow hallway down the middle and two rooms on either side. The sound of struggle emitted from the left, so I ran into the living room and paused at the sight that awaited me.

Linnea was on her knees on the ground with water dripping down her face and neck, flower petals caught in her hair. She had her hands shackled around an older woman’s wrists, struggling to contain her as she writhed in her worn, blue velvet chair.

“You bitch,” the woman shouted, nails curling into Linnea’s hands so deeply, blood welled beneath the tips. “You bitch, I told you that part was mine!”

“I know,” Linnea spoke so softly, it was almost hard to hear her after the screech of the other woman’s pitch.

“I know, which is why I’m going to go speak to the director right now and tell him you’re the one who is right for the role, okay?

But I need you to relax, or I can’t fix things. You want the part, don’t you, Miranda?”

My breath stuck in my lungs, caught in the web of surprise.

Miranda?

As in Linnea’s mother, Miranda Hildebrand?

The once stunning actress who had earned her fame from soap operas and a series of spectacularly failed marriages.