Page 110 of With Stars in Her Eyes

My best friend winked at me. “Still can’t believe I went from thinking you were dead to figuring out Demetrius and I were accidentally interrupting sexy time in like two min—”

“Saaaam.”

Jeannie came up and set a plant at the register before I could say anything else. “Couldn’t help but notice a blue Subaru at your house all weekend, Miss Courtney Starling.”

I bent my head down and rested it on the counter.

“Shh… Ms. Jeannie, don’t embarrass her. She’ll tell us about her marathon sex weekend when she wants to.” Sam’s eyebrow quirked up as she looked over from the cords she had been untangling.

Jeannie measured my face. “Trouble in paradise?”

“So—”

“Oh, I need to ask you something before she gets here.” Sam grinned. “Dinner tonight has a little birthday surprise, and I was going to invite Thea too. But I didn’t want to overstep, depending on how the weekend went. Since she was still there this morning, I’massuming—”

“Birthday?” I fumbled for my phone to check the date.

“Today’s June thirteenth, so tomorrow is—”

“Oh right.Mybirthday. Got it. Right.”

“Nic’s coming up—that’s the surprise. And since Demetrius is here too, he’ll be there. And Ms. Jeannie, so for Thea…” Sam scrutinized me. “Courtney? Are you okay?”

“I think Courtney and I are going to go outside and get some air and some coffee. That okay, Sami?”

“Of course,” Sam said, her playful tone turning worried. “I’ve got this here.”

Jeannie led me outside. I didn’t ask her where we were going because I was just happy to have the cool breeze against my burning face.

“Want to tell me about it?” Jeannie asked. “Only good coffee shop near here is four blocks up, so we got time.”

“I guess.” I hung my head and twisted my fingers together as we walked. “I didn’t tell her about being Kestrel. I told Sam I wasn’t telling her because I thought if she didn’t care it would be awkward, but I think I was lying to myself.” The defensiveness in my voice made me want to shrivel up inside.

“Hmm.”

“What if she didn’t care? What if she did care and then thought I was an idiot for considering giving it all up? For what it’s worth, I truly didn’t think she’d have any idea who I was. I figured she knew Demetrius’s band, but if I name-dropped all that, wouldn’t that have been kind of weird too?”

“Weird for the woman you’ve spent the last three plus months half out of your mind for to know how you spent the last decade rather than doling bits of your life story out in drips and dribbles?”

“Well, when you put it like that.” I rubbed my temples. “I did actually tell a lie, but that’s kind of complicated too.”

“Most lies are. Know that from experience myself.” Somehow there wasn’t any judgment in Jeannie’s voice.

“Last night she asked me what my biggest fear was.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Losing the people that I love.”

“But that’s a lie?”

I stopped walking. Jeannie stopped too. The skies were gray today. Dim enough to make the world feel a little less saturated in color than usual.

“The first thing that came to my mind when she asked was that my biggest fear was to have my career really be over. To never get up on a stage again.” I scowled my disgust at myself. “How shitty of a person does that make me that I’m more afraid of losing that than like losing anything or anyone else? It just reminded me of—”

“Of what?”

“Of my parents. That’s how they were. Single-minded. Focused.”And didn’t give a shit about me.