Page 31 of With Stars in Her Eyes

Courtney

I rolled over on the hotel bed. Five-star hotel rooms felt just as lonely as the cheap ones, but at least the sheets were nice, and the thermostat was adjustable.

The bed was too damned big. Of course it was. Demetrius had arranged it. He probably felt guilty, but none of this was his fault. I had been crying for an hour after getting off the phone with Thea. I wasn’t even sure how much Thea had heard of my rambling.

God, I felt sick.

This moment sitting alone reminded me of the last time I was in a strange bed.

There had been no throw pillows there. There had been no curated art on the walls.

There, everything had been a sicklier version of cream, gray, and pink. The sheets had scraped over my skin, which was already raw from tape and bruised from being stuck over and over again in an effort to coerce the blood from my reluctant veins.

I had sat in that fucking bed for the nearly seventy-two hours waiting for answers.

The basic pee drug screenings they did in the ER didn’t distinguish between illegal stuff and some of the medications I had been on for years for my headaches.

They’d even given me some nose spray like I was overdosing.

It made my heart race. It made me want to claw myself free of my own skin.

No one seemed to believe me about anything until I got my Kansas doctor on the phone.

The only thing that kept me going was thinking I might—just might—have some answers as to why everything was happening.

For two stupid days I had hoped that as humiliating as the Troubadour show was, maybe this was the moment I would find out what was wrong with me and figure out how I could get better.

But every fucking scan had come back clean.

Other than moderate-to-severe dehydration, every doctor I saw gave me a clean bill of health.

I hadn’t had a stroke. Obviously that was good news.

The doctors would tell me that over and over, clearly looking for gushing gratitude.

But all I knew as I sat on that horrible hospital bed was that my dream was ruined, and there was no hope of finding a way to get better.

Things had been getting worse for years, and there was absolutely no explanation for why.

It wasn’t that I wanted to have something catastrophic found. But how could I have an episode that intense and have all those years of dealing with daily headaches with nothing to show for it on an MRI scan? Just one more insult from a body that had mistreated me for so long.

Demetrius had come straight to the hospital after the show. He had told me to take as much time as I needed to feel better. Whereas Richard had called later to remind me of all the upcoming dates I was contractually obligated to attend.

They had kept me an extra night for no damn reason beyond the doctor leaving early the day before and forgetting to write whatever order the nurses needed. That third morning, the nurse had left to get my discharge paperwork.

A knock at the door had me trying to put my calm face on so I looked saner when I talked to the nurse the last time.

But it wasn’t the nurse.

In walked a man I had been avoiding for nearly ten years. The man I had seen in the crowd. The man who had given me that scribbled note on the napkin before the show. The man I had been married to for several of the worst years of my life.

And Jesus fucking Christ , Jeremiah Camden, former Christian “rock star,” had morphed into a full Patagonia finance bro.

Gone were the skintight emo jeans and the stained T-shirts that showed off all the biblically inspired tattoos on his forearms. Today, the button-down beneath the vest covered his forearms. He must have even gotten plastic surgery to close his gauged earring holes.

Unsurprising since they probably didn’t play well with potential right-wing theocrat voters.

“Get the fuck out of here,” I said, mustering anger to cover the fear.

His unconcerned frown was the only response.

Of all the times to come face-to-face with my ex-husband, it had to be while I sat barefaced under hospital fluorescent lighting, wearing sweats Demetrius had brought me, and smelling like cheap hospital toiletries.

Men never understood why some women want to have their hair done and makeup on when facing situations like this.

It was part of why performing as Kestrel had worked.

I could hide my mousy blond hair, my raw acne-scarred face, and my real boyish body beneath billowy dresses I would never wear in real life for a second.

The sunglasses had been for my light sensitivity, but everything else wasn’t.

Everything else had been a disguise that felt more like armor than illusion.

I needed Kestrel because even after years of deconstruction and picking apart the religion my parents had nailed to the insides of my soul, the only way I felt powerful enough to face the world was in a literal costume.

This man pretended to love me back until I shed my mask with him. He had preferred the performance. Back then I didn’t know about the inner self I’d sacrificed on the altar of my parents’ expectations. Back then I felt as empty and hollow as all my unanswered prayers.

I had spent too many years as a puppet. I was programmed to please a stage-prop version of God created by greedy men to help them hoard power. A promise of grace that repaid my efforts with shame, leaving me feeling less than human.

Jeremiah sat in the chair beside the hospital bed.

“I—I said get out.”

“Your hair’s so long now. And that color’s certainly a choice.”

I fought the urge to use my blue hair to hide my face. He was the intruder here.

“I’m just here to check on you.” Jeremiah leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest, his knees wide in a characteristic manspread.

“I wouldn’t put a lot past you, Dove, but getting high and drunk onstage?

Embarrassing your band?” Jeremiah tsked.

“I guess this is what a lifestyle outside the faith leads to.”

“That’s not what happened.”

“Do you really think anyone is going to believe you? Especially with your drug screening lighting up like a Christmas tree.” He held up a piece of paper.

“How did you—”

“Don’t you remember? When you came in here for stitches after a little fainting spell, you listed me as your emergency contact back then, and my name was still in the system.

As was the medical records release. They would’ve called me from here anyhow even if I didn’t witness that disaster.

” Jeremiah sighed. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

You’re just like your father, I guess. Except this time—”

“No, I’m not like him at all. I’m on medications prescribed to me, you asshole.”

His brows knit together in a twisted facsimile of sympathy.

“But you are like him, and you don’t even see it.

You’re willing to give up everything else in your life that gets in the way of you achieving fame and money.

But I can tell you that none of that will truly fulfill you.

You know what will though. It’s not too late for you.

” Beneath the paper in his hand was a pocket-sized leather-bound Bible.

He used to carry that one with him everywhere.

It had been on the table next to me when he first got me in bed with him. “I’ve been praying for you.”

“Spare me the evangelizing. Not really interested in hearing it from a man who was cheating on me with my friend while we were—”

“Fine. Let’s focus on why I’m here. I think you know why.”

“Literally no idea why you’re here, and don’t care. You need to leave. Now. Someone’s going to be here—”

“No, they won’t. I asked at the front desk.

They said after the first day you haven’t taken calls from anyone.

You said you didn’t want visitors. Typical to avoid the people you hurt with your behavior.

” The facade of charm in his smile was broken by a derisive huff of air.

“So my publicist sent me your little album.”

I froze.

“The songs are cute.” The wildness behind his eyes locked all my muscles in rigid readiness. “But you spinning the narrative of our marriage like that… it’s pretty pathetic. Pathetic. And risky.”

“It’s not a narrative. It’s what happened.”

“There’re two sides to every story and you know that. Especially after your little episode onstage, who is going to believe you? Addicts hurt people. Your father’s congregation here was a lot more forgiving after his little drug-fueled indiscretions than the public will be.”

“It was a migraine.”

“There are always excuses. Your dramatic whining about your health. But I know who you really are. And it’s really hard to hide the laziness and the drama forever.”

“You never knew me. I was basically an exploited child when we met, and you took advantage of—”

“I tried to take care of you. It’s not my fault you quit school. You could’ve said no then, but you quit, and then blamed me that you weren’t there when Demetrius got his big break.”

“ No .”

“You were stuck in self-pity and guilt and then you shut down. God even tried to give us another chance with that baby, and you threw that away too—”

“You’re delusional. Actually delusional.”

“When we met, you loved to tell me how sick of the spotlight you were. How sick of being the little pop-star princess your parents wanted you to be. I invited you on my tour. I gave you a home. I did everything for you. But it wasn’t enough.

Then every other choice you made since leaving our marriage was just you trying to crawl back into the spotlight again.

That’s the part that’s really addictive for you, isn’t it?

Especially when you don’t have anything else.

Or any one else in your life to make your life truly meaningful. ”

“I wanted to perform on my own terms. I’ve been doing it for over ten years.”