Page 32 of With Stars in Her Eyes

“And as always you’re willing to betray anyone who’s standing in your way?

” He flung out his hands, and I shifted backward in the hospital bed.

“Dove, you’re so lost right now. It breaks my heart to see you looking so lost.” He had turned on the voice he used at his concerts and during church services.

The voice that coaxed his audiences into something they thought was a spiritual encounter but was really just a dopamine-induced euphoria created by the key change and lighting.

All people who work in the church know that dopamine turns into dollars.

“Leave me the hell alone.”

“They’re all going to find out who you really are eventually. I just hope Demetrius isn’t the one hurt when it happens. He seems like a nice enough guy, especially with what he used to get up to at school.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about all the stuff you left at my house when you ran away the first time. Photos and letters. Demetrius had some interesting friends back then. And some very interesting habits.”

“ What? Demetrius is the best person I know.”

“Oh, Dove. You know the way these things can be spun.” He passed over a photo.

It was from when we played some large event for the Yale yacht club.

It showed three people, including the student president of the organization who had ended up getting indicted several years back for some kind of white-collar crime and later was found to be responsible for some serial assaults on campus.

It’d been a well-publicized case, and the angle of the photo looked more like Demetrius and I were partying with him rather than playing in the orchestra at the stodgy event.

“No one’s going to—”

“You think that’s all I have?”

I stared back at him, trying not to hyperventilate. I had no idea what I’d left with him.

“Are you willing to risk Demetrius’s career on the idea that whatever I have won’t be enough to cause a stir? Doesn’t take much these days…” He surveyed me. “You’re considering it. This is exactly what I meant.”

“No, I was just—”

“Everyone you think you love will always come second to your music. They’ll realize you’re the same selfish teenage brat who was ungrateful to everyone else in your life and the opportunities they gave you, who then threw away your family when you felt like it. Just like you threw away our marriage.”

“They didn’t want me to be me . This is me.” I gestured to myself. “Kestrel is me.”

Is it though?

Something inside me had seemed to hesitate at the thought.

“I know this is who you think you are.” His smile shifted in a frown of false pity.

A look designed to make me feel like everything I was, everything I had accomplished was the ugliest kind of tarnished trash in comparison to his shiny self-righteousness.

“This is what walking away from the church does to a person. You had such a gift. But you could have been so much more if you used it for the—”

“Tell me what you want, or you can get the fuck away from me.” I fumbled with the bed remote and pushed the call button, hoping to summon anyone that could make him leave.

“You want to release a song that rehashes everything from our past because you want to advance your career and because you’re a vindictive little—”

“Leave.”

“I have attorneys who are going to bury you if you try to release it. My father’s attorneys will bury Demetrius too.

You think that photo is bad? We have records that will stir up things he wanted hidden.

If you want to risk his career just for a few more minutes basking in the spotlight by telling your ‘little story,’ ask yourself if it’s worth screwing over your friend too. ”

“Just leave him alone…”

“He’s enabling this little public tantrum of yours by producing this album just to hurt me, and despite everything my attorneys have already sent him, he’s refusing to see reason.

Some scandals stick around in this industry.

Grammy voters have long memories. Truth never ends up mattering as much as the headlines. ”

“Don’t you dare—”

“Word on the street is that this year would’ve been his year. Highly favored in pretty much every category he’s nominated for… for now. We’ll see.”

Demetrius had racked up dozens of Grammy nominations and never won. Gilded Shadows , the album the Violet Trikes released last year, was supposed to be the album that finally won.

“What if… what if I pull out of the tour? What if I don’t release it?

” My eyes were blurred with tears that humiliated me more than anything else.

I mustered the passive stoicism that I’d learned from my mother and shut that shit down.

My voice was measured when I found it again.

“Will you leave him alone if I don’t put out my album? I can tell them I changed my mind.”

“I’ll consider it.” His bottom lip pushed outward like he was judging prized pigs at a country fair.

“Honestly, after watching everything go down in that show, I’m shocked you ever want to get onstage again.

That kind of thing can get in a lot of performers’ heads.

Maybe I shouldn’t have even bothered to come out here to check on you. ”

I looked down at my hands and balled them into fists.

He shook his head, attention flicking toward the door like he heard someone outside the room.

He leaned closer and gave my shoulder a pat before I could twist away from the contact.

“Happens once and people might forgive you, but if it happens again, shew-wee . That would be difficult to come back from. Especially if the toxicology screening were to leak. People are so suspicious of cover-ups these days.” Without another word, Jeremiah walked out of the room.

I signed everything the nurse asked me to sign without reading it.

I lied when the nurse asked about having a ride.

My checking account was nearly empty after a few big expenses, so I didn’t want to buy another plane ticket.

I left most of my equipment in Demetrius’s rental house.

I stuffed my duffel bag with what I could, including the small but heavy collection of books I had been picking up whenever I could during my travels.

After an unforgivably short text to Demetrius, I grabbed my bags and started to price out the cheapest bus tickets that would get me to Kansas.

I had just locked the door behind me when a tall shadow blocked out the sunlight. I whirled around in a panic, which subsided the moment I took in the face in front of me. “Nic?” I dropped my large duffel.

He pulled me into a tight hug.

“How did you…?” The words shook.

He held on to my arms as if he was worried I would fall over. “You didn’t think you could run away from LA again without your favorite road trip buddy, right?” Nic rubbed the stubble on his chin. “I’ve been itching for another road trip anyway.”

“But sorry, I already called shotgun,” another voice said, just as unexpected. I blinked away my tears and found Sam behind him.

I sank to the ground and cried all the tears I had held back in the hospital.

Sam wrapped me in her arms while Nic lifted my bags from the ground and carried them down to the sidewalk.

He went back in and grabbed all the rest of the things I had left because I couldn’t bring them on the bus.

Through my blurred vision, I could make out his enormous double-cab truck parked on the street. He’d driven all the way here?

“When did you get here?”

“We missed you at the hospital. It’s my fault.

My flight was delayed, and Nic was picking me up from the airport first. Hey…

what’s… I know things are bad, but…” Sam read something in my face, looking like she understood far more than she should be able to.

“It’s going to be okay. Everything’s going to be all right, okay? You’re going to be okay, Courtney.”

I settled into the crook of my best friend’s neck, feeling like a creep because of how much the smell of Sam’s perfume put me at ease.

Nic loaded my stuff in the back, and we headed out on the road.

I had told Thea I knew Nic and Sam would drop everything if I needed them.

Because they already had.

Tomorrow would be another day spent with attorneys trying to convince them to let me out of releasing the album. Another day spent with Demetrius looking betrayed and confused, trying to convince me that it was the time to tell my story.

As I tried to sleep, my parents’ voices blended with Jeremiah’s. Anxieties and memories blended into a chorus of words from my past.

“You break everything you touch, Dove.”

“You can’t hide from me. You can’t hide from God either.”

“You committed a murder today.”

I rolled over to the other side of the king bed in the Brooklyn hotel, but a tugging pain had me straightening the thin gold hoop on my ear. It wasn’t sore anymore except when I accidentally pulled on it.

I fingered the cool metal hooped through the daith piercing.

Had it really been last night that I was kissing Thea and licking along her ear in that upstairs studio?

It was a million years ago and hundreds of miles away.

Maybe after I slept for a while, I would be able to figure out what the hell I should do next.