Whole Lotta Heart: Rock Star Hearts - Book #4

by Amity Cross

  Resisting the urge to put, Move your fat fucking arses out the way of the ambulances you morons, and at the end, I realised I had one bar of reception.

  I walked out of the ICU and into the hallway beyond where I got enough juice so I could send the posts to every feed I had going. Knowing how the tabloids worked, I knew someone had just refreshed my profiles in an office somewhere and forwarded it to someone else so they could update their live news stream. My notifications had already begun to ping with likes, hearts, wow faces, and comments.

  “Mr. Hale?”

  Looking up, I saw Statfield lingering in front of me, wearing the same clothes he had on last night. Honestly, I was surprised he was still here.

  “I thought you’d left,” I said eyeing him.

  “I’m still on the clock.” His tone was gruff, but I could sense his frustration. He blamed himself for Juniper’s attack, and maybe I did a little, too.

  “They arrested her,” I declared. The slightest mention of the woman who’d shot the love of my life grated against my heart.

  “It doesn’t mean my job is over,” he said. “Other people will try and get into the ICU.”

  “Someone else can handle it.”

  He frowned. “Sir?”

  “Go home, Statfield.” I turned and walked towards the ICU.

  “I’m sorry,” the bodyguard called out. “I failed her.”

  I tensed, but I didn’t stop walking until I was back at Juniper’s bedside, where Josh had fallen asleep in the armchair. I’d failed her, too.

  3

  Sebastian

  Our first kiss had been a desperate explosion of need.

  I was screaming into the silence, struggling with an overwhelming need to feel something real in my manufactured life, and she’d heard me. The disconnect had been so great—I hadn’t cared anymore, but fate had set me down into that small town on the edge of the world and thrown me into Juniper’s path that very first day.

  When the dam had finally broken, and I’d given in, one taste had sealed my fate. We’d seen into each other’s souls, wrapped around our respective flaws and anchored ourselves there. Together, we were the eye of the storm—the world raged around us, but as long as we held onto one another, we could weather anything that was thrown at us.

  We could weather this, too.

  By Christmas night, I’d gotten used to the awful antiseptic smell of the ICU. The comings and goings of the hospital never disturbed me, nor did the sounds of the machines that were hooked up to Juniper. The book I’d gotten her sat open in my lap, my knee holding it open to the place we’d left off.

  When the door slid open, letting in the hum of the ward beyond, I hardly had the strength to look up.

  “Sebastian?”

  Vanessa stood beside me, her gaze fixed on Juniper. I wondered if I’d had the same look on my face when I’d first seen her, too. Surprised, shocked, and a little vacant.

  “Oh, Juni,” she said through a moan.

  “You’re here.” I looked up at Juniper’s best friend.

  “What happened? It’s all over the news, but… All of it’s bullshit.” She shook her head and wiped at her tears. “How…?”

  I told her everything. How someone had been breaking into the grounds of the McMansion, the letters and the parcels, the incident in LA with the package hand-delivered to our room, then… Christmas eve in the kitchen, how we were talking about our future and all the things we wanted to do. How the woman was standing there with a gun pointed at Juniper.

  “I couldn’t do anything to stop it,” I said, my voice wavering. “I turned and—”

  “I believe you, Sebastian.”

  “I tackled her to the ground the second the gun went off. I just… If she’d fired again—”

  “Sebastian,” Vanessa’s hand settled on my shoulder, “she’s the strongest person I know. If I know Juniper half as well as I believe I do, she’s doing everything she can to fight her way back to you.”

  “She’s in a fucking coma. How can she fight?”

  “The mind is a mysterious thing, you know.”

  Pain, longing, love, loss—our perception of all these things were such a fucking enigma, even I was lost in the depth of it all.

  “She told me she stood on the cliff her father jumped off,” I began, my thoughts so scattered I could hardly hold onto any of them. “That she was so broken she…”

  “I think she just wanted to connect with him,” Vanessa mused. “I don’t think she was going to follow in his footsteps.”

  I gritted my teeth. Knowing I was the one who pushed her to walk towards the edge in the first place stung.

  “She’s so much like her mum—quick to love—but she’s also like her dad too,” Vanessa went on. “I always remembered him as this strong guy, but I was only a kid. Everything’s bigger and brighter when you’re that little.”

  “How long have you known Juniper?”

  “Most of my life.” She smiled at me. “She was my best woman at my wedding, you know.”

  “Is that a hint?”

  “I don’t know. Is it?”

  I shook my head and turned my eyes back onto Juniper. Strange that she was in the room, but so far away.

  “Why would anyone want to leave her?” I mused, thinking about her father. To me, she was this perfect creature full of love, life, and strength. She was the level-head when mine fell off my shoulders. She was the spark when mine had gone out. She was the light that illuminated all the dark places inside me.

  “We’ll never know why he jumped,” Vanessa replied, even though I didn’t need an answer to my question. “Maybe he wasn’t well.”

  “You think he had a mental illness?”

  “Maybe. People didn’t talk about it back then.” She snorted and shook out her blonde hair. “But I thought about it a lot over the years. Why would he leave like that? It never made sense to me.”

  I edged my chair closer to the bed and twined my fingers through Juniper’s. Her skin was still cold.

  “There were times when I worried how things were going to turn out between you two,” she said, taking Juniper’s other hand.

  “I seem to remember you were the one pushing her towards me.”

  “Yeah, when I thought it was just a fling. It wasn’t until I saw how you were with her that I changed my mind.”

  I frowned. “How I am with her?”

  “You’d die for her.” She gave me a pointed look. “I’d like to say Hugo felt that way about me—he loves me, he really does—but the kind of love you have with Juniper is rare.”

  Rare? I supposed it was. I never thought I’d be the guy who’d fall in love and settle. Never in a million years.

  “You’re not who I expected you to be,” Vanessa said, sitting on the end of the bed.

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah, it is so,” she replied with full sass. “You were the bad boy rocker who’d made eyes at my friend. You had one-nighter written all over your face. Never in a million years did I think you were going to stick, especially after all that shit with the paparazzi.”

  “She sent me away,” I whispered, remembering the argument we’d had in the Page Break Bookshop. The press had printed her family’s tragedies and given their own twisted commentary on our relationship, and she couldn’t handle it. Her fear had won out, but she’d come back to me.

  “You didn’t handle the whole sex tape thing well either, but Juniper forgave you.”

  I didn’t need the reminder. I knew the life I led wasn’t exactly a fairytale. The kind of fame, money, and career Beneath had amassed came with a heavy price.

  “And what about you?” I asked.

  “I’ll always be on Juniper’s side, but I’m not afraid to tell her when I think she’s wrong.”

  I straightened up. “You convinced her to come back? That day she came to the concert in Melbourne…”

  “Duh.”

  Shit, I owed more to Vanessa than I ever realised.

 
; Gazing at her friend, she asked, “Have the doctors told you anything else?”

  “No, I…” I trailed off, my stomach tying itself into knots. “They’ll bring her out of her coma when they’re satisfied the swelling in her brain has gone down. But she mightn’t wake right away and—”

  “There might be other damage.”

  I nodded and pinched the bridge of my nose with my free hand.

  “Sebastian, you did everything you could.”

  “Did I?” I asked. “It doesn’t feel like it.”

  “You had security and—”

  “Security who didn’t catch the fucking bitch,” I snarled, thinking about Statfield.

  “Be careful where you’re laying blame,” she warned. “It sounds like she was determined to get inside, no matter what.”

  Who did I blame then? The woman who stalked Juniper? She was a product of the Beneath image, the façade created to sell the dream along with albums and concert tickets. Vix was at the helm of all that, so did I blame her? Or did I blame the alleged mental illness that fed that unknown woman’s perception of reality?

  Who did I blame when mine and Juniper’s baby had lost its life? It hadn’t even been old enough to grow a fucking heart and already it was gone.

  “Vanessa… Juniper was pregnant.”

  The blood seemed to drain from her face and she stared at me in subdued shock. “What?”

  “When the surgeon came to talk to me, he said…” I felt tears welling in my eyes and it was such an unfamiliar sensation, I clamped my mouth shut and looked away.

  “She was hit in the stomach,” Vanessa whispered.

  I nodded.

  “How far along was she?”

  “Six weeks.”

  “Oh fuck… Sebastian… I’m so sorry.”

  “We didn’t know. We didn’t—” I choked back a sob and tightened my grip on Juniper’s hand. “She doesn’t know.”

  “Sebastian.” She grasped my shoulder and shook me. “It wasn’t your fault, you hear me? None of this was your fault, so stop beating yourself up. When she wakes up, she’s going to need you, okay?”

  I nodded and wiped my sleeve across both eyes.

  “We’ll tell her together, okay? Then we’ll face whatever’s next. The three of us.”

  I nodded again.

  “I brought Ziggy,” she said after a moment. “I hope you don’t mind, but he’s at your house with some guy named Farmer. I figured she’d like to see him.”

  “How did you get him here?”

  “Private charter, courtesy of some rich arsehole I know,” she declared. She smiled and I marvelled at her strength. I could see why she and Juniper were friends. “You need to go home and have a shower,” she paused for a minute, “and get a change of clothes. Also, eat something while you’re at it.”

  “I don’t want to go home,” I said. “I’m fine right here.”

  “She won’t be alone. Besides, you can pack her some things. She’ll need a change of clothes, her pyjamas, her toothbrush… better bring her makeup as well. Not that she needs it. Have you seen her complexion? Her skin in perfect.”

  Vanessa had gone off on one of her trademark tangents, but she was right in a way. We still didn’t know when or if she’d wake up, but the doctors seemed confident she would. The comfort of her pyjamas would be welcome compared to the scratchy hospital gown they’d put her n.

  The book was still perched on my knee, so I closed it with a snap before I got up.

  “What’s that?”

  “Juniper’s Christmas present,” I replied, setting the book onto the table. “Pride and Prejudice.”

  “Ooh, that’s an oldie. I bet she’ll love it.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah. Of course. The bent and broken ones are her favourite kind.” She took my place in the chair and I wondered if it was an analogy for why Juniper was so drawn to me back when we first met.

  Rounding the bed, I leaned over and stroked my fingers over Juniper’s cheek. “I’ll be back soon, okay?” I whispered before placing a soft kiss on her forehead. “Wait for me.”

  When I went out into the hall, Statfield was still there.

  “Mr. Hale?” He looked at me expectantly, as if he was waiting for a command, so I gave him one.

  “I need to get out of here and go home without alerting the press.”

  He nodded and brushed his palms over his shirt. “Yes, sir.”

  When I walked into the McMansion, the house was cold despite the heat of the summer evening.

  The hospital staff had helped us get out via a service entrance, and half and hour later, we’d sailed through the gates past a flurry of flashing camera bulbs. Thankfully, the media had gotten the memo about blocking ambulances, but hadn’t seemed to care about circling our home and pissing off our neighbours.

  I stood in the kitchen, staring at the floor where Juniper and I had been standing when… The blood was gone.

  I swallowed hard and breathed deeply. The scent of pine disinfectant lingered on the air, and outside on the deck, the mess from the party had been cleared. The Christmas tree was still in the middle of the room, glittering under the LED lights strewn around it.

  I didn’t know how to be here anymore, knowing what’d happened.

  “Mr. Hale?”

  Farmer’s voice echoed across the empty living room and the sound of claws scraping on the parquetry floors scurried towards me. I caught Ziggy as he leapt up into my arms and almost fell onto my arse. He had a lot of bounce in his hind legs for such a robust little canine.

  “Mrs. Hutchinson left the dog,” Farmer went on. “They don’t allow pets at the hospital.”

  I gathered he was talking about Vanessa, since I’d never known what her last name was. “Ziggy,” I corrected him, setting the little Jack Russell back onto the floor. “His name is Ziggy.”

  “Ziggy,” the security officer said. “How is Miss Rowe?”

  “No change,” I said scratching Ziggy behind the ears. I was glad to see him, and like a guardian fucking angel, he’d shown up at the moment I was about to lose it and held me together. “They cleaned up.”

  “A few hours ago,” Farmer confirmed, “after the police took their evidence. The leftover food and drinks are in the fridge. The guys helped clear the deck.” He coughed nervously as I rose to my feet. “Mr. Hale… I’d like to apologise for—”

  “Don’t,” I interrupted. “Just don’t do that, Farmer. I appreciate everyone giving up their Christmas to handle this, but just don’t go around assigning blame, okay? I’ve already had Statfield up my arse about it and I just…” I glanced down at Ziggy, who was sitting patiently at my feet. When he sensed my eyes on him, he looked up and wagged his tail.

  “Yes, sir,” Farmer said, his voice clipped. “He likes you. The dog, I mean.”

  “Yeah,” I murmured, my gaze flicking to the spot where Juniper had fallen. “He’s one of a kind.”

  “Mr. Hale?”

  “What?” I scowled, my patience completely shot to hell and back.

  “Detective Halliday left his card. He’d like to take your statement as soon as you’re able. They need it to apply to keep the… Well, to keep her behind bars.”

  I nodded sharply. “I’ll call him tomorrow.” I clicked my fingers and whistled as I walked away. “Ziggy, come.”

  The little dog ran after me, leaping up the stairs as I left Farmer alone in the kitchen.

  In the bedroom, I could smell Juniper’s perfume on the air—vanilla, jasmine, and the tang of some sweet spice.

  Sitting on the end of the bed, I stared out the window barely seeing the stunning sunset blazing across the Sydney skyline. If Juniper didn’t wake up, what was I going to do? I couldn’t go on without her. She was my entire world and I didn’t know how I ever survived without her in my life. We’d only been together six months or so, but it felt like an eternity. I guess that’s what it was supposed to feel like when you found ‘the one’.

  Ziggy leapt
up onto the mattress, sat beside me, and put his head on my knee. I stroked the soft black fur on his ears, glad for his company.

  “What am I going to do, Ziggy?” I whispered. “I can’t save her from this. How can I just sit around on my arse and wait?”

  Ziggy drew in a deep breath and let it out with a groan.

  “You had a big day today, huh?” I murmured. “A private charter on Christmas Day? I wonder how much that cost me.” A fucking lot.

  My entire world was crumbling. All of this was a blow, not just to me, but to everyone I cared about.

  Our European tour would be off, Beneath was without a manager, Juniper was fighting for her life, and the record label—along with our personal lawyers—were fighting a massive legal battle against Vix. Since Stargazers had apparently gotten wind of that too, Myers would now be on the warpath looking for the person who’d leaked the news. Paired with all that other shit… Well, Beneath would be on the back burner for some time. Who knew when we’d be able to reschedule the tour, or if it went ahead at all. If Juniper didn’t make it, then my life would be over, which meant Beneath would cease to exist. After everything I’d done to protect them—Josh, Nate, and Damon—it still might all come crashing down.

  For the first time in years, my future was one hundred percent unknown… and it scared the hell out of me.

  My fingers wound through the wiry hair around Ziggy’s collar and he rolled over so I could pet his belly. Right now, he was the only thing holding me together. A little dog and a broken rock star.

  4

  Sebastian

  I’d been away from Juniper for too long.

  I’d spent the night at her bedside, but when the sun came up and Christmas was over, I had another task to attend to.

  Sitting in that waiting room for news had been agonising, but giving my statement to the police had been worse. I didn’t want to relive what’d happened, but Detective Halliday had grilled me on every point. Did you recognise her? What did she say before she open fired? Did she have any other contact with you or Juniper outside of the letters? What did she look like? Could you pick her out of a line up? How many shots?