by Amity Cross
Standing in the open doorway, I felt like a thief sneaking into someone’s private oasis, and my hands began to tremble. I knew I was alone, but I glanced over my shoulder anyway.
The guitar he’d been playing the other night was still on the couch, and his journal was sitting on the coffee table. It was closed tight, though all the little pieces of paper he liked to stuff between the pages were poking out. Resisting the urge to peek at whatever he’d been working on, I stepped deeper into the room.
The walls were filled with framed gold and platinum records, celebrating sales milestones in several different countries. A number one single in the UK, another in the US, a number one album that went double platinum. I ran my fingers over the point of an ARIA award—an Australian music industry gong—and studied the famous shape of a gold Grammy statue.
I felt small standing amongst all of Sebastian’s achievements and I wondered what I could do to match it. He lived and breathed his music… What was my equivalent?
I stopped in front of the rack of guitars and studied each one. I didn’t know anything about playing, but I could at least tell the difference between an acoustic and an electric guitar. The floor was littered with snaking black leads, a microphone stand sat in the corner, and different sized amplifiers lined the far wall. A large black hard case was propped beneath what looked like a mixer—a large piece of equipment with lots of knobs and dials used for recording. Another hard case was open next to that, full of pedals and things that plugged into the electric guitars to make different sound effects.
Organised chaos. That’s what this place was.
I sat on the couch with a sigh, realising I’d been content listening to Sebastian play, but I’d never asked him any questions about how things worked. How the hell did he write a song with music and words and notes and make it all match? How did he know which notes went together?
I picked up the guitar and a thrill rolled through me as I nestled it on my lap. Listening to the quiet house, I bit my bottom lip. Did I dare… I strummed lightly, the sound jarring through the silence. It was out of tune. I tightened the top string and gave it a strum, but it sounded even worse.
“It’s too tight,” a voice said behind me. “You need to loosen it.”
I turned, my heart skipping a beat, and I found Sebastian leaning against the doorframe. The sneaky— He looked dishevelled in his torn Black Sabbath tee and messy hair, but he always did—it was part of his bad boy allure.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—” I pursed my lips and frowned. It felt like we were starting all over again, though this time I was even more nervous around him, though I shouldn’t be. We’d had sex in just about every position I could think of. I felt myself flush from the thought of him inside of me.
“It’s cool,” he said, hiding a smile. “I need to retune that one anyway. Tight is high and loose is low… you know, just for future reference.”
“Noted.” I had a feeling he was just being kind, but I didn’t try to correct him.
I set down the guitar and glanced away, but he was like a magnet and I was drawn back again.
“It’s the only room I ever spend any time in,” he said, watching me closely.
“I can see. It’s messy as hell.”
“Yeah, but I know where everything is.” He rounded the end of the couch and sat beside me. “That guitar is the second one I’ve ever owned,” he said as he picked it up. He began tuning the string I’d fiddled with. “My mum bought it for me.”
“Really? What happened to the first one?”
“I smashed it over my dad’s head to stop him from hitting Mum.” He said it so frankly, I wasn’t sure how to take it. He strummed the strings and continued to tune as I blinked.
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “It was a long time ago. Another life…”
Silence opened up between us as he set down the guitar.
“How did it go?” I asked, almost too afraid to hear the answer.
“They took it better than I expected,” Sebastian replied, rubbing his eyes. “I thought there was going to be a riot, but it was really mellow actually.”
“That’s good, I guess.”
“They’re on board. Josh has taken it upon himself to seduce Vix.”
“That’s crazy.” I snorted and shook my head. “Though, if anyone can get into Vix’s knickers, it’s the ultimate manwhore, Josh Carroway.”
“So, you two have met.” Sebastian laughed and knocked his fist against my bare knee. His touch sent sparks racing up my skin and I shivered, tensing when my core began to ache.
He glanced at me, his eyes darkening. There was a moment where I pictured myself straddling his lap and taking his mouth with mine, but I blinked, and the image was gone.
“When it comes out, it’ll be the scandal of the century,” I said. “Are you ready for that?”
“I have to be,” he replied, his expression changing. “People are going to say what they want regardless, but I can’t let Vix get away with everything she’s done.”
I nodded, agreeing with his train of thought. It was going to be tough, but how he handled it—how we all handled it—made the measure of the man. So far, he was doing spectacularly.
“Juniper…” He sighed, his breath wavering.
“I’m…” Vanessa had said to simplify. I took a deep breath. “I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of losing myself,” I murmured. “To you, to your world, to more humiliation…”
“To me?” He shifted so he was facing me straight on. “Never.”
I looked around the room at all his achievements and knew I was clutching at straws. All that time ago, when I’d stood in his dressing room back in Melbourne, I hadn’t really leapt, had I? I’d merely dipped a toe into the water.
I studied Sebastian’s features, taking in the flecks in his stormy eyes, the chiselled edge of his jaw, and the line of his strong shoulders. I knew if I took his hand in mine, I’d feel the callouses on his fingertips from the years of playing guitar.
“Tell me about the band,” I said. “How it was before you signed. Tell me everything.”
Sebastian smiled and settled back onto the couch. “It’s wild. Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“Yeah.” I nodded, my entire body aching. “I want to know everything about you.”
6
Juniper
We stayed up all night talking.
Sebastian and I were just together. Just him and I for the first time in months. There were no screaming fans, no paparazzi, no Vix, no contracts, and no obligations. It was how things were when we were together in the Point. It was what I’d craved the moment we went on tour. Time.
Sebastian told me about his life before Beneath. How he’d grew up in the outer suburbs of Melbourne and gone to a big university with a TAFE program and studied sound engineering. He’d always known he wanted to get into music, but he’d also been realistic about it. He couldn’t hitch a wagon to being a rock star, he said, not back then. He’d started the band with Josh while they were still at TAFE—Nate and Damon had joined soon after—and he’d worked two jobs while they’d played gigs around town.
“I worked at the JB Hi-Fi Distribution Centre,” he’d said. “I moved boxes of electronics around on a forklift, then I went into the city at night and either mixed sound for other bands or played in my own. I’d get a few hours’ sleep, then I’d be back at the warehouse to do it all again the next day.”
His mum had been sick at the same time—she’d been battling breast cancer—so his dedication was even more inspiring to me. He’d needed the extra money to help pay for her treatment, so the only downtime he’d had was when he was on stage with Beneath. It seemed like a cruel twist when she’d passed away right before he’d been handed the record deal of his dreams.
Sebastian’s family life had been tumultuous, that was for sure. He’d also told me that he’d seen his dad one more time before he’d died of liver fa
ilure. The man was an alcoholic, so the diagnosis hadn’t been a surprise. However, the fact that he’d shown up on their doorstep asking Sebastian to be tested to see if he was a match for a transplant, was.
All Sebastian said about that was that he chose not to do it.
My life wasn’t anything close to Sebastian’s, but I told him what I remembered of my dad. How to me, he was always happy and liked to play silly songs on his trumpet to make me laugh, how he danced round the apartment with my mum, and how they read all the classics to me at bedtime. All my friends were reading Dr. Seuss and Mr. Men and there I was, begging for the next chapter of Little Women. We’d had a small life, but it’d been a good one until my dad committed suicide. I still didn’t understand why he had to leave—and I knew I never would—but at least we’d had those times together.
It’d been a long day, and we’d fallen asleep on the couch in the music room sometime after two a.m.
I’d woken first, my heart uneasy.
Sebastian’s guitar was on the floor and the man himself was behind me on the couch, the big spoon to my little. For a moment it felt blissful, until I extracted myself from his grasp. Looking down at him, he’d never seemed so vulnerable to me. Underneath the fame, the money, and the music, he was just a man.
In the kitchen, all was quiet. It was beginning to sound like a certain Christmas rhyme in my head, so I shook out the cobwebs. I felt like I had the hangover of the century. There was something to be said about emotional exhaustion.
I found it strange that Sebastian didn’t keep any staff. There were no personal chefs, trainers, cleaners, or security guards—there was off-site security that monitored CCTV cameras around the grounds, but no one patrolled—it was just him and me alone in this big McMansion. When I told him that’s what I called this place, he’d just laughed.
Opening the huge stainless-steel fridge, I found an unopened carton of orange juice. I checked the use by date just to be sure, then poured myself a glass.
The polished concrete floor was cold under my bare feet, and I sipped the juice, thinking about everything we’d talked about the night before. Before long, I caught myself grinning like a lovesick teenager. It was coming back.
Unfortunately, my phone buzzed in my pocket, snapping me out of my daydream like a slap in the face with a giant wet fish. I wanted to ignore the annoying ding, but habit had me reaching for it to see what notification I’d received. It was the ultimate curse of the modern age if you asked me.
It was a message from Vanessa. Have you seen this?
Any message that opened with those words had me swallowing a little vomit, but I opened the link anyway. The fish came back and slapped me on the other cheek as I was taken to the Stargazers website where a grainy photo of Sebastian’s McMansion awaited me.
The headline was worse. Are they back on? Juniper Rowe spotted at Sebastian Hale’s Sydney home!
My grip tightened around my phone. Fuck.
“Hey.” Sebastian shuffled into the kitchen and grabbed a glass off the shelf, but I wasn’t looking at him. I was too busy re-reading the article. He poured himself some orange juice and leaned against the counter. “I feel hungover, which is fucking bizarre. I didn’t drink at all last night. I just had a couple of beers at Josh’s.” I didn’t reply, and he paused. “Juniper?”
I grunted.
“What’s wrong?”
“The bag is out of the cat. I mean, the cat…” I snorted and handed him my phone. “They know I’m here.”
Our fingers brushed, and I tensed from the contact. Sebastian glanced at me, and if he noticed I was getting all flustered he didn’t say anything. He scanned the article, his forehead crease deepening with each sentence. It was only a short article, but he was getting a massive brow wrinkle.
“This is going to fuck up things with Vix, isn’t it?”
“Don’t worry,” he replied, setting my phone onto the kitchen island. “This won’t change anything. I’ll be able to spin something to her. I wouldn’t underestimate Josh, either.”
I didn’t want to know the specifics of Josh’s ‘mission’. Just the thought of him in bed with Vix made me want to hurl. “But how do they know I’m here? I know Harry wouldn’t say anything.”
“It’s probably some arsehole on a boat with a telephoto lens. Whoever it was got lucky, or they Photoshopped it and took a punt on a rumour.”
“That’s a thing?”
“It can be a thing. I’ve had it happen before.” He shrugged. “Sometimes even Beneath has quiet weeks.”
“I can’t believe this,” I fumed. “We’ve been so careful. Are you telling me I can’t go near the windows now? The whole McMansion is glass if you hadn’t noticed.”
“Don’t worry, Juni,” Sebastian murmured. “We’re going to figure this thing out, and when Vix is gone, everything will be a million times better.”
I wanted to believe him, but where there was one, there would be more waiting in the wings for a chance to exploit the both of us. Playing the fame game was the last thing I wanted to do.
“That night…” Sebastian began, his hand tightening around his glass, “at the awards…”
Of all the things we’d talked about last night, the public sex tape reveal hadn’t been one of them.
“I don’t know if I want to talk about that,” I said, my cheeks heating. The pain was still raw, and I found myself clinging to it like it’d keep snapping me awake. Vanessa was right—I was melodramatic and cynical. Instead of elaborating, I swirled the orange juice around in my glass and watched the pith as it made a whirlpool.
“Then you need to listen,” Sebastian said. “You told me I’d done nothing that night. You thought I’d gone behind your back with Mallory and I knew what she was going to do. I didn’t, not really. Maybe I went about things the wrong way, but I was trying to protect you from her. I believed she had footage of me and her, not of me and you. Mallory is a lot of things, but she’d never do anything to threaten her career, even if she wanted revenge that badly. I honestly believed she was bluffing.”
I tensed. “Sebastian—”
“I didn’t do anything at first because I was blindsided, Juniper. I had no idea. None of us did.” He sighed and lowered his gaze. “I know you don’t trust me, but I don’t know…”
I thought about all the things Vanessa and Harry had told me. How Sebastian had sued every tabloid and media outlet that’d reported the sex tape. How he’d kept his distance to protect me from Vix. How he’d known about the non-disclosure and had let me sign it—though, it’d only been afterwards that he’d realised just how sticky Vix’s fingers were—knowing that it’d keep me afloat financially and stop any more footage from being released. He’d taken a giant fucking bullet for me.
“I don’t know how things got so turned around,” he murmured.
“It’s not you,” I said leaning on the counter. “I know that now. It could never be you, Sebastian, but—”
“It’s the world I live in.” His gaze met mine. “And the things people do for money and fame.”
“Unless I play the game, I’m always going to get caught in the crossfire, aren’t I?”
“I wish I could say no, but I can’t control what other people do,” he scoffed and screwed his eyes shut, “I wish I could keep them all away.”
He’d give it all up for me. In that moment, I realised just how much he meant it when he said he loved me. He loved me.
It was time to grow the fuck up, let the past go, and decide what I wanted without fear.
I turned my gaze onto the pool and the garden beyond. “Sebastian, I—”
My gaze locked onto a shadow in the garden and I straightened up, my heart skipping a beat. There was someone outside. The shadow seemed to notice me staring and darted off into the bushes along the fence near the water.
“Juniper?”
“Someone’s outside,” I whispered, wondering if I should find a really big knife. “Someone’s in the garden.”
&nbs
p; “Are you sure?” He turned and scanned the garden with a frown. “No one can get in. The grounds are secure.”
“I know what I saw, Sebastian.”
“Then I’m going to check.” He went to move and I reached over the counter and grabbed his shirt.
“Don’t.”
“It’s probably an animal.”
“An animal?” I scoffed. “In the city?”
“Sometimes there’s pelicans in the yard,” he replied with a shrug. “Lots of things live out in the water.”
“Yeah, in the water.”
“Juniper, if there was someone on the grounds, the cameras would’ve picked it up. They detect motion, and they’re monitored.”
“I can’t believe you’re who you are and don’t have more security. Haven’t you ever seen The Bodyguard? I wouldn’t believe you if you said you’d never had any crazed fans.” I wanted to tear my hair out. “Anyway, with everything that’s going on, you don’t think someone would want to try and get a closer look? A picture of us together now would be worth a shitload.”
“I’m beginning to change my mind on that subject,” he muttered, looking for his phone.
“Good. It’s one thing being photographed in a public place, but in your house? Fuck them.”
Sebastian didn’t seem all that concerned, but he called the security company to come and do a sweep for my peace of mind. An hour later, they’d given the all clear. If anyone had been there, they hadn’t left any evidence. No alarms were tripped, nor was there anything on the cameras.
“Maybe you’re just tired,” Sebastian offered once the squad of men had left.
“Yeah,” I murmured, my heart still out of sync. “Maybe.”
7
Sebastian