When Stars Fall by Wendy Million
Chapter Thirty
Ellie
Present Day
I tuck my breasts into my teeny-tiny bikini and hope that nipple-gate doesn’t happen on top of baby-gate. Or, I guess, child-gate? Although my breasts might take the focus off Haven. My brain is fried, and I haven’t even stepped into the glare of the sun, the glare of the cameras. Wyatt’s right. They’ll be there whether I see them or not. We’d better be good enough actors to make our relationship seem authentic.
I make my way to the water, where Wyatt and Haven are laughing and screaming. Listening to her high-pitched voice paired with his deeper tone is like hearing music for the first time. I want to stand and soak in the sound, imagine every note. For a moment, concealed by the trees, I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and allow myself to pretend this life is normal.
Wyatt’s baritone laugh reverberates around the cove below. My heart swells. His laugh, his genuine one, wakes up my body. I press my palm to my chest and rub, like the memories are a spot I can scrub out, as if the ache will disappear with enough effort. Ten years of repressed feelings. They won’t go away—nothing and no one makes me feel this way except the man himself.
When I step onto the rocky shore, he spots me and swims over. He rises out of the water, ripe for the cameras to catch every ripple of muscle, every rivulet down his chest. He scoops me up, and I laugh as he tosses me into the deeper water. I emerge to Haven’s giggles.
“He’s been doing that to me too, Mom. It’s so fun. He can throw me so far.”
I stroke my way to the shallows. Wyatt takes Haven, counts her off, and throws her out again. He does make it look easy. He wades to me while she plays in the water, a school of fish looping around her ankles. With his arm around my waist, he guides me to his side. Bending his head, he whispers, “Relax. You’re better than this.”
Under my lashes, I glance up at him, and he sucks in a sharp breath. Rising on my toes, I brush my lips against his cheek. “Better?” I let our bodies slide together.
“Almost.” He tugs me flush against him. His blue-green eyes darken, and he places his hands on either side of my face. He kisses my forehead and then my cheek. His attention lingers on my face, the way it once did when we were telling each other secrets in bed. The moment sings with a new kind of tension, and it’s got nothing to do with anger.
When Haven swims closer, he releases me so quickly I’d have stumbled if we were on land. The water saves me from looking like too much of a fool.
“Again?” he asks her, grinning.
“And again, and again, and again.” Haven’s smile matches his. “This is so fun.”
He picks her up, and the muscles in his back ripple. After he’s released her, he says to me over his shoulder, “Haven said something about a tube?”
“Oh.” I’m startled out of my thoughts about his thick muscles, and his toned back. He’s so good with our daughter—a natural, as though the years without him never happened. My mind is going to places, to memories it has no business journeying to. “I’ll get it.”
He takes my wrist, drawing me close again so his lips graze my ear. “Let me get it. If I seem familiar with where things are, anyone watching will think I’ve been here a lot.”
“Right.” I stare at his chest, afraid to make eye contact. He’ll realize what I’ve been thinking. Reading me, when he was sober enough, was second nature.
“Ellie.” His voice dips low, the tone weakening my knees.
My name from his lips has always sounded so much better than from anyone else. Unable to resist, I glance up, and my heart lodges in my throat. I long to rise onto my toes, press my lips to his, see if the chemistry is still there. It is. Has to be. Parts of me have already ignited at the mere thought of his exploratory hands.
A knowing smirk quirks up one corner of his lips. “Where’s the tube?”
“In the little storage shed, on the far corner of the cliff face.” My voice hasn’t sounded turned on like that without me doing it on purpose in years. I could rip his clothes off right here. My eyes half flutter when he dips his head into my neck.
“Got it,” he murmurs against the sensitive skin. A shiver plays the most fantastic notes along my spine. I clutch his impressive biceps to keep myself upright. The skin-to-skin contact is delicious.
“Again?” Haven calls out, just before she goes under and comes up next to us. Her reappearance snaps me into reality.
I step back from Wyatt as though I’ve been stung. He yanks at his swim shorts, which are mostly concealed by the water. I’m not the only one with my engine revving, nowhere to go. He winks at me as he turns to Haven. “What about this tube?”
“Oh yeah.” Haven jumps around. “The anchor is really heavy, though.”
“Too heavy for me?”
Haven turns to me for confirmation. “I’m sure Wyatt will be fine.” Nikki and I always cart out the anchor for the giant tube together, but I doubt Wyatt will have the same trouble. He just came off filming a superhero movie, and if his Instagram pictures are anything to go by, he lifted a lot more weight than the anchor in preparation for the role. I spent far too many nights scrolling through those pictures.
Haven and Wyatt wade to the shed and then make short work of digging out the tube and inflating it. Wyatt lets Haven drag the tube through the water to me. He follows with the anchor cradled in his arms.
“Too heavy?” I call out.
He chuckles and changes his grip to hoist it over his head.
“Guess not.” Every time his arms flex, my heart pumps heat into areas of my body that haven’t felt this way in ten years. I take a deep breath. Get a grip, Ellie. Lust. That’s all this is. Supercharged lust. He doesn’t even like me right now. But these last few days, when I stare at myself in the mirror, there’s a change in me.
I’m awake. The hibernation is over.
For another hour, we jump on and off the tube, float in the ocean, flirt, laugh, pretend. The easiness isn’t an act for me. I’ve almost convinced myself we’ve always been this way when Haven starts to shiver. She’s so petite the cold hits her hard. The sun has disappeared behind some clouds. Wyatt wraps her in a towel and carries her up to the house with me trailing behind.
When the door to the outside closes, the chill follows us in.
Haven and Wyatt spend the rest of the day ignoring me unless Haven wants to know where something is, when a particular experience happened, or how old she was when she did something. Sometimes I catch Wyatt observing me, but I’m terrible at deciphering his thoughtful moods. Ideas are bubbling below his surface, but I have no idea what they are.
Nikki comes into the kitchen as I’m putting items away after Wyatt’s complicated snack. “He’s better with her than I expected.” Nikki takes a seat at the island.
“He is.” I can’t dispute that. Parenting is hard, sometimes really hard, but he’s taken to it with ease.
“What are you going to do?”
“What do you mean?” I stop cleaning, cloth in hand.
“He leaves tomorrow.” She checks her phone.
I straighten when Wyatt comes into the kitchen. He grabs a glass and gets water from the fridge without speaking and then disappears out the door.
“Has he said anything to you since you came up from the beach?” Nikki asks, eyebrows raised at the frosty air that entered the room with Wyatt.
“Does ‘do you want any?’ count? He was making lunch at the time.”
“The only person he should be mad at right now is himself. You gave him a choice, and he chose wrong.”
“Bit of a false choice when I don’t tell him everything, though, isn’t it?” I say.
“You did go back. He doesn’t remember.” Nikki runs her hands along the granite island. “Says a lot.”
“I’m not throwing that in his face. I knew he wouldn’t remember. Again, it’s not a real choice when he doesn’t understand what’s happening.”
“You’re being too easy on him.”
“I’m trying to be fair. Telling him when I knew he wouldn’t remember wasn’t the right thing to do. Made me feel better at the time, but it wasn’t the right thing to do.” Wyatt and I know each other too well for either of us to accept one visit when he was wasted as being a genuine effort to offer him a choice.
“Fine. I want you to close your eyes and think about how things might have been if you’d stayed. Tell me about that.” Nikki leans back.
“So many things. Too many things.” I hold up a finger. “And not all of them bad, Nikki. You see him now. He’s great with her. With very few exceptions, he treated me like the most precious person in the world.” He cherished me, and despite the fame and the women, and everything else that could have doomed us, I trusted him. He never gave me reason to doubt.
“Getting back together with him when he’s been in your life less than a week is a mistake.”
“He’s so angry with me right now, he doesn’t want me. He might never want to be with me again.” My voice catches, and I swallow my anxiety.
“What if he does? What if he tells you he wants it all with you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’d do.” Other than Anna’s presence in his life, I trust him. He’s not the man he was. But I don’t trust her or her habits. I really don’t trust the drug addicts and pushers she likely hangs around with. Maybe Wyatt doesn’t knowingly let her use in the house, but it doesn’t mean she isn’t hiding needles, powder, or pills where kids can find them. I left Wyatt to keep Haven away from the drug abuse, the violence, the unpredictability of an addict. Letting him take our daughter into a situation where those things exist nullifies the ten years I stayed away.
“He leaves tomorrow. What’s the plan for tonight?”
“I’ll drive him back to his hotel after dinner, when Haven’s in bed. I don’t want to talk about any custody or visitation things with her around. Sometimes we say things that aren’t always . . . kind.”
“You’re having those discussions when you take him back to his hotel?”
“I have to. We’re out of time.” I’d prefer not to get lawyers involved if we can be adults about this. I rub my face. “Haven can’t be around Anna. It’s a hard line for me.”
“Not sure how you stop that.”
“If Wyatt takes me to court . . .” I can’t finish my thought.
“It’ll get nasty,” Nikki agrees and rises to stand beside the island. “He’s led a very public, very messy life.”
“I’m not sure I can do that to him or Haven—drag him through the mud.”
“Maybe you won’t have to. You say he’s changed. I guess we’ll see if that’s true.” Nikki walks out of the kitchen and back into the living room.
Every time my thoughts drift to Anna, I’m not sure how we’ll ever solve our custody problem—if she can’t stay away from drugs, and he won’t abandon her, we’re at an impasse.
He’s on the back of my bike, and we’re taking the alternate route off my property. The path is too narrow for a car. When I first bought this place, I paid to have this tiny road carved out as an escape route from the paparazzi in case they came calling. They never did, but I’ve kept it cleared in case. Now they are camped out in droves by the security hut. I checked with Jerome before taking the secret exit.
Wyatt’s dinner reminded me he can make delicious food with very few ingredients. Haven helped him in the kitchen, learning alongside him as he talked about flavors, cuts of meat, spices, ways to cook things, and anything else she asked. My heart melted like butter in a pan. His patience was limitless.
When he put her to bed, I stood outside the door, listening as he read her stories and answered her questions. I rushed back down the hall when I heard him getting up to leave.
The rhythm of my life with him is something I could get used to. I have no idea how he’s feeling. He hasn’t said two words to me on the ride back. Not about the path, not about Haven, not about custody arrangements. Nothing.
When we left the house, I texted Calshae, and she suggested the employee entrance. The fewest paparazzi were there, and she could use her workers as an excuse to move people along without raising suspicion. We’re arriving at shift change.
Calshae holds open the door as we squeeze through. “I had anyone turned away from staying here who was obviously a member of the press,” Calshae says as soon as we’re in the door. “But my employees aren’t detectives. There could be people here who work for gossip outlets who slipped through the cracks.”
I nod and glance at Wyatt. His jaw is tight, but he nods too. Out of the corner of his eye, he looks at me. “Are you coming up?”
“We should talk.” Worry eats at me, a worm in an apple. After the quiet stage, the next is the vindictive one, though I was never on the receiving end. He’s already called lawyers. Going up to his room might lead to another fight. There’s not much choice, with him leaving tomorrow. Determining a way forward over the phone gives us too much room for misunderstandings.
He takes my hand and the small action, so deeply familiar, gives me hope. He offers a gentle squeeze when our fingers intertwine, once a silent form of reassurance. Maybe we won’t fight. Heat floods my cheeks. Calshae gives me a sly look but this isn’t what she thinks.
When we get to his room, he drops my hand the minute we’re in the door. He sits in one of the chairs by the desk, hands clasped across his middle.
I perch on the edge of the bed, waiting. Starting with the lawyer seems confrontational, but I don’t want to hide what I’ve learned either.
“I just keep getting angrier.” He runs a hand down his face. “It’s like an endless spiral of rage. I don’t know when I’ll get to the bottom, but I’m not there yet.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“About why I’m angry?”
“No, I understand why you’re angry,” I say. “But if you want to talk about anything . . .”
Wyatt’s shoulders fall. “There are so many things. The firsts with Haven. All of them—gone.”
“There are still some left. Lots of them.”
“Don’t. Okay? I don’t want to fight with you. I don’t.” He shakes his head. “I’ll say shit I don’t mean. Or that I mean right now, but won’t mean later. I don’t want to hurt you, but I’m also not sure how to move forward.”
I scooch back onto the bed, drawing my knees to my chest. The answers don’t exist in me either. There’s no clear path to get past what we’ve both done to each other.
He examines me for a while before he speaks again. “You used to sit like that when we lived together. Do you realize that? If we got in a fight and you were in the wrong, you’d curl up into this little ball.” He stands and shoves his hands in his pockets. “I know that about you. I notice so many things. The last few days, I’m remembering more and more. Weird, right? I come after you because I love you and then spend these last few days remembering why I love you.”
Tears prick at my eyes. Seeing him again has been like that for me. Except I’ve spent years denying my feelings existed. Embracing them wasn’t an option. I have no idea if it is now either. His back is to me like he can’t stand to look at me.
“Everything about Haven’s nine years bothers me. All of it.” He goes to the curtain on the sliding door, drawn tight, and twists it back, peeking out. Turning, arms crossed, he stares at me. “The other thing that makes me angry, irrationally angry”—he chuckles and runs a hand through his hair, as though he knows I’m going to think he’s lost his mind—“is that I didn’t get to see you pregnant with my kid, with Haven.” He comes to me and takes my hand, tugging me to my feet.
“I had terrible cravings for the strangest combinations,” I whisper. “Some things you might be glad you missed.”
“I’m not so sure.” He presses his hand against my stomach. “I think I would have loved it all. God knows I loved you.” The raw need in his voice hits me straight in the chest, piercing my heart.
“Wyatt,” I breathe out. The heat from his hand burns through me. I itch to shift his palm a little lower. My thoughts from earlier today are tiny fires threatening to become an inferno.
“All day, I’ve been looking at you, wondering what it might have been like if I’d gone to rehab like you asked, if I’d stayed that day instead of leaving, if I wasn’t so fucking out of it when you came back.” His Adam’s apple bobs. “I’m sorry about everything I said during that fight, Ellie.”
Going back to either of those days doesn’t help us now. Without realizing it, we’ve shifted closer, so close that breathing makes our bodies touch. Every exhale skims us together. My heart wants to escape my chest and brush up against him. My eyes flutter closed, lost in a haze of sensations that have nothing to do with thinking. Wyatt’s breath stirs my hair next to my ear. I long for the press of his body against mine, for the length of him to fill me, to be sure he’s mine again. I’d give anything to have him mine again.
“Not unless you say yes.” Wyatt’s mouth is close enough to my ear his lips graze my earlobe, and I suppress a moan.
Fireworks go off in my brain, leaving behind a haze of memories. Every time he’s whispered in my ear in a crowded room, under the glare of lights, beneath the cover of darkness, bursts to the surface. I don’t want to think anymore. I don’t want to argue anymore. I want to feel.
“Yes,” I whisper, eyes closed.
“Look at me.” His voice is gruff, one hand cupping my cheek.
Opening my eyes, I see my desire reflected on his face. So familiar. If I say the word again, there’ll be no turning back. If I think about what saying yes means, I won’t speak the word. “Yes.”
His hands sink into my hair, and his lips rush to meet mine. I wrap my arms around him, everything so natural I can switch off my brain, go on instinct. In one swift movement, he lifts my shirt over my head, my hair tumbling around my shoulders. Both hands come back to my hair, and he deepens the kiss. His lips are firm but soft, and his tongue tangles with mine.
I slide my hands up his muscular chest, taking his shirt with me. Our lips break contact only long enough for his shirt to pass his head. His kisses are hungry, demanding, as though we can rewind ten years in one night. Maybe we can.
My shorts pool at my feet. I step out of them while Wyatt trails his mouth down my neck. Nibbling my earlobe, he returns to my lips while I push his shorts off him. My hands slide into the waistband of his boxer briefs, grazing his ass and coming around to cup his manhood.
He groans into my mouth. “Ellie.” A rasp. The way my name used to sound on his lips before he came, as though he couldn’t control himself, as though he’d never loved anyone more.
Desire swells in me. Hearing him say my name like that causes my knees to weaken. This wildfire of emotion is the standard he set, and I don’t understand how I was ever with anyone else after. Our chemistry burns through me. He scoops me up, laying me back on the bed. Trailing his hand down my body, he follows with his mouth. When he gets to my stomach, he pauses, his palm skimming across my middle. “No trace,” he whispers, his voice full of awe and sadness.
An ache blooms in my chest. My job, my life, depended on there being no sign I was ever pregnant. He doesn’t wait for a response, just continues to drop lingering kisses along the edge of my panties. His lips skim my inner thighs before he removes my panties in one swift action. Shifting his body to the side, he comes back to my lips while his fingers circle my sensitive spot, working magic on my most intimate parts. In the years we were together, he took pleasure in learning every way to take me over the edge—quickly, slowly, and every increment in between. I moan into his mouth, slick with need, headed along the path of no return.
“Not yet. Not without me,” he says.
I arch my back, then he takes each breast into his mouth, sucking and licking the nipples. When his teeth graze them, I gasp, and he chuckles.
“Say it,” Wyatt murmurs into my neck. “Tell me, Ellie.”
“I want you.” I bite his earlobe and scrape my nails along his shoulders. “Please, Wyatt.”
His lips return to mine as he positions himself between my legs. Cupping my ass with one hand, he pushes into me, filling me. I wrap my legs around his waist, keeping him tight. Both his arms come up underneath me, cradling me as he rocks into me. The full body contact is delicious and sends a flood of sensations through me.
“I love you, Ellie,” he murmurs before he kisses me, long and deep.
Our mouths barely break contact, and he shifts to rub me the way I need to climax. I missed him. I missed this. No one makes me come alive like he does. The way we move together, the tenderness and love of being cradled in his arms. There’s nothing like being with him.
“Ellie.” His voice is strained.
“Yes,” I say, breathless. “A little more. Yes.” I moan. “God, Wyatt, yes.”
He pushes into me harder, the contact sending me over the edge, crying out his name in a haze of ecstasy. He chases my orgasm with his own and then kisses me tenderly.
Rolling to the side, he tucks me against his chest. He wraps both of his arms around me, and he presses his lips to the top of my head. “I’ve missed you.” His chin rests on my crown.
“Me too.” The truth is so much easier to admit than I expected. I have missed this version of him, which I got so often when we first started dating and less often as he spiraled out of control. Maybe we can carve out happiness together.
Exhausted, lulled into a sense of security by the soft thud of Wyatt’s rhythmic heartbeat, my eyes drift shut.
Hours later when I wake up, Wyatt has me secured to his chest, his arm a weight across my middle. His steady breathing is near my ear and stirs my hair. I shouldn’t stay any longer. Haven will get the wrong idea if she realizes I slept here, and I’m not sure what the right idea is yet. We didn’t talk. Still, hope fills my chest. I shift Wyatt’s arm, even though I long to stay.
“Where are you going?” Wyatt mumbles into my neck.
“Bathroom.” Another shiver flows down my spine and across my body. I’ll never understand how he can make me want so much with so little. Fingers crossed he falls back to sleep. I don’t want to fight, and he won’t be happy with me sneaking out, even if it’s for the best right now.
He releases me, and I tiptoe to the bathroom, collecting my clothes as I go. I dress and then stare at myself in the mirror.
What am I doing? I grab a tissue and brush away the mascara that’s smudged under my eyes. Balling it up, I toss it toward the garbage, and I catch sight of a familiar bottle. I crouch to examine the trash can. My heart kicks at the realization of what’s stashed inside the white plastic bag. There are fifteen or more minibar bottles, empty.
He lied to me.
I suck in a sharp breath. Anger rises in me, but tears leak out. Removing each bottle from the garbage, I line them up on the counter. From my purse on the floor, I find a pen and a scrap of paper. With tears blurring my vision, I scribble a note and leave it propped against the bottles.
How could you? What else have you lied about?
I risk one last glance at him before leaving the room. His sleeping form almost undoes me, but the row of bottles I laid out mocks me. He made me believe he had his addictions kicked, or at least under control. He fooled me. There’s nothing controlled about that much alcohol. A headache builds behind my eyes. I embrace the anger and frustration because my other option is heartbreak. We were so close.
Twenty in total. He’s still drinking.
When I leave his room, the door closes behind me with a click.
