Page 64 of When the Stars Rise
When I weave through the crowd and return to our group, Hales is holding court from a leather sofa at a raised booth in the middle of the dance floor. It’s just as conspicuous as her security team, trying and failing to blend in with the crowd.
Chris’ expression is always stoic, locked down, but I can tell he’d rather be anywhere else than in this club.
When I step onto the riser, the blonde sitting next to Hayley scoots over to make room for me. I drop onto the seat and thank her, which prompts her to smile and move closer. Her thigh is pressed against mine, and she keeps leaning over me under the pretense of hearing whatever Hayley says.
I do my best to ignore the way her boobs keep brushing against my arm but I’m pretty sure it’s intentional.
Hayley looks over as if she’s just realized I’m here and gives me a dazzling smile. “Hi.”
“Hi.” We look into each other’s eyes without blinking—her big hazels lit up like she’s happy to see me—and all the noise fades away until it’s just us in our own little bubble.
I count my heartbeats before she turns away. One. Two. Three. Four. Five…
“Hayley!” someone yells, and she whips her head around and raises her glass of champagne for a photo, then returns to her conversation with the two superfans, who are hanging on her every word, leaning forward in their seats to hear her over the music.
It’s bottle service, so I pour some whiskey into a tumbler and lean back, kicking out my legs and extending my arm across the back of the sofa behind Hales.
Aiden’s got some girl in his lap and his arm around another one.
Jules has disappeared, and I suspect all that texting has to do with the guy he’s been seeing. They were together in New York, where Roman lives and where Jules will be moving after this tour. I only knew Jules was quitting the band because I hung out with him and Roman outside the Times Square studio watching Hayley onGood Morning America.
Roman let it slip and Julian asked me to keep it to myself until he got a chance to talk to Hayley. It wasn’t really my news to share so it wasn’t like I’d intentionally kept it from her. But I get the feeling that’s what set her off.
Liam is on the dance floor with some girl, and Caleb looks like he’s meditating. He’s sitting cross-legged in a nightclub with his eyes closed.
It’s a weird dynamic.
It feels like we’re in a fishbowl with all the eyes and phone cameras trained on Hayley and by default, me. No doubt there will be tons of videos and speculations about our relationship status on social media by tomorrow morning.
Sometimes it’s almost comical just how in-depth Hayley’s fans go trying to analyze every single look and word that comes from her mouth. Needless to say, it’s often taken out of context and usually blown out of proportion.
I take a sip of my whiskey and stare at her profile. Her face is animated, hands gesturing while she tells her superfans the story behind the very first song she ever wrote when she was fourteen—“Graffiti the Sky.”
She glances over at me and wraps her hand around my bicep. My gaze dips to her mouth when she speaks, and I don’t even have to hear the words. I can read her lips. “Remember how shocked we were when we found out everyone has a unique set of fingerprints?”
I nod. It’s funny now to think how mind-blowing that concept was to us as kids. We were really young, maybe only four or five when Jude took us to one of those pottery places to make Mother’s Day gifts for our moms.
We made handprints on plates and painted them. When Jude told us that no two fingerprints (or handprints) were the same, we couldn’t believe it. So we both dipped our thumbs in paint and added our fingerprints to the design.
After that, we tried to leave our fingerprints wherever we went. Mud prints on the fence around the paddock. Fingerprints in the sawdust when Jude was building the treehouse. In the flour on the counter while her mom was baking pies. Anywhere and everywhere, we left our mark.
Nine years later, she wrote a song about it. “You wanted to graffiti the sky with our fingerprints,” I say with a smile.
She smiles back at me before turning to look at the others. “I wanted to write our names across the night sky.”
“Ahhhh, I love that story,” the brunette says, her hand going to her heart.
The song was about hopes and dreams and reaching for the stars. It was a love song, too. A sweet and innocent ode to two best friends growing up together and discovering the magic and wonders of the universe and finding our place in it.
I shot the music video down by the lake on my dad’s ranch and uploaded it to YouTube. Not my best work, I was still learning how to shoot and edit, but we were so fucking proud of it at the time.
What Hayley doesn’t tell her superfans, however, is that the video blew up and went viral after the accident.
Someone touches my arm, jerking me back to the present and I turn my head to look at the blonde girl next to me. I’d honestly forgotten she was there until now.
She licks her glossed lips and flutters her fake lashes at me. “Hey, I’m Gabby.”
“Noah.”
