Page 1 of Read Between the Stars (Turn it Up Spinoff)

Prologue

Ben

“Why areyou being such a tool about this?” The annoying voice comes through the long-distance line.

“Why do I have to explain it to you for the twentieth time?” I clip back, shutting her down. “This is my life.”

“But it’snota life. You’re just sitting in transcendence until you die.”

“Which is how I want it.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” My friend Melanie bellows with exasperation before releasing what sounds like a cleansing breath and regrouping. “Look. I was there too. I was in that dark place also, but trust me, it can be overcome! You can live your life joyfully again.”

“Maybe I don’t want to, ever think of that?” I bite out between clenched teeth.

“Why?” she demands. “Why don’t you?What will happen if you do? Will the world fall apart if you’re happy?”

Damn good question that I just don’t want to answer, so I revert to name-calling instead.

“You’re being a real pain in my ass, you know that?” I snarl.

“Oh bite me, you stubborn asshole,” she returns, I can tell, without blinking. “If I can do it, you can do it. You’re just acting like a third grader because you think it will be too hard.”

“Listen you little…” I growl before I stop myself. We’re getting carried away, and if I want this conversation to end, I need to back it down, otherwise Melanie and I will get on one of our asshole-go-rounds which will end the way it usually does - with her winning. “Look,” I readjust my approach, “I’m glad you and Matt found a way back to each other, really. But I can’t exactly do that, remember?”

She lets out a painful sigh before softening her voice.

“I know. You can’t do it with Jamie, and I’m so sorry.” All the roasting is put to the side and our brother/sister relationship shifts its tone. “And I’m not saying you have to do it with someone else. I’m just saying, do it for you. Hell, do it for her. I feel like she’d be getting tired of looking down on you and seeing you in your self-imposed misery. I think she’s ready to see you smile again.”

“It’s just not that easy,” I sigh into the phone.

“Of course it’s not that easy, you idiot!”

And we’re back.

“It’s damn hard. You have totry,” she enunciates the last word like I’m in kindergarten. “And then it gets easier. Hell, it would be easier than what you’re doing right now, which is refusing to let go and allow yourself to heal.”

“You done yet?” I ask cynically, pinching the bridge of my nose. She’s exhausting.

“Just get your ass to my wedding, you stubborn jackass!” She gets the last word in before the line goes dead.

I drop my head back in a sigh and toss my burner phone down on the rumpled, unmade bed. The very phone that she thrust at me after frantically purchasing it at a convenience store near the restaurant we were eating at when she flipped out and decided she needed to go back to the States.

Okay, it wasn’t exactly as simple as that. She saw on the TV that was playing there that some evil douche from her past had messed with her family. Her brother Jack happens to be the lead singer and guitar player for a famous rock band called Turn it Up. The broadcast on the screen was that her asshole ex had become their agent and had harassed Jack’s wife, among many other women, Melanie included. The whole reason I met her here on the fine island of Flores was because she had been blackmailed by the dick to flee the States. They had a past and he wanted her out of the way so that he could sign her brother’s famous band.

She filled me in further while she threw her clothes in her suitcase like a madwoman, that the bassist of Turn it Up, Matt, was the love of her life; the man she’d been missing and hurting for the entire time - something she and I had in common… missing somebody.

Chapter One

Ben

My wife,Jamie, had always had a thing for shooting stars. If we were ever outside on a summer night, it was almost impossible to get her to pull her eyes away from the sky because she was always searching for one, with a somewhat mischievous, childlike smile that made her brown eyes dazzle with a quiet excitement. It was crazy how she could be totally engaged with me, talking about anything and everything, but as long as we were outside, her eyes were on the sky. Even if she never saw one, she still enjoyed searching the inky dark canvas full of glowing stars above us. On the rare occasion she did see one, she’d freak out and celebrate and tell me it was a sign, and that anything that happened between then and the next nightfall, no matter how crazy, was meant to lead the person who saw it to their next stop on their life’s journey.

No matter how much I searched the skies after Jamie died, I never saw another shooting star. I told myselfad nauseamthat I didn’t believe in that shit and that she never really did either, that it was just something fun she liked topretendto believe. Yet I found myself on every clear night thereafter, searching the damn galaxy without even meaning to. Four fucking years went by without a single white streak against any night sky I found myself under in the world.

So you can imagine my befuddlement one night when I was sitting on the deck of my boat, enjoying a beer and the only company I wanted - which was my own - when I finally saw a blazing bright star shooting clear up in the dark blanket of the night. It was quicker than a blink, but I saw it; it was there. I let out a sarcastic chuckle of disbelief. I had told myself countless times that I was never going to see one again. I hadn’t even replaced the breath in my lungs when I heard the most annoying, blood curdling shriek, followed by some very un-ladylike cursing over on the beach.

Anything that happened… no matter how crazy.

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