Copyright © 2023 by Q.B. Tyler

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination and used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Kristen Portillo—Your Editing Lounge

  Developmental Editing: Becca Mysoor—Fairy Plot Mother

  Paperback Cover Design: Emily Witting Designs

  E-Book Cover Design: Pang Thao

  Interior Formatting: Stacey Blake—Champagne Book Design

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Playlist

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  Preview of What Was Meant to Be

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Q.B. Tyler

  About the Author

  Kill Bill—Sza

  Hold Up—Beyoncé

  Essence—Wizkid (ft Justin Bieber & Tems)

  Never Felt So Alone—Labyrinth

  Comfortable—H.E.R.

  Get You the Moon—Kina

  Where Have You Been—Rihanna

  I Have Nothing—Whitney Houston

  Lost in the Fire—Gesaffelstein & The Weeknd

  Good As Hell—Lizzo

  A Sunday Kind of Love—Etta James

  To all the women who wished that the movie

  The Bodyguard had a different ending.

  The flash of a camera is so bright it almost blinds me, and for the first time in years, I put a hand over my face to shield them from the tears that are building in the back of my throat. Tears I never shed in front of paparazzi. I’ve rarely even cried aside from the times I had to for work. I can count on one hand the number of times in the last five years, but watching my life fall apart in front of my eyes has the tears building from deep within like I’m preparing to exorcize years’ worth of demons.

  I’m used to being in front of the camera. I’ve never been shy. Even at a young age, there are videos of me performing musical numbers for my stuffed animals and talent shows I put on for anyone and everyone in the neighborhood where I grew up. There are hundreds of VHS tapes in boxes in my basement of practice auditions and dramatic readings and singing and even more of me learning all of the skills that were on the resume glued to the back of my headshot.

  Ballet, horseback riding, tap dance, archery, gymnastics, and the list goes on.

  There are hundreds of Polaroids and pictures taken with disposable cameras that were once glossy and shiny but have faded over time in dozens of photo albums and shoe boxes because my mother could never take just one picture.

  I’m used to being on the red carpet where thousands of cameras are pointed at me; where I’m trying my best to focus on each of them, trying to give my attention to everyone at once.

  Smile. Turn. Change pose. Smile. Turn. Sexy smile. Sweet smile. Wink. Flirt with the camera. Walk to your next mark.

  It’s as easy as breathing. Of course, there were moments when I felt anxious. The moments when I didn’t feel my best, or I didn’t feel pretty, or I felt the pang of regret over skipping a workout. A fleeting worry that maybe I hadn’t been standing straight so a camera caught me at a bad angle. But I learned to take those moments in stride. I’m not perfect and having to be on twenty-four-seven is impossible. I’ve watched as it destroyed fellow actresses’ mental health and how quickly it could send them into a spiral.

  As often as I’m in front of the cameras, I’m rarely in front of them for the wrong reasons. I stay out of the drama and the scandals and I’m one of the few child actors that hasn’t spent a night in the drunk tank. I’m considered unproblematic, genuine, kind, and according to the last issue of People Magazine, one of America’s Sweethearts.

  Unease washes over me and a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach tells me that my days of not being associated with drama are over. I want nothing more than to run. Run away from the room where I had a front-row seat to my worst nightmare and from the man that starred in it.

  My man.

  But running from this room like it’s on fire will raise questions and the last thing I want is to answer them for the paparazzi before I have a chance to answer them for myself.

  “SHAY!” His voice booms after me and I try to ignore him just as I notice the movement of a group of girls pulling out their phones and holding them up towards us. I was the star of a hit television show in a relationship with Hollywood’s newest “IT” actor who was predicted to take home the Oscar for Best Actor in just a few months. So, it’s rare for the cameras not to be on us which is why I’m very confused as to why he put himself in a situation to literally get caught with his pants down. Even if he hadn’t been caught by me, which I know he wasn’t expecting given that this trip was a fucking surprise after weeks we’d spent apart, it was stupid for him to assume that he’d get away with fucking his co-star in the back room of a club without anyone finding out.

  His hand grabs my elbow and I pull out of his grasp as gracefully as I can, wanting nothing more than to scream at him for what I just walked in on, but I can’t do that.

  “This is not the place to do this, Pax,” I tell him through narrowed slits while also trying my best to appear unphased. He knows my looks, so he should be able to read the one I’m giving him that says don’t fucking push me but might be unreadable from a stray picture taken by anyone at the club. His brown eyes are worried and it irritates me more than I care to admit that he keeps darting his eyes around the room to see who is paying attention to our interaction.

  Don’t cause a scene.

  Right now, it probably just looks like we’re in a lovers’ quarrel.

  “Trouble in Paradise?” the headlines will read.

  But responding the way I want to will cause a domino effect that I’m not prepared for without talking to my PR team and getting a plan in place first.

  My job doesn’t allow me the luxury of acting based on emotions. Everything has to be practical. Pragmatic. Calculated.

  I fucking hate it sometimes.

  I’ll take the media outlets reporting that it’s just an argument versus headlines exposing his affair though. The ones that would speculate that I knew he was fucking other women despite our committed three-year relationship or even that I engaged in it.

  No. Fuck all that.

  I refuse to look weak.

  For now, I have to keep things cute.

  “Baby…” he starts, running a hand through his dirty blonde hair that he’d highlighted for this most recent part—that I’ll admit I do not particularly love.

  “No.” I shake my head at him. “How could you?” I feel the tears building and I refuse to let them fall here. Not now. My eyes dart behind him and I pray the woman I found him with, his whore of a co-star—who’s a really shitty actress for what it’s worth—doesn’t emerge. That would just alert everyone in the bar that Shay Eastwood just caught her boyfriend of three years cheating on her.

  I turn my head, searching for Damian, and just like always, I don’t have to search far before our eyes lock from across the room. Even with the low lighting, I can see his face transform from impassive to something dark and almost angry and then he’s a man on a mission, tearing through the crowd towards me. His long legs eat at the space between us and just as Paxton goes to touch me again, Damian is at my side towering over us both. “Everything okay, here?” His voice is low and I detect a hint of anger in it probably brought on by his instincts that everything is definitely not okay.

  “I’m ready to go.” I glare at Paxton. “Alone.”

  “Baby, please just let me explain. Let me come with you. We can talk, privately.” What the fuck could he possibly explain? That I didn’t just catch him fucking his co-star? That I’m seeing things? He pulls at his suit jacket, probably trying to straighten how disheveled he still looks from having to get dressed so quickly to follow me out of the room.

  Don’t cause a scene.

  Don’t cause a scene.

  Paxton doesn’t wait for me to respond; he just looks at Damian in the way a man looks at another for their co-sign when they think a woman is being unreasonable. I can almost hear the, you
know how she can be…in the two-second glance. “Can you give us a second?”

  I go to respond when Damian beats me to it. “No. When she wants to talk to you, she will. Back off, Paxton.” Damian turns his back to him, putting himself between me and my soon-to-be ex-boyfriend, and ushers me out. Like every other time, he doesn’t touch me, but I can feel his hand hovering at the small of my back.

  “What the fuck? Shay!” I hear Paxton call after me but I keep walking towards the entrance of the club and I’m grateful there’s a long-enclosed hallway before we get outside granting me a second of peace before I have to face the paparazzi.

  I’m even more relieved that Paxton didn’t follow me.

  I stop walking when I hear the door close behind me, leaving Damian and me alone in the long corridor. He’s a few steps ahead of me and I don’t know when he realizes I’ve stopped walking but moments later, I see his black Tom Ford loafers that I’d gotten him for Christmas—I practically had to beg him to keep them. Something about them not being practical.

  I’m staring at the ground, the adrenaline slowing down and the reality of what the fuck just happened settling in, when I hear his voice, smooth and even as it washes over me like the warm shower after getting caught in a freezing rainstorm. “Shay, look at me.” My gaze darts up to his obediently and his blue eyes, that were previously cold and angry, are soft. “You cannot cry right now.” I blink away the unshed tears that are pooling in my eyes and nod in preparation to wade through a sea of flashes that will scrutinize every facial expression I make while I walk to the car. “You have a few seconds before we’re out there and you’re in front of the cameras and the paparazzi are going to have questions especially if you’re leaving alone when they know Paxton is here. Don’t let them see you cry. You can cry once we get in the car.” He leans down so that we’re at eye level. “Don’t give them that.”

  Five Years Ago

  “I don’t understand. I already have security,” I tell my father, pushing my sunglasses to the top of my head as he, my mother, and my manager are now blocking me from the sun where I’m sunbathing beside the pool at my parents’ house.

  My father stares down at me with a look I haven’t been on the receiving side of many times and I blanch under his narrowed gaze. Tall and slender but with a muscular build after years of college sports and a few years of playing semi-professional basketball, my father is now a lawyer at one of the top entertainment firms in the state. “That you ditch constantly to get into trouble with Veronica. They are both way too easygoing for our taste. You need someone that isn’t so easily manipulated.”

  Veronica chirps from the other side of me. “Hey, what did I do!?” She peeks up over the latest issue of Vogue and lowers her sunglasses to the bridge of her nose before pushing them back into her cornsilk blonde hair. “I hardly call going to the mall, brunch at the Grove, and going to the occasional bar getting into trouble. Come on Mr. E.”

  “You’re not twenty-one!” my mother exclaims, crossing her hands across her chest. They’re both tanned to a rich mocha and glowing from their recent trip to Mexico on what was probably their fourth honeymoon, a trip they had to cut early because of what happened last week.

  I knew this was coming, just not this fast.

  Veronica looks at my mom with a surprised expression. “So what, you think we’ll get arrested?” The humor in her voice is evident and despite the irritation that was previously flowing off my father, he chuckles.

  “Not. The. Point.” She points between us before smacking my father’s arm. “Do not encourage her.” She turns back to Veronica. “Your parents put us in charge while you’re out here and I do believe you promised them that you’d behave.”

  Veronica’s parents live in Chicago with her younger siblings and a medical practice her father isn’t prepared to leave until he retired, so when she signed on for the spin-off to the television show we’d been on for five years, she moved out here permanently to live with me. We’d been best friends for years, about as long as our characters had been, making us more like sisters.

  “Look, I’m not going to get on you about going out. I’ve gotten you this far without any scandals and bullshit. You’re eighteen now and I can’t make you stay out of trouble,” my father starts. “If you want to tarnish the reputation that you’ve built to become the clichéd child star turned party girl, by all means.” He waves his hand and I roll my eyes at the reverse psychology. “But being eighteen means you have different eyes on you now, and after what happened last week, I’m not taking any chances.”

  I’ll be honest; the situation last week did shake me up a little. I was used to the paparazzi. I was used to fans. Fans that told me they loved me, fans that wanted to be my best friend, fans that wanted me to sign things for their daughters and nieces and granddaughters. Boys my age that would tell me they loved me or slide in my Instagram DMs asking me to go to their proms with them.

  What I was not used to was grown men that were fans. Grown men that were now legally able to engage with me.

  I was out shopping one day, admittedly alone because I had ditched my security. I was just at the mall, and was rather incognito when I was approached and then followed around for most of the day by this guy that may or may not have been trying to lure me into a windowless van. I texted one of my guy friends from the show a very panicked SOS and when he showed up with three of his friends in tow, it led to a swarm of paparazzi because “An ‘LA Days and Ways’ reunion!” It also led to a rumor that we were dating that lasted for two news cycles.

  My parents eventually caught wind of what happened when I had to explain to them that Bryan Whitlock—Hollywood’s bad boy and not in a good way—and I were not dating and why I called him in the first place. This opened the floodgates of the “fan mail” they’d evidently been keeping from me. And by fan mail, I mean pornographic letters of what men and some women wanted to do to me.

  Sometimes while I resisted.

  “You’re meeting him tomorrow morning, so be in my office at eleven,” my manager, Cooper Jennings, from the time I was just doing Pampers commercials, speaks up. Cooper has always been on my side and takes my feelings into consideration more so than my parents do sometimes. He’d backed me up in arguments when I didn’t want to go for certain auditions and even convinced my parents that getting highlights and a nose ring wouldn’t be the worst idea. Sure, the nose ring lasted about five minutes but principle.

  “Wait, you’ve already chosen him!?” I sit up completely and my eyes widen, shooting to Cooper who I always thought reminded me of a young George Clooney without the mullet. “Really?!”

  “We’ve been holding interviews all week.” My father gives me a look that says, do you have a problem with that?”

  “Shouldn’t I have been allowed to sit in? Ever heard of a screen test? What if we don’t get along?!” I screech thinking about some of the friends I have who can’t stand their bodyguards. The ones that treat them like their prisoners and don’t even allow them to go to the bathroom alone. The ones that sit one table over from us at brunch making it impossible to talk about anything personal. The ones that report on every single move they make to their parents and agents.

  “You will get along great with him. He’s very nice.” My mother speaks up as she tucks a strand of her new sleek bob haircut behind her ear. “And he comes highly recommended!”

  “By who?”

  “A guy from work,” my father says. “He was on the security team for one of our top clients.”

  “Why isn’t he anymore?” I ask, immediately conjuring a story in my head that he was fired for something scandalous.

  “How should I know? The guy’s an asshole, so maybe Damian got sick of his shit. Who knows?”

  You do. I think.

  I go to respond when my father points at me. “You’re asking a lot of questions. Tomorrow, at eleven. Do not be late.”

  I’m not late, but I’m also not early, which earns me a look from Cooper as I stroll into his office at the stroke of eleven with a vanilla latte in my hand, somewhat surprised my new security isn’t waiting in his office.

  “So, where is he? I have a meeting with my trainer at one.” I drop to the chair in front of his desk, crossing one leg over the other, and push my sunglasses to the top of my head.