“I haven’t been this relaxed since Aruba.” I stretched and rolled to my belly on the beach blanket we had laid out, forgetting for a moment that was almost five months pregnant. It was like trying to roll over with a basketball in your stomach. I stayed on my side.
“One more show and we can get ready to fly back home.” Rob reached over, still on his back, only wearing sunglasses, and took my hand as I settled myself up on my elbow.
“Are you sure no one uses this beach?” I shaded my eyes, peering down the stretch of sand.
“Celeste rented the house.” Rob sat, reaching for a water bottle he had half stuck in the sand. “This beach is private property. And no one knows we’re here.”
The house she’d rented was a sweet little villa on the French Riviera. We had done two shows in France already and would do another tomorrow night. Then it would be time to go home. I couldn’t quite believe it was over. And I still couldn’t believe Rob had insisted on bringing me on stage to sing at every single show since Germany. I didn’t know what I would miss more, Europe or performing on stage.
“I can’t believe we’re going home.” I stared out across the water, thoughtful. I felt the baby move and smiled. Some part of me was glad to be going home.
“I can’t wait.” Rob took a long pull on the water bottle, wiping sweat from his brow. “My own bed. With you in it. Now that’s heaven.”
I remembered that bed, his bed, fondly.
“Your bed?” I raised my eyebrows at him.
“Our bed.” He ran a hand over my ribs, dipping into the curve of my waist before sliding up over my hip. “And we aren’t leaving it for at least week.”
“Well, we’ve got until Labor Day.”
“Oh no.” He shook his head, offering me a drink of water. He’d been paranoid about keeping my hydrated since Ireland. We never went anywhere without bottled water. “I told you, you’re taking a sabbatical. You’ll have to go on maternity leave in November anyway, right?”
I sighed. We’d had this discussion a dozen times already.
“Hey, am I crazy, or is there someone on that boat with a camera?” I squinted against the light and Rob frowned, grabbing his swim trunks and sliding them on before standing to peer out at the water.
I grabbed my towel and wrapped it around myself—not that it would do much good. We’d been swimming and walking around nude all afternoon. We’d been doing that for two days. If someone was out there taking photographs with a zoom lens, they already had plenty of material. The thought made me sick to my stomach. The paparazzi couldn’t post nude photos of celebrities, could they?
“Goddamn.” Rob swore under his breath as I got up to stand next to him. “I think you’re right.”
I was. We left the blanket and went into the house, heading for the shower, but Rob’s phone was buzzing. The message was from Celeste, and it wasn’t good news. Rob didn’t even finish listening to it before someone was pounding on the front door of the villa. I quickly put on shorts and a t-shirt, following him downstairs to answer the door.
“It’s all over the tabloids.” Celeste slammed a paper down on the kitchen island. It was written in French, of course, but the picture on the front was clear enough. It must have been taken the first day we’d been in the villa—I was wearing a bikini that first day, white with red polka dots, too nervous to go skinny dipping yet.
Me and Rob on a beach again. Except this time, I was very, obviously pregnant.
I couldn’t read the headline, but I had taken French for a few years in high school and I recognized one word. Gravide. Pregnant. And of course, the word “Trouble” in English.
“She saw it?”
“Everyone saw it!” Celeste snapped. “It’s all over! All the TV news magazines have picked it up. TMZ is having a field day. Even Entertainment Tonight covered it.”
“Fuck.” Rob sank onto one of the kitchen chairs, paling. “She’s never going to give up now.”
“Well, she can’t force you to say married.” I looked at Celeste. “Right? I mean, even if she gets half, that’s really all she can—”
“Sabrina, she wants—”
“Celeste!” Rob’s head came up sharply.
“She wants what?” I looked between the two of them, frowning. “What? How bad could it be?”
“She wants...” He swallowed, meeting my eyes. “She wants the rights to our songs.”
“But...” I sank down onto the chair beside him, my knees feeling shaky. “But she can’t do that, can she?”
“She can if she wrote them.” Celeste took off her sunglasses and put them on the island with a sigh.
“She didn’t write them.” I looked at Rob. “You did.”
“I... did a stupid thing.” He ran a hand through his hair, rubbing the back of his neck. “I put her name on some of them.”
“You did what?” I whispered. “Why?”
“That’s a good question,” Celeste commented, fiddling with her Blackberry, ostensibly doing damage control.
“Okay, okay. I had my reasons.” Rob shot her a dark look before answering me. “Look, we weren’t married at the time. I thought... I wanted to give her something, and it was early, our second album. I thought I was in love with her...”
“You could have just put a ‘thank you’ in the liner notes,” Celeste muttered.
Rob ignored her. “So now she wants the rights to the songs her names are on.”
“Oh Rob.” My eyes widened, realizing now what that meant. “The second album. That’s... not... Can’t Break a Broken Heart?”
He nodded miserably.
“But she didn’t write them?” I asked, looking between the two of them. “Did she?”
“No.” He shook his head. “And I only put it in the liner notes. They’re not copyrighted to her.”
“Oh!” I sat back, relieved. “Well then she really has no claim to them, does she?”
“She might.” Rob made a face. “The lawyer’s fighting it, but he says copyright is tricky and unfortunately, hard to prove in court, even if you have all your ducks in a row.”
“Why is she doing this? Is it about money?” I asked. “I mean, half of whatever you own together has to be... an astronomical amount.”
“Because royalties are forever.” Celeste sounded amused at my naïveté. “If she gets rights to the songs, she’ll get paid on those until the day she dies.”
“Oh my God.” I looked over at Rob, who sat with his head in his hands again. I couldn’t even imagine what he was feeling. Of course, he was kicking himself in hindsight, but he couldn’t have known things would turn out this way, that Catherine would be so vindictive.
“So, it’s all about the money then?” I picked up a copy of one of the papers Celeste had put down, staring at my obviously pregnant profile.
“No, it’s about you,” Celeste frowned, punching a number into her phone. “If you hadn’t come along—Hello? Can I speak to the editor please?”
“Celeste!” Rob warned, but she was already walking away, her finger in her other ear as she talked.
“Don’t listen to her.” Rob reached out, putting a hand on my arm. “Even if she gets my rights... I’ll live with it. It’s my fault, not yours.”
“Why does she think it’s my fault?” I nodded toward Celeste, standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room with the phone to her ear.
“Catherine is very jealous.” Rob sighed, rubbing my arm as if he could warm away the goose flesh there, but I wasn’t cold. “When she found out about you... that’s when she decided to up the ante.”
“That Inquirer photo of us?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “And she’d already seen you at the house. She knew it was true.”
“So, it is my fault.” I sat back, defeated. “You’re going to lose the rights to your songs because of me.”
“No.” Rob frowned, taking his hands in mine over the table. “No, Sabrina, this isn’t about you.
“Except it kind of is,” Celeste said as she hung up the phone.
“Celeste, you can go.” He stood, pointing toward the door. “Now.”
“Don’t you think she should know?” Celeste didn’t budge, crossing her arms over her spotless Donna Karin blouse. Her voice was shaking. “We both know how crazy Cat can be. Did it occur to you that Sabrina might be in danger?”
“Why do you think I keep her with me constantly?” he snapped.
“Rob?” I stood too, putting a hand on his arm. “What should I know?”
“She’s never going to stop now.” I’d never seen calm, cool Celeste this emotional about anything. In fact, I couldn’t’ remember ever seeing her emotional at all. She always handled everything with finesse and grace. This was completely out of character for her. “You know what she’s like as well as I do!”
“I can handle this, Celeste!” Rob’s arm flexed as his hands clenched into fists.
“Like you handled it when she did this?” Celeste grabbed the edge of her blouse and yanked it out of the waistband of her skirt, pulling it up high, over her bra.
I gasped, covering my mouth with my hands, staring at the long scar running from the middle of her chest down to her navel, a raw, red, angry slash.
“Catherine did that to you?” I blinked at Celeste as she angrily tucked her blouse back in. “Why? Why would she?”
I turned to Rob, who took both of my hands in his, shaking his head sadly.
“Maybe she’s right.” His mouth trembled, with sadness or anger, I couldn’t tell which. “Maybe I should have told you before...”
“Told me... what?”
“Cat thought we were lovers.” Celeste looked at Rob, who closed his eyes and turned his head away at her words. “We weren’t. But she’s one of those women who assumes everyone else is doing what she’s doing. You know the type?”
I nodded as if I understood what she was saying. I couldn’t take it all in.
“Anyway, she got it into her head that I was sleeping with her husband.” Celeste sneered. “That’s when she did this.”
“But... wouldn’t she be in jail?” I asked. “Or... something?”
“The lawyer got her off.” Celeste scowled. “She had to wear a little ankle bracelet for a while, that’s all.”
I looked at Rob, frowning. “Is this true?”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “That’s when we separated.”
“I wouldn’t have told you if I thought you didn’t need to know,” Celeste said. “If she would do that to someone she just suspected was sleeping with Rob, can you imagine...?”
“But wasn’t she cheating?” I asked, looking between the two of them.
“Constantly.” Rob’s jaw worked, tensing, untensing.
“It makes no sense.” I couldn’t puzzle it out. “Why would she get jealous, if she was already cheating?”
“She’s not rational.” Rob snorted. “She didn’t want me, but she didn’t want anyone else to have me.”
“She is... very unstable,” Celeste agreed. “I don’t think she would have even agreed to the separation if she hadn’t found someone else.”
“She found someone else?” This was news to me!
“Some poor guy actually thought he found a catch.” Celeste rolled her eyes. “I mean, she is a model. She’s beautiful, right? I’m sure there were perks. That’s why she finally served Rob divorce papers.”
“But I don’t understand. What’s the problem?” I asked. “She wants to move on, you want to move on...?”
“It’s been like a perfect storm.” Celeste sighed. “Her new guy ended up going back to his pregnant wife.”
“Oh no,” I groaned.
“Oh yes.” Celeste’s smile was wry and bitter. “And then she saw you and Rob in the tabloids. You and your belly.”
“Oh no,” I whispered, putting a protective hand over the baby. Rob pulled me closer, shaking his head as if saying “no” could change any of this.
“The thing is, Cat couldn’t have kids,” Celeste explained. “She slept around and didn’t have to worry about getting pregnant.”
“Do you really think she’d... do something?” I looked up at Rob, frowning.
“She’s not going to fly to France,” he assured me.
“But we’ll be home soon,” Celeste reminded him.
“And I’ve beefed up security,” he countered angrily. “Look, Celeste, you’re scaring Sabrina and I think you’d better go.”
“Don’t shoot the messenger!” She held up her hands to ward him off, turning to leave, but her parting shot over her shoulder before she went out the front door was, “Just watch your back.”
“Rob, this is insane,” I whispered. “What are we going to do?”
“This is why I didn’t tell you.” He turned, cupping my face in his hands. “You’re safe, trust me. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
I believed him. But that wasn’t all of it, not by half.
“What about your songs?”
“She won’t get them.” He pulled me into his arms, holding me close. “We’re fighting it.”
“What if she does?” I put my head on his chest, miserable at the thought. “Oh Rob, you’ll blame me for the rest of our lives...”
“No!” He grabbed my arms, holding me out from him so he could look into my eyes. His were dark, as dark as I’d seen them. “Sabrina, this isn’t your fault. None of it is your fault. It’s mine. All mine.”
Something in him broke. I saw it in his eyes. They clouded as his head dropped with his gaze. His voice was a bare whisper, choked, like he couldn’t get the words out.
“I’m sorry,” he managed. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, Rob...” I reached out and touched his cheek, shaking my head, feeling tears coming to my eyes in the face of his pain.
“I don’t deserve you,” he whispered, his hands falling to his sides. He stood there, helpless, defeated. “I don’t deserve any of this.”
“No, no...” I protested, grabbing his hands in mine, urging life back into them. “Don’t say that. Rob, don’t. You’re my entire world. You are everything to me. Everything.”
He looked so unsure for a moment—so unsure and lost and yet still just a little bit hopeful, like he wanted to believe, he really wanted to—it broke me wide open. I felt tears slipping down my cheeks.
“Don’t you know that?” Now it was my turn to cup his face in my hands, to make him look at me, as if I could convince him, if not with my words, then with my eyes. “Don’t you know how much I love you? I’m so yours. All yours.”
“Sabrina.” He closed his eyes, resting his forehead against mine, still not touching me, his hands at his sides. I wanted his arms around me, I wanted my sure, confident, determined Rob back. Had she broken him down so far? Had I?
“I would give this all up right now for you,” he whispered, not opening his eyes. His lashes were wet. “None of it matters. I don’t care about the money. She can have it all. I just want you.”
“Oh Rob.” I wrapped my arms around him, tight, tight, my cheek against the hard beat of his heart in his chest. “You already have me.”
“Mine.” His arms encircled me, his voice a whisper. “You and our baby mean everything to me. Everything.”
“I know.” I knew because it meant everything to me too. “But Rob...”
That rational part of my brain wouldn’t let go, wouldn’t settle for just this, just us.
“I don’t want you to lose your soul, too,” I pleaded with him. “Your music, your songs. I don’t want you to resent me five, ten years down the road.”
“Say that again.” His arms tightened around me and his lips touched my forehead.
“I don’t want you to resent me,” I choked out.
“No, baby.” His lips touched my temple, my cheek, little feathered kisses down to my lips. “Five years, ten years, twenty, fifty. Forever.”
“Forever.” I kissed him back, tasting my tears on our lips.
“Whatever happens, Sabrina, you’re mine. Now and forever.”
“Yes.”
I knew then that I wasn’t going “home” after the tour was over, that the life I’d lived in my little yellow house in Ferndale, teaching kids music in Detroit, that was already part of my past, and my mind just hadn’t caught up yet. My heart already knew.
We belonged together, doing this, and whatever trepidations I had about having a baby in the midst of it were assuaged by this man who loved me more than, maybe, I even deserved to be loved, this man who broke my heart and put it back together every single moment of the day. This man was my world, had been for years, and now I lived here. He was mine and I was his and we were forever.