SPOTLIGHTS BLINDED FROM ABOVE, and a light sheen of sweat lifted on Shea’s heated skin. Her black dress glimmered with the sequins sown into it, covering it entirely, the fabric itchy where it was held in a strapless fashion above her breasts. High black heels adorned her feet, and she tried not to focus on the way they made her feel awkward and compromised, the sexy shoe completely exposed on one side by the slit in her dress that cut all the way up to her thigh.
She’d walked out onto the stage feeling like a blundering fool, although she’d been told she looked like a million bucks.
She had one song.
One song at the country awards show introducing her as Delaney Rhoads.
It was unheard of, she’d been told, coming on the scene that fast, being invited to play this way.
And she’d been told again she was just that good.
Yet somehow Shea felt like a fraud.
Still, the guitar in her hands and her mouth at the mic felt like the most natural thing in the world.
She let her thoughts go and paid no mind to those who filled the music theater in Nashville. It was crammed, the plush maroon seats filled to capacity.
Sold out.
Just like she had.
As if she was ever given any choice.
Today was her birthday.
Eighteen.
She had signed the contract. She’d sat in that big leather office chair with her insides quaking and her mother whispering in her ear, “This is it, baby. We made it. Everything we worked for all these years. We have it. You’re a star.”
Shea had scrawled her messy signature across the line, unable to still the shaking in her hand, because everything inside her had screamed she should not.
But tonight?
On this stage?
Shea sang. She let her fingers strum away the sadness, and her voice cover the sour taste on her tongue.
She knew her grandmother would be watching her on TV from her hospice bed. The woman she loved most in the world was too sick to be here.
The only thing Shea wanted was for her grandmother to understand that even though the circumstances might have been horrible, when Shea began to play, everything else floated away and she felt it in her heart.
Just like her grandmother had made her promise to do when she was just a little girl.
Shea wanted to make her proud.
Not of what she’d attained, or the money promised, or a life of fame. Shea wasn’t impressed with any of those things.
Shea just wanted her to know she was using the gift she’d been given, and when she sang, somewhere inside her, it still felt important.
Shea’s voice trailed off into silence before roaring applause broke through the air. It echoed through the enormous hall as people jumped to their feet to give her a standing ovation.
Tears sprang to Shea’s eyes.
Because she’d felt the beauty, too, the same thing that seemed to ride on the energy that filled the space.
It was what was waiting for her offstage that was vile.
Shea whispered a quiet, “Thank you,” into the mic before she exited the stage.
Her mother hovered behind the curtains. “There’s my shining star.” She made sure everyone heard.
Her mother’s creepy boyfriend Donny, who’d been tacked to her mother’s side since the second they’d rolled into Nashville, was nearly salivating where he stood behind Shea’s mother.
“Come here, sweetheart, there are people to meet,” her mother said.
Shea did her best to smile pleasantly as she shook hands with those who only wanted her for the things she didn’t want to give, like touching her skin gave them a taste of glory when she knew without a shadow of a doubt she’d sold her soul into sin.
No, it wasn’t because she desired any of it.
She’d simply been on this train for far too long and had no access to the brakes, the pressure and coercion too much to take, so she’d always given in. For so long she’d simply gone through the motions and never voiced her opinions or concerns because they were never heard anyway. Her mother was in full control and she couldn’t find the strength to fight her.
But now she wondered when it would be her who would break.
Warily, Shea looked up when she felt the eyes boring into her. A searing heat of predatory lust. She felt burned by it, and not in a desirous way, but like hell had found its way to her.
She shuddered.
Her mother prodded her back and pushed up onto her toes to speak into her ear. “Go on, girl. He’s waiting on you.”
When Shea hesitated, she could feel her mother’s annoyance, as if she were speaking to a toddler who had no clue what it took to make it in the real world.
Shea wasn’t sure she did.
“Achieving your dreams will require sacrifices, Shea.”
In that moment, Shea had never hated her mother more. She’d sold her off so easily, using her for little more than personal gain. Shea had spent years striving harder and higher and faster, thinking if she managed to touch the sky her mother would finally see her as the star she wanted her to be. She’d spent so many years being tailored into this thing, stitched and patched and sewn into something that had become unrecognizable.
But the outside was completely mismatched with the fabric of who she wanted to be.
“Besides,” her mother said with a perverse grin, “the two of you make a gorgeous couple. It’s what the world wants to see. A beautiful young girl on the arm of a successful, handsome man. He’s put himself on the line for you, and it’s time you showed some gratitude for it.”
Gratitude?
The simmering bile in her stomach worked into a frenzy, and Shea thought she would be sick.
She knew Martin Jennings was attractive. She wasn’t blind. But in the year she’d known him, she also felt something dark lurking around him, something ugly that radiated from his pores like an omen.
Every cell in her body implored she stay away.
Instead, she made her feet move in his direction where he held back like a phantom along the far wall.
She ducked her head timidly when she came to a stop in front of him.
“Magnificent,” he said in his smooth, slick voice. He touched her cheek, and she held her breath, trying not to flinch. “Do you have any idea the effect you had on the crowd, Delaney Rhoads? Every single person out there was putty in your hands. You are magic.”
Her thoughts went back to her grandmother, a picture of a frail woman lying in the confines of her bed.
Would she have thought the show magic?
What would she think now?
The pads of Martin’s fingers slid down the outside of her arm and threaded through her fingers. Chills of unease lifted her skin, but she didn’t fight it, just like she hadn’t fought it two days before when he’d pushed her against the wall in his office and kissed her mouth and her neck.
But tonight when he guided her down a winding maze of backstage corridors and led her into a vacant office hidden in the bowels of the theater, the lights cast low, he didn’t stop. He set her on the desk and lifted the skirt of her dress as he went.
Tears soaked her face, and Martin wiped the wetness away. “You’re far too beautiful to cry, Delaney Rhoads.” He brushed his mouth at the corner of hers and she whimpered.
“Shh…you’re mine now.”
She shook violently, no poised on her tongue, but she didn’t know how to release it. Just like she didn’t know how to say it with every path her mother had led her down.
Say it, Shea. Say no. Please, say it, she silently begged herself, before she turned to silently begging him. No. No. No.
Metal clanked as he fumbled through his belt, and his slacks dropped to his thighs. Shea panicked, her hands shoving and slapping at his chest as her breaths turned ragged with fear.
“Shh,” he whispered again, as he shackled both her wrists in one of his hands and forced her closer to the edge of the desk. He wedged himself between her legs.
She cried out in pain when he ripped through her.
She sobbed. Her breaths choked and panted as he moved in her.
Music filtered from above, another act on stage, and she tried with everything she had to focus on those beautiful sounds and not the grunts raking from Martin’s mouth. But there was nothing beautiful in this moment.
Sadness and pain crushed her. How ironic that a man was touching her for the first time in her life, and she’d never felt more alone.
And Shea… Shea might have hated this man with all her life. Shea might have hated her mother more than she ever had before. But not nearly as much as she hated herself.