Midnight Blue

 

To live in Alex Winslow’s world.

We stopped at a little café and had a full English breakfast, then zipped straight into London. It was close to eight o’clock in the morning—still far too early for the local shops to open—when we stopped in front of a fancy-looking building on Piccadilly Circus. Alex jumped out of the SUV and helped me out, and we both walked under an arched entrance leading to the back of a block. Someone buzzed us inside, and a second later, we stood in a red-carpeted foyer.

“Close your eyes,” he croaked.

“Why?”

“Because everything is so much more beautiful when you can’t see it.”

I bit my lower lip, allowing my eyelids to flutter shut. Alex took my hand, not gently—the way he did everything, with the kind of coarseness I’d grown to love—and ushered me a few feet until I heard a door opening and closing.

“Open.”

I was spellbound before my eyes were fully wide. Fabrics. Hundreds and hundreds of fabrics. Lace. Satin. Velvet. Chiffon. Organza. Colors . So many gorgeous colors, swirling together like a carnival of beauty. Merlot red. Electric pink. Paradise blue. Metallic silver. Rich and soft and inviting, I wanted to roll inside them like a caterpillar. Swim in them. Live in them. Love in them. I ran to a corner where the velvet sat in long rolls, stocked on neat shelves in the vast, old-school room.

“This is perfect,” I exclaimed. “This is everything.”

“You’re everything,” I heard him say, still standing at the door.

I turned around. His hands were stuffed inside his pockets. His gaze was a little warmer than his usual indifferent face. To some, it may look like he had melted and yielded to what we were. But I knew better than that. There was fire in him, and it was going to consume him one day. One day soon. That was why I’d written him the poem that morning.

The poem I knew I would give him someday.

Someday soon, when we said goodbye.

Someday soon, when I’d need to forget.

The lads didn’t join us until Paris.

Which was a good fucking thing, because every minute alone with Indigo “Indie” “Stardust” Bellamy, I felt like I could breathe deeper. It wasn’t that I didn’t like my mates. I did, in my own screwed-up way. Despite everything they’d done—and maybe even because of it—I knew they always had my back. But I also acknowledged that I wasn’t in the best state of mind.

I needed to be tamed.

So they’d tried to tame me.

And that’s when the monster inside of me came out.

Spending time with Indie, the monster was tucked in. Sure, Stardust watched over me, but she wasn’t them . She was fresh, pure. We weren’t stuck between the walls of the past, a foundation that had been steadily crumbling with every hushed phone call and white lie meant to save me.

By the time we boarded the plane to Paris, after my Cambridge Castle gig, I wasn’t even pissed off at Blake and Lucas anymore. That elusive feeling of contempt, one that cannot be bought, purchased, abused, and monitored with measurements of lethal powder or amber liquid, was strange to me. I was happy, but I couldn’t control it.

It came to me in small, steady doses, not all at once, with a rolled note and a few sniffs. It came to me as all good things should be experienced—in time, and in effort, and with caution.

By the time we got to Paris and Stardust’s face glowed like a thousand fireflies, I’d forgotten who I was.

I’d forgotten my name was Alex Winslow.

I’d forgotten how it was going to explode in my fucking face.

And I’d forgotten all the mistakes I’d collected over the years since hitting it big.

Well, I was about to remember.

Paris, France.

 

H ow do you know you’re in love?

For me, it was in the kiss. I knew I was in love when I found myself opening my eyes when Alex and I were kissing. I no longer needed to close them to concentrate, to withdraw the curtain so I could feel the magic, so to speak. Alex was the magic. And every time we kissed with our eyes closed, I missed him. It was corny. Gag-worthy even, but nonetheless true.

It was under the Eiffel Tower that he’d told me his existence had felt different the past couple of weeks. Like his living and breathing were more significant, somehow. “Remember in Berlin, when I asked you to sit by the stage, where I could see you?” he’d asked. I’d nodded, taking a sip of my foam cup. The coffee was better in Paris. Come to think of it, everything was better in Paris. Alex had jerked me to his body with the collar of my coat, our lips touching as he’d spoken. “The way you look at me when I sing and play reminds me why I started doing it in the first place. It reminds me there’s nothing else I want to do—can do—and even though there’s something tragic in that, a man with one destiny, you take the edge off.”

“How does your soul feel these days?” I’d smiled.

“Pure,” he’d answered.

Had I known this was the last time Alex and I would be this way, peaceful and whole and unassuming, I would’ve spent a few more minutes sipping that coffee. A few more moments kissing him under the perfect blue sky. But I hadn’t known, and we’d had to go back to the hotel and get ready for the charity gala. I don’t know if he’d realized it, but Alex had had a smile on his face the entire time. Even when Blake had forced a disgusting herbal tea down his throat to help his vocal cords. Or when Lucas had sat between us and stared at him with the same kind of pained, pissed-off expression Lucas only produced when he looked at Alex. Hell, he’d even laughed at Alfie’s completely inappropriate jokes.

The last thing I remember from that afternoon was when we were in the snack room before the limousine came to pick us up for the gala. Alfie had been loitering by the entrance with a few fans, Blake had been on his phone to Jenna, and Alex, Lucas, and I had been sitting in the hotel lobby, sipping orange juice from champagne glasses. I remember the way Lucas had looked at me when Alex pulled me into his lap after I’d paid a quick visit to the bathroom. Alex had circled my waist with his arms and spread his lean thighs apart to accommodate me, his fingers playing with the hem of my dress as he’d talked shop with someone he openly referred to as French Suit Number Three.

I remember thinking I’d gotten it all wrong.