She was my muse.

She was my life.

She was my all.

I took a plane back to Los Angeles nine months after I landed in New York. I was sober, on top of my game, and ready to chase what was mine.

Only Indie had never been mine. She was, in fact, the one thing I couldn’t even think about ever claiming, because I didn’t deserve her. But I finally understood what Will, Lucas, and Blake had wanted to do. Even more frightening than that—I was happy they’d done it, because if they hadn’t thrust her into my life, I would’ve never given rehab a second chance, I would’ve never written Midnight Blue , and I definitely wouldn’t have understood what this thing I made millions upon millions upon—Love—had meant.

“Alex Winslow! Looking mighty fine, dude.” An American paparazzo jumped into my face at LAX, followed by a bunch of paparazzi photographers. They all wore ball caps and black clothes and smiles that were a cross between taunting and downright smug.

“Never been better.” I smiled. Which was partly right, and partly so, so wrong. I was breezing through security, two nameless bodyguards by my side. I didn’t usually use them—I counted on my friends to throw off potential stalkers or overtly aggressive fans—but I needed to do this alone.

I slid into a rental car—I didn’t want a driver or anything else remotely fancy—and programmed Indigo’s address into my Waze app. I knew she still lived at her old place, even though she’d rented a better one for Craig, Natasha, and Ziggy. Because that’s the kind of person she was. Selfless. It’d been so many months, the thought she wouldn’t remember me occurred as I pulled out of the massive parking lot and into the constant, never-ending traffic of Los Angeles. It was utterly ridiculous to feel that way. Indie couldn’t have forgotten about the first man who’d fucked her—really fucked her —the first man she’d given her heart to, the first man who’d broken it without even meaning to, and the first man who’d ruined her life. Those were too many firsts. Good and bad. Fact.

I was all wired up and ready to explode in the car on my way to her. My foot kept bouncing on the brake pedal, which prompted the drivers behind and ahead of me to honk their horns and flip me the bird.

“You can’t rush love!” I popped my head out from the window, forcing myself to laugh.

“Holy shit, Mom! It’s Alex Winslow!” a teenybopper yelled from a Toyota Corolla next to mine amidst the traffic jam.

When I finally took a turn to her neighborhood, my heart started racing insanely fast. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but I was worried it might be a heart attack. That couldn’t be too good. I already looked like shite. I had bags under my eyes from working nonstop and my hair needed a cut two months ago, straddling the line between a tousled mane and an almost man-bun. Not that I would ever collect my hair in an elastic. That was almost as unacceptable as making country music. Point was, I looked rough, and now I was also sweating like a pig. Great.

Come get it, Indie. A sweaty, ex-druggie with baggy eyes. Every girl’s dream.

It took me twenty minutes to find a parking space, and I was actually pathetically thankful for that, because it gave me time to stall. It gave me the chance to think about what I was going to say to her. You’d think I would’ve been more prepared, but you’d be wrong, because the conversation I wanted to have with her could go so many different ways, I constantly changed my mind about how to approach it.

I parked.

Got out of the car.

Heavy feet. Heavy heart. I climbed up the stairs, feeling irrationally hopeful and soul-crushingly disheartened at the same time. I knocked on the door. Stared at it for a few seconds, feeling a sweat drop slithering from my temple all the way into my right eye without moving an inch. I tried to listen to the sound coming from the inside, but the place was dead. I knew I would, and could, stay there. In the hallway. Waiting for her. There was something symbolic about it, too. But the truth was, I couldn’t endure another minute of waiting.

I’d waited for her in rehab.

And I’d waited for her when I recorded Midnight Blue .

I’d waited for her on every airplane I took, every interview I’d given, every fan I’d hugged, every hour I’d spent away from her. Every breath I’d taken without knowing what she was doing. I’d paid my dues.

I knocked again. The third time. Then rang the doorbell.

She wasn’t there.

I decided to get out of the building and walk around. Maybe she’d gone to the grocery store down the road. Maybe she would meet me halfway, and her big, blue eyes would widen, and she’d run toward me in slow-motion, and we would kiss slow and hard and wouldn’t even have to talk about any of the bad shit that had happened between us.

My legs carried me down her street. I passed the grocery, and the Israeli coffee shop, and the Korean nail salon. I knew these places because I may or may not have visited her neighborhood once or twice or twelve times before I’d finally dragged my arse to rehab. I cut a corner and stopped at a junction that kissed a small park with a few benches scattered around some swings and a slide. It was tiny, really, and wouldn’t have caught my attention in a million years if it weren’t for a bright blue pram parked beside a bench.

A bench on which my very personal Blue, Indie “Stardust” Bellamy, was sitting.

Cooing at the baby inside the pram.

A baby.

Not a toddler like Ziggy. A newborn baby.

She was wearing a big, floaty white dress, and her blue hair was braided and flung over one shoulder the way I liked it. I froze in my spot, unable to take a peek. But she did the job for me by rocking the pram back and forth. When she pulled it away from her, I got a decent look at the little human inside it.

He or she was so tiny.

My heart stopped. Literally stopped—and yes, I know what the word ‘literally’ means. It was too early in the day, after too many hours on a plane, to do the math. Was it mine? Was it someone else’s? God. Fuck. It couldn’t have been someone else’s. This baby was mine. Jesus Christ. I had a baby. Indie had a baby. And she hadn’t said anything. Not a phone call. Not a letter. No nothing.

She’d had so many ways of contacting me. I’d made sure my whole staff was available for her. Blake checked on her every week to assure me she was fine. Jenna would accept any message she’d wanted to send me through her with open arms. Especially now, when she was a mother and actually resembled a warm and welcoming human being. Not to mention Indie had both my phone numbers, my email, and my secret Facebook account I’d only given ten people in the entire world. Anger swept through me.