Beneath His Stars

  Beneath His Stars

  Copyright © 2018 Amie Knight

  All rights reserved. No part of this novel may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted without written permission from the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This Book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with others please purchase a copy for each person. This Book Beneath His Stars is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and occurrences are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, events, or locations is purely coincidental.

  Editor: Emily Lawrence of Lawrence Editing

  Proofreading: Julie Deaton of Deaton Author Services

  Interior Design and Formatting: Stacey Blake of Champagne Book Design

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Other Books

  About the Author

  To Jackson and Violet. Never forget, the darkest nights sometimes produce the brightest stars. So, don’t forget to always look up. Love you to the moon and back. Better yet, I love you to Pluto and back.

  Present

  ONLY IN THE DARKNESS CAN you see the stars. I knew that better than anyone. He did, too, only for different reasons.

  He lived in the dark.

  I worshipped the stars.

  What a pair we were.

  I’d praised them, basked in their twinkling lights.

  He’d hidden among them, covered in the shadows of their night.

  I’d danced under their glittering radiance.

  He’d concealed himself in the darkness surrounding them.

  A sky of dreams. That’s what they were to me.

  But he was adamant that my dreams were just clouds of helium, hydrogen, and dust that began to collapse under their own gravitational attraction. He’d point to the sky, his face serious, his eyes grave and tell me that as that cloud collapses, the material at the center begins to heat up. Me snuggled between his legs, our behinds to the hard ground, he’d say “A star’s born right there at that hot core in the heart of a collapsing cloud, Luna. That cloud had to die for your dreams.” He’d sneer.

  He says science and I say dreams.

  I was silly, then. Just a young girl with too many ideals, too many wishes, and I depended on all of those twinkling lights to make them happen. Oh, how I’d matured the last year.

  Then, I thought it so beautiful how much we were like the stars. He and I. Our light and dark. Only, now, I realized how unfortunate it was for us how much we had in common with the stars I loved so. How we united under the most strenuous of circumstances. Carefully, slowly and even though we may have tried to fight it, we couldn’t. We were helplessly pulled and twisted together by some unknown, magical force. And we formed. When we finally came together, it wasn’t just hot. It was fire. We could have burned the world down. Maybe we did. Maybe we’d burned too bright. Too big. Until we’d just snuffed out.

  But how could that be? I still burned for him.

  A star was realized.

  A dream was born.

  But even stars and dreams die.

  And God, my heart ached because of it.

  Tick. Tick. The clock on the wall read 3:25. Five minutes and I’d be free. Not free to leave. Or free to love. Or really free at all. But free from this classroom and its eyes. I swallowed the lump of emotion in my throat and saliva filled my mouth even as my stomach rolled. I felt sick. But I couldn’t think about him here. Not where people could see me. Not where I had to share him.

  I stared at the calendar next to the whiteboard as my knee bounced restlessly beneath the desk and my heart raced.

  Don’t cry, Livvy. His voice slid through my mind so effortlessly, so freely, it could have been my own. My lips trembled even as my pulse slowed. Even though he was miles and miles away, his calm washed over me like a wave rolling up on the beach.

  Four days. Four days since I’d been here. My own personal hell. Four long days since I’d seen him. Since I’d smelled him. Since I felt him. Closing my eyes, I took a calming breath. The galaxies behind my eyelids made me snap them back open.

  The screech of a chair across the tile floor drew my attention and my gaze inadvertently landed on the girl next to me. Her eyes widened, and I lowered my head as I heard her rushed whisper to the girl next to her. “What the hell is wrong with her?”

  There was a hell of a lot wrong with me. Wrong with the world.

  The not quite familiar bell rang and still I shot to my feet and practically ran from the classroom and then the building, the sense of suffocation making me fly. My flip-flops slapped against the pavement angrily as I crossed the courtyard to the entrance of the dormitory where I paused and looked up the four floors to my window. I hated that window, this building. I gulped in big breaths, praying for the ability to breathe that never came.

  The memory of my stepmother’s always contained voice washed over me. “This is for your own good, Livingston. He’s just a phase. It’ll pass. You’ll see.” She’d patted me on the head, like an animal, not a daughter. “You’ll thank me later,” she’d said right here in this very spot. Her pale pink cardigan had blown in the breeze over her perfectly ironed-to-death white blouse.

  I’d stared at the pearls around her neck past the point of pissed off and right into enraged territory. “If he’s just a phase and it’ll pass then why the hell am I here?” I’d gritted from between my teeth.

  “You’ll watch your mouth, Livingston. Young ladies do not speak that way.”

  He wasn’t just a phase. He wasn’t just anything. How could he be anything when he was everything?

  Even at seventeen, I knew. He was my one—the star that shined brightest in my sky.

  I skipped the elevator and the people I knew would occupy it and headed for the stairwell. I couldn’t deal with the new-girl stares. Climbing the stairs quickly, I felt them. The tears I worked so hard to keep at bay all day. They hit my eyes like twin pools before trailing down my face and down my neck. There were too many tears to count. Too much sadness to carry. I pressed my hand to my chest hard. I wanted to reach in there and grab my heart, toss it down the stairs. How could it be the source of my life and yet hurt me so badly, too? Instead, I pushed the door open at the top of the stairwell and dashed to my bedroom on the fourth floor. Throwing the door open, a sob hit my throat. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. It echoed throughout the room and only made the ache in my chest worse. Relieved and equal parts devastated I was alone, I fell onto my bed face first, clutching my pillow to my face. My tears quickly soaked the fabric and my pillow barely muffled my cries.

  This was it. I was going to die of heartbreak. That’s what this was, right? I’d never experienced something so debilitating. So excruciating. So awful. I hadn’t felt this way since I’d lost my father.

  How would I go on without him? Would he forget me? About us? About the stars? Where was he now? Was he okay? Was he as torn up as I was? I rolled to my side and pulled my legs to my chest and held them there, rocking my body.

  And I did what I’d done for the past days I’d been
here. I thought of him. Of his clear blue eyes framed by the thickest, darkest lashes I’d ever seen. I thought of the tiny crinkles around those eyes when he bestowed one of his rare smiles on me. Those smiles that made me feel like the only girl in the world. I pictured his wide, pink lips when he smiled, that one crooked tooth in the front of his mouth that stole my damn heart over a year ago.

  I went back to Adam Nova and his bad boy attitude. His one-word answers that drove me crazy. His too-long dark hair I loved to run my hands through. His way of loving me that compared to no other.

  I went back to our space and time. To the field that separated our lives as much as it did our hearts.

  To the beginning. To the beginning of the end.

  I lay there in that dorm room remembering us. Remembering when I lay beneath our stars. When I lived beneath his stars.

  Past

  “WAIT UP, LIV!” I HEARD from behind me, but I pretended I didn’t. I was on a mission and that mission was to get as far away from this school as I could get in the smallest amount of time.

  “Liv! I know you hear me.”

  Oh, for heaven’s sake, but he wasn’t giving up. I rolled my eyes. Braden was dumb, but he wasn’t that dumb, apparently. Who would have thought?

  I plastered a contrived smile onto my face and pivoted on a heel. Sticking my thumbs inside the bookbag straps that sat on my shoulders, I asked, “What’s up?”

  I didn’t give a diddly what was up, really. I just wanted to get him off my back and get to where I was going. After a full day of playing pretend with my pretentious schoolmates and an hour more of piano lessons I only endured for my stepmother’s sake, I just wanted out of there. I wanted to get home, wolf down my dinner as fast as I possibly could, and hide in my room. And then the stars.

  I quirked an eyebrow at Braden that could only be described as get the hell on with it.

  He danced back and forth on his feet nervously and ran a hand through his blond hair, but I knew better. His horse and pony show weren’t fooling me. However, his next words did shock me. “Are you going to homecoming?”

  Was he asking me out? Oh, God, no. This was not happening. He had to be kidding me. I felt my brown eyes widen in panic as I looked around the courtyard for any noticeable signs of escape. I wasn’t going to the homecoming dance. I especially wasn’t going with Braden. Why the hell was he asking me? I stared down at my white Keds that fed into what we in the South liked to call the boniest legs ever and then up at my schoolgirl uniform complete with navy blue pleated skirt and white polo. Yes, I realized, I was a walking cliché. I even annoyed myself.

  There were plenty of girls floating around who didn’t have bony legs. That weren’t too tall. All I had going for me in the boy department were my too big breasts, and well, they were too big. He could have had any girl at Saint Ashley Preparatory. Which meant he could pretty much have any fancy ass girl on the whole ridiculously posh island of Saint Ashley itself.

  After all, Saint Ashley was so small we all knew each other. Too well, if you asked me. Everyone was always in somebody else’s business. The island dynamic was all too incestuous for my tastes. Saint Ashley sat right off the coast of Madison, South Carolina. I’d call the island more of a resort than an actual place to live. The natives were ridiculously wealthy, living in monstrosities they called mansions that dotted the east coast of the island and the children were disgustingly spoiled. We had one school, K through twelve. One grocery store. And God only knew how the modest Piggly Wiggly in the middle of town was still around, but there it stood, even if it had a fancy coffee shop inside. That grocery store was really the only thing normal about Saint Ashley and it truly wasn’t all that normal. Basically, what I’m getting at is that Livingston Montgomery belonged on this island about as much as a fish belonged on dry land.

  I was a fish out of water or at least that was what it felt like most days. Don’t get me wrong. I was rich. Loaded if you asked my stepmother, but I came from humble beginnings. The people on this island, they were born rich. They’d die rich and they’d never know a day of struggle in their lives. They were what the South liked to call old money. Old money held respect. I was new money, or I’d be new money at the age of twenty-one when I inherited my father’s fortune, and no one around here thought new money was worth much at all. And me, I was tired and bored and restless wading through the masses of Louboutin, Versace, and Benzes. These people prided themselves on their belongings, not who they were. Which was exactly why I could never go out with Braden.

  He was quarterback of our football team, which the whole island fawned over, but the truth was, they sucked. Bad.

  Braden had somehow managed to fool the rest of the girls at this school with his demure act, but he didn’t fool me. He could fake it with the best of them. Even his wholesome good looks couldn’t snare me. Like now, the adorable shy way he bowed his head, his long blond locks covering his eyes, or how he rocked from foot to foot in a show of nervousness, but I knew there wasn’t a bashful bone in Braden’s body. He came off modest, almost shy. But I’d seen and heard the things he’d done. After all, he was my lovely stepbrother’s best friend.

  Seeing no way out of the conversation, I turned around and started heading back in the direction I was going. “Not gonna happen, Braden.”

  I wasn’t being mean, but there was no way in hell I was letting Braden take me anywhere. Besides, Sebastian would lose his damn mind. Not that I cared, but I didn’t need him breathing down my back anymore than he already did.

  “Wait up, Liv.” A warm hand landed on my shoulder. I blew out a long, tired breath before turning and facing Braden. I was scrambling and looking for any excuse to say no. He was making me feel trapped and I didn’t do trapped.

  “Sebastian won’t like it,” I threw out there like the winning pitch at a baseball game. I was playing dirty, but that was the name of the game in Saint Ashley.

  Braden’s pretty boy looks fell and I almost felt bad until I remembered how I’d heard him and my stepbrother talk about girls. How they demeaned and disrespected every girl they dated. He brought his hand to run through his hair and gave a good show of flexing his big biceps. I felt like my eyes were going to roll out of my head and my guilt flew out the window right along with my patience.

  “Can I go now?” My shoulder brushed his as I started a speedy twelve-minute walk home.

  He stepped in beside me. “Seb won’t care.” His voice was gruff, determined, and I realized this was going to be harder than I thought. He really did want to take me out. It was comical. We’d known each other for years, and he’d never put the moves on me. What had changed?

  A bitter laugh flew from my lips. “Sebastian will kill you dead, Braden, and you know it. Why do you want to go out with me, anyway? The bimbo brigade finally catch on to your ways?”

  He had every girl in the school falling at his feet. Drooling for his boyish good looks and sweet ride.

  Reaching up, he grabbed a thick strand of long brown hair between his fingers and rubbed. I pulled my head back and picked up speed.

  “I’ve always liked you, Liv.”

  I shook my head and felt my face get red in embarrassment. “No, you haven’t.”

  He stopped on the sidewalk suddenly enough to make me stop, too, and our bodies brushed. I flinched at the contact.

  “I don’t give a shit what Sebastian says anymore. I want you.”

  The look in his eyes reminded me all too much of Sebastian’s and I felt my skin crawl, but I was no shrinking violet. I’d learned at the tender age of ten when my dad had married the she-devil and moved us to this godforsaken place that I would have to be tough. Be strong. Or this island and its people would pull me down and eventually I’d be too far underwater to make it to the surface. It was a good thing I was an incredible swimmer. My daddy had made sure of that before he left me.

  “I’m not interested.” I pulled my bookbag higher on my shoulders and took off at a jog now, leaving Braden in the dust, his b
lond hair and good looks just a dot in the distance when I chanced a look back.

  I walked the main strip, the sea at my side and a row of beautiful homes at the other. You’d think as a sixteen-year-old girl, I’d be living the dream. Instead, my life felt like some kind of nightmare I couldn’t wake up from as I walked the stretch of island feeling like a bowling ball sat in the bottom of my stomach. Going from that school to my home was trading one evil for another. I loathed them both, but I was sixteen. I could endure. I could make it to my twenty-first birthday. Until I inherited the money my dad left me. Until I could get the hell out of here. Until then, I had the stars and my field.

  I paused outside of the huge pink stucco home in front of me. I’d been here six years, and still it didn’t feel like home and now that my daddy was gone, I knew it never would. After all, it wasn’t somewhere he would have picked to live anyway. No, this home, it was all Georgina. Down to the floral rugs and pink towels that hung in the bathroom. It was nauseatingly girlie with a huge side of gaudy. The huge fountain in the middle of our circular drive said it all. Stone mermaids and cupids and hearts and water. It was ridiculous.

  My eyes darted to the left and my lip curled at the red convertible BMW in the driveway. Great, Sebastian was home already. Usually, he was at football practice or out gallivanting with his friends or better yet, taking some unsuspecting girl’s virginity and then dumping her the next day, which offered me some reprieve from his creepiness. Not today, though.

  If it wasn’t for my golden retriever, Harry, I probably would have just turned around and headed to the beach or something. I couldn’t leave him to suffer alone.

  My shoulders slumped as I walked up the front steps and let myself into the huge marble foyer. I shut the front door quietly, but footsteps echoed from the staircase and I knew I wouldn’t manage to get to my room unnoticed.

  Sebastian. He might have been good-looking to some. In fact, I knew he was if all of the girls mooning over him at school were any indication. But not to me. All I saw was ugly. That ugly was big and dark and it had lived deep inside Sebastian since the very moment I’d met him years ago. It poured out of his ears and eyes like a heavy fog rolling off the ocean in the morning. Ugly. It was all I saw.