Chapter 1
Thirteen Years Ago
Finn
The plane landed at midnight, as sleet came down in the darkness over Seattle. The flight from Tokyo had been nearly ten hours, and I didn’t remember most of it, though I had barely slept. I had existed in nothingness, high in the sky above the rest of the world, inescapable. Plenty of time to think about being a failure at nineteen.
Only four thousand fans had come to my Tokyo show, in a venue built for three times that many. And the numbers for the rest of the tour looked worse.
There were no press to see me off the plane, because the paparazzi doesn’t care to stay up all night to see a tired nineteen-year-old pop star walk down a set of steps and into a waiting car. Still, I made sure to look presentable: moisture drops in my eyes, hair combed, and most importantly I relaxed my facial muscles so I didn’t look like I was angry or frowning. Anyone can snap a photo where you look like a mean asshole, when really you were just exhausted and your face was tilted the wrong way under the light.
One of the security guys walked me to the car, and another got in the front passenger seat next to the driver. The security guys worked a rotation, because no one guy could be expected to work my full schedule, with the flights, the jet lag, and the crazy hours. No one questioned that I could do it, though. I didn’t question it, either.
There was no small talk as the car took me to the Seattle outskirts. It was late. I sat back in the seat, tilting my head back and closing my eyes, though once again I didn’t sleep. A headache pressed my temples. Someone was handling my luggage somewhere, transporting it. If I said I was hungry, I’d be instantly fed. The house where I was going was already clean and perfect, waiting for my arrival. Everything was taken care of. I should be sleeping like a baby.
Four thousand tickets, though. It was bad.
My biggest crowd was thirty-five thousand, at a festival four months after “Ice Cream Girlfriend” released. The crowds were getting smaller, and everyone noticed.
The people around me were trying to reverse the fall. My agent had set me up to be seen with a lingerie model while I was in L.A. tomorrow, which he said was okay because she was eighteen. “She’s an inch taller than you, but she’s agreed not to wear heels,” he’d said. “People will eat it up. Make sure to hold her hand. We’re in negotiations for her to be your Grammy date.”
When I was dating someone, I got talked about. This wasn’t the first model I’d been set up with. I barely spoke to the girls, and most models did coke, which meant I took plenty. It kept my energy up, but I had been told that I’d get in trouble if I did too much, because being an addict would be bad press. I was also told that it would be more believable if my fake girlfriend and I fucked, so we did.
I didn’t want to do the dating, really, but my second album hadn’t sold as well as my first, and my third album—my favorite by far, the one I’d put my heart and soul into—had sold much worse than either of them. It had barely cracked the top 100 before sinking again, and considering “Ice Cream Girlfriend” had spent thirty weeks in the top ten, it was embarrassing. The album had been out for four weeks, and it was clear that my career needed emergency resuscitation, like a patient in cardiac arrest. I was getting scheduled to every talk show that would take me, and to keep my name out there, I was going to get another beautiful girlfriend and get caught holding her hand before I brought her to the Grammys.
I hadn’t written a song in months.
The car pulled up the driveway, and without a word, the security guy got out and opened my door for me. I unfolded my legs and stood up, taking in the cold, wet air of my hometown and not minding the shiver it sent down the collar of my shirt. “Thanks, man,” I said, since I didn’t know the guy’s name.
“Sure,” he replied. “Good night.”
I walked up to the house I’d bought a year ago. I hadn’t spent much time here, and when I bought it, I picked it from a set of photos, like a police lineup.
It was huge, but I wanted someplace big enough for Dad to live in, with his own living space. I also needed rooms for my older brother, Alistair, even though Alistair was twenty-one and should be living on his own by now. Alistair had dropped out of college and now waited tables at a restaurant downtown. We didn’t see each other much, and when we did, we had nothing to say to each other. I’d been away from home so much that we were more like distant cousins than brothers.
But Alistair needed somewhere to live, so here he was. And he needed room in one of the garages for his car. And there should be a pool, because even though I was never home to use it, one of the other people living here might want to use it. And a pool needed pool staff, so I had those, too. And no one wanted to mow the lawn, which was huge, so I made sure there were staff for that. And who was supposed to cook and clean? It wouldn’t be Dad, who was busy working for me, and it wouldn’t be Alistair. So cooking and cleaning staff were added to the list.
I had to keep all of this straight in my head, make sure it was taken care of. No one cared that I was nineteen.
I keyed the code in the front door and opened it. I paused in the hallway, listening. There was loud, grinding music coming from the direction of Alistair’s rooms. And wafting through the air, as if carrying the terrible sound, was the smell of pot smoke.
I kicked off my sneakers and climbed the stairs, bypassing the party. I hoped the sound wouldn’t carry all the way to my bedroom. I desperately needed sleep.
In the upstairs hall, a light shone beneath Dad’s office door. I knocked twice, then pushed it open.
Dad was sitting at his desk, wearing his reading glasses as he typed on his laptop. He looked up at me with a smile when I came in, then got out of his chair.
“Hi, Dad,” I said.
“You’re home,” he replied.
As he walked toward me, I noticed little details. The UW sweatshirt he was wearing, which was his favorite. The tuft of hair sticking up unheeded on the back of his head. The crinkles around his eyes, the way the skin was starting to sag on his jaw. He was only in his early forties, but he looked older. Too old. I had gotten famous fast at sixteen, and Dad had had to rearrange his life, just like I’d had to rearrange mine.
He surprised me by stepping right up and hugging me, his arms around my shoulders. I blinked and hugged him back. It wasn’t that Dad wasn’t affectionate—he was. But this seemed different somehow. Like he needed this hug as much as I did.
I gave in, wrapping my arms around his worn old sweatshirt and digging my nose into the crook of his neck, like I was a little kid again. He smelled like laundry soap and aftershave that had long ago worn off. He was warm, and he hugged me tight for a long time. I had no idea why I suddenly felt like crying.
“You should be in bed,” I said when he let me go. “It’s late.”
“Too much work to do,” Dad replied. He patted his palm gently on the top of my head, like a grownup does to a toddler, even though I was almost two inches taller than him now. “I don’t mind staying up. They called me from the airstrip to tell me you landed all right.”
I nodded. “Alistair is partying downstairs.”
“He’s having a few people over.”
He looked so tired, more tired than I was. “You don’t have to work so much,” I said. “We can hire someone to assist you so you have time off.”
Dad laughed at that. “You’re my son! I can’t delegate my son like you delegate a few legal letters.”
“But we could?—”
“Don’t worry about it, Finn.” He was stern, but his eyes were still crinkled at the corners. “I’m exactly where I want to be, doing what I want to do. You worry too much.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face. I couldn’t think about this right now. I was so tired.
“Go change and wash up,” Dad suggested. “Then go down and unwind with Alistair and his friends.”
I almost laughed out loud. Me, hang out at Alistair’s party? Alistair was tall and thin, and he’d dyed his hair inky black. He wore it in a short cut that he gelled in spikes. He had a ring in his eyebrow. The whole look should have been stupid, trying too hard, but somehow he pulled it off in a way that amazed me and made me mad. I had Hollywood’s best stylist do my hair, at a cost that would make most people throw up, and Alistair looked cool with a fourteen-dollar cut and drugstore dye.
“I don’t think he wants me down there,” I said to Dad, as gently as I could. In Dad’s eyes, I was just as cool as Alistair, maybe cooler.
“Sure he does,” Dad said. “He’s your big brother. Alistair loves you.”
Another fiction in Dad’s mind. “He’s hanging with his friends. I wasn’t invited.”
“Because he didn’t know you would be home.”
I would do almost anything for my dad, but I couldn’t subject myself to the humiliation of knocking on Alistair’s door and begging to join his party. “I’ll clean up and go downstairs,” I said, which wasn’t the same thing.
“Good boy,” Dad said, squeezing my shoulder.
“But only if you agree to go to bed. Right now.”
“You have a deal.” He hesitated. “Finn. You know I love you, right? No matter what happens.”
So that was it. He was as stressed about the tour as I was. “Yeah, I know,” I told him. “I love you, too. Goodnight.”
The party was still going half an hour later, when I went downstairs, heading for the kitchen. I had cleaned up and changed into navy blue sweatpants and a tee, my feet bare. I wasn’t planning to see Alistair or any of his friends, but at the last minute before leaving my room, I thought about Alistair’s hair and felt self-conscious about my dark brown waves with subtle, professional highlights. I jammed a baseball cap on my head, just in case.
At the bottom of the stairs, I turned down the corridor that ended at the huge kitchen. For the first time since leaving Japan, I finally felt hungry. I’d get a snack, staying downstairs long enough to appease my dad before he fell asleep, and then I’d sneak back upstairs with no one the wiser.
But the party hadn’t stayed in Alistair’s rooms. I heard voices in the spare room off the hall, a man’s and a woman’s. I didn’t think the man was Alistair, which meant it was one of his friends.
Even though the entire house was mine, this was the thing that felt like it invaded my privacy. Why were strangers in my part of the house? Annoyed, I grabbed the door handle and pushed it open.
There was a pull-out couch in here—as if this house needed more bedrooms—but the couple using it hadn’t bothered to pull it out. They were making out on the couch, the guy on top of the girl. He had long hair, and when they both pulled back to look at me, I noticed he was wearing a Pantera shirt. The girl wasn’t wearing any shirt at all. She didn’t even cover up when she saw me, just scowled with her breasts right there, in plain view.
I blinked, even though I’d seen boobs before.
“Do you mind, man?” the guy asked, annoyed.
“Sorry,” I said, and backed out, closing the door. I didn’t even think of how stupid that was, that he’d cut me down so easily, a stranger in my house. I was blindsided by the breasts. It wasn’t just the fact of them, but their size, their fleshy imperfection compared to the models I’d seen. The way she didn’t cover them up, as if being topless was completely natural. It was startling—and hot—in a way I wasn’t used to.
Even though I was a famous pop star, I was also a nineteen-year-old boy. Breasts had the power to rob me of speech.
Still dazed, I wandered the rest of the way down the hall to the kitchen. I found some vegetables in the fridge, then some cooked lean chicken that had been prepared for me. I had to be photographed, I had to go on talk shows, I had to go to the Grammys. I could eat lean chicken, and that was it.
I put the cold chicken on a cutting board and sliced it into bites, eating it right off the board without a plate. I stared at the wall, picturing the girl’s nipples. They were dark red, and they had been hard.
“Oh, Jesus,” someone said in the doorway. “Who the fuck are you?”
I whirled to find a girl in the doorway. She was wearing jeans with frayed hems and a loose shirt that she’d tied in a knot right below her breasts, so a slice of her belly was visible above the waist of her pants. Her hair was dyed bright red, like Gatorade. She gripped the doorframe with one hand, as if she was so startled she might fall over. She stared at me with wide eyes that were lined with dark, smudged eyeliner.
I blinked hard at her. I was still seeing the other girl’s naked top, so I had to strain not to stare at the soft, curved lines under her shirt. “I’m Finn,” I said.
Her eyebrows rose. “Huh,” was her only comment. Her gaze moved down me to my feet, then up again. I couldn’t tell what her conclusion was.
I cleared my throat. Since I had forced my gaze to stay on her face, I realized she was pretty. She had a neat chin and nice lips. Her eyes were perfect, and I suspected that even without makeup, she would be beautiful to look at. “Are you hungry?” I asked, because she wasn’t saying anything, and I felt like she might leave, and I didn’t want her to go yet.
“Finn.” The girl cocked her head, as if trying to place the name. Was it an act? I had no idea. “You’re Alistair’s brother,” she said.
Alistair’s brother? “You don’t know who I am?” I asked.
The girl rolled her eyes. “I know who you are. Okay? Does that satisfy your ego?”
I suppressed a smile. Fair enough. “Yes, thanks. How do you know Alistair?” What I meant was, Are you dating him? Are you his girlfriend? Please, please tell me you’re not my brother’s girlfriend.
“He works with my sister at the restaurant,” the girl said, oblivious to how my shoulders drooped with relief. “I don’t know him, really. I kind of crashed this party.”
“It doesn’t matter if you crashed, because this isn’t his house. It’s mine.”
“Whatever,” the girl said, because she honestly didn’t care. “So you’re home now. Are you going to kick us out of your house?”
“Should I?”
“Sure,” the girl said. Then she turned around, bending at the waist so her jean-clad butt was facing me, a juicy pear shape. She slapped one of her ass cheeks with her palm, a single sharp sound. “Kick my ass right out the door,” she said.
I realized that she was a little bit drunk. Not drunk enough to slur, not drunk enough to forget this conversation later, but drunk enough to have lost her filter. It was adorable and incredibly sexy. I had never looked at a lingerie model like I looked at this girl’s drunk, perfect ass.
“It’s okay,” I said, because I was responsible for everyone. “You can pass out here.”
“Kick me to the curb, Finn!” She smacked her ass again, the sound loud in the quiet kitchen, and this time I laughed. “Put me out in the rain!”
“Stop it,” I told her. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“I’m Juliet.” She straightened and turned. “Like the Shakespeare play.”
“Well, Juliet,” I said, “I don’t kick out drunk girls, so you’re safe.”
“I don’t like your music.” She said this politely, without a hint of scorn. “No offense. It’s nothing like mine, that’s all.”
“You play music?” I asked.
“Yeah. I sing, and I play bass.”
My heart was literally racing. This girl was straight out of my dreams. “I play bass,” I said. It was true. I could also play guitar, piano, and drums, but I didn’t want to sound like I was bragging.
“Well, if you’re lucky, Finn,” Juliet said, “maybe I’ll let you play in my fucking band.”
I had written songs about love. I had sung love songs written by other people. My biggest, worldwide smash hit was about love. But that moment was the first time I had any idea what I had been singing about. That you could look at a person and think, How can I get more of this person? Even the smallest dose? What do I have to do?
My blood was rushing through my veins, hot and urgent, right here in this kitchen. I felt awake, alive. I could feel the tiles under my feet and the air against my skin. It was much better than coke.
“What’s your band called?” I managed to ask.
“The Muffins.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. On any other girl, that hair would look awful. On Juliet, it looked like goddess hair. “If you really can play bass, we should jam sometime.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know any of your songs, and you don’t know mine.”
“So we find something we both know. It can’t be that hard.”
I wanted to. More than anything, I wanted to sit down with Juliet and The Muffins and play something, anything. I didn’t care that she didn’t like my music and that I probably wouldn’t like hers.
“I can’t jam with you,” I said, the words hurting my chest. I leave for L.A. in—” I looked at the clock over the stove. “I leave in seven hours.”
“You just got here,” Juliet said. “This is your house. Stay a while and chill out. Get some sleep. Change your flight.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Jesus, Finn,” she said. “Doesn’t everyone here work for you? Tell them what to do, and then do whatever the fuck you want.”
“It’s complicated,” I argued.
“Is it?” She shrugged. “It doesn’t seem complicated to me.”
“I’m going to the Grammys.” I nearly shouted it, amazed that I had to explain to anyone why that was a big deal.
Juliet shrugged. “So go to the Grammys, then come back and jam. Tell everyone to fuck off. Have a little fun for once.”
“I have fun,” I argued.
“Do you? It doesn’t seem like it to me.”
She was twisting everything, making me mad, making me crazy. I wanted to kiss her, but I was sure that if I tried it, she’d push me away. From the party downstairs, Radiohead’s “Creep” started playing. It didn’t make me feel any less lonely.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her in frustration. “If you think I’m such an idiot, why are you partying in my house?”
“I told you to kick me out,” she shot back. “You should have done it when you had the chance.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face. “Why are you in the kitchen? Why aren’t you with your sister and Alistair?”
Juliet shrugged. “My boyfriend came up here a while ago. He said he was bringing back snacks.”
I dropped my hand. It took a second. Her boyfriend? She had a boyfriend?
And then I realized. The guy in the room down the hall—the guy making out with the topless girl—that was her boyfriend.
I felt my face go slack with shock.
Juliet might be drunk, but she was very perceptive. Or maybe she had reason to be suspicious. She narrowed her eyes at me. “What?”
Tell her. Don’t tell her.
Don’t tell her. Tell. Her.
She was about to hate me. Downstairs, “Creep” went into its awful chorus, with the guitar that sounded like someone was punching it.
“What?” Juliet said again, sharper now.
I cleared my throat, hoping against hope that I was wrong. “Does your boyfriend, ah, have long hair? Wearing a Pantera shirt?”
She knew, then. She must have picked up on something, put pieces together that I couldn’t see. Maybe he’d shown interest in the other girl before. Maybe he’d been gone from downstairs too long for a snack.
Her face shut down—there was no other word for it. The glint of mischievous humor drained from her eyes and the smirk dropped from the corners of her lips. She blinked, and I saw pure hurt in her eyes, open and raw.
“He’s with Naomi?” she whispered.
I was silent. I didn’t know the girl’s name.
“She said she was tired,” Juliet said. “She said she was going to sleep.”
I pulled away from the counter. “I’ll go tell him to get out of my house.”
“No, Finn,” she said.
“Yes.” I was mad now. I couldn’t control anything in this house, even this jerk who was no doubt now fucking that girl—Naomi—under my roof, cheating on his girlfriend. On Juliet. “He can knock it off and get out.”
I turned, but Juliet grabbed my wrist. “No, Finn,” she repeated.
Her touch on my skin was white hot—or maybe that was my imagination. I paused, speechless, waiting for her to say something.
There were tears in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. She blinked them back as she got control of her voice. “I’ll handle it,” she said.
“What are you going to do?” I asked her.
She shook her head.
“Don’t make excuses for him,” I said. I couldn’t get mad about anything in my own life, but apparently I could get mad about this. “There’s no question, Juliet. I saw her tits.”
She flinched. “I’m not in the mood for a bullshit scene. A bunch of drama. I’ll handle it my own way.”
“Handle it by dumping him,” I said as Radiohead howled in the background. “Handle it by telling him to go fuck himself.”
“I’ll figure something out.”
“Don’t stay with him,” I begged her. “Don’t forgive him. Don’t listen to whatever line he gives you.”
“There’s nothing he can say that I haven’t heard before.”
Our gazes locked, and we stared at each other, at an impasse. This was it, the only moment we would ever cross paths. I would never see this girl again.
“You think you deserve it,” I told her. “You don’t.”
She flinched again, harder this time. She was so tough, this girl, and yet she wasn’t. “Fuck you, Finn.”
“Fuck you, too.” My voice was rough.
I stepped back, and she dropped my wrist.
“I’m going home,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter to me.” I shrugged. “I’ll be gone in a few hours. See you later, Juliet.”
“See you never, Finn.”
I turned and left the kitchen, heading for the stairs.
See you never, I thought, ignoring how much the words hurt.
See you never.
Seven hours later, I was on a plane to L.A. They told me the model’s name was Maggie and she was looking forward to meeting me. She said she was a fan.