Neglected and Betrayed by My Rockstar Husband (Billionaire Marriage in Crisis #21)

Prologue

Aster

The diner smells like stale coffee and desperation, and I fucking love it.

“We have an early call tomorrow,” Dylan says without looking up. “The radio interview, remember?”

“I remember.”

“So maybe we should…”

“I’m hungry.”

I’m not hungry, and I don’t really know what I am.

Empty, maybe, or restless, or both at the same time.

There were twenty thousand people in that arena tonight and every single one of them was screaming for me, and I stood on that stage with the lights in my face and the bass vibrating through my chest and I felt absolutely nothing.

That’s not entirely true, because I felt tired.

I felt like I’ve been running for two years and the speed keeps increasing and I can’t figure out how to slow down without falling on my face.

The door to the kitchen swings open and she walks out.

The first thing I notice is her hair, light brown curls escaping from a messy bun and falling around her face like she stopped caring about fixing it hours ago.

Then I notice the freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks, and after that her eyes, which are green and bright and looking right at me without a single spark of recognition.

She’s carrying a coffee pot and she looks exhausted and annoyed and completely unimpressed by everything in her general vicinity.

One of the guys who travels with me, some nephew of someone important whose name I can never remember, snaps his fingers at her. Actually snaps his fingers, like she’s a dog.

“Hey, sweetheart, can we get some service over here?”

She stops walking and turns to look at him, and the expression on her face is so perfectly contemptuous that I almost choke on nothing.

“Coffee’s hot, not fast,” she says, her voice flat. “So you’ll wait like everyone else.”

His face goes red. “Do you know who…”

“Don’t care.” She’s already walking toward our table, coffee pot in hand. “You want coffee or not?”

I laugh, and it comes out of nowhere, this sound I barely recognize because it’s been so long since I made it.

It’s a real laugh, not the practiced one I use in interviews or the polite one I give fans when they say something they think is funny.

This one is surprised out of me by a woman who just told off my handler without blinking.

She looks at me, really looks for the first time, and I watch her take in my face, my clothes, the expensive watch on my wrist. I wait for the recognition, the widening eyes, the sudden shift from annoyed to eager, the “Oh my God, are you…” that I’ve heard ten thousand times. It doesn’t come.

“Coffee?” she asks, like she’s asking if I want to be hit by a bus.

“Please.”

She pours. The coffee smells terrible from where I’m sitting, but I don’t care, because I’m watching her hands instead, steady and efficient, watching the way she moves like she’s done this a million times and could do it a million more without thinking about it.

“Anything else?”

“What’s good here?”

“Nothing.” She tucks the coffee pot under her arm. “The pie is the least bad. Cherry or apple, don’t bother with the pecan.”

“You’re really selling this place.”

“I work here, I don’t own stock in it.” There’s a hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth, barely there, like she’s fighting it. “Cherry or apple?”

“Cherry.”

She walks away and I watch her go, which is probably creepy but I can’t seem to stop myself.

She’s not wearing anything special, just jeans and a t-shirt with the diner’s logo on it and an apron tied around her waist, but there’s an ease in the way she carries herself that I can’t look away from.

She knows exactly who she is and doesn’t give a shit if anyone else approves.

“We should go,” Dylan says, glancing up from his phone. “Seriously, you need sleep.”

“I’m eating pie.”

“You don’t even like pie.”

“I like this pie.”

“You haven’t tasted it yet.”

“I have a good feeling about it.”

Dylan stares at me like I’ve lost my mind, and maybe I have. Maybe the emptiness finally cracked loose and this is what comes out of it, a grown man sitting in a shitty diner at 2 AM waiting for pie he doesn’t want, just so he can watch a waitress who doesn’t know his name.

She comes back with the pie and sets it down in front of me without ceremony.

“Anything else?”

“What’s your name?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because I want to know.”

“Flora.” She says it like she’s daring me to make fun of it. “My mother loves plants.”

“Flora,” I repeat, and I like the way it feels in my mouth. “I’m Aster.”

“Good for you.”

“That’s it? Just ‘good for you’?”

“What do you want, a parade?” She’s definitely fighting a smile now, her lips pressing together like she’s trying to hold it in. “Eat your pie, Aster. I’ve got tables to clean.”

She walks away again and I eat the pie, which is terrible exactly like she said it would be, and I finish every bite anyway because it gives me an excuse to stay.

The rest of my team leaves one by one. Dylan is the last to go, giving me a look that says he thinks I’ve lost my mind before he finally gives up and heads for the door.

I barely notice, because I’m watching Flora wipe down tables and refill sugar containers and count out her tips.

She moves through the empty diner like she owns it, even though she just told me she doesn’t own stock in it.

Around 3 AM, she slides into the booth across from me.

“We close in an hour,” she says. “You planning to sit there until then?”

“Maybe.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” It’s the truth. I don’t know why I’m still here, or why I can’t make myself leave, or why this woman with her messy hair and her sharp tongue is the most interesting thing I’ve come across in months. “You’re the first person who hasn’t asked me for something in a long time.”

“What would I ask you for?”

“A photo. An autograph. My phone number. A selfie for Instagram. A shoutout. A mention on Twitter.”

“You’re very full of yourself.”

“I’m not.” I lean forward, elbows on the table. “I’m just telling you what usually happens. Everyone wants something.”

“Not me.” She shrugs, casual, like this conversation isn’t the most real thing that’s happened to me in years. “I want to finish my shift, go home, take a shower, and sleep for approximately ten hours. None of those things involve you.”

“What if I want them to involve me?”

The words are out before I can stop them, and I wait for her to roll her eyes, to shut me down, to walk away.

She laughs instead. It’s a good laugh, real and surprised and a little bit husky, and it transforms her whole face, makes those green eyes crinkle at the corners, shows off a dimple in her left cheek I hadn’t noticed before.

“That was terrible,” she says. “Does that actually work on people?”

“Honestly? Yeah. Usually.”

“Then those people have low standards.” She stands up, but she’s still smiling. “Eat your terrible pie, mystery man. I’ve got work to do.”

She walks off and I watch her cross the room, and something in me that’s been wound tight for years starts to loosen, just a little.

I stay until closing. She lets me, even though she clearly thinks I’m insane, and we talk in between her tasks about nothing important and about everything important.

She tells me about the drunk customer who proposed to her last Tuesday, complete with a Ring Pop.

She tells me about her mom, who grows vegetables and hasn’t owned a television in fifteen years.

She tells me her feet hurt and her back aches and she’s been on shift for ten hours.

I tell her nothing about myself. No mentions of the tour, the albums, the awards, no name-dropping or bragging or subtle hints about my net worth. I’m just a guy in a diner booth talking to a girl with flour on her apron, and it’s the best night I’ve had in years.

When she finally kicks me out at 4 AM, I stop at the door and turn around.

“Flora.”

“Aster.” She’s counting the register, not looking at me.

“I’m going to marry you.”

Her head snaps up. She stares at me, those green eyes wide with surprise, and for a second I think I’ve finally managed to shock her. Then she laughs again, that husky sound that does things to me I can’t explain.

“Get in line, rockstar,” she says. “And leave a decent tip.”

I leave a five hundred dollar tip on a twelve dollar bill.

I come back the next night, and the next, and the next, every night for two weeks straight until she finally agrees to go on a date with me.

Six months after that she’s wearing my ring, because she follows her heart, and her heart said yes.

And I think to myself at our wedding, watching her laugh with her mother, that all I have to do is make sure the lights I keep chasing lead me back home to her.

The memory dissolves and I’m lying in a cold, empty California king bed with morning light streaming through the windows, and the truth settles over me.

It’s our anniversary, and I haven’t slept beside my wife in eleven days.

Eleven nights on the couch in the studio because the mix wasn’t done, and the mix still isn’t done.

I reach across the bed to her side. The sheets are cold. The pillow still holds the faint indent of her head, but she’s been gone for hours.

My phone is on the nightstand, buzzing with notifications, so I grab it and scroll through. Forty-seven messages. Texts from Dylan, emails from the label, Instagram notifications, Twitter mentions. Not a single one is from Flora.

I stare at the empty space beside me and try to remember the last time I woke up with her there.

Last month, maybe, or the month before, and I honestly can’t say for certain.

The days blur together into studio sessions and interviews and flights and shows, and somewhere in that blur I lost track of the most important thing.

I reach across the bed again, my hand landing on cold sheets, and the emptiness is back and worse than it’s ever been, because this time I know exactly what’s missing.