Chapter 1
one
INDIGO
Everyone wants to be the daughter of a movie star until someone leaks their parents’ sex tape.
“If I have to see my dad’s ass one more time,” I grumble to my best friend, covering my eyes and turning off the television, where entertainment reporters discuss a blurred image of his backside. “Seriously, Lola, there’s not enough therapy in the world.”
“But it is a great ass,” my former best friend says matter-of-factly.
I never should have video-called her. Seeing her expression makes this worse.
“Lola! Gross.” The bed creaks when I flop dramatically onto my back, bouncing a few times before coming to rest. A strand of my rose-gold hair sticks to lip gloss before I brush it away with a frown.
“Sorry, girl, but your dad is Robert Bloom. Millions of people are in love with him. You know they’d line up to take a bite out of that peach. He looks damn good for a man in his mid fifties, and I’m not even attracted to men.”
As if I could ever forget that half the world is in love with my dad. And the other half is obsessed with my mom.
“Yeah, well, the sex tape is fifteen years old, and he’s had a shit ton of plastic surgery.”
Lola’s piercing blue eyes widen and her perfect little button nose wrinkles. “On his ass?”
“Probably? I don’t know. We don’t discuss the extent of the work they get done.
He and my mom both will show up on random days with bruises and bandages, and I don’t ask questions.
” Neither of my parents had much work done when I was younger, but the older they get, the harder they cling to the fleeting glow of youth and the movie roles that come along with it.
Even if it means they’re more filler than genetic material at this point.
Frankly, it’s a wonder either of them can make any kind of facial expressions.
“And your mom’s tits? Damn. You’d never guess that woman nursed an infant at one point.” Lola absentmindedly grabs one of her boobs and gives it a squeeze.
“That’s because she didn’t nurse me. I’m not even sure she could after her boob job.
” And even if she’d been physically able, there’s no way in hell Vivian Marsh, the blonde bombshell and sex symbol with surprising dramatic range, would risk her body any more than necessary.
It was bad enough she had stretch marks on her stomach from growing me. On her boobs?
A bridge too far.
“Either way, at least they look good. If my parents ever made a sex tape?” Lola shudders, and I crack a smile for the first time since the video leaked last night.
“Like, I love my mom and dad, but my dad has the build of Santa Claus, and my mom did nurse a few babies. She could tuck those titties into her jeans, if she wanted to.”
“Jesus, Lols.” That mental image will be burned into my brain for a while.
“Just saying, it could be worse.”
I bang the back of my head on the mattress.
“Sure. Yeah. It could be worse. There could be a horde of paparazzi camped out along our street, foaming at the mouth to get a shot of one of us taking out the trash.” Pushing up off my bed in my little cottage house on my parents’ estate, I move to one of the massive windows I normally love.
They take up the better part of two walls and let in tons of natural light.
Except now, they’re shuttered. I’ve drawn every blind in the house to keep unscrupulous photographers with ultra-telephoto lenses from getting a single shot they can sell to the tabloids or plaster online in one of the many Hollywood gossip blogs.
Turning the camera so Lola can see what I see, I crack one blind just enough to show her the growing mob of shouting paps. “Oh wait, there is a horde of paparazzi camped out along our street.”
When I look at the screen, my best friend’s pretty face has lost its levity. Instead, sympathy bleeds out of every pore and turns her eyeballs into these wide, wavering, glittering things that look alarmingly like anime eyes. I seriously don’t know how she does that.
“I’m sorry, Indie,” she says seriously. “I know how much you hate the spotlight.”
Hate may be putting it mildly.
My parents are both gorgeous specimens of humanity. Like, ethereally beautiful. They love the spotlight, and the spotlight loves them right back.
Me?
Somehow, it only seems to add ten pounds to my ass and shine a glaring light on how utterly ordinary I am compared to them.
More than one article has been written lamenting the fact that two of the world’s most beautiful people combined genetic material and created someone so very average.
And chubby. Which, in the eyes of the media, is akin to a mortal sin.
So, yeah, I hate the spotlight. I hate it so much that I’ve gone out of my way for the last decade to do everything I can to avoid it.
But now? Not only are my parents going through a nasty, public divorce, but someone also leaked a sex tape I never wanted to know about, and public interest in my family is at an all-time high.
Which means these vultures want to know everything, even if it has nothing to do with Robert and Vivian.
Once again, I’m in the crosshairs, and I desperately want to get out of them.
“I can’t even leave the house,” I tell Lola, pacing the length of my room.
Normally, it’s my sanctuary. The deep phthalo-green walls, rich woods, and lush fabrics provide the perfect escape from the bright, too-perfect veneer of the rest of the estate and this whole damn city.
It’s a calming space. One where I can breathe deeply and let my creativity flow.
Not anymore.
Most of the time, I don’t even want to leave my cottage, but now that I can’t without being mobbed? All I can think about is getting the hell out. And that’s not possible. Not without fighting for my life in a sea of boundary-crossing paparazzi.
“You could come stay with me,” she offers. “My couch is comfier than it looks.”
“They’d find me there. I’m not going to do that to you.”
“Can you hole up at one of your parents’ other houses?”
I shake my head. “I thought about that, but they’re staking those out too.” An all-too familiar sensation bubbles up in my gut, turning my stomach. “If I want to get away from them, I’ll have to leave LA altogether.”
Lola cocks one eyebrow. “Then, why don’t you?”
As if it’s that easy. Lola’s my best and only real friend here.
Sure, I’ve kept in touch with my college roommate and our friends from school, but they’re in Canada.
Driving across the border and holing up in an entirely different country isn’t as simple as crossing state lines to hide out.
Canada’s probably out of the picture. So, where would I go?
My mind wanders to the little town on Mount Desert Island in Maine where my parents and I spent our summers from the time I was ten through the summer before I left for college.
Somehow, Bar Harbor always felt more like home than LA ever did, even though we were only there for a month and a half each year.
I could go there.
But the thing that made Bar Harbor feel like home—or should I say, the person—isn’t there anymore. Sure, I could escape to the little seaside resort town, but I suspect I’d end up even more depressed. Because memories of him would be everywhere.
It took me years to get over him. And I think I have. Mostly. Probably. But I lost something that summer when I lost him.
That warm feeling of home? I haven’t felt it since. It was like he was the sun, and when I left Bar Harbor that summer—when I left him—he took all the warmth with him.
“Don’t read it, Rosebud.” Sebastian yanks my phone out of my hand, holding it above his head so I can’t reach. He’s grown since last summer. At sixteen, he’s already a few inches shy of six feet tall. I’m pretty sure I’m almost done growing, and I’m barely five foot five.
“It’s fine,” I lie. “It won’t bother me.”
“That’s bullshit. And there’s nothing wrong with being bothered by strangers on the internet making mean comments about the way you look.
Anyone would be hurt by that, Indie.” He still holds the phone over my head, but at his words, I stop trying to grab it.
Instead, I look into the eyes of the boy who’s become my best friend in the whole world and soak up the care I see there.
No one else has ever looked at me this way, and my heart soars, despite the cruel article and comments that had me spiraling.
To the rest of the world, I’m just the disappointingly average daughter of two beautiful movie stars.
I’m too chubby, not talented enough, and they love to pick apart everything from my teenage pimples to my stomach rolls.
But not to Bash. To Bash, I’m his best friend. I’m his Rosebud. The girl he texts good morning and good night to every single day. The person he shares his deepest secrets with and whispers his dreams to. He sees the real me in a way no one else ever does.
I wish we could spend every day together, not only during the summers. Ever since that first day we met two years ago, Sebastian has been my best friend. He’s my safe place.
He’s home.
“For what it’s worth, I think they’re all idiots if they can’t see how beautiful and amazing you are.
” He shoves my phone into his back pocket and gently grips both of my shoulders, looking into my eyes.
“It’s natural to be bothered by what they say, but I want you to know that they’re wrong.
They’re just jealous of how awesome you are.
Besides, most of the people commenting are probably bald and lonely, anyway. What do they know?”
I laugh for the first time that afternoon when he boops me on the nose. When he pulls me in for a hug, some of the chill I’d been feeling starts to thaw. He’s solid and warm. His presence alone is enough to chase the clouds away.
My sun.
“Yeah, you’re right. What do they know?”
“Why are you making that face?” Lola asks, brows pinched.
“What face?”
“Like you’re taking a shit and it stinks.”
“Ugh.” Always so eloquent, my bestie. “I do not look like that.”
“You do. But that’s not the point. What are you thinking about?”
I roll my lips between my teeth, sucking on them for a moment to let the little bite of pain clear my mind before exhaling deeply. “The sun.”
Lola blinks. “The sun?”
“I was thinking that maybe I need to be near the sun.” Not close enough to get burned again, but close enough to soak up some of his warmth.
“I’m so confused,” my best friend muses.
Yeah, well, that makes two of us.
“What would you say to running away with me for a few months? Not permanently, just long enough for the worst of this whole debacle with my parents to blow over?” My heart slams against my rib cage. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m worried she’ll say no, or if I’m worried she’ll say yes.
She shrugs, her shoulders rising to her ears. “I can do social media for my job from anywhere. What, exactly, did you have in mind?”
Taking a deep breath, I square my shoulders, lift my chin, and cross my fingers. “How do you feel about Minnesota?”