Falling for the Star

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I kept my plan to plunge off the suspension bridge a secret from Carter.

The math was simple. First, the severe depression had already swallowed me whole, and the doctors were powerless to pull me back. Second, I knew the ugly truthhe didn't actually love me.

So that morning, I followed the routine. I slung my bag over my shoulder and headed for the entryway just like any other ordinary day.

He leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms, his gaze washing over me with sheer indifference.

"Goodbye, Carter."

He just popped a single brow.

I turned the knob.

And stepped out of his world forever.

Chapter 1

"You look gorgeous today. Have a smooth trip. Come home to me early."

Those were the three things Carter told me this morning. He had his head tilted, propping up his chin, just staring at me. Staring until the heat practically burned my cheeks.

Bathed in the morning sunlight, the man slouching in his chair suddenly burst into laughter. His shoulders shook with laughter, his face still distractingly handsome.

"How many years have we been married now? Stella, could you please stop blushing every single time I look at you?"

I stiffly grabbed my keys and fled the scene. In the end, I still couldn't bring myself to tell him I had decided to jump off the suspension bridge. Even though I knew the brutal truth: if I told him, he wouldn't even lift a finger to stop me.

I was dead, but somehow, my brain was still firing. I had become a spirit, just drifting through the air. I didn't know where the hell I was supposed to go, so my subconscious dragged me straight to wherever Carter was. Which was exactly how I ended up floating through the high ceilings of a ridiculously lavish hotel ballroom.

It took zero effort to spot him. Carter had this innate gravitational pull, forcing every pair of eyes in the room to lock onto him. He was the dead center of the crowd. It had always been like this.

Being in his orbit felt intoxicatingly comfortable; he knew exactly how to make people fall obsessed with him. Regardless of whether he ever gave a damn about them in return.

Tonight was likely the gala hosted by the organizers after he swept that massive music award. His career was officially in the stratosphere now. Stepping into the brutal glare of the public eye, both his velvety voice and his flawless face proved he was born to devour this industry.

Carter was no longer the guy who used to squeeze into a cramped apartment with me. He was no longer the man who sang in rundown dive bars until he lost his voice.

"Carter, let me toast to you. I hope we get plenty of chances to collaborate in the future Ah!"

A girl in a flowing evening gown walked over with a champagne flute. Whether she tripped on her own hem, got shoved, or orchestrated some desperate power play, I couldn't tell. She lunged straight into his chest.

He shifted his body just a fraction, his large hands catching her swiftly by the waist. The exact second she found her footing, he retracted his hands. He had smoothly caught her glass, too, holding it steady.

But the ice-cold champagne splashed all over his expensive, custom-tailored suit, leaving a massive dark stain. The girl's lipstick, reeking of some sickly-sweet perfume, smeared heavily across the collar of his silk shirt.

"I am so, so sorry, I"

"It's entirely fine." He cut off whatever pathetic excuse she was about to make. She looked up, falling straight into a pair of crescent-shaped eyes brimming with a gentle, forgiving smile.

"Don't let a little spill ruin your mood tonight. Compared to me," he leaned in just a fraction, offering a playful wink, "it would be a far greater tragedy if a gorgeous girl got her gorgeous dress ruined, wouldn't it?"

A furious blush crawled all the way up to the tips of the girl's ears.

The man who effortlessly sparked this reaction didn't give it a second thought. He gave a polite nod, gesturing that he needed to step away to change his suit.

But the very millisecond he turned around and stepped out of the crowd's line of sight.

The muscles in his jaw locked. The warmth in his eyes froze over into ice. His long fingers aggressively yanked at his tie, as if he had just been contaminated by some nauseating piece of trash.

I tilted my head, floating silently behind him. Figured you were still putting on a masterclass in fake charm, Carter.

After changing his clothes, he didn't head back to the ballroom. Instead, he found an isolated, shadowed corner in the garden to light a cigarette. I remembered reading a viral fan comment about him once online:

[ Carter descended straight from heaven. He's like an angel; he was born radiating pure light. ]

Chapter 2

Honestly, I thought he belonged to the dark.

When the mask slipped and his guard dropped, there wasn't a single gentle bone in his body. He was vicious, ice-cold, and downright cruel.

Like when we were in bed. He loved dragging me in front of the full-length mirror, his heavy grip locking my hips in place.

He would press his chest flush against my back, his hot breath brushing my neck, demanding to know exactly what we were doing. Asking me who I was. He would force my chin up, making me stare at my own flushed, messy reflection, and ask me what I looked like to him.

I would stare back into those pitch-black pupils through the glass, searching for a spark, but all I ever found was a suffocating emptiness and a raw, feral hunger.

The thick cigarette smoke blurred his sharp features. I drifted closer, peeking over his shoulder as his thumb swiped across his phone screen.

It was our text thread.

Oh, right. I hadn't double-texted him today. I used to blow up his phone constantly.

If he replied, my heart would race; if he left me on read, I'd just keep aggressively typing. It got so bad he actually looked me in the eye and told me he put my contact on 'Do Not Disturb'.

But hovering here, I realized something I never knew. I was pinned to the top of his messages.

The thread was frozen on last night. I had sent:

[ "Don't these two cats look exactly like us?" ]

[ "See, this one is me, clinging to you 24/7 like a stage-five clinger." ]

[ "And you only ever pet me when you're in the mood." ]

[ "It sucks." ]

Ten minutes later, from another room in the exact same house, he had replied:

[ "No." ]

That was it. A brutal, one-word shutdown. Our entire digital history ended right there.

He stared at the screen for a long beat, then hit the power button, plunging the phone into black.

The sharp click-clack of heels echoed on the pavement. Carter crushed his cigarette under his dress shoe and turned to face the girl stepping into his space.

"Carter, I know this is super forward of me, but I I've had a crush on you for the longest time"

It was the same girl who had spilled champagne on him earlier. Bathed in the pale moonlight, her cheeks were flushed. She was definitely riding a liquid courage buzz to be shooting her shot like this.

He looked down at her, the corners of his eyes curving up. The moonlight caught in his dark pupils.

"Sorry, I'm strictly off the clock right now. So maybe" He offered a lazy, killer smile. "Save the sweet talk for the next fan meet-and-greet?"

He always did this. Leaving an out. His fake gentleness was just a dull blade sawing through bone.

The girl's breath hitched, taking a desperate step closer. "No, you don't get it. I don't mean as a fan, I mean"

"You're drunk." He cut her off instantly. The warmth evaporated from his voice. His gaze turned to ice.

She flinched under his stare, shaking her head. "No, I'm sober, I swear, I"

"If you're sober, then your eyesight must be shot. You should be able to clearly see the wedding band on my finger."

He raised his left hand, flashing it right in her face. The platinum ring gleamed under the sparse light, drawing a sharp, arrogant arc through the dark air. Without another word, he turned his back on her, leaving her shivering in the biting wind outside the venue.

Well, that was out of character. I expected him to keep up the charming act for at least another five minutes.

I trailed right behind him as he retreated to a darker corner of the garden. He pulled his phone back out, his thumb flying across the screen. A second later, he pressed the device to his ear. Half of his face was swallowed by the shadows.

He was actually calling me.

The line rang and rang, echoing in the dead silence, until it finally clicked into a hollow beep.

I didn't answer. My phone was already buried deep in the freezing mud at the bottom of the river.

This was the very first time. Carter couldn't find me.

Chapter 3

I used to be certain that Carter liked me. Otherwise, when we ran away, why was it my hand he grabbed? I used to think that if I confessed to him, we would definitely end up together. Otherwise, during those days of hiding in the shadows, why did he always shove the last bite of decent food into my hands?

Carter and I survived the same trashed foster home. When we were six, he dragged me out of there and we ran. That drunk of a foster father told me I was a dog and forced me to crawl on the filthy floor to eat table scraps. The day Carter busted me out of there, I sobbed so hard I thought I'd throw up my own heart.

He yanked me into his chest, his voice floating over my head.

"I don't do the comforting thing. You've got me now, so stop crying."

From that second on, my entire world shrank down to just Carter.

Later, Carter told me he found someone to take us in. A gang banger reeking of cheap smoke and stale beer looked me up and down.

"Fine. You want this girl in a public school? Then you bleed for me on the streets." He bared a row of yellowed teeth at Carter.

The guy took us in. From then on, I had a desk in a classroom. Carter never saw the inside of a school.

He shadowed that guy, leaving before dawn and dragging himself back in the dead of night. I had zero clue what he was actually doing out there.

But in my head, the math was simple. Carter gave up his education for me. He would throw away anything for me. When we escaped, mine was the only hand he held.

I couldn't stop the obsession from clawing into my chest. Puberty hit, and his features sharpened into something brutally handsome. He smirked constantly, exuding this effortless, magnetic pull no matter what he did. Whenever his long legs strode past the school gates, he physically snapped the necks of every girl in a ten-mile radius.

People were constantly begging me for his number. I would just shake my head, playing dumb, my jaw tight as I wondered why he had to be so damn popular. Every single memory from middle school was infected by him. Wrapped up in the suffocating, acidic burn of a secret crush.

Then came that July, hot enough to drive a person insane. I leaned against the rusted window of our beat-up RV in the trailer park, ripping the plastic off a cheap Popsicle.

He stepped out of the tiny bathroom, vigorously rubbing a towel over his wet hair. Beads of water slid down the sharp V-line of his torso, glowing perfectly under the bleeding sunset.

My lungs stopped working. I forgot about the Popsicle melting in my grip. Sticky syrup dripped onto the linoleum until his shadow swallowed me.

He stepped in, closing the gap until the heavy heat radiating off his skin wrapped around me. He leaned down and ran his tongue in a slow, deliberate line from the base of the Popsicle straight to the tip. He held my gaze the entire time, the setting sun sparking dangerous fires in those dark, intoxicating eyes.

The world went black. My pulse hammered wildly against my eardrums.

"Spacing out? If you're not gonna eat it, I will."

By the time his raspy voice scraped against my ear, he had already snatched the Popsicle from my numb fingers. I stared at his damp, slightly flushed lips. I couldn't take it anymore.

I shoved him hard onto the narrow mattress and straddled his waist. The Popsicle hit the floor, sticky syrup pooling across the cheap wood. I lunged down, desperately chasing his mouth, my hands digging brutally into his shoulders, but he jerked his head to the side.

Our messy breaths tangled together as we stared at each other.

"I like you," I pushed the words out.

He tilted his chin up, his voice dangerously light. "What."

"I like you." I repeated it, my nails biting deeper into his skin.

The dying sun flooded his dark pupils before he slowly, deliberately dragged his gaze away.

"Sorry. I think I gave you the wrong idea." He delivered his sentence.

I stared at his sharp profile, my chest caving in so hard I could barely pull air into my lungs.

Chapter 4

I cornered my so-called angel. "If you don't like me if you don't care then why the hell were you so good to me? Then why pull me out of there? Why did you grab my hand?"

"It wasn't a big deal. I treat everyone like that. Because your mattress was closest to the window we busted out of. I only had time to drag one person with me."

"And school? Why did you make sure I was the only one who got to go?"

"Because I hate school."

He didn't blink. Not a single muscle in his jaw twitched with hesitation. The dying sunset bled into his eyes, leaving nothing but brutal, naked honesty.

That exact moment ripped the curtain open. It was the prologue to a decade of me hopelessly, pathetically chasing after Carter like a stray dog.

Carter called my number three times. I let every single one ring out.

Obviously, I couldn't pick up. My corpse was probably tumbling through some unknown stretch of the freezing river current by now.

The gala was bleeding out into the dead of night. He stared down at his glowing screen, his thumb hovering in the dark for a long beat, before he dialed a different number. I leaned over his shoulder. He was calling my boss, Josephine.

"Josephine. Hi. I apologize for calling this late."

That velvety voice of his was engineered for platinum records, but it worked just as ruthlessly in regular conversation. It was smooth, rich, practically forcing whoever was on the other end to drop their guard.

"This is Carter Stella's husband. I just wanted to check in. Did everything go smoothly with her business trip today? Oh.

There aren't any out-of-town projects for her department right now. I see. No, no, thank you. I appreciate you looking out for Stella"

He traded a few more polished, textbook pleasantries. Every syllable out of his mouth was flawless, polite, practically begging for a corporate seal of approval. But the look in his eyes plunged straight into pitch black.

He strode out to the curb while wrapping up the call and flagged down a passing cab. The driver threw him a look in the rearview mirror, asking for a destination.

He killed the call, lifting his dark gaze. "The police precinct."

He was trying to file a missing persons report. The desk cop flatly told him he had to wait twenty-four hours before they would even lift a pen.

A drunk guy who smelled like cheap beer and was cursing up a storm about his smashed-up pickup truck was slouched in the waiting chairs. He leaned forward, jumping right into the conversation.

"Hell, if you ask me, buddy, that hot girlfriend of yours just finally got sick of your shit, right? Women love to play the disappearing act when they're pissed off. You really dragging the cops into this petty drama?" He slurred, pointing a grimy finger.

Carter ended up sitting next to the drunk on the peeling bench right inside the precinct doors. Still wrapped in his custom-tailored suit, he looked like a razor blade dropped into a trash can. His striking eyes were dead empty, staring straight at the scuffed linoleum, ignoring the drunk who was suddenly squinting at him.

"Holy shit, wait are you that singer? The one blowing up on the radio"

He cut through the rambling, speaking more to the wall than the guy next to him. "She doesn't ignore my calls."

His face was stripped of all expression. The flashing red and blue squad lights from the street bled through the glass, catching in his dark pupils. He stated it with the unshakable certainty of a man saying one plus one equals two.

"She texts me back even when she's in the shower."

The drunk just blinked, silenced.

He wasn't lying. Back in the day, when I was blindly, toxically in love with him, I pulled every pathetic stunt in the book just to keep his attention. During my senior year of high school, right when the pressure for finals was suffocating everyone else, my biggest priority was digging through online recipes to cook for Carter.

I had swallowed some garbage advice from God knows where: "The quickest way to a man's heart is through his stomach."

So every time he walked through the door, the dinner table looked completely different. I obsessively tracked his preferences, writing down what he touched and what he ignored, endlessly tweaking the menu for the next night.

He told me he didn't do the comforting thing. Fine. I decided right then and there that I would be the one to comfort him, to take care of him, no matter what it cost me.

Chapter 5

So I made sure the meat was practically falling off the bone and his Coke was ice-cold. I spent the entire afternoon baking his favorite ribs and mac and cheese. While all the kids my age were losing their minds over the SATs, my brain was entirely consumed with how to keep him fed.

That day, he dropped his fork on the table, offering this lazy, half-smile. "Stella."

"Yeah?"

"The ribs are too salty. The mac and cheese is way too heavy. The sides are too spicy."

I nodded immediately. "Okay. I'll use less rub next time. Really? I thought you liked it extra cheesy"

It wasn't until that last sentence dropped that my brain finally caught up. I hadn't put a single drop of hot sauce in anything. And I had taste-tested the whole spread myself. It was fine.

He leaned back, sprawling out in his chair, just studying me.

A hollow ache bloomed in my chest. "Do you just hate my cooking now?"

"Stella" He dragged my name out. He tilted his head back, locking eyes with me. The harsh overhead light traced the sharp, perfect angles of his nose and brow bone.

His voice dropped into this soft, almost bratty drawl. "My shoulders are killing me."

I shot up from my chair and moved right behind him.

"Is this pressure okay?" I asked quietly, digging my thumbs into the tight knots at the base of his neck. Even the sliver of skin showing above his collar was flawless. I caught myself thinking, not for the first time, that Carter could stand next to any A-list actor on TV and blow them out of the water.

"Stella. Clean up the kitchen when we're done. Do the dishes. And wire me three grand."

"Okay. Okay Three thousand dollars I don't have that kind of cash right now. Can I once I get into college and get a real job, can I give it to you then?"

My thumbs froze on his skin. I lowered my head, keeping my voice painfully careful.

The dim kitchen light flickered, catching in his pitch-black eyes. The whole world could be burning down around us, and Carter would still look impossibly untouchable. Yet, staring into those depths, I never found a single trace of myself.

He suddenly let out a low laugh. He reached up.

His knuckles brushed my cheek. Just a graze. A fraction of a second before he pulled away entirely.

"Stella, step outside for a minute. I need a cigarette." He dropped the bomb.

I stood out on the apartment landing like a perfectly trained dog. The crisp autumn wind was biting. I kept my head up, counting the stars. But by the time I hit number sixty-seven, he still hadn't opened the door.

Finally, I grabbed the freezing doorknob and pushed my way back inside. There wasn't a single trace of cigarette smoke. On the cheap dining table sat a single piece of paper and a plain white envelope.

The handwriting was his. Unnaturally neat. I had no idea when he even practiced writing like that.

"Focus on your finals. If you bomb them, whatever. I'm out.

I won't be back for a few months. Don't bother looking for me. You won't find me."

I ripped open the envelope and tipped it over. A messy stack of bills spilled out onto the table. I counted it, my hands shaking. Exactly three grand.

I crushed my finals that year. I was already the top of my class, but I knocked the state exams out of the park. Nobody from our dead-end town ever scored that high.

But I didn't feel a single shred of joy. Not until Carter came back.

He had turned in the gang leader who took us in. That guy ran a massive local syndicate and was now facing a life sentence on heavy felony charges. Rumor had it that during the trial, the boss hawked a massive wad of spit right at Carter's face, cursing him out with the filthiest street slang imaginable. Too bad for him, Carter didn't have a family to curse anyway.

Chapter 6

Carter acted like nothing happened. He even brought me a gift. Congratulating me on turning eighteen and actually getting into the college I wanted.

That was the second time I threw myself at him. He stood right next to me, taking a slow drag from his cigarette, looking down at me through the smoke.

"Hey, Stella. Could you drop the one topic we both know is a dead end?" He exhaled, his voice flat.

Carter called my number again.

This time, the call went straight to voicemail. My phone was dead. This was probably the first time in history I had gone nearly twenty-four hours without texting him back. In the past, I wouldn't have let him wait a single damn second.

He was scrolling through our chat history again. I honestly didn't get what was so fascinating about it. The screen was practically a solid wall of my own texts.

[ "So bored." ]

[ "Carter, what are you doing?" ]

[ "Keep me company." ]

[ "I like you." ]

[ "Don't ignore me." ]

[ "Jerk." ]

It always ended like that, with me throwing a pathetic digital tantrum. Sometimes he replied. Most of the time, he ignored me. I didn't care, and he was long used to it.

He was used to me constantly forcing my way into his space. Used to me biting down hard on his collarbone when he had his arms lazily wrapped around me.

"Carter. Could you pretend to give a damn about me for once?"

But this time, his thumb swiped all the way to the bottom. I had left his last message on read for five hours. On the glowing screen, his two text bubbles glared back in the dark.

[ "You promised you'd come home early tonight." ]

[ "Stella, it's really late." ]

During college, Carter and I worked in the same city. We ended up moving in together. The rent was dirt cheap, and the apartment complex was basically falling apart. There was a rusted fire escape that led up to the roof, and we always loved killing time up there at dusk.

"Carter, what's your actual type?" I asked him once.

He was leaning heavily against the rusted railing, his posture loose. He shifted his broad shoulders, physically blocking the howling autumn wind from hitting me. Half of his razor-sharp face was soaked in the bleeding sunset.

"Rich ones. Someone who can bankroll me. Someone who doesn't need to be coddled. Low maintenance.

I hate girls who cry over every little thing." He stated naturally, clicking his tongue.

I never once doubted that Carter's ultimate life goal was to find a wealthy woman to fund his existence. He truly didn't look like a guy burdened with massive ambitions. Or maybe guys who looked like him just knew they could get whatever they wanted by simply snapping their fingers.

But from that exact second on, my sole obsession in college became one thingmaking bank. My brain was wired perfectly for academics. Problems that took other students minutes to decode, I could solve in seconds.

It didn't take long before I landed a solid gig at a tech startup run by some upperclassmen. After that, the money started rolling in. I got rich.

I remember it perfectly. It was Carter's birthday.

The snow was coming down hard that night. I walked out of the kitchen holding the cake I bought for him. A $500 custom cake. I really thought it was the kind of cake only rich people could afford to eat.

"Carter." I pulled out thick stacks of hundred-dollar bills from my coat pocket. My wages from the last few months. So, so much money.

I slammed the massive pile of cash onto the table right in front of him. "Look. I'm rich now. You don't have to hustle so hard out there anymore, I"

Until the wail of police sirens tore through the night, screaming closer.

The violent flash of red and blue lights painted the snow outside the window. Yet, my gaze remained glued entirely to his dark, unreadable eyes.

"Carter. Could you just take a single bite of the cake? I spent so long preparing this for you, I Happy birthday, Carter."

The police dragged me away.

Chapter 7

The tech startup I joined was hit with massive federal charges for wire fraud and tax evasion. Since my name was slapped on the official documents as the registered CEO, I was the first one the feds dragged away in handcuffs. The upperclassmen who founded the place had vanished into thin air the second the news broke, leaving me to take the brunt of the fallout. The realization hit me like a physical blow to the gut: they only recruited me so enthusiastically to use me as their legal meat shield.

I blocked out the memories of those days locked in the county holding cell. Eventually, the feds hunted down the real founders. Because I had the paranoia to back up all the company emails on a hard drive beforehand, the DA dropped my charges. I walked without doing actual time.

Carter was the one waiting by the curb the day I walked out of the detention center. His dark eyes hadn't shifted a single degree. But the words died in my throat.

He silently draped his heavy wool coat over my shivering shoulders. We got into his car.

"Want to go get steak?" He acted like we hadn't spent a single second apart.

I always tried to dig for some hidden layer of emotion in Carter's eyes. I always came up empty. At the steakhouse, I watched his face through the rising heat of the sizzling plates. I just blankly noted how his eyelashes were actually long enough to cast physical shadows over his cheekbones.

"Stella." He called my name.

My pulse hitched, mirroring the lazy, rhythmic tapping of his expensive steak knife against his porcelain plate.

"About this whole getting arrested disaster. Let's get one thing straightI'm not taking the blame for it." He paused.

He propped his chin on his knuckles, his striking eyes holding absolutely nothing but empty beauty. The corners of his lips curved up into a cruel, paper-thin smile. "Don't even try to guilt-trip me."

"Officer, you need to listen to me. I'm telling you, something is seriously wrong with my wife." Carter checked his heavy Rolex for the third time before pressing his hands flat against the precinct's front desk.

"Sir, your wife is a grown adult with total agency. We've logged your concern, but nine times out of ten, her phone just died or she drove into a dead zone. There's no reason to panic right now"

For the very first time in my existence, a crack of genuine disorientation splintered through Carter's dark eyes.

"Our dynamic is different. I am deeply important to my wife. She physically does not ignore me.

I just ripped through our entire chat log. Officer, I don't know if this counts as probable cause, but she has never, not once in her life, gone more than five hours without texting me back. And I'm sorry, but in this day and age, you can buy a phone charger at any damn gas station"

The desk cop just offered a strained, pitying smile and buried his head back in his paperwork. But the drunk guy mourning his smashed pickup truck wasn't about to let the silence sit. He shoved his way right back into the spotlight.

"You two just had a blowout fight, man! 'Deeply important to my wife' my ass Face it, buddy. Your old lady just dumped you." He slurred loudly, pointing a grimy finger.

Carter froze. He opened his mouth to snap back, but a brutal gust of autumn wind shoved the precinct's glass doors open, whipping straight through the lobby. His spine locked up. He stood there paralyzed, the cold air biting his skin before he slowly turned to look over his shoulder into the empty dark.

The heavy police scanner on the front desk suddenly blared to life with a blast of static.

"Dispatch to Central Precinct. We just pulled an unidentified female body from the East River. Requesting immediate cross-check for any recent missing persons reports matching her description"

Chapter 8