Catching the Superstar

I don't date broke boys.

I said it to the smartest boy in our school, and then I tore his love letter to pieces in front of him.

Seven years later, I saw him again.

From the nosebleed seats of a sold-out arena, one screaming face in a crowd of twenty thousand.

Somebody shoved a mic at him. Come on, superstar. Anybody back in school you never got over?

Caspian's eyes moved across all those people and stopped on me.

"Yeah," he said. "There is."

Then he smiled, soft and cold, straight down the lens.

"But I hope I go the rest of my life without ever seeing her again."

Chapter 1

The spotlight found me before I understood what was happening.

One second I was nobody in a crowd of twenty thousand. The next, a white beam nailed me to my seat, and my face went up four stories tall on the screen behind the stage.

Rain still in my hair. Mascara I hadn't fixed. Twenty thousand strangers, turning to look.

Onstage, Caspian sat on a high stool with the mic loose in his hand, like he had all the time in the world.

"Looks like you're tonight's lucky winner," he said.

The arena screamed.

I dug my nails into the ticket in my lap and tried, uselessly, to slide it into my pocket.

Because I knew what was printed on the back.

I was never supposed to be here.

An hour ago I'd been up in the cheap seats with Kayla from work, holding a ticket I hadn't paid for. Our boss had swept in that afternoon with a fistful of passes and one instruction: take my daughter to the show.

So there we were. Me, Kayla, and the boss's little girl, wired to the ceiling on concession-stand candy, parked so high up we needed the screens to see anything at all.

Then, somewhere in the second act, a staffer in a headset had appeared at the end of our row. Smiled. Checked a name off a list. And walked the three of us all the way down to the floor.

VIP. Close enough to count his eyelashes.

Kayla had grabbed my arm the second the man left. "You went to high school with him? With him? And you never told us?"

I hadn't. There was no version of it that came out right.

Close enough that, all night, I kept catching his eyes as they swept the crowd. Warm, when the cameras were on him. Cold, every time they crossed me.

He didn't know I'd spent years watching him from a safe distance, on a screen, same as everyone else. I'd watched a boy nobody looked at twice turn into the man an entire country screamed for. Like he'd stepped out of his own skin and left it behind.

I'd have paid good money to be anywhere but that front row.

Onscreen, the game swam back into focus.

"Every ticket tonight had a question on the back," Caspian was saying, one long leg hooked lazily over the other. "You had to write an answer to get in. I'm guessing you all did."

"WE DID," the arena roared back.

He let his gaze wander. Let it settle on me.

"So here's the fun part. I pull one lucky fan, we throw their answer up on the big screen. Nobody minds, right?"

Nobody minded. They were thrilled.

My sixth sense was already screaming. I had the ticket halfway to my pocket when the staffer reached me, still smiling, and plucked it clean out of my fingers.

The camera pushed in.

The question hit the screen first, in letters the size of a car:

ANYONE FROM SCHOOL YOU NEVER GOT OVER?

Behind me, people laughed. Because that was the rule tonight. The fan answered, and then the superstar answered the same question.

I felt him watching me. "I'll be honest," he said. "I'm curious what you wrote."

Seven years folded shut like a door.

The letter I tore up. The one I'd made myself tear up, right in front of him. It stood between us now like a bar of light I couldn't step around.

A few seconds later my answer went up on the screen for twenty thousand people. One crumpled, handwritten word.

Yes.

His eyes, when they came back to mine, could have drawn blood.

Caspian sat back under the flashbulbs, and the light went out of his face, and the shadow took everything above his mouth.

Chapter 2

He tilted his head, easy, unbothered.

"Want to tell us about him?"

"No," I said. "I don't."

Because that boy lived in the one summer I never talk about, the crush I'd ended with my own two hands. For years he'd turned up in my dreams anyway, a bruise that never finished healing.

"No?" Caspian smiled.

The camera cut back to his face. Not a flaw on it.

He lifted the mic, and his eyes went to black glass.

"I've got one too," he said. "And she's here tonight."

The crowd lost its mind. He waited it out, patient, letting them beg.

Then, gently, almost kind:

"But I hope I live the rest of my life without ever seeing her again."

A beat.

"We're both better off. Really."

Twenty thousand people screamed like he'd handed them a gift.

Beside me, Kayla was outraged on his behalf. "Can you believe this woman? Showing up here? He gets famous and now she wants him back. Like she was ever in his league."

I pulled the corner of my mouth into something like a smile.

"Probably not," I said.

My league. My shiny, promising life. It had ended one summer seven years ago, and no one in this whole arena knew it but me.

The storm broke the second the show let out, city-wide, the kind of rain that falls in sheets.

The taxi line was a wall of soaked bodies. Kayla went down hard on the wet steps, twisted her ankle badly enough that her boyfriend had to haul her off to urgent care.

Which left me. Forty minutes into a line that hadn't moved, a three-year-old asleep on my shoulder.

That was when the two girls ahead of me started talking.

"...I heard she went after him right before finals. Wrecked his focus on purpose, locked down her own early-admit to Wexford, then dropped him like it was nothing."

"Used him and tossed him. God, imagine."

"Where'd you even hear that?"

"Serena. In that interview, the long one."

Serena.

Seven years, and the name still went through me like ice water.

Every word of it backwards, the way she always told it.

Serena was why I dropped out. Why I never set foot in Wexford. Why I lost the only boy I ever wanted. She put me over a cliff with one lie, then landed the lead in his music video and became someone the whole country adored.

I tucked my coat over the kid's head and cut toward the back of the building, away from the noise.

No lights back there. Just dark and rain and me walking too fast.

I hit something solid.

The ground tipped, and an arm caught me around the waist before I went down.

Close. Too close. Close enough to catch the trace of something on him, not cologne, something stranger, and I knew it before I knew anything else.

"Sorry," I breathed, on reflex.

Headlights snapped on behind him, white and blinding, and I squinted until his face came clear.

That perfect, arrogant, ice-cold face.

Caspian.

Behind him stood a whole crew, loaded down with bags. One of them cut in, sharp.

"Ma'am, he's not signing on personal time. You need to go. Now."

Two guards shifted to put themselves between us.

Heat climbed my neck. They thought I was some stalker. "Sorry, I'm not "

Caspian didn't blink.

"Long time no see," he said.

The whole crew went still, and every last one of them turned to stare at me.

Chapter 3

They'd all worked it out by then. I was the woman from the stage.

I hugged the kid closer. "Sorry to bother you. I'll "

"You won't get a cab back here either." Caspian's voice was cool. "So. Keep standing in the rain, or come with me."

I couldn't keep a three-year-old out in that.

So I got in his car.

Rain drummed on the roof. My hands and feet had gone numb. "Thank you," I said quietly.

"How old is she?"

"Three. Just started preschool."

The air in the car dropped another few degrees.

I looked out at the crowd still screaming his name and drifted somewhere far off. We really were different now, the two of us. The boy I used to watch from the corner of a classroom, the one nobody looked at twice. And now this. All these people who'd have burned the world down for one glimpse of him.

A call lit up my phone.

His eyes went to the screen before I could move.

I pressed my lips together.

"Why aren't you answering?"

"It's not "

The kid's flailing fingers hit speaker.

"You home tonight? I made you a pot of dumplings."

A man's voice, filling the whole car.

Derek. The setup my family kept pushing. I'd told him no a dozen times. Never slowed him down once.

I went rigid. Fumbling to kill the call, I knocked my bag off the seat.

An old keychain spilled onto the floor mat.

His photo on it. Caspian, seventeen years old.

Seven years I'd carried that, and now it sat there in the light for him to see.

He looked down. His gaze caught on the photo and stayed. Something moved at the corner of his mouth that I couldn't read.

My face went hot. I grabbed for it and only made it worse, hands everywhere, and clipped the window switch.

The glass dropped an inch.

The roar of the crowd poured in through the gap.

"THERE'S A WOMAN IN THE CAR."

"GET A PHOTO"

A hand came down over my eyes.

Caspian leaned in from behind, mouth at my ear. "You really haven't changed."

"Married, and still carrying my picture around. That what they teach you over at Wexford?"

"I'm not married"

"So what's the play?" He wasn't listening. "You want me to know you never got over me? Want my fans catching you in my car so we trend together? Fine by me."

He tipped my chin up. His voice dropped to ice.

"Be good. Let my fans get a look at you. Smile pretty. You're on camera."

Everything in me went cold at the thought of my face on another screen.

I heard the window slide the rest of the way down.

Wet night air poured over me.

Then he lifted his hand.

Nothing.

An empty field, black and wide open. No fans. No cameras. The car was already up on the ring road, miles past all of it.

He'd driven me clear of every last one of them before he said a single word.

Caspian folded back into his seat and closed his eyes. My phone lay by his foot. Derek's call had already dropped.

A long time passed before he spoke again, flat and hard.

"Get out when we stop. You're married. Quit coming around."

I all but fell out of that car.

I watched his taillights tear off into the dark and let the explanation die in my throat. He could think what he wanted. I wasn't about to chase a pop star down to correct his math about my life. I had my own road to get back to, and it didn't run through him.

We lived in two different worlds now.

Chapter 4

To Caspian, I was a girl he'd shared a classroom with once. Nothing more.

No sense flattering myself.

A few days later, "Caspian, Off the Market" was trending.

The photo went around fast, the one where his hand covers my face in the car. Half the internet decided the woman had to be Serena.

Top comment: [He's allowed to date, isn't he?? Leave my man alone.]

Only one person called me that first day. My best friend.

"That's you in the photo. Isn't it."

"Yeah."

She was quiet a moment. "Vivi. Aren't you scared she'll do it to you again? Serena will bury you."

"I am scared," I said. "Which is why, barring a disaster, I'm never seeing any of them again."

Then life did the thing where it laughs at you.

My boss dropped an assignment on my desk that week. Land Caspian for an authorized biography.

"Whole internet says he and Serena are a thing," she said. "Kayla mentioned you two went to high school together. You could dig up plenty."

"Close this one, and your year-end bonus doubles."

I thought about it for a second. Then I said yes.

I didn't want to be a gossip reporter for the rest of my life. And I needed the money. For school.

Early winter, I flew into Boston.

Caspian had a show at Wexford. I checked into his hotel on the last favor my company could pull.

At five, a commotion broke out by the doors.

He came through the middle of the crowd, glossy as ever. Somewhere in the last few years he'd built his own company and turned himself into real money.

There was a familiar face at his shoulder.

Serena.

Reporters swarmed her. "Serena! Any big plans, tagging along this trip?"

She pinked up, playing shy. "Just here to watch my boss put on a show. Obviously."

The crowd ate it up.

Caspian didn't look up from his phone.

Then Serena found me across the lobby. Her smile caught for half a second before she slid her hand around his arm.

"Tonight's private, so we're calling off all press. I'd really appreciate everyone giving us some room."

The last part she aimed straight at me.

She knew exactly what it did. My company had burned every connection it had to get me one night in this hotel. After tonight I'd never get near him again, and she wanted me to know she knew.

Caspian shrugged her hand off and walked for the elevators.

Serena passed close on her way by. She smiled at the front-desk manager, pitched just loud enough to carry. "Could you make sure the paparazzi don't get upstairs? They're so tiring."

Her eyes flicked to me on the word paparazzi.

After that, his floor filled with security.

So I waited in the elevator.

Serena's feed filled up with scenic shots. Her fans camped in the comments, begging for couple content. Somebody decided he'd taken her out to see the harbor.

I waited from afternoon into the dead of night.

I'd just about decided he wasn't coming back when the doors slid open.

Caspian stood there.

The smell of alcohol came off him, faint.

He didn't say anything. Just walked in, quiet, and set his shoulder against the wall a few feet from me, every line of his face cut sharp under the overhead light.

The elevator started to climb.

The silence poured in around us.

I made myself swallow. "We had a deal. For tonight."

"Just give me a few minutes. I'll be quick"

Chapter 5

He moved before I finished the sentence.

One arm came down against the wall beside my head. Then the other. I was boxed in, cold steel at my back, all of him in front of me, close enough that his breath broke hot across my face.

He didn't touch me. He didn't have to. He just took up all the air in the room.

"Why did you come back?"

He was tall enough to blot out the light, and the shadow he threw dropped over me until I couldn't see past him.

I got my fingers around his wrist, panicking that someone would see, and made myself talk fast. "I need the bonus. I need the money."

"Money." He laughed like it was the best joke he'd heard all year, and I felt the tremor of it run down his arm. "Running low on diaper money?"

"This Derek guy's really that pathetic. Has you begging an old classmate at midnight."

"It's my business," I said. "It's got nothing to do with you."

"No?"

He dug a fistful of bank cards out of his pocket and pressed them into my hand. "Then ask me for it, Vivienne. Go on. Beg."

"You're drunk"

"Not enough? I've got property deeds too. How many do you want. All of them?"

When I said nothing, he pulled the collar of his shirt open at the throat. "Or do you want me?"

"You ask, and every last piece of it is yours."

A man who could sign over the whole world, and the only thing he wanted back was for me to turn around and reach for it.

My phone rang. The worst possible second for it.

I went for it. He got there first. His eyes cut to the screen, to Derek's name, and something in him pulled violently tight. He hit answer.

Then he kissed me.

Right down the open line, so the man breathing on the other end could hear every second of it.

Alcohol and heat. My pulse slammed up into my throat. I got a hand flat against his chest to push him off.

I didn't.

His heart was going like something coming loose in his chest, and I felt every beat of it straight through my palm.

"Caspian." It came out wrecked. "You've lost your mind."

He'd smeared my lipstick, crushed my dress. When he drew back an inch, his eyes were dark and blown wide with it.

"Vivienne. Vivi." Low, and rough, and coming apart. "Leave him. Be with me."

"I'll be good to you. Good to the kid. I swear I will."

I got just far enough loose to breathe. "I'm single"

He kissed the rest of the words out of my mouth.

The boy I'd wanted for years, walking back into my life out of nowhere to pull every last string he had and take me apart with it.

There is no bracing for that.

That night I dreamed my way back to seventeen.

I had a fistful of his white uniform shirt, grinning up at him. "Hey. Caspian. Come to a movie with me after the match."

His lips went tight, the tips of his ears flushing pink, his voice cold as anything. "Teachers don't like boys and girls getting close."

"It's one movie! I mean it! Trust me!"

Back then, Vivienne pulled straight A's and moved through the world like she owned the light in it. When she wanted someone, she had the nerve to want them out loud.

That afternoon I kissed Caspian in the back row of a theater.

The same way he kissed me tonight.

Something in my chest that had set hard years ago went molten again, rolling over, breaking against itself, restless the whole night through.

When I woke, a half-dead leaf was scratching at the window glass, stubborn about it.

Caspian was gone.

I came to slow, a blanket over my shoulders, sitting on the couch staring at nothing. It took me a minute to put the night back together.

He'd called me his honor student more than once. Said my name like it cost him something.

And I'd lied to him.

Chapter 6

Slowly, I put a hand over my face.

If he knew I never made it to Wexford, that I'd dropped out of high school, would he still want me?

I left with my suitcase before he could find out.

Bad luck. The elevator doors opened, and there was Serena.

"Well. Vivienne." Her eyes slid to my suitcase, sweet as anything. "Leaving so soon? Didn't you spend the night up in Caspian's room?"

How did she know that?

She caught the door and dropped her voice at my ear. "You honestly think he likes you? He's getting even, sweetheart. He sleeps with you, then he tells the rest of us about it for a laugh."

Something dropped in my chest. I pushed her hand off and walked, my suitcase wheels loud on the marble.

She called after me, smiling. "You're the little slut who got herself thrown out for hooking up with some guy at school. Do everyone a favor and face it."

That one landed where it always landed.

I stopped.

I turned around. Walked back to that smug, satisfied face.

The slap cracked across the lobby loud enough to freeze the whole room.

Serena's head snapped sideways. Her palm flew to her cheek. "You you hit me?"

"I should have done it years ago."

Years of it came up out of me all at once, level and cold. "Serena. However famous you get, to me you will always be a coward who makes up filthy little stories about the people who scare her."

Her eyes cooled over.

"Is that right." She smiled. "Then turn around. Go on. See which one of us they believe."

I turned around.

Flashbulbs lit the lobby white as noon. A crowd packed shoulder to shoulder, pouring in like locusts, swallowing me whole.

"Ms. He, an anonymous source says you were caught with a guy at school back in high school. Is that true?"

"Your old classmates all say you graduated from Wexford. But you actually dropped out of high school, didn't you?"

"Did you spend last night in Caspian's room?"

"Have you been lying to him this whole time?"

Years of scar tissue, torn off all at once, skin and all, down to the raw red underneath.

And just like that I was back there, on the worst afternoon of my life.

Serena, standing in a sun-filled office, lying with her chin up. "Sir. I have to report Vivienne. She snuck off with some older guy during finals week. People have pictures."

Seven years later, here she was, running the same play. Trying to hound me out of the room all over again.

Behind me, Serena kept her hand pressed to her cheek. "Don't say things like that, everyone. Yes, she dropped out, but her private life is really none of our business. Have a little respect for a girl's privacy."

The crowd turned on a dime.

"She cracks Serena across the face and Serena's still covering for her?"

"Bites every hand that ever fed her."

"You really a high school dropout? Get lost."

Then, through the crowd, I saw him.

Caspian. A bag of breakfast in one hand. He'd been standing there a while. A long while.

Under the storm of shutters, he asked it quietly.

"You lied to me. Didn't you?"

I still don't know how I got the word out