To Catch a Falling Star Read online

  by

  L.Duarte

  * * * *

  To Catch a Falling Star

  Copyright © 2013 by L. Duarte

  Cover design by Sarah Hansen of Okaycreations

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To my husband and children

  TIM TUGS MY hand and yanks me out of the group. “Hey, what are you doing?” I ask, whispering.

  “Shhh,” he hushes me.

  “Where are we going? We’re gonna lose the others.”

  “Just shush and come away with me,” Tim orders with a dimpled grin. I glance back, and see our group already sitting by the fire on the beach. I want to join them, but I can never say no to Tim.

  Obediently, I follow him. I’ve followed him since I was five. We met during my first week of kindergarten. I fell in love right after I busted my ass on maroon-hued wood chips. Yeah, cheesy, but it was love at first sight.

  It was an early September afternoon. Little lungs that bubble with life burst into giggles, laughter, and screams. A warm breeze swirled the innocent sounds of childhood throughout the playground. Wearing pigtails, rosy cheeks, and hot-pink All Star Converses, I played with my best friend Tanish. Then DJ and Mark pushed us off the seesaw. Before I had time to react, Timothy appeared and punched DJ on the nose. I never confessed to this, but I was about to yell at him for playing Don Juan. That was before his big blue eyes stared down at me and, with a concerned voice, he asked, “Are you all right?” At that moment, I forgot the little speech running in my mind. He reached down to help me up and I knew then that I had found my mate.

  “Careful,” he says, pulling me back to the present. He assists me as I climb over the trunk of a fallen tree.

  “They’re gonna worry about us.” In between giggles, I inhale the sweet smell of mango as we navigate through a maze of tropical trees.

  “We’ll be back before they notice our absence.”

  My legs ache as I struggle to keep up with his long strides. We are thirteen, but Tim has gotten very tall. This is our first mission trip. We are building a schoolhouse in a small village on the southern coast of Jamaica.

  “Here,” Tim murmurs, halting under a tree.

  I search the area, but can’t identify anything special.

  “What?” I frown.

  “This tree. It’s called Lignum vitae,” he says. I glance up. Dark-green branches mantle over us, granting us solace. “It’s the hardest, heaviest hardwood known on the planet we inhabit.” That’s how Tim is. He always knows random facts.

  I indulge him with my brightest smile. Truth is, I love that he’s so smart. Heck, I love everything about this boy. Patches of moonlight filter through the leaves and cast a golden light on Tim’s face.

  “‘Lignum vitae’ is Latin for ‘tree of life,’” he explains. His beautiful face turns serious. “Melody, ever since I saw your tenacious face on that playground I’ve meant to ask you this. But before I ask you, I need to come clean. On the day when we met, I knew you could have defended yourself from that jerk. But I wanted to be your knight in shining armor. I rushed to help you, even though from a distance I saw in your eyes that you would beat the crap out of him.” He inhales a deep breath and shoves his hands in his pockets as he kicks the dusty ground around us.

  “Since you are coming clean…” I stare up at him. “I have to confess, I was about to tell you off. But when I saw your beautiful face, I wanted you to like me.” I giggle.

  “Will you marry me?” he asks quietly, as if under his breath.

  “Tim…” I blink repeatedly. We are thirteen. “Yes.” I flash a smile. “Yes, Tim. I’ll marry you.”

  He lets out a long breath of air. “God, it feels so good to get this over with.” He places a silver band on my finger. “This is not our real engagement ring. I promise I’ll buy you a real one when I’m old enough to get a job.” He kisses the ring on my finger.

  “Do you think our parents will be okay with our engagement?” I ask.

  “We don’t need to tell them just yet.” He shrugs. “When we are sixteen.” He hugs me and places a small kiss on my lips. I feel the fluttering of butterflies in my stomach.

  “I love you, Timothy Fisher.”

  “I love you too, Melody Miller.”

  Unhurriedly and hand-in-hand, we stroll back to the beach. Tim holds my sandals. I savor the delicious tickling of sand slipping in between my toes. The round yellow moon, an accomplice to our mood, casts a dreamy soft light over the palm trees. Even the tropical air tints the island in romance.

  I gaze up at Tim. My heart flutters in my chest, as if it is ready to take flight. Waves crashing against the shore are faintly muffled by the giggles and whispers of our friends gathered around a crooning fire. It’s one of those perfect moments in my life.

  Tim and I exchange a secretive smile. We lounge on the soft sand. Tim puts his arm around my shoulders. I feel safe, but I also feel that life is the most thrilling adventure that there is.

  I SNAP MY eyes open. My bedside clock tells me it’s five thirty. In a half hour, the alarm will ring. It’s a half hour until my coffee machine, which is set on automatic mode, sputters the routine morning coffee. This is my half hour of silent depression. For a half hour, I can be free to mourn, to cry, or just to lie here feeling sorry for my lame ass.

  Hugging my pillow, I gaze at the violet-blue sky out my window. Birds greet me with their chirping. The branches of a maple tree hypnotically sway its leaves my way. I like daydreaming. I like staying in my mind, lost in my thoughts. When I was young, I spent hours projecting how thrilling my life would be. I never considered I was going to grow up to a mediocre existence.

  Of course, back then I had Tim. Life was vibrant. When I had Tim, I knew nothing bad was ever going to happen. And, even better, I was bound to have an exciting life.

  But a soul-crushing entity called death killed my dreams. Now all I have are remnants of the memories of my great love. Darkness and pain have been cast upon my heart, tearing from me all excitement.

  I’ve always been ordinary. In fact, it’s as if I’ve been trapped in a maze of average. I’m average height, average GPA,
average family, average weight, average IQ, and average, medium-length brown hair. Two parts of me are notable. One is my eye color, which is green with slivers of gold and orange. Yes, they’re slightly weird. The other part regretfully distinguished is the anatomy of by behind. My ass is huge. Mom tells me it is my Latina heritage. I say to hell with it, why can’t I be average there too?

  But Tim tipped my scale of excitement, stirring me to a thrilling existence. All is dull without him.

  I grew up believing in fairy tales. Tim proved me right. I met him when I was five. Kissed him for the first time when I was thirteen. And married him when I was twenty. I never doubted that our story’s last line would be, “And they lived happily ever after.” But in the second year of our marriage, ten days before our daughter Ella was born, Tim was ambushed and killed in the mountains of Afghanistan.

  I don’t want to navigate through life, depressed and fazed out. But life sucks, and I wonder if this is all there is to it. The ache of my soul is so intense that at times it threatens to absorb reality. And I’m lost in the midst of this vast sea of pain. But being miserable is not the worst part, fear is the bane of my existence. I’m afraid to fail as a mother. Ella deserves better.

  So every morning, for exactly half an hour, I secretly indulge with a concoction of all things depressive. Then, I put my happy face on. And up I go.

  I scramble out of bed and slide my fingers along a picture frame. “I miss you.” I whisper to the beautiful boy grinning at me. Caged in the frame is a distant version of us, smiling at the camera. We were sixteen and full of dreams.

  In bare feet, I pad down the hall. By Ella’s door, I stop and peek inside the room to watch her sleep. Her wild curls tumble over her face. Her chest moves slowly up and down. I can honestly spend the reminder of my day, just gazing at her. I sigh, then head downstairs.

  In the kitchen, I grab the extra-large Live, Laugh, Love coffee mug, fill it with the fresh brew, and sit at the kitchen table. The folder Will handed me last night remains unopened. It contains the medical and criminal record for Tarry Francis. The famous musician is the best friend of Portia, my sister-in-law.

  I briefly met Tarry about five years ago when he came for Will and Portia’s wedding. It was Thanksgiving week and he arrived on Thursday.

  As we do every year, we served dinner at the homeless shelter. To my surprise, Portia, one of our generation’s greatest Hollywood stars, along with Tarry and Nillie, her two best friends, volunteered with us. It was all over the news. Reporters hounded my father for weeks trying to get a scoop on the story. People from the shelter, me included, were star struck with Tarry’s enthralling presence.

  I clearly remember his silver-gray eyes staring at me throughout the evening. He didn’t hit on me, as he is notorious for, but his eyes followed my every movement and made me feel uncomfortable. At the time, I was married and pregnant. It was creepy, to say the least.

  For the last eight years, Tarry’s consecutive number one hits on the music charts have earned him AMA, MTV, and Billboard awards. He’s also received twenty-two Grammy Awards.

  Early in his career Tarry was a pop idol. He has since metamorphosed into a rock ‘n’ roll singer. He has been under the heavy scrutiny from the media. There are those who claim Tarry owes his tremendous success to being the only son of the owner of Highma Music Group. Being one of the world’s major record labels since the thirties, Highma happens to produce Tarry’s music.

  In recent years, his life has been a downward spiral of events. Without regard to his career or the perception people have of his talents, he has squandered his image with his outrageous behavior and perpetuating his image as one of the bad boys of music.

  Now, as our paths cross again, I am as anxious as ever. First, because the man is hot as hell. Second, because of the emotions his stare raised in me. The depth of pain inside his silver-gray eyes rocked me on a deeper level than anyone could have ever prepared me for when meeting a stranger. Tarry has the saddest eyes I have ever seen, which I think is part of his sex appeal. One peek at those broken and lost eyes and a desire swamps you to want to cuddle him and make him happy.

  I ponder the last few years of Tarry’s life. It is a mystery how he manages to maintain his fame. Yet, his fans seem to feed on his self-destructive behavior. During his world tour, he managed to cause a riot on stage in each country where he performed. Also, he always leaves with a groupie or two hanging on his arms.

  In one small European country, he went to jail for having sex on stage. Seriously, who does that during a live concert? At another show, he collapsed on stage. He passed out during the performance, poof, just like that. In a sold-out crowd in Brazil, one of his greatest live audiences to date, he got into a fight with his bass player. He broke the man’s nose and cheekbone. At his last performance, he refused to play the rehearsed songs. His band, abandoned him on stage. After the others left, he sang alone a repeated version of “Sweet Death Agony.” When he went to jail in England for smoking pot on stage, he said to the reporters, “Oops, wrong country.”

  Last year in LA, he drove his metallic blue Bugatti into a pool. He was quoted as saying, “I just wanted to prove a point.” We have yet to know what the point was. Yikes, how do you ruin such an expensive car to prove a point?

  If none of the awful stories about him were enough, Tarry has an unorthodox lifestyle that includes polyamory, a fancy term for dating multiple partners at the same time. He has dated and lived with two French top models, Monique Pier and Nola Tursan.

  A shudder runs through me as I mull over the bad womanizer rep that Tarry owns. Yeah, I kind of follow his career through TV and magazines. I know that a great deal of news is just sensationalism by the media. But Portia has been worried sick for the last few years and has told me that most of the reports about Tarry are true.

  Since his last tour, Tarry has disappeared from the spotlight. But then, two months ago Tarry and Monique were found passed out in a hotel suite in LA. They had overdosed on speedball, a mixture of heroin and cocaine in the same syringe. Monique died at the hospital. Since then, Tarry has been detoxing at a celebrity rehab center near LA.

  Knowing I won’t have the time to read it later, I open the file on the notorious rock star:

  Assault, possession of an illegal weapon, driving without a license, driving while under the influence, possession of false identification, possession of illegal substance, resisting arrest, and violation of parole are a few of his previous charges.

  I continue to scan through the dense file until I spot the documentation of his prior therapist. It reads, “Patient participated during daily treatments during past week. Presents with passive-aggressive behavior and decreased motivation. States continuing daily hallucinations, presents with delusions and paranoia. Uncooperative, unpleasant, and arrogant. Contemplates death. Denies suicide idealization. Will continue to benefit from intensive psychological intervention. Will also benefit from a referral to psych to reevaluate current meds. Poor minus potential of achieving established goals.”

  I drink the bitter Colombian brew, a habit I learned from my mother, and continue to read Tarry’s file. Wow, the term “wildlife” sums up this dude’s life. Miserable, yeah, but far from dull.

  I read the court order from the judge releasing him from rehab under the care and responsibility of Will and Portia. He is supposed to undergo regular therapy for six months before presenting a clean and sober version of himself before the judge. And that’s where I come in. That’s why I’m sitting here reading over the details of this file.

  Oh, I so wish Dad was here. He’s the senior pastor of our church. But Mom and he are in Colombia, visiting with my sick grandmother. In Dad’s absence, Pastor John, an associate pastor, oversees the parishioners, but I provide counsel to all the people who receive free counseling from our church.

  MY CAR TIRES screech to a halt in the parking lot. I glance at my watch. “Shit, I’m so late.” Wondering if Tarry waited, I scramble out of my anc
ient Ford and sprint to the church offices.

  Prior to today, I had two overly simple commitments: Mondays were with a couple undergoing marital issues and Wednesdays with the AA weekly group meeting. Now I am stuck with this very complex case.

  Why did I agree to get my ass dragged into this? Because you can’t say no to Will, you idiot. I reprimand myself for the hundredth time. I’m a single mother, I work overtime as a police officer, and I teach belly dance classes to meet my financial needs. Those simple reasons would have sufficed, should I need to justify my actions to my guilty conscious. But, no, I jumped into committing to counsel the infamous Tarry. Who, I may mention, can afford the best shrinks in the nation.

  I yank open the door and rush inside the building. Breathless from running, I scan the hallway and I spot him sitting on a fold-up chair in front of my office. His head is down, his shoulders hunched, and his long legs crossed. Noticing my presence, the controversial rock star glances my way. Honestly, I’m nervous as heck. Trying to calm my tangled nerves, I inhale a deep breath of air.

  “Hello, I’m Melody Fisher, Will’s sister.” I approach him, reach out my hand, and attempt to smile.

  Tarry slowly stands. Immediately his masculine and sexy presence fills the empty hall. He wraps his long hand around mine. The touch of his calloused fingers causes an electric spark to erupt from my hand and travel through my body. Just as the first time we met, he holds my hand longer than necessary.

  “Hi, Melody, good to see you again,” his voice rumbles through the empty hall. I frown. “We met…” He arches his brow and adds. “At Will and Portia’s wedding.”

  Wow, he has a good memory. It’s been over four years. “Oh, I remember you. I’m just surprised you remember me. I was huge,” I say, referring to my pregnancy. “I’m very sorry for being late. I got caught up at a crime scene.”

  “No prob,” he says, unimpressed with my apology.

  Balancing his folder and my purse in one hand, I slide the key into my office door, swing it open, and wait. He glances my way and unhurriedly swaggers his way inside. I resist the urge to rush him since I’m the one who’s late.