Your Fallen Star: Under the Stars Book 1 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  More 5*Star

  More from Raleigh Ruebins

  Social Media

  Your Fallen Star

  Raleigh Ruebins

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  More 5*Star

  More from Raleigh Ruebins

  Social Media

  This is a work of fiction. Names, businesses, places, and events are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 Raleigh Ruebins

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Cover design by AngstyG

  One

  Leo

  The email from Ella came in at 7:21 a.m. and set in motion a wave of panic that lasted throughout the rest of the morning. I was already angry at being woken up—in my dream I had been on a warm, sandy beach with David Beckham naked next to me, his hand moving up my thigh, and the next moment, I was in my own bed, cold and heavy with sleep, reaching over to my phone to open the stupid email from my manager.

  To anyone else, the email might have seemed innocent, with its exclamation point, niceties, and even a fucking emoji:

  Leo,

  I think I’ve finally got someone! Can you stop by my office before 10 today?

  You’ll like him. He’s not from L.A. and promises that he’s never once written for a gossip blog ;-)

  See you in a few

  xo

  E

  She had found someone dumb enough to attempt to write my biography.

  I read over the email once, twice, three times, my blood pressure spiking with each pass through.

  I wanted to be back at the beach with Beckham.

  Ella had been trying to find someone willing to write about my life story ever since New Years, and I was beginning to think that it would never happen. A few writers had already tried and failed, and all of them had been in some way wrong.

  The first writer had been a middle-aged woman who never got past Ella’s office. She politely declined the offer when she found out who the biography was about—apparently not everyone is too thrilled with the prospect of writing about washed up ex-boy band members in their mid-thirties.

  I couldn’t blame her—I wouldn’t want to write about me either. Ella had said that her exact words were, “Maybe back in 2003, but not now. I just don’t see the selling points.” A wise woman.

  The second candidate was a man who wanted more money than what we could offer. There was a time when I would have thrown money at him faster than he could catch it, but the slight snag was that there was no money anymore. Not much, anyway. I still had the house, of course. In the Hollywood Hills, purchased outright on a whim in the early 2000s when I could actually still purchase things on whims. It wasn’t a huge place, but it had the right zip code.

  But there was not much else to my name. Hence the reason for Ella’s grand idea in the first place: to reel someone into writing a tell-all story of my life, propelling me into cultural relevance yet again, like Where Are They Now for the small section of people who both read books and still gave a shit about 2nd-tier former members of boy bands from the late 90s.

  The third candidate had hung on a little longer, actually writing two chapters and spending a little time with me, before bailing after claiming that I had “thrown” a crumpled “bag” of “fast food” at him in a drunken state one night while he was attempting to conduct an interview.

  It was in my house. I had been throwing it at the trash can—it wasn’t my fault that he’d walked in front of it right as the bag left my hand. And it wasn’t just any fast food, it was In-N-Out, the dregs of my protein-style double cheeseburger that I’d needed after the brutal workout I’d done that day.

  I had apologized profusely afterward, but the damage was done. When he left the job he’d said it was about the empty bag, but we all knew it was about my personality.

  Oh well. I hadn’t liked him either.

  And I was sure that I wasn’t gonna like whoever this new guy was that Ella had found.

  I dragged myself out of bed and to the shower, running shampoo through my hair and letting the hot water pound onto my neck. Three hours of sleep had not been enough. I couldn’t really say why I hadn’t been sleeping well. There was no particular reason other than the clamor of my thoughts that kept me awake until nearly four in the morning, more mornings than I’d like to admit.

  T-shirt. Jeans. Boots. Dark sunglasses. I tossed on my usual uniform, then headed out the front door and down the driveway to my car. The drive to Ella’s office was good, Los Angeles traffic be damned; it was the first time I’d been outside in two days, and seeing civilization—even from the confines of my car—was as welcome as a breath of fresh, slightly smoggy air. It was a little after 8:30 when I arrived at the office.

  Ella was waiting at her desk when I walked in. She was bright-eyed and energetic as ever, sitting up straight and typing away furiously at her keyboard, blonde hair pulled into a high, tight ponytail.

  “Morning!” she chirped, smiling wide.

  I grunted in response, sitting down at the seat across from her desk.

  “Up late last night?” Ella asked, clicking her mouse one last time and then leaning back in her chair, hands clasped.

  I sighed, leaning back as well. “Yeah. What else is new.”

  “Have you tried those sleep sounds apps? The ones that make rain sounds, or white noise? Maybe you need to feel like you’re near a river to fall asleep.”

  I smirked at her. “I think my insomniac tendencies run deeper than sleep sounds.”

  She shrugged. “Don’t knock it til you try it.”

  “Okay, let’s cut the chit chat. Who’s the guy?” I’d feel rude as hell talking to anyone else like that, but Ella had been my manager for years—I talked to her like she was a sister, and she knew we could be candid around each other.

  Ella bit down a smile, leaning over to a drawer and pulling out a
folder. She opened it.

  “His name’s Jamie. He just graduated from some tiny private school in upstate New York and moved to L.A., like, three weeks ago.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “What?” Ella asked. “Already you’re looking at me like that?”

  I shrugged at her. “You wanna get some kid just out of college to write the biography that’s supposed to regain me some scrap of respect in the world?”

  “Here’s the thing—we can afford him. He was so grateful to find any job at all that he accepted our lowest offer. And he isn’t anything to sniff at. He was a creative writing major and got damn near perfect grades, and his thesis was literally a biography.”

  I stared at her skeptically, with a half-smile. “A biography. Of who, exactly, may I ask?”

  Ella bit her tongue, casting her eyes downward and shuffling some papers. “Well, of his grandfather. But still,” she continued, taking the resume and sliding it out in front of me on the desk. “I read his writing sample. He’s good. And we have a deal for a few chapters at first. We’ll see how he does, and then take it from there—see if we want to continue with him.”

  I pushed my eyes downward at the resume in front of me. “Jesus,” I said, pulling off my sunglasses and hunching lower to see the paper, “Who puts a photo of himself on a goddamn resume?”

  There it was, in the top right hand corner of the page: a tiny photo of a young man, staring right out and beaming.

  “People who look like that—“ Ella said, looking down at it, “—put photos on resumes.”

  Yeah. So what. The kid was goddamn perfect looking in all the right ways. Brownish well-kept hair, glasses, a button up shirt—he looked every bit like a writer. But I could not for the life of me figure out who would have the balls to include a picture on a professional resume.

  “He’s not right.”

  “Leo—”

  “He’s not.”

  “You haven’t even looked through the whole page.”

  I kept staring at the photo. "He looks like the kind of guy who thinks he's smarter than you."

  "Yeah, well, he probably is smarter than you."

  I couldn't argue with that. I humored her and scanned through the page a little more.

  “I mean, I see that he’s been in all these writing clubs and got some short story published, but what does any of that mean for me? How is it going to help my career?”

  Ella sighed, snatching the resume back and slipping it into the folder again.

  “Leo, do you like what you’ve been doing the past, oh… ten years?”

  I put my sunglasses back on. If Ella was going to bring up the pathetic state of my life, she was gonna get the sunglasses treatment. “Now is not the time, Ella.”

  “I’m just saying—I’m looking out for you, whether you choose to admit that or not. I don’t want you to have to end up in another Blade-Chopper situation again, and I know full well you don’t either.”

  I prickled at the mention of the Blade-Chopper. It was one of the more shameful attempts at bolstering my income that I’d been involved with in the past decade. For a quick buck, I was the “celebrity guest” of a half-hour long infomercial for the Blade-Chopper, a device that allowed home users to chop up fruit and soft vegetables with the mere push of a button. It was much more cumbersome to use than any knife I’d ever held. For a year while the commercials were airing, people would stop me on the street and act out the motion that I’d been made to perform on TV: raising an arm up high in the air and down onto an imaginary button. It was almost more annoying than when people recognized me from the band.

  “No,” I said to Ella, looking down at my hands in my lap and then back up to her, “I’d prefer to avoid more infomercials.”

  “And I know you’d never go on tour with Damien,” she said, gesturing at one of the concert posters she had framed on her wall.

  I frowned at the mention. “Ugh. Don’t even say his name.”

  There he was, splashed across the poster to the right of Ella’s desk: my ex, the rock star, Damien Jarvis. Ella was his manager, too. Damien was usually seen with his wife, the guitarist of his band. The woman he’d left me for. The tabloids loved to photograph them kissing, and every time I saw it, it cut to the core.

  Because I knew how it felt. I knew how his lips felt on my mouth, my chest, on the base of my cock when he was making me come. I knew how they looked when they were wet and kiss-swollen, my own name falling out of them, his hand firm against my back.

  But no one else liked remembering anything about that, of course. Not Ella, not any of his adoring fans. At this point even Damien probably didn't remember. I was a temporary black mark on his otherwise pristine career, and I’d faded into obscurity while he skyrocketed to success.

  Ella looked to me sympathetically. “Then until 5*Star has a reunion, this biography is our best bet for getting your name back out there. Give the writer kid a chance. If he sucks, we don’t have to keep him.”

  Ella couldn’t possibly have known how it felt to be confronted with someone like this guy—Jamie, his name was.

  There he was, leaping off of the pages of his resume. Young. Eager. His life ahead of him. You could see it in his eyes, in that stupid little picture. He was going places.

  I wasn’t going anywhere.

  The truth is, I knew he could handle writing a straightforward biography. He’d just gotten out of a great school, and I was sure his writing chops would be more than sufficient for the job. But my fear was simpler than that. Someone as young and good-looking as Jamie was a reminder of everything that I used to be, and what I no longer was.

  My band, 5*Star, had broken up in 2004. Of course, Chandler was still famous. He’d always been the most prominent member of the group, and his solo career had taken him into the stratosphere. Singing, dancing, acting, Chandler Price could do it all, and he was a mega-celebrity to this day. But the rest of us—me, Eric, and Adam—were just struggling to remember what a normal life even felt like.

  And I was sure that normal didn’t mean being picked apart by some 22-year-old who was probably better than you in every way and was being paid to write your biography. But it was a last-ditch effort, and I could see the pleading in Ella’s eyes.

  “Fuck it,” I said, standing up from the chair and pushing it back toward the desk with a scrape. “Let me know when he can come for the first chat. My schedule is… painfully open.”

  Ella sat up straight, a smile spreading across her face. She reached out and held my hand in her own for a moment, and even that small gesture of closeness was enough to send a sense of warmth to my heart, followed closely by ache. It wasn't romantic, not with her, but the smallest touch just served to remind me of the distinct lack of touch in my life.

  It was a cliché: I was lonely. Poor little formerly-famous-and-rich boy. I could barely find anyone to date or have sex with who didn't know me from 5*Star. And even when I found people who saw me for me, things somehow always fizzled out. I couldn't remember the last time any hand other than mine had touched my cock. Had it been over a year?

  I gave Ella a tiny smile, letting her know that despite everything, I was thankful for how hard she was working to get my career back on track. I’d be nowhere without her.

  “Thanks, Ella.”

  “Of course.”

  I left her office thinking only of that man she’d pulled out of thin air—okay, pulled out of a job listing website—the man with a laundry list of skills and searing good looks who’d soon be studying me night and day.

  I’d be flattered if I wasn’t so damn nervous.

  Two

  Jamie

  I was gonna make it!

  I was in Los Angeles, I was following my dream, and holy shit, it was actually coming true!

  Well, kind of coming true. But I’d done it—accomplished what I’d set out to do: I had snagged a writing job after being in L.A. for only three weeks. I’d be writing a biography of Leo Stone, not writing movies
like I really wanted to do—but a job was a job, and I could finally tell my parents that I wasn’t wasting away in the city I now called home.

  I was sitting in bed with my laptop, taking an online quiz to determine what type of cheese product I was, when I’d gotten the email from Ella Lansing:

  Good afternoon Jamie,

  It was wonderful meeting you a few days ago. I’m delighted to inform you that we would love to hire you for the Leo Stone biography project. Leo was deeply impressed by your resume and took a liking to you immediately. You can come see me tomorrow to go over the official terms of the contract.

  Give me a call to set up a time tomorrow, and I will see you then,

  Ella Lansing

  Wow. He’d liked me immediately? I couldn’t believe that a former member of 5*Star was actually thinking about me. On TV, he’d always seemed like the sweetest member of the group, all shy and humble and cute. I couldn’t wait to meet him. I called Ella’s phone number and set up the meeting for the next day right away.

  “Fuck yeah,” I said out loud, to no one, after hanging up the phone.

  I pictured myself as the star of a movie, finding out he’d just gotten his big break—the first step that would eventually lead him to stardom. I paced across my small room to the window, triumphantly pushing it open. Stale dust and ancient paint flakes fell out of the window frame and I brushed them away, leaning out to gaze down at the view of Los Angeles below.

  I mean, yeah, my apartment was only on the 2nd floor, and the view below consisted of a narrow dingy side street, some turned over garbage cans, and a few palm trees. I was in Silver Lake, not Beverly Hills. It wasn’t a sweeping view of the city. But it was my view.

  A group of skateboard-clutching teenagers walked by, and one of them saw me, gave me the middle finger, and cackled. But I just breathed in deep and smiled wide. I was going to be an author.

  Just then I heard the front door of the apartment opening and slamming shut. Chelsea had just come home from work. I ducked back inside the window and went to go tell her the good news, that I’d been rescued from the brink of abject failure.