I reached for my phone at the same time my doorbell rang. Putting my cell down, I walked to the front door to find a wide-eyed Amanda Hardy. “What’s wrong?” I asked, reaching for her hand. If Preston Drake had done something stupid, I was going to slap him myself. He hadn’t gone through all the craziness to make this woman his only to mess it up weeks before the wedding.

“Sadie. She just called me,” Amanda said, looking ready to cry. “She’s coming home. Or here. She’s . . . Jax broke off the engagement.”

Jax Stone was the biggest thing in rock music, and each year he just got bigger. Sadie White had been a young girl from Sea Breeze High when he first met her and fell completely in love with her. It had been fun to watch a rock god fall for a girl I knew.

“What?” I asked, confused. The last time I had seen them, he was just as infatuated with her as I remembered. That was only a couple of months ago. Rock’s cousin Jess was engaged to Jax Stone’s brother, Jason. Jess was pregnant with a Stone kid. We had thrown them a baby shower and Jax and Sadie had come.

Amanda sank down onto my sofa and shook her head in a daze. “She sounded hollow. She wasn’t sobbing like I would expect with this kind of news. She was just . . . empty. Void of emotion. I don’t . . . I’ve never known Sadie to be so . . .” She trailed off.

Jax wasn’t a player. He had fought to make Sadie his, and, unlike other celebrities, they had a healthy, happy relationship. Heck, if you googled Jax, then a million pictures of them showed up on the Internet. The world loved them.

“She didn’t tell you why?” I asked.

“She . . . No. She . . . just said Jax ended things and she was coming home. That’s it.”

I went to get my cell and dialed Jess’s number. She’d know something.

Jax Stone and Sadie White were the kind that you expected forever for. The way he looked at her was the way Rock looked at me. Something was terribly wrong.

Epilogues

Jax and Sadie from Breathe

Sadie

Jessica, my mother, was coming to get me. When I had called her to tell her my plane arrived at ten at Pensacola International Airport, the closest major airport to Sea Breeze, she said she’d be there. We would have plenty time to get back to Sea Breeze in time to get Sam, my little brother, from school. He was in kindergarten this year.

I put my hands on my stomach and closed my eyes. I wasn’t ready to tell Jessica anything yet. She’d want to know. Jessica was nosy, and although she had grown up a lot from the woman who had raised me, and had become a good mom to my little brother, she was still not someone I wanted to talk to about this. I wasn’t ready to talk to Amanda about it yet either, and she was my best friend.

I needed to process everything first. This wasn’t just about me now. If I had told him, maybe he would have changed his mind and listened to me. But I didn’t want the fact that I was pregnant to control his decision. I wanted him to listen to me and trust me because he loved me.

We had been through so much together over the past five years. Until yesterday I thought that we were rock solid. That nothing could penetrate what we had built. Then he had pulled the rug out from under me and walked away. It hadn’t been my Jax who had done that. It was Jax, but he was different. It was a side of him I’d never seen.

It had also shown me I couldn’t trust someone that way ever again. I’d fallen in love with him so easily. I had stars in my eyes the moment he leveled that blue gaze at me. He hadn’t stolen my heart—I had laid it down at his feet after only knowing him a few months. And I had never taken it back. It was his.

Until now. When he had walked out of our house—or his house now—and not listened to me or asked me about what had really happened, my heart had shattered.

This morning, after I had stayed up all night crying and waiting on him to return, I had picked up the pieces of my heart and taken them back with me before stepping out of the mansion in Beverly Hills that had become my home.

It was his home. It had never been mine. And it never would be again.

The plane touched down and I looked out at the airport I wasn’t familiar with. We normally flew into Sea Breeze in a private jet. But I had used the money that I had saved in my bank account to get a plane ticket. All I had brought with me were the clothes I could fit into the only luggage I had: a Louis Vuitton set that Jax had given me for Christmas two years ago. Everything else I had I left there. Most of it he had bought for me anyway, and I didn’t want it.

There were some things, like my books and my pictures of Sam and Jessica, that I wanted. And there were some photos of Amanda and me at Marcus’s wedding that I kept on the mantel. I asked Barbara, the head of the house staff, to get it packed up for me, and I left her money and my mom’s address to ship it to me. She had hugged me tightly and told me that he’d come around. That she loved me and believed I’d be back soon.

I hadn’t had the heart to tell her that I’d never be back. I had I had squeezed back just as tightly and promised to call and check in soon. Then I had walked out of the house, leaving my memories and dreams behind.

When I walked off the plane and headed for baggage claim, the numbness that had settled over me remained. I wasn’t feeling anything. Nothing at all. Although I knew this was actually happening, I wasn’t processing it well.

When I stepped off the escalator, Jessica was standing there, looking entirely too beautiful to have a child my age. The look in her eyes, so full of pity and pain for me, did something. It flipped a switch. Tears filled my eyes and I walked straight to her and dropped my carry-on at her feet, then threw myself into my mother’s arms and began to sob.

“Oh, baby girl,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

I knew I had to get a grip on myself. But seeing my mother had brought all the pain back. It was like I was reliving Jax walking out last night after telling me it was over.

“He’s an idiot. I’m going to put a hit out on him,” my mother said as she ran her hand over my hair. If I weren’t hurting so much, I would laugh. Leave it to Jessica to threaten to have someone murdered.

I swallowed the next sob and took a deep breath. Then I pulled back, ducking my head as I wiped my face. Once I was sure I had it under control, I lifted my gaze back up to meet my mother’s. “Hey.”

She frowned and cupped the back of my head. “Hey, you. Let’s go get those expensive-ass bags of yours and go home. Sam will be thrilled to see you when he gets home.”

Being reminded that I would see Sam soon made this all easier. I nodded and picked up the duffel bag that matched the rest of my luggage and headed for the baggage carousel.

My bags came out eventually, and then we headed for the car. Mom was driving a newer Honda. She had finished school last year, and she was now a labor and delivery nurse. Her income was good and she gave Sam a good home. I was proud of her.

We put my luggage in the trunk and the backseat. I had four bags with me, including my carry-on duffel, which I’d put all my underclothes and accessories in. I had made it out of the airport without anyone noticing me and approaching me. But I had also gone without makeup, my eyes were swollen from crying all night, and I had my hair in a ponytail with a baseball cap over it. A trick that Jax often tried, but it never worked for him.

My fame came from being Jax Stone’s girlfriend, and then fiancée, over the past five years. Once he was seen with new girls, I was sure that would end. People would soon forget I existed. My hand went back to my stomach and I remembered that maybe I wouldn’t be able to fade away. If the media ever found out that this baby was Jax Stone’s, I’d have to go into hiding.

That is, if I ever told Jax. He may have been able to brush me away with ease, but I knew him well enough to be sure he’d want to know his kid. But could I trust him to protect me, too? And not let the media eat my life up?

Jax

Sadie’s red Mercedes Roadster that I had given her just two months ago was still parked in the garage space that was designated for her. The Jaguar I had given her last year was parked in the next space over. The other seven were also full as I pulled my Escalade ESV into the last space. She wasn’t gone.

I hadn’t told her to leave. I had, however, ended things. Pain sliced through me as the idea of losing Sadie sank in. My head pounded from the hangover from hell I had woken up with in the penthouse at the Wilshire. I wasn’t sure how I had even gotten there. After I had downed an entire bottle of vodka, things had started to fade away.

Sadie’s betrayal and the pain of having my heart ripped from my chest had numbed me, keeping me from drinking my weight in alcohol. It had been a reprieve until I woke up in my own vomit this morning, feeling like I’d been run over by a truck several times.

I stepped out of the Escalade and closed the door. I had to face her again. She’d had all night to decide what to do. When I had gotten a shower this morning and slowly started to sober up, the fear that she’d be gone when I got home had claimed me, and it had been hard to breathe.

She had been making out with my drummer behind my back. Seeing it from my publicist before it was going to hit the media today had been as painful as having my body sliced open slowly with a blunt knife. I had beat my drummer to the point that he was hospitalized, then I’d come home and finished unleashing my fury by yelling at Sadie.

Never had I ever imagined my sweet Sadie could do something like this. Just watching her try to explain it infuriated me and broke my heart at the same time. I didn’t want her lies. I had seen the proof. She’d gotten jaded by this life, and somehow I had missed it. Just like I had feared it would, it had gotten to her. People devoting websites to what she wore and where she went had gone to her head. It had changed her. The girl I had fallen in love with was now gone.

I had lost her, and it was all my fault. Bringing her into this world had ruined her. I never should have touched her. My selfishness had turned the most beautiful woman inside and out into what I despised.

She would have to leave. She wasn’t gone now, and she was probably ready to beg me so she wouldn’t lose this life I had given her. If she wasn’t Jax Stone’s fiancée, she was no one. She loved that life, apparently, and she wouldn’t go easily. Remembering that the girl I had fallen in love with was now gone would be hard. Forcing Sadie out of my house was going to destroy me.

This was a hell that I would never overcome. That I never wanted to repeat. No woman would own me again. Ever.

I was done.

I opened the door leading into the house from the garage and stepped inside. She wasn’t waiting on me. At least I would have a moment before her groveling started and I had to stomach seeing the woman I had loved turned into a greedy monster that this world had created.

I dropped my keys onto the table, knowing someone would put them where they were meant to go, and headed to the hallway that led to the back side of the house. I didn’t hear anyone, but I knew there were at least six employees here at the moment.

When I finally made it to the hallway that led to our bedroom, I stopped and took a deep breath. If she was in there asleep, I had to be tough. Hard. I couldn’t let the vision of her sleeping in the bed where we’d had the best moments of my life get to me. Sadie would destroy me completely if I didn’t do this. She had already ruined me. My soul was gone. She’d taken that and killed it. If I was going to get over this and move on, she had to leave.

I had to be the one to make her.

The door to our room opened, and Barbara walked out with a box in her hands. She paused when she saw me, and then her face hardened. What the hell? Had Sadie lied to her? Had the woman not seen the entertainment channels or looked at the paper today? Hell, we were going to be on the evening news before this was over. I wasn’t the one she should be pissed at. But then, Sadie’s sweet face could charm a damn snake. Beauty like hers blinded people.