Pop star, p.1
Pop Star, page 1
part #1 of Famous Series
Pop Star
Famous Book 1
Eden Finley
Pop Star
Copyright © 2020 by Eden Finley
Cover Illustration Copyright ©
Cate Ashwood
http://www.cateashwooddesigns.com/
Professional beta read/development edit/line edit by Les Court Services.
https://www.lescourtauthorservices.com
Proofread by One Love Editing
http://oneloveediting.com/
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher.
For information regarding permission, write to:
Eden Finley - permissions - edenfinley@gmail.com
Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This book may have been released amongst the COVID-19 pandemic, but Harley’s irrational fear of germs was written long before the outbreak.
Contents
1. Harley
2. Brix
3. Harley
4. Brix
5. Harley
6. Brix
7. Harley
8. Brix
9. Harley
10. Brix
11. Harley
12. Brix
13. Harley
14. Brix
15. Harley
16. Brix
17. Harley
18. Brix
19. Harley
20. Brix
21. Harley
22. Brix
23. Harley
24. Brix
25. Harley
26. Brix
27. Harley
28. Brix
29. Harley
Thank You
Also by Eden Finley
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Harley
What happens when the most successful boy band on the planet breaks up?
How about twenty thousand screaming fans yelling my name.
Only my name.
The atmosphere of a stadium show is indescribable. I’ve never gotten used to it. Not while in a group, and definitely not as the focus of everyone’s attention. No matter how much previous fame I had, no matter how many dollars line my pockets, and no matter how many Grammys I have on my mantel.
The awards wouldn’t mean shit if not for the people in this audience tonight.
Constant flashes go off from cell phone cameras, the people at the front try to push their way closer by pressing themselves against the barricades, and the whole stadium is buzzing with a high that’s more addictive than any drug.
The pulse of the crowd beats through my veins. I can taste it in the sweat on my top lip.
It’s the part of the set toward the end where I slow things down and have a chance to take it all in. I sing a slew of ballads from my backlog of mostly peppy, teenybopper songs.
I’m on my last show of a short tour, so I need to take a breath and savor it because it’ll be a while before I’m on the road again.
All the long hours in a recording studio, all the painstaking interviews and promotion for the tour, it all comes down to this. And the payoff is so worth it.
When I strike the opening chords on my acoustic guitar to my latest single “Confusion,” the crowd goes wild and Pride flags appear from all corners of the audience.
Since the track dropped as a surprise release six months ago, I’ve become somewhat of a queer icon. My label and public relations team have worked overtime for years trying to keep the truth of my orientation a secret, but with one song, speculation is everywhere. A simple google search will bring up countless articles and blogs questioning my sexuality.
Of course, releasing a song with the guy who broke my heart wasn’t exactly subtle, but whenever I’m asked about the meaning behind the song, I point them in Radioactive’s direction and to my ex, Jay, who cowrote this song. He’s already an out and proud artist.
I give nonanswers, making sure I stick to ally-focused vocabulary.
It’s the most freedom my label has allowed me. It’s not much, but as I stare out over the crowd and see the support and love they have for this song, my heart feels full knowing I’m doing something to contribute to the community. My community.
People have tweeted me when they’ve come out to their families and thanked me for inspiring them.
Pride fills my veins knowing the song has been received so well, and as I glance offstage to where my manager and assistant are standing, my heart sinks at the reminder they’re the only two people I have to share this moment with.
People I pay to be here.
I close my eyes and concentrate on the song when my voice cracks with an unintentional rasp.
You help me escape
A life I can’t lead
A life I need to hide
I swallow hard at the heartache attached to this song and at the empty spot next to my manager, Gideon. A spot I wish I could fill with someone who chooses to be there. Who wants to be there.
It’s something I’ve craved nearly my entire career. For a while, I had it.
And then I lost it.
Because I chose this life over one filled with love.
After the song, I finish the rest of the set with the kind of energy my fans deserve from me. It involves a lot of jumping, a lot of using as much of the stage as I can so each person in the audience can get a piece of me.
“Great show,” Gideon says as I finally leave the stage after my third encore.
As far as managers go, he’s a good one, but he’s extremely business oriented. He’s your stereotypical suit. Always immaculately dressed with his phone permanently attached to his hand.
“Uh-huh.”
My assistant hands me a towel to wipe the sweat from my head, and then I want to kiss her when she passes me a packet of M&M’s.
We walk through the halls of the arena to my dressing room so I can shower and change before doing VIP meet and greets with fans who have paid an insane amount of money to chat with me for three minutes and get a photo.
It’s hectic, but it’s my life.
And I love it.
I get into fresh clothes and take the chance to grab a drink and have twenty minutes of downtime before I’m due in the VIP room. And by downtime, I mean going through all the gifts and fan mail people brought to the arena.
“How many of them are creepy this time?” I ask my assistant.
Jamie’s an adorable, recent college grad with a short pixie haircut, thick-rimmed glasses, and a bubbly attitude. She hands me some handwritten letters. “Only four marriage proposals, one offer to go to Thanksgiving family dinner, and, uh, a really gross pair of underwear.”
I cock my head. “Gross?”
“There was, like … stuff in them I don’t even want to think about.”
Gideon’s towering presence looms over me. “Now that you’re home for a while, I think we need to reassess the security situation again.”
Ugh. He’s been on this since a fan somehow snuck past security and was in my dressing room one night during this tour.
“Why now? Because some chick sent me her used underwear? Not the first time that’s happened.”
“It was, uh, a guy’s underwear,” Jamie says.
I grin. “Did it come with a photo?”
“Harley, this is serious,” Gideon says.
“No, it’s not. It’s fan mania. People being in my dressing room and giving me dirty underwear is nothing compared to some of the stuff we got on an Eleven tour. We once had tiny vials of blood sent on chains to wear around our necks. Now, that’s fucking crazy. The current security team is fine.”
If I ever need to go out, I have a driver and bodyguard on call. On tour, we have an entire team that follows me around from the venue to the hotel, and anywhere I want to go in between. It works.
It took my security team three seconds to get the fan out of my dressing room, so it was never a dangerous or risky situation.
I don’t need someone full-time. I don’t need someone living with me.
In my own home, I can be me. That’s my safe space—our safe space. Mine and Evah’s.
My relationship with my “fiancée” is, and always has been, a publicity stunt organized by my record label. It was a punishment of sorts for rumors spreading about me and Jay.
Apparently, letting the world know I’m gay would result in a loss of music sales so drastic that my career would be over. This is what music execs have told me for the better part of a decade. Do I believe them? Enough that I’m not going to risk everything I’ve sacrificed so much for.
Even when I question them by throwing artists like Sam Smith in their face, they tell me I’m no Sam Smith.
Thanks.
They remind me I’m one fifth of a complete act—a boy bander trying to make it on his own.
And I believe them. Every time.
Because I know how easy it is for careers to end.
Mason, one of the guys from Eleven, had a crappy solo album release. Music is over for him. Blake had every intention of trying to make it on his own but only got halfway through cutting his album before landing a major acting gig. He hasn’t looked back since. Aside from a small group of fans, no one’s asking for his next single.
It’s that easy to disappear from t
Music is my life. Always has been.
It was there for me during my awkward preteen years when Harry Stench was being teased for being short, chubby, and, well, having the last name Stench. After puberty did its job, and I’d hunked out, Mom realized I had star potential. She sent in an audition video to Joystar Records, and just like that, we left Kansas and were flown out to LA. The label immediately wanted to sign me to a boy band they were putting together, and that’s when they made me Harley Valentine.
I don’t need anyone prying into my life and finding out that underneath it all, I’m still Harry Stench.
“I think you need someone full-time watching your back,” Gideon says. “An NDA will mean a twenty-four-seven bodyguard wouldn’t be able to talk to the press if that’s what you’re worrying about.”
Ugh. More NDAs. Like that’s what I need. I think it’s at a point where if something leaked about my life, we wouldn’t know who broke their contract and we couldn’t sue anyway. My sexuality wasn’t a well-kept secret between Eleven and the crew.
“I’ll think about it,” I mutter to shut Gideon up.
I love fame.
I love my life.
But sometimes it’s too overwhelming. I want a break from it but then remind myself I can’t stop even for a second. I have to keep pushing. Keep going.
The VIP party is like the billion others I’ve done. It’s basically a conveyor belt of rotating fans coming up to take photos and squeal in my face. They ask about Evah and look mostly disappointed when I tell them she’s visiting her parents in Kansas. Some look hopeful, like Evah being out of town means they have a chance. It’s not anything I haven’t heard before.
On the way out, I nod and wave to some fans lurking by the back door, and then venue security puts me into the back seat of the Escalade waiting for me.
All in all, it was a successful night, successful tour, and now I’m looking forward to doing nothing but writing songs for the new album I’m set to record in six weeks.
Twenty minutes later, my driver pulls up to my short driveway and waits in the car until I put my passcode into the gate before taking off.
The Spanish Colonial property set me back a cool ten mil, but it’s big enough for Evah and me so we’re not living on top of each other.
I unlock my door using an app on my phone, which still amazes me. Sure, the multimillion-dollar views of LA are breathtaking, but I can unlock my house with an app!
I flick on the lights and make my way to my bathroom for another shower. The guys from Eleven used to mock me for my germ phobia, but after our first ever tour, I got hit with the flu. And I don’t mean the sniffly kind. I mean bedridden, fevers, vomiting, and delirium for weeks. I needed an IV of fluids and antibiotics for the infection I got from it. Since that happened, I shower after any meet and greet and try not to flinch if someone so much as coughs within five feet of me.
Dressed in sweats, my hair still damp, I scroll through social media on my phone while heading for the kitchen to get a snack.
I easily become lost in the world of Twitter, reading tweets about the show—egotistical maybe, but I read it for the feedback as well as the praise. If there’s something I could be doing more or doing better, I want to know about it.
The fans made me who I am, and I owe everything to them.
But as my feet carry me across the cool tile, something feels off.
I get the sense I’m not alone, but Evah’s not here. Unless she came home early from Kansas. I check my billions of unread messages, but none are from her.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickle.
I look up from my phone and see a guy I don’t recognize sitting on a stool at my kitchen bar.
My skin breaks out in goose bumps.
I blink, thinking I’m confused or hallucinating or something. He’s still there, so I blink again.
I even look around the room as if I’m the one in the wrong place. Like, it was possible for me to walk into the wrong house, shower in the wrong bathroom, and put on a stranger’s sweats.
Because someone getting in, let alone looking so casual about it, doesn’t make sense.
Him being here isn’t even the scariest thing. It’s the small smile he wears. It’s … normal-looking. Cute, even. Which is why it terrifies me. He doesn’t even appear to be apologetic about breaking in.
His T-shirt is old Eleven merch from a tour a few years ago, and as he stands, he slides his hand into the pocket of his ripped skinny jeans.
Seconds pass where we stare at each other.
This isn’t some fan sneaking into my dressing room. This is my home.
Headlines from tomorrow’s news flash through my head: Harley Valentine Killed in Home Invasion.
I’m going to die.
Breathe, Harley. Stay calm.
I glance at the counter where he was sitting, and yep, there’s my knife block that usually lives about three feet to the right.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
“I thought it looked cool.”
I startle at his voice, which is calm and casual, much like his demeanor. That only freaks me out more.
“Looked cool?” I manage to keep my voice flat. Somehow.
“Yeah.” His smile brightens.
I don’t understand because he looks so … sane. The kitchen lights make his pale skin glow. His dark hair is trendy. He’s so average-looking that meeting him on the street wouldn’t make me think twice.
But he’s in my house. He has to be a few cards short of a full deck.
My phone is still in my hand, but I’m scared if I dial 911, he’ll hear it and get to me before the cops can.
He runs a finger over my knife block which is one of those novelty things where it’s in the shape of a man and the knives sit through different parts of his body. “Thought it was funny.”
I swallow hard. “Ah, Evah actually bought that for me as a joke.”
He frowns. “I don’t know how I feel about that or how this is gonna work with her.”
This keeping calm thing is hard, but I try. “How what is going to work with her?”
My hands shake. I want to put them in my pockets to cover the trembling, but I need my phone to get me out of this. I need to alert someone without actually making a phone call or being obvious that I’m texting.
My finger hovers over the home button, and that’s when I remember the emergency function Gideon set up for me. If I tap the button three times fast, it’ll send Gideon a recording, my location, and photos.
I don’t do it yet. It only records a ten-second snippet, and I need to get this guy’s name or somehow record why he’s here so when Gideon gets the message, he understands I’m in danger. I don’t think I’ll be able to aim the camera part properly without him realizing what I’m doing, so the photo part won’t help me.
I itch to press the button—to get help—but I tell myself to breathe and calm down. I need to wait for the perfect moment for it to actually help.
“Well, when you told me tonight that Evah’s out of town, I thought that maybe … you were doing it to let us all know you were available. Then on your way out when you nodded to me to follow you, I almost told myself not to do it. You’re engaged, you know? It’s wrong for us to hook up.”
Okay, he’s not only psycho but goddamn delusional.
I do it—I hit the button on my phone three times and say, “So you followed me home from the concert.”
“Yeah.”
“How’d you get in here?”
His eyes widen, and I watch as his hand taps along the kitchen counter closer to the knives.
