By Hannah Leigh | America’s Daily News
While attempting to enter the United States, celebrity singer Aurelia (27) was waylaid by an alarming lack of passport. Though no one can deny her identity—hello, she’stheAurelia George—it seems to have caused quite the kerfuffle at Canadian customs when the international superstar, who went missing earlier this year, arrived at a private airfield in Vancouver without a scratch. You might recall the devastating plane crash that claimed the lives of seven and critically injured one—her head of security, Tyler Westbrook. Though one cannot help but give thanks that the rising legend is alive and well, it does leave everyone scratching their heads and asking one very important question. Where exactly has she been all this time?
AURELIA
The news that I’m alive breaks before the plane lands in Portland.
And yet, all I can think about when I step off the plane is how different the air smells. I don’t know why it’s the first thing I notice, but I try not to fixate on the differences as I’m quickly ushered into an SUV with tinted windows under the cover of several umbrellas.
It isn’t raining. The umbrellas are to shield me from anyone with a powerful enough telephoto lens to capture me from outside the private airfield.
No one is supposed to know I’m alive yet, but that plan quickly went to shit hours ago once I found myself seated in front of a slack-jawed immigration officer who stared at me like he’d seen a ghost. Valid. When he stumbled to ask for my passport, I remembered that I no longer have one.
But Oni and her assistant were on it, having already filed the necessary paperwork and skipped past the red tape for a limited passport. By the time we landed in Portland an hour and a half later, I’m once again making headline news.
It’s only a matter of time before someone lands a picture of me to confirm, which is the reason for the long line of twenty identical black vehicles as we leave the airport.
Even though I’m staying local, the car ride is a long one since the driver was given explicit instructions to loop around several times to shake any tails. It doesn’t help that I have no idea where I’m going.
Oni hadn’t been too forthcoming with the details, and I hadn’t cared enough to ask, but by the time we finally arrive at wherever I’m going to be hiding out, I’m more than a little curious. Especially when I look out the window and get an eyeful of the towering spires reaching toward the moon, the elaborate tracery in the arched windows, and the decorative masonry draped with vines. The Gothic-style abode is more castle than house.
It’s haunting and beautiful.
It’s the small garden of purple lilacs losing their leaves to the fall in the middle of the circular driveway where my gaze lingers though.
I’m still frowning in confusion when the SUV rolls to a stop.
“Where are we?”
“Somewhere safe with people you can trust,” Oni says ominously next to me in the back seat. The exec never even looks up from her phone. She’s been working nonstop to scramble a team together for me to deal with the fallout of being alive.
Because apparently when you’re famous evenlivingis scandalous.
I start to tell her that I don’t trust anyone that isn’t them, my mountain men, when a shadow falls over the window and the words die unspoken. It doesn’t matter. While nothing has changed for me, I know they will never trust me again. Never…let themselves love me again.
The back door is yanked open before I can tumble down that heartbreak hill.
“Relly!” Before I can get a glimpse of the culprit or even be properly startled, I’m pulled out of the SUV and lifted into a bear hug. The cologne is rich and smells expensive, and the burgundy silk shirt is smooth against my smashed cheek. “Holy shit. It’s you. It’s really you. You’re alive. What the fuck?”
I finally get a glimpse of my host when I’m set on my feet and he pushes me to arm’s length to get a good look at me. I gape at the blond man with black eyes and a magazine-cover smile. And I do mean his face and smile have literally been plastered on the front cover of several magazines around the globe. “Loren?”
The hands still holding my shoulders give a comforting squeeze in answer. “In the flesh, baby girl.” He goes back to looking me over in that assessing yet platonic way of his. “You look like shit by the way.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Come on,” he says while taking my hand. “Let’s get you inside and settled in.”
“Wait… I’m staying here?”
“Of course,” he answers easily. “Where else are you going to find a better hideout? And with the single most interesting group of people on the planet.”
I can think of one place, but that’s gone now. It’s over. I walked away knowing I could never go back, so I force the cabin that’s no more, the Cold Peaks, and them from my mind as I follow Loren James, the bassist of Bound, around the SUV.
The ornate front doors of the mansion are thrown open, and the space is filled with three other bodies. I take in the grim smiles of Houston Morrow, Jericho Noble, and Braxton Fawn, and I want to weep.
Oni could have stashed me anywhere—some ridiculous villa or penthouse in the sky where I’d be alone with only the paid staff to keep me company, but instead, she was perceptive enough to bring me here. To make sure the first faces I see on my return home are friendly ones. And probably the only ones I’d see for a long while.
I send her a grateful smile that she once again waves away like she’s just doing her job and it’s no big deal. Maybe to thoseaccustomed to basic human decency, but for me, it’s a very big deal.
