Cross the Stars (Crossing Stars #1) Read online

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  Cross the Stars

  Copyright © 2016 by Venessa Kimball, writing as V. Angelika

  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 both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of adult fiction. The author does not endorse or condone any of the behavior enclosed within. Please note this novel contains profanity, sexual situations, alcohol and drug consumption, and is not appropriate for minors. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author. 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, bands, and/or restaurants 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.

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Title Page

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 26

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  ~ I always thought it romantic the way people would describe their last moments. Stand-out moments framing their existence here on earth. My moments; my sister Jilly, Allison, Grandma Wallace, attending Georgetown University. Meeting Tom for the first time about the program and the decision to travel to the other side of the world, Jordan. The moment I met my host family, the Ba’ashirs, and the family they gave safe haven to, the Ahmadis. My girls, the moments I had with them. Learning Arabic, something I never imagined doing in a million years. Above all, the moment Raj looked into my eyes and told me I was his forever; no matter the pact fate had made with the universe ... we would defy it. Cross the stars and steal the moon, risk everything to be together. This is what frames my existence as I lay here among the ruin, hovering between two worlds just before the darkness finds me. ~

  The knocking on my door at eight o’clock in the morning, courtesy of my roommate Allison, would normally be a rude awakening if I wasn’t already awake. “Are you up, El?”

  “Yeah.”

  Technically I am awake, no longer slumbering, even though I am still lying in bed with my blankets pulled up tight around me. Even though it’s April, spring has not found its way this far north, and wrapping myself up in five or six blankets to keep warm is getting really old.

  “When I say up, I mean in the literal sense. Meaning rising from the catacomb, El,” Allison calls from the other side of my door. Up until now my eyes have been closed, taking in the last of the small moment in time between wake and sleep, when my door opens.

  Bundled tightly, I turn only my head to acknowledge her. “Is it ever going to get warm again?”

  She has a cup of coffee in hand as she leans against the doorway and smiles snidely at my rhetorical question. The steam wafting from her mug calls to me with both the promise of warmth and liquid adrenaline.

  “Come on. It isn’t so bad,” she says as she tucks her arm close to her body, idly looking around my room. “It does seem colder in your room though.”

  Ignoring her observation, I wonder how we had made it through another cold Washington, D.C. winter here at Georgetown University in this small, tight, quartered yet affordable two-bedroom apartment. I look up at her over my covered body. “It is fucking cold in here.”

  Allison opens the drawn curtains, letting in some of the dull pre-spring overcast sunlight. “They say it’s supposed to start warming up this week. Thank God!”

  The overcast light fills the room, making me squint.

  Allison and I have been roommates since our freshman year. Last year we pooled our money together and found this apartment. It’s a longer distance from campus than the dorm, but a hell of a lot cheaper, and every penny counts when you are living on financial aid.

  I sit up, bringing my tightly wrapped blanket with me. Cocooned in fabric, I reach down to turn up the space heater when I notice the illuminating “on” switch is not lit. “No wonder it’s so cold in here. My heater is off,” I mumble as I flip the switch off and on, off and on with no reaction from the heater. “What the hell?”

  “What is it?” Allison calls to me, now down the hall clanking around dishes in the kitchen.

  I glance over at the outlet to make sure it’s plugged in; check. I flip the switch off, on, off, on a few more times without any solution. “My stupid heater is broken!”

  “Damn, that sucks,” she replies. “You think you can be ready in fifteen minutes?”

  As I rise and stomp in my long socks to my dresser, half of the blankets wrapped close to me begin to fall away loosely to the ground. I open and shut my drawers hard as I grab for each article of clothing. “No! I’m just getting out of bed! Sorry, I’m just pissed about the heater. Just go on without me.”

  As I stand there, a blob of blanket, she smiles at my fluffy attire and the frustration melts away, leaving me wondering why she is going in so early. “It’s only eight. You don’t have class for like two hours.”

  Allison pours the remainder of her coffee down the sink and talks as she rinses her mug. “I have a makeup lab from last week when I was sick. This is my last chance to make it up and I can’t let some stupid lab keep me from getting an A.”

  She is aiming for medical school, so every A is a necessity where GPAs are concerned. I, on the other hand, have just moved from “Undeclared” to an English major, and I’m not sure if I am going to stay with it or change again. I’m barely keeping my head above a 3.0 GPA with my time divided between studying and my job on campus.

  Allison puts her jacket and gloves on and tosses her backpack over her shoulder as she speaks. “Yeah, well I need to turn in my financial aid packet for next year.”

  Shit, I have to turn in mine. I filled it out two nights ago, just haven’t had the time to make it over to the financial aid office to drop it off.

  “Next week is the deadline,” she warns. “You are going to apply, right?” We are sharing an apartment and I can understand her need for me to take care of my financial end of the bargain, but I can’t help thinking maybe I am wasting my time. Yeah, I know, how could I fucking be wasting my time by going to Georgetown University? It might just be me, but I can’t see me do
ing anything with purpose beyond graduation at the rate I’m going; it’s disturbing.

  Before I can relieve her concern, she probes, “Or are you going to talk to your parents tonight about helping you out?”

  I cut her off before she can go there. “The paperwork is already filled out. I will drop it off this week.”

  Avoiding any further interrogation, I go into the bathroom, shut the door, and turn on the shower faucet. I can’t blame her for asking. I mean, if I knew my friend’s parents had money and were in a political position like my father, yet she chose to put herself through college with work and financial aid, I would want to know what the hell brought it on. She never straight out asked me my issue with them, just indirect comments and questions like the one she just posed.

  Allison’s voice sounds full of apology as she calls to me over the running water. “Want to meet for lunch?”

  I drop the blankets around me and get undressed. A hotdog or a burger is the best lunch option I could find in college on a tight budget.

  “Yeah, lunch truck at one?” I call back as I get into the shower, lather up, and rinse quickly, leaving a few short seconds to soak up the remaining hot water.

  The bus stop is three blocks down from our apartment complex, with the ride to campus being just over thirty minutes with stops. The neighborhood is not the safest, but we don’t mind. My parents don’t approve of the part of D.C. where I live. They make it known at every family dinner. I don’t expect them to understand, since money is no object for them. Having come from two well-bred families, they have never experienced wanting for anything.

  Grandma Wallace was the only one who could truly understand having grown up with no money until marrying Grandpa Wallace. Even then, she kept things real. She would always come to family dinner on Fridays and talk about all of the things she did in her life. Even at the age of ninety, she would recall the moments of her life as if they had occurred yesterday. My last memory of her is asking me, “Is it worth the risk to cross the stars and steal the moon for something greater than yourself? Something greater for someone else? For love?”

  “Always do something with purpose, Ella Marie. Something greater than yourself. Risk for love, risk for life. Cross the stars and steal the moon if you have to.”

  Those words ring fresh in my mind and have been with me for days now, haunting me, reminding me I need to do something with my fucking life. I’m sure it has to do with tonight’s dinner at my parents’ house. Dad said he had an offer to discuss with me and I have been debating canceling just to avoid any fucking confrontation with him.

  Dad is a Congressman serving his third year as a prime example of our roots. Mom is the ideal congressman’s wife, having been groomed by her own mother, who was the wife of an influential prosecution lawyer who turned into a judge in his later years.

  There are very few Wallaces and Cromwells who haven’t made a name for themselves up and down the east coast of the United States. Those cast aside Wallaces and Cromwells, the deadbeats left for no mention, were considered a sore on the family names. What if they just took the road less traveled? The tucked-away road, the road of the fucking “undeclared,” not yet purposed? They still could prove themselves.

  My parents see this as the direction I am heading, since I haven’t made as many advances and wise decisions as they expected. My mediocrity isn’t something that just happened one day; there were reasons for it.

  Mine started years ago in high school. I had become tired of not fitting in. The phrase “If you can’t beat them, join them” somehow became a necessity in my naive mind. Dad was a newly elected senator and Mom was finally enjoying the fruits of their labor by decorating our new house on The Hill, also known as Capitol Hill.

  It was a lapse in judgement with me trying to fit in. A lapse leading me to believe the finest schools, the prettiest clothing, the best-looking boyfriends, the most popular and well-to-do friends, and the most elite and influential people in the district were what I had to surround myself with.

  Try it. You will like it.

  The best tutors for the highest GPA. Getting accepted to the best universities. Losing your virginity to the most popular senior in high school and son of one of the most influential families in the district.

  Try it. You will like it.

  Sex in Logan’s parents’ cabin, my bedroom, the backseat of his car. Nowhere was off limits because we were Logan and Ella and it was expected since it was inevitable in everyone’s eyes that we would marry and live happily ever after with little Bristols running around.

  Try it. You will like it.

  Attending the National Debutante Cotillion and Thanksgiving Ball for only a few of the hand-picked juniors “coming out” with Logan on my arm; a preparation for his and my parents to brag about us being the most pedigreed couple of the entire event.

  Try it. You will like it.

  All of it was a putrid pool of overindulgence, entitlement, and extreme privilege invisible to me until the night I came home from the ball, my five-thousand-dollar Emilio Pucci dress rumpled from the clumsy and haphazard sex Logan and I had in the backseat of the limo paid for by his parents, with my Jimmy Choo heels linked in my fingers. My mother and father sitting in the living room waiting for me to tell me my grandma had passed.

  Her death was my awakening. That night was when the rose-colored glasses of living under my parents’ endowments, my parents’ great expectations, and our family’s influence in the elite circle of friends we kept came off. Actually, I threw them down and stepped on them, completely shattering and rejecting everything that reflected the privileged and materialistic lifestyle I had focused on for far too long. One of my many rebellions widening the rift between my parents and me was choosing to pay my way into Georgetown University without their help.

  That night the rift between us became so wide, I never expected to fill it again. It still hasn’t been filled, just calcified over the bitter co-existence. That is what the high society does, covers the rifts and makes nice like everything is perfect and undamaged.

  My wait at the bus stop is cut short when a white BMW pulls up to the curb.

  “Hey, El.” It’s Natalie, my sister.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?”

  “I was in the area and thought I would catch you before you got on the bus. Get in, I’ll give you a ride to campus.”

  Okay, first off, she would never be caught dead in my neighborhood, let alone at eight thirty in the morning, so I’m skeptical from the start to get into the car. I hesitate, wanting to question her reason for being here, when she leans farther across the passenger’s seat and raises her eyebrows.

  “It’s cold and I have to get to campus. Look, I thought I was being nice by stopping by.”

  She rolls her eyes then forces a smile. “Come on, get in.” The smile she holds on her lips is full of unvented sarcasm, I can feel it. I get into the warmth of her car and barely get the door shut before she takes off.

  “What are you doing all the way over here?” She lives in Georgetown in an apartment she is renting with another graduate. There is no reason for her to come all this way unless something is up.

  She concentrates on the traffic. “I had to drop off a document with a client. Hazards of being an intern for a corporation, I suppose. Could be worse,” she says and starts to giggle, “I could live here,” then she realizes her comment went a step too far. She glances at me briefly, then back at the road. “Sorry.”

  I glance out the window to hide rolling my eyes and try to change the subject. “Yeah, so we have dinner tonight at Mom and Dad’s.”

  “Yeah, but I need to head back right after. I have this thing with a couple of friends,” Natalie halfway explains.

  “That’s fine.” If the evening at Mom’s and Dad’s is too long, the conversation turns against me and I don’t want to deal with that shit. It’s hard enough bringing myself to go every week as it is.

  I hear my mother’s voice ringing in my e
ars, “It’s family tradition, Ella.”

  “Want to come tonight?” Her question doesn’t register right away, until she peers over at me.

  “Me?”

  She gets this stupid look on her face. “Yeah, you, El. Who the hell else? Are you okay? Don’t tell me you are sick or some shit. I don’t have the time to catch anything from you, let alone bring you to Mom and Dad’s sick!”

  I shake my head, more to diminish her credibility to myself than answering her. “Just thinking about classes.”

  “How are they going? Are you keeping up? You know, since you chose your major late in the game, things are going to get more challenging. What’s your major again?”

  This is how deep our disconnection is. She doesn’t even remember my major. She is as big of a pain in the ass about my shortcomings as my parents.

  Being a year ahead of me, Nat earned a bachelor’s degree in Communications from Georgetown University on my father’s dime. That wasn’t enough for my mother and father though. “Aim higher, Natalie,” they said. Fitting the Cromwell-Wallace mold, she was accepted into and enrolled in the master’s degree program for Public Relations and Corporate Communications. What kind of job will that get her? I have no fucking idea, but it sounded prestigious to have been accepted into the program at GU. Hey, it might earn her a husband, you never know.

  She was the perfect Cromwell-Wallace package all wrapped up into the nicely dressed, perfectly made-up and bejeweled eldest daughter of Byron and Nannette Wallace.

  Suddenly, the car jolts as a taxi cuts her off and stops to make a pickup, sending Nat into a conniption fit as she lays on her horn. “Are you fucking serious! Move out of the way, you fucking asshole!”

  Minor flaw: for a pristine daughter, she has a mouth like a sailor; just like me, the affected daughter. The taxi moves on quickly and Natalie swerves around it as she stares over at me. “What is wrong with people?”

  I can’t help but grin.

  “What?” she asks, noticing my smile.