Hello, alien lovers!

I want to celebrate an exciting music summer! Kesha's new album is almost out, and last week, Lorde's Virgin dropped.

I've never been a big Lorde fan until her historical duet with Charli XCX on Girl, so confusing. Her new album has been giving me life and has been playing on repeat since its release. My favourite songs are Broken Glass and What Was That, but the entire album is great.

It's powerful and raw, and Lorde has been very open about her insecurities on the press tour as well as in her lyrics, which I really appreciate.

I encourage you to go listen to it!

In the gym, I'm exorcising
All my demons, make 'em keep riding
Yesterday I lifted your body weight
I pick a song and I listen to it
Till it's just a piece of music
And everything else falls away
Ah-ah, ah-ah

Welcome to Chapter 34!

I'm currently stuck writing Chapter 45. Finishing a novel is hard! Argh!

Chapter 34 was a fun, action-packed chapter to write. Maple is pissed and poor Salvatore has to explain himself while making sure they don't get killed/kidnapped. The end twist was soooo delicious to write!!!

Enjoy!
lunus 🩷

If you're new to the story, start with Chapter 1

If you missed the last chapter, Previously on Perilous Love Stars

Daphne’s bazooka, like most alien tech, was hydropowered. The detonation was almost too quiet. The missile was made of the same fluorescent blue liquid that Yellow had fuelled the SUV with. It flew in crisp silence. The explosion that followed the impact was thunderous, shaking the ground enough for Maple to feel it in her bare feet. Her slippers had been lost in the chaos. 

A few minutes ago, she was resting in Salvatore’s arms, not a care in the world. Now, everything was going wrong. They were under attack, and Salvatore had lied to her again. Despite his assurances of honesty, he’d betrayed her once more. Had all of this—their trip, their relationship—been a pretext to infiltrate Daphne’s mansion? For what purpose? And why not disclose his true identity to Maple? Was his amnesia even real? Fuck! Everything was twisting in Maple’s mind, thoughts and emotions wringing together. Salvatore had seduced her for ulterior motives. Maybe none of what they’d shared had been real, maybe he’d lied about everything. 

She thought of a French saying Cynthia used a lot, “L’arroseur arrosé.” Maple lied about everything to everyone. Maybe it was simply fitting that she had fallen for a liar, too. 

Salvatore grabbed her hand and guided her to the door. “We shouldn’t stay here. We’re too exposed. Let’s find somewhere to hide.”

“To hide?” Maple exclaimed, taking her hand away. Salvatore’s touch felt wrong. She was too angry and hurt to receive it. “And let an old woman fend for herself?”

Another explosion thundered. Daphne had taken another shot at the mercenaries invading her property.

Salvatore’s eyebrows arched in amusement. “The old woman seems to know what she’s doing. Unlike you, who don’t have a gun. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“All your lies already hurt me,” she said and heard how childish she sounded.

His levity vanished. “Not right now. Let’s get you to safety first.”

Maple looked back. Daphne jumped through the library window, already preparing her next shot.

She met Salvatore’s eyes and wondered how safe she was under a liar’s protection.  “How can I trust you?”

“You can always trust me to keep you safe.”

She didn’t have time to deconstruct that. The second pair of doors in the library opened to reveal two hooded men dressed in camouflage outfits, armed with assault weapons. 

“Stop right there!” one of them screamed. 

With one swift movement, Salvatore used his free arm to grab Maple’s waist, dragging her to him, his robust chest against her back. He shot at one of the men while stepping back, getting Maple out of the library and out of shooting range. Bits of the wall blew into pieces as bullets pierced through the air.

Maple held her breath, as if stopping her oxygen intake would somehow make her safer. She resented Salvatore’s arm on her, how he was taking charge and treating her like she was a child, and yet—she’d be dead if it wasn’t for him. She’d never have avoided these bullets on her own. She was too dazed, too angry, to focus on self-survival. 

Salvatore leaned forward and took two shots. Immediate grunts and the distinct sounds of bodies hitting the floor followed. Maple got free of his embrace and glanced at the room. The library was a mess. Open books and broken glass littered the ground. One unmoving body lay on the blood-soaked carpet. The other gunman was displayed across one of the couches, blood oozing out of the bullet hole between his eyes.

Salvatore stood alert, scanning the room, the exits, and the adjacent corridors for potential threats. He was ready. He’d done this before.

“You’re a killer,” Maple said.

“I’m a survivor. I do what I need to survive.”

“Did that include seducing me so you could get to Daphne’s?”

The weight of her accusations settled in the silence between them. At least, he had the decency not to deny it.

Maple’s heart shattered. “Oh, wow…”

“Maple, please, I want to explain—”

“There’s nothing to explain.” 

There was much to explain. Salvatore owed her explanations, but she wasn’t ready to receive them yet.

“There is,” he protested. “Let me get you to safety first.”

Maple took in the room again. The impact holes in the furniture. The dead bodies. The smoke coming from outside, the devastation of Daphne’s weapon in her garden. She saw death everywhere reflected at her. She should be scared. But all she could feel was overwhelming anger. Salvatore’s betrayal cut too deep for any other emotions to bubble to the surface.

“Fine, let’s get to safety.” She had no intention to stay for his redemption monologue. Once she was out of danger, she’d get Daphne to Salvatore’s military alien SUV—which made sense now that Salvatore was some sort of special agent or some shit—and get the fuck out of this shitshow. 

They moved quickly, as discreetly as possible. Maple stopped by one of the ground-floor bedrooms, rummaging through the closet to find shoes. None of them fit her, so she had to settle for another fluffy pair of slippers. It wasn’t the best footwear choice to escape armed mercenaries, but it’d helped her avoid lodging a glass shard into her feet. Instead, she could worry about the shards of her broken heart. Every time she looked at Salvatore, the impact of his betrayal and lies reverberated in her all over again. She wanted to scream and cry. She wanted to slap him. But she needed him to stay alive, at least for now.

She joined him at the bedroom entrance. He was guarding it, his hands holding firm to his gun. 

“What’s the plan?” Maple inquired in a tone she hoped to be detached and not drenched in the bitterness that was slowly infecting all of the memories she’d made with Salvatore from the past week.

“I roamed through the house last night before I found you in the library.” The fleeting memory of what they’d shared last night on the desk cut right through Maple. She caught her breath, holding tears in. “There’s a way through the kitchens to the winter garden. From there, I can try to fly us up the wall again.”

“I’m not flying anywhere with you.” Maple pointed to her left, waiting for confirmation that that was the right way to the kitchens. 

Salvatore nodded, and she rushed forward, not waiting for him. 

“Maple, I’m your best chance of getting out of this alive.”

“Who are these people? What do they want?” She didn’t want to hear Salvatore’s logic for breaking her heart, but some context for the mortal danger they were facing would be nice. 

Salvatore furtively checked every room they passed, his eyes eagle-like, assessing potential threats at every corner.

“They’re here to take me home.”

“So, you do have a home.”

He paused. “I had a home growing up. I don’t consider that place my home anymore.”

His arm stopped her in front of the kitchen entrance. Three connected rooms made up the last distance they had to cross before reaching the greenhouse.

“You remember where you grew up,” she said to herself, processing the implications of his statement. “So—”

“Yes, I lied about having amnesia.”

Salvatore lied to the entire world, not just to her. She’d never been special in her eyes. She was like a fan or journalist, someone worth lying to.

“Like I said,” he continued, stepping into the first kitchen, his vigilant gaze sweeping the room. “I’m a survivor. I grew up with a violent dad. I had to leave to protect myself. It was a matter of survival. I made tough choices. One of them was to change my entire identity and my appearance.”

They heard a metallic ruffle from the other room. Salvatore pressed his index finger against his lips, tilting his head to the side, asking Maple to hide in the crook behind the pantry.

She followed his order and observed him walk to the large island at the centre of the room. He kneeled, prepped his gun, and shot. The silencer muffled the noise, so all Maple heard was the crash of pots and pans. He gestured for Maple to wait while he went to check. 

Salvatore came back seconds later with the same striking flicker he had in his gaze since the attack started. Eyes tainted with violence and pain. Maple realized she didn’t know him at all. She’d mistaken Salvatore for the man of her dreams. The alien in front of her was someone else entirely.

“There’s a doctor who helps aliens change their appearances,” Salvatore continued, moving slowly into the second kitchen with Maple following closely behind him. She clocked the dead body near the stove, the blood streaming out on the pristine white tiles. “I knew of them, so I asked for help. I had no money, nowhere to go. Being raised by an abusive parent meant I had no friends, no relatives I could turn to. I knew I could act, that’s how I got out. When I heard about La Saga de Emmanuel, I convinced myself that the role was made for me. Charles taught me to manifest my destiny. That’s what I did. I walked into that audition room with the certitude that no one else but me could play Emmanuel De La Saga.”

It wasn’t lost on Maple that Salvatore had probably never shared any of this with anyone. He was finally revealing himself to her, and she hated that it had taken another betrayal and the risk of mortal danger (again) to get him to trust her with this.

They reached the last kitchen. By now, Maple was familiar with the choreography. She waited safely out of range while Salvatore sneakily checked the room. The last room had large metal tables with fresh veggies and fruits, six imposing fridges and freezers, and more plates, platters, and cutlery than Maple had ever seen. It was odd that the mansion seemed to have been made ready to welcome dozens of guests when Daphne had been clear with her disdain of visitors.

Salvatore emerged from the kitchen, and some tension in his shoulders evaporated. “All clear.” 

He smiled. She didn’t.

“Didn’t you think becoming a telenovela star would put you on the radar?” she asked, strolling past him into the room.

Salvatore’s backstory was lore, which was one of Maple’s creative kinks. She didn’t want to hear his excuses for breaking her heart and leading bloodthirsty mercenaries to her and their best chance at saving their show. But she would listen to his lore. Maybe if she survived, she could use some of it to write a book about an alien fuckboy betraying the poor woman he’d seduced.   

“When I got the role, I panicked,” Salvatore explained, keeping pace with her. Maple resented that his presence behind her gave her a fake sense of safety. Safety didn’t exist in the arms of a liar. “But I had changed my name, my face, the colour of my eyes even—”

“Wait. Is that why the teenagers didn’t look anything like you?”

“Yes. They look like the old me. Well, young Salvatore, actually. I was sixteen when I ran from home.”

“And the fake amnesia?”

“I got the idea by reading the script for Emmanuel. It was an easy way to explain my story. I lied about my age, and I had a fake ID to back it up.”

Maple stops at the greenhouse door. Her hand rested on the handle. Just like he’d indicated, it was right at the end of the third kitchen.

“I understand why you had to lie to survive,” she said. “What I wish is that you hadn’t lied to me after you promised you wouldn’t.”

“I never promised, Maple. I’m sorry I lied to you, but I would never promise something I couldn’t deliver on.”

“That’s even worse. I wasn’t even worth a broken promise.”

She pushed the handle. The door opened. A whiff of humid air breezed out, followed by an overwhelming variety of scents. Jasmine, orange, pine wood. Fruity and floral washing over Maple. She blinked. 

When her vision refocused, she found a man standing before her, amidst the framework of long, green leaves. Salvatore pushed past her to place himself between Maple and the man. 

“Salvatore, good to see you,” the older man said, beaming with evil pride. “Come give a hug to your Father, will you?”