Series: Fever Falls Series by Riley Hart
Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 96922 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96922 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
“You’ve been in here all day?” Jace asked.
“Yeah. I have this idea in my head that I’m going to walk out there and have to hear someone call me by that name again. I’ve spent a lot of years cherishing my anonymity. Where others wanted fame, I just dreamed of being able to walk into crowded rooms and disappear, blend right in.”
“I doubt you blend in anywhere, Dax.”
The way he said it, scanning me over, brought back that feral desire he stirred almost effortlessly with as little as a simple glance.
“It’s different, though. It’s nice when you’re out and someone you don’t know treats you like a stranger, rather than acting like they know you…really know you, when you’ve never talked to them in your life.”
“I kind of get that,” Jace said.
“Oh, you’ll definitely have more than your share when this all keeps on.”
“What was that like? You told me a lot about your mom and what happened with her, but what did it do to you?”
It was effortless for my mind to go there, since that’s where it’d been all day. “It was a lot of pressure on a kid. Every agent, every casting director, every producer, every reporter, every fan…they all had an image in their head of exactly who I was, and I didn’t think it was very fair when I wasn’t so sure. I went to a casting session for a film when I was fourteen. It was supposed to be the next break for me. A TV movie. I was coming into my own, maturing, and I don’t know what I did in the audition, but the casting director said, ‘You came across a little gay that time. Can we do it again?’ I didn’t even know that part of me yet. I was a fucking kid who didn’t know shit about who I was, but I remember thinking, This isn’t about me. This is about this thing they think I am…Lil’ Donnie Gibson. And I didn’t want to be something for them. I just wanted to be me, whoever that was.”
Jace looked off the balcony, staring into the distance, as though thinking very seriously about what I shared.
“I get that,” he said. “My father, Crawford, arrived on a scene, and this guy told him his wife was stuck inside, first floor in a back room. Of course, Crawford didn’t flinch any more than I would have. He and his crew rushed inside, and like the heroes they fucking were, found her. She’d lost consciousness, so they carried her out, Crawford at the back, where the fire was creeping up on them. The floor gave, and Crawford pushed them forward so it wouldn’t take the rest of them with it. But he got trapped in the basement. He didn’t make it.”
“Oh my God, Jace.”
I couldn’t believe he was sharing that, but even more confusing was how the fuck petty shit from my childhood pertained to something so horrific.
“Just like that,” he said with a snap of his fingers. “Because that’s how it goes in our line of work. You sometimes have only a few precious seconds and that’s it. And a fire doesn’t give a fuck how much a person gives or cares or loves…or how many people need that person to keep going.”
I could feel his heart wrenching as he forced the words out.
“Crawford McKenzie Kruse,” he added.
McKenzie stuck out. “Mac?”
He nodded, as if he couldn’t bring himself to say the words. Then he coughed, seemingly trying to create a distraction from his moment of weakness. “Some of the guys from the station told Nance first, and she just fell apart, and then she pulled Keeg and me into the bedroom. I was sixteen, he was eight. Neither of us knew what was wrong, but Keeg was already crying because Nance was. All I knew was that I had to be tough. Someone had to be strong. Because that’s what Crawford always did. If shit went down, he was a fighter. And I would be too. When she gave us the news, I knew it was my job to be strong…to be there for our family, especially since he couldn’t be. Not that I didn’t cry that night, because I did, but I fought, and I did my best to be strong for them, to help them through it all. It didn’t take long before I started hearing people around town talking about how cool I’d been…how strong…and really, it just ate away at me, and I knew, none of these people knew who the fuck I was.”
He looked to me, a tear stirring in his right eye. “So I know about people not seeing the real me. I’m not saying I’m not tough. I know my strengths, and I can handle a lot of shit, but sometimes, I try so hard to be that because people want me to be that for them, and I’m just like…fuck, I’m only human.”