Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
“Don’t, man. Just don’t,” he orders. “Fuck!”
He grits his teeth, glaring at me while I consider going at him again, and he sighs. “I’m not saying you can never tell her. But if shit blows up, Trent will move on. He’ll be fine. Hell, I can play drums without all the theatrics. But you? You’ll be done. You’ll be a hermit, hiding out and never singing another day in your life, and you fucking know it. I’m trying to protect you.”
I can see the truth in his eyes. Or at least that he believes he’s protecting me.
Honestly, I can see his point.
Trent is our lead guitar player. He’s been in several bands before and probably has a short list of bands he could join at any given time. He’d move on from Midnight Destruction within the hour. He’s with us, but we’re not his family. He actually has one of those—a wife and two kids, who visit him on the road.
Sean is a beast on the drums, and he’d play naked in the middle of Times Square without missing a beat. I’m the problem in our band of not-so-merry men. The costumes, masks, and disguises are all for me.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re a great marketing ploy, too, but they were born out of necessity because of my stage fright. I can’t be me onstage. I’ve tried. And even though it was a stupid, meaningless high school talent show, I cracked under the pressure and have no desire to try again.
They do have the added bonus of letting Trent, Sean, and me live relatively normal lives, though. Trent goes to his kids’ soccer games when he’s home and nobody gives a shit. He’s just the tatted-up dad who’s sporting longer hair than most. Sean can sit at a bar and drink a whiskey alone, and nobody tries to maul him or ask for autographs. I can disappear to a sleepy little town in the middle of nowhere and be a tourist who meets a local girl and falls in love.
I collapse to the chair, staring unseeingly. “Fuck!”
I force myself to fight my stage fright demons so Sean can have the steadiness of the band and not be another statistic from our neighborhood. He wouldn’t end up on a street corner like we were destined to, not with the money he has. But he could end up in a bottle, blowing through his savings as he escapes the banality of life. And he’s fighting me to make sure I can keep the thing I’m meant to do—sing. It’s what I was made for. It’s the only thing I’m good at.
We’re doing what we’re doing for each other. It just sucks that it hurts at the same time. But life’s never been painless for us. Maybe it has to be this way.
Especially because he’s right. I can’t tell her. Not yet. One day, but not yet. The risk is too great, and her wounds are too fresh.
Sean knows I’ve realized it too. “Sorry, man. Not to mention, AMM would haul you in for breaking our contract.”
Because of course keeping our true identities secret is in the contract too. Ironically, we actually added that ourselves, wanting to keep nosy workers at AMM from spilling industry secrets about us. Technically, I’m supposed to ask permission from AMM before telling anyone, and Hope would have to be my wife and sign an NDA contract before they’d even consider approval.
“Fuck AMM,” I spit out.
“Yeah, that’s the consensus,” Sean agrees, sitting down too. “This thing really that serious?”
I nod. But something he said is sticking in my throat. “She’s not like Mom.”
Sean presses his lips together like he’s trying to hold back something he wants to say. That’s not like him. He doesn’t filter anything, so I can only imagine how harsh it is if he’s swallowing it down. Finally, he concedes. “If you say so.” He pauses, but like he can’t help himself, he adds, “I picked you up once after a woman tore your heart to shreds. I’d do it again. But don’t make me.”
There’s only one woman who’s ever done that to me: Mom. She blamed me for her boyfriend going to prison and us having to move out of the neighborhood, and her betrayal cut me deep, leaving a gaping wound that I barely patched over with Sean’s help. It was ugly for a while, and he’s the only one who knows the full breadth of how gutted I was, because he literally propped me up and kept me going.
Hope is nothing like her. She’s fresh out of a shitty relationship, but she’s nothing like Mom.
Chapter 23
HOPE
I don’t like leaving the cottage without Ben, but I do as he asks, heading to my parents’ and worrying the whole way. I look in the rearview mirror roughly three hundred times, thinking every car behind me is either a deputy who’s now been additionally assigned to look for my car or Ben chasing after me. Neither happens.