Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 129207 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 646(@200wpm)___ 517(@250wpm)___ 431(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129207 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 646(@200wpm)___ 517(@250wpm)___ 431(@300wpm)
“You’re not a mess,” she tells me. “You just need a little retail therapy.”
I lift my head and stare at Madds as I resist rolling my eyes. By retail therapy, she means candles. She always means candles. It’s a sick obsession. They’re everywhere and take up every available surface, but there’s no denying our home smells like a fortress of magical wonder. But after tripping over a box of them for three months, I had to put my foot down, and now she tries—and fails—to keep them within the confines of her bedroom, but who am I to tell her she can’t live her best life?
Getting up from the table, I go to find my bag, knowing that once retail therapy has been mentioned, there’s simply no avoiding it. “And to think, I could be on a world tour right now.”
Madds scoffs. “Stop trying to kid yourself,” she says. “You and I both know you were never going on that tour.”
This time there’s no resisting the eye roll. She has a very valid point.
Demon’s Curse is currently making their way around the globe for their third world tour, and as long as He Who Shall Not Be Named is the front man, I’ve made a point to stay away. Hell, I know Axel is hurt by the fact I won’t listen to their music anymore, but he understands why and forces himself to be okay with it.
Their first tour was huge. They were already experiencing international stardom once their first album dropped, but by the time they wrapped the first tour, they were household names. I was only sixteen and there was no way Axel was going to let me drop out of high school just to go on tour with them, but by the time the tour had wrapped, it didn’t matter anyway because everything had already changed.
Ezra Knight. The lead singer of Demon’s Curse, A.K.A. Devil Spawn, and Axel’s best friend. Also often referred to as He Who Shall Not Be Named, but I suppose I ruined that now. Maybe it should be He Who Shall Not Be Named Out Loud.
He may or may not be the man I’ve been desperately in love with since I was thirteen years old, the one I still can’t seem to shake all these years later. He was sixteen when he first came around, and every time I looked at him, I knew that he would be someone special.
He was everything to me—the other half of my soul. We were the sweetest symphony, so perfectly in sync, but we were too young. I was too young.
Ezra is the textbook definition of right man, wrong time.
By the time I was sixteen, we were inseparable. He captured me in a way that would ruin me forever, but he was always careful not to completely cross that line. He kept the distance I needed to be respectful of my age, and while sometimes I hated it, I’m grateful for that now. We knew there would come a time when those limitations didn’t seem so bad, and I held on to that hope tighter than I’ve ever held on to anything in my life.
Everybody knew it. We were soul mates. The perfect couple that nobody else could even attempt to compare to. I was so lucky to have him, to have experienced him in his rawest form. To know him and to be the woman . . . or the girl he loved.
Not knowing him anymore hurts.
Hearing the songs I know are about me . . . hurts.
But knowing that the epic, all-consuming love we once had will never exist again in this lifetime . . . Well, that fucking kills me.
Maybe I was wrong to assume that Axel is the only lucky one in the family. Maybe we’re all allotted a certain amount of luck in a lifetime, and while Axel is out there using his in the best way possible, I used up all of mine on a man who would disappear in the blink of an eye.
That first tour should have been the best moment of our lives, but the second they packed their bags and walked out the door, the woman I could have been disappeared with them.
Everything changed, and almost in an instant, Ezra Knight became a stranger. He was no longer mine. He was theirs.
The boys were gone, and I was left alone . . . with him. Every day was a fight to survive, and I’ll never forgive them for leaving me behind. It wasn’t their fault. They couldn’t have known what was going to happen, nor did I ever whisper a word about it. I know it’s irrational to blame them for leaving me behind to endure that, but I still do.
If they never left . . . Fuck.