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)
When they leave, Ben shakes his head. “I don’t know if that’s okay, but I need to talk to you. I can explain.”
“There’s no need,” I answer numbly. “You lied. The end.”
He refuses to hear that. “No. I couldn’t tell you, Hope. I’m not allowed.”
I huff out a humorless laugh. “Doesn’t seem to have stopped Sean from doing it.”
He nods. “I know, and he’s going to pay a steep price for that if you tell anyone. Did you tell Joy?”
Realization dawns. He’s not here to apologize or defend himself or ask for forgiveness. He’s here to make sure I’m going to keep quiet. “Does it matter? Or is that part of the game?”
“Game? What the hell did Sean tell you?” he growls, but doesn’t wait for a play-by-play. “Look, Sean and I are in a band. Midnight Destruction. We have been for years, but my stage fright is a bigger issue than I admitted to. I can’t sing onstage as myself. So he came up with the idea of costumes, masks, and all that shit. It’s a way to hide myself so I can do what we need to. But all that secrecy is a big deal to us. If people knew who we are, we wouldn’t be able to live our lives.”
“Musicians and actors live their lives every day,” I argue, not sure why I’m even entertaining this. I don’t care. I don’t.
“But I can’t. It’s too much,” Ben says, his voice full of emotion. “Maybe that means I’m weak, but it’s the truth. If my identity is revealed, I’m done.”
“Dramatic much?” I snap, still not caring. Nope, not even a bitty bit of care in this heart. I turned it off, like a light switch.
If only it were that easy.
“I saw you, Ben. That’s not what you do, not something you can walk away from like a job at the Piggly Wiggly. That’s who you are.” I point a finger to his chest, wishing I could stab him there so he’d bleed out the way I am.
“It is. It’s a part of me, but it’s a role too. To them—the fans, I mean—I’m a character they ascribe attributes to, reading into my every move and gesture while they dissect every lyric. It’s a vulnerability I’m not strong enough to withstand as myself.” He grabs at his chest, yanking at his T-shirt like he’s disappointed at his own humanness. “But it was our way out. Sean’s and mine. So I did what I had to do. We signed our lives away, and one of the rules is, we can’t tell anyone.”
I glare at him, silently reminding him that Sean told me. “I won’t say anything.”
He sighs in relief, confirming that that’s what he’s really here for.
Angrily, I bite out, “I won’t say anything about you ever again. I’m going to pretend this was all a fever dream. I’ll probably wake up in the woods any minute now and realize I tripped over my wedding dress, bumped my head, and went unconscious for an indeterminate length of time. I’ll go home and Mom will take care of me, doing concussion checks every thirty minutes until she’s sure I don’t have a brain bleed.”
As awful as that sounds, I almost hope it’s true. It’d be better than the reality of this betrayal.
“No,” he growls, rising up to his knees and gripping my hips to pull me to face him fully. Up close, he says, “This is real. We are real. It’s all real.”
“I don’t believe you. You lied,” I answer. No matter how many times I say it, it’s really as simple as that. He can say whatever he wants, but I’m never going to trust him again. He played with the truth, with my feelings, with my heart too easily, and I’m too freshly whole to risk breaking.
Especially because Ben could do a lot more than break me. He could shatter me. Ruin me.
He might’ve already done that.
“Everything else I told you is true. My childhood, my mom, my arrest, my music, my heart. It’s all true.”
“Or was it a character you were playing?” I throw his own words back at him. “One you designed just for me, reading my train wreck of a life and dissecting what I might want so you could deliver it on a silver platter. I really am that gullible, aren’t I? Well, bravo, Ben. You made me fall in love with you. You win.”
He flinches and I’m glad my words are slicing into him as intended. I want him to hurt the way I do.
I’m mad at myself for not seeing through him, but the truth is, I wanted to believe in love. I’ve seen it firsthand, so I know it’s real, and I actually thought that maybe I was going to be one of the lucky ones who got struck by lightning. This was going to be our wild and crazy meet-cute in the woods and whirlwind falling-in-love story.