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)
It’s nothing special, nothing to be proud of, but it beats going back to that house, and I’d take the struggle a million times over submitting to the devil.
Every few months, I move around and find a new town, never able to find somewhere to settle. Ever since I lost Axel, I’ve felt like a hopeless soul, destined to wander without a purpose, and damn it, it makes me so angry. Before him, before Ezra and the band, I wanted to be something. I wanted to do good in the world, but I’m broken beyond repair, and I don’t know how to claw my way out of the darkness. I’m barely surviving, and all I want to do is scream.
Don’t get me wrong, every now and then I find the courage to laugh and smile again. It never lasts long, but it’s always enough to give me what I need to keep going, to see the light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how dim that light might be.
Today, the dim light is the ice cream cake I’m going to splurge on. It’ll probably leave my lactose intolerant body hunched over a toilet later as a big fuck you, but it’ll be worth it. I hope.
I stand in the bathroom mirror of the shitty motel I found late last night. The bed is just as terrible as I expected it to be, but at least the door offered a dead bolt, and the TV had more than one channel to occupy my lonely night.
Most of the time, I do what I can to avoid social media. I have my phone, and while it’s nothing special, it allows me to keep in contact with Madds and check up on Dylan and Rock every now and then. Truth be told, I haven’t responded to many of their texts lately. They don’t tell me how Ezra’s doing, and I don’t dare ask, but I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t admit that I’d wondered on more than a few occasions.
Losing Ax would have hit him just as hard as it hit me, and while a part of me hates myself for what I said to him at the funeral, I can’t bring myself to regret it.
The words I said to him repeat in my head a million times a day, and while it kills me every time, nothing guts me more than remembering the haunted emptiness in his eyes before his security team escorted him out. Axel’s death killed him, but my ruthless rejection burned him to ashes.
I needed him to feel my pain. I needed him to hurt, and hell, I think I still do.
I have too much anger, too much to blame them for, but since Axel’s not here to take the brunt of my wrath, I have no choice but to let it eat me from the inside out.
This pent-up anger is slowly killing me, and I hate that I’m not capable of letting it go.
I’m wasting my life away, and when I think of everything my mom and Axel would have wanted for me, all I can do is laugh before it turns into a broken, gut-wrenching sob.
My phone rings from the small bedside table in my motel room, and I step back from the mirror and make a show of forcing a smile across my face and hating how fake it looks. It’s showtime.
Hurrying out of the bathroom, I quickly scoop up my phone and accept the call from Madds. She checks in almost every day, and honestly, I’m so glad she’s so easily swayed and never thinks to dig deeper than the surface. Otherwise, she would have seen through my lies years ago. “Oh my god! Happy birthday,” she squeals into the phone before I have a chance to even say hello. “I feel like it was only yesterday I was calling on your last birthday. It’s insane how quickly these past twelve months have gone.”
“Right,” I say, despite not being able to agree with her even a little bit. It’s crazy how long the days feel when you work two jobs and spend the nights sleeping with a knife you stole from a restaurant just so you can feel safe enough to close your eyes. “How are you doing? How’s work? Is that boss of yours still giving you a hard time?”
“Ugh, yes,” she says. “She’s such a cow.”
Madds instantly dives into a rant while giving me more than enough corporate gossip than I can handle for the day, and as she chats away, I grab my small makeup collection and head back into the bathroom.
I start getting ready for my first shift in this new town that I didn’t bother to learn the name of, and when she turns the conversation back on me, I start to sweat. “So, how’s everything going for you? You’ve gotta tell me all about this guy you’re dating. Oh, scrap that! How did it go with that promotion? Did you get it?”