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)
“We’re almost at the mall,” Madds offers.
“Ahhh, fuck. It didn’t go well? Retail therapy?”
“Yup,” I say, popping the p.
“Candles?”
“You know it,” Madds sings.
Axel sucks in a breath, the sound hissing between his teeth, and I can imagine the way he would have awkwardly grasped the back of his neck. “Shit. Okay, umm . . . You wanna talk about it?”
“Nah, I’m good—”
I hear a noise in the background, something kind of like a door opening. “Shit. Didn’t realize you were in here,” a familiar voice says, penetrating right through my soul. There’s a slight pause, giving me just a second to remind myself to breathe before it comes again. “Fuck . . . that her?”
Axel lets out a heavy sigh. “Shit. Yeah, man. Just . . . just give me a minute, alright?”
I hear the door close, and while it’s a subtle thud that fills the car, to me, it feels like a bullet right through the chest. “I’m sorry,” Axel says. “You good?”
I plaster a fake smile across my face as the heaviness weighs me down. “Yeah, I’m good,” I lie as Madds reaches across the center console and grabs my hand, giving it a tight squeeze. She’s capable of reading me so easily.
“Sure?”
“Yeah, listen, we’re just pulling into the mall parking complex,” I say, lying right through my teeth again. “The call will probably drop, but I’ll check in with you tomorrow before your flight to Australia.”
“Okay, yeah,” he says, his tone shifting with a shallow heaviness, making it clear he knows I’m lying but not being able to do anything about it. “I’ll talk to you later. Be safe, okay? And Madds?”
“Yeah?” she says, perking up.
“Look after my sister.”
“You know it!”
Ending the call before it somehow gets harder, I let out a heavy breath. “You really okay?” Madds asks, a deep skepticism in her tone as my eyes begin filling with tears.
“No,” I admit, needing to pull over again. “Just need a second.”
“Okay. Take your time.”
I blow out a heavy breath, my cheeks inflating like balloons, and in a flash, I hit the gas and whip the car back around. “Woah,” Madds says, gripping the door. “Where are we going?”
“Home.”
“But . . . but candles.”
“Fuck the candles, Madds,” I say, pressing a little harder on the gas. “We’re getting drunk.”
2
Ezra
Rain pours over us, sticking my black button-down to my open chest, as the eager crowd roars, and I step back from the microphone before breaking into the guitar solo of our final song. It’s been a wild night. Hell, a wild fucking week, and now the rain only makes it better. There’s nothing I love more than a rain show, and the fact that we’re in Australia is the fucking cherry on top. These Aussies know how to go off. They’re always our loudest crowd, and performing for them always leaves me on a fucking high.
It’s the best type of chaos.
Tonight is our final show for the Australian leg of the tour, and while I live for this shit, I’m more than looking forward to the next two weeks of rest before we hit up Europe. Nobody ever warns you how exhausting these world tours are. Night after night, performing in a different city. Getting sick is not an option, and if we’re unlucky enough to fall victim to the common cold—tough luck—the show must go on.
The fans come first. That’s been our mentality right from the start, and fuck they’re loyal because of it.
Most of them have been with us from the moment our first single ‘Hypothetically Yours’ was released. It’s been a fucking whirlwind since then with our fanbase growing day by day. Our label saw the hype building around us, fast-tracked our album release, and within two months, we were told we were going on tour. And fuck, that tour was a mess. We were barely nineteen, most of us had never even left our hometown, and there we were performing for sold-out stadiums.
We had instant stardom, and honestly, most of us didn’t know how to handle it.
The girls. Partying. Drugs. Alcohol. Anything that was thrust in our faces, we took. Our faces were splashed across every magazine, our cell numbers were leaked by the press, our personal lives were exploited for entertainment, and once the fans figured out our home addresses, it was hell on Earth. For a while at least. It didn’t take long for us to put together a proper team we could trust, and after that, it was smooth sailing.
We lived it up like fucking gods, and by the time we were wrapping our first tour, not one of us recognized ourselves. But this tour is our third rotation around the globe, and we’ve learned from our mistakes . . . sort of.
Management caters to our needs and doesn’t allow us to run rampant like we did in our early days, and on top of that, we’ve learned how to say no. No to the media. No to management. No to assholes who use us for their own gain. It was a learning curve, but you don’t get to where we are by letting others walk all over you.