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 been six years, but there’s no turning back now. She needs a better man than me, someone who can give her more than just a headline in a bullshit magazine. There was a time I thought I could be that for her, but the realities of my life and how I deal with it made it clear that this isn’t what she deserves.
She should have so much more than a life on the road, being reduced to a tabloid story, being mistaken for a groupie, and missing out on normal school and college experiences. Rae has the potential to conquer the whole damn world, and I wasn’t about to subject her to a life of following me from city to city, being nothing more than my girl.
Crashing through to our small dressing room backstage, I go to grab my shit, more than ready to get out of here, when the rush of thoughts from back home has me reaching for my notepad. “Yo, wait up,” I tell the guys, searching every corner of the dressing room for a pen.
As if reading my mind, Axel pulls a pen from a bag and shoves it into my hand, knowing I won’t be able to relax until every word is scribbled into my notepad. It’ll be a mess of words tonight, but on the flight back to LA tomorrow, I’ll turn that mess into art, and by spring, every household across the globe will be singing these words.
Getting to work, I flip to a new page and scrawl the words across the paper while Axel peers over my shoulder, reading the jumbled mess. “Fucking hell,” he mutters, reading the overly sexualized lyrics. “This better not be about my sister.”
A grin tears across my lips. The poor fucker. He’s spent years performing my songs, and while there are a handful that are very clearly about Raleigh, like “Hypothetically Yours,” the rest he has no clue about.
I tell him stories, let him think they’re nothing more than random scenes that play out in my head. But joke’s on him because the truth of the matter is, every last song I have ever written is about her.
It’s always her.
Our first single off our current album, Bleed for Me, is our opening song for the tour. I told the guys that it was inspired by a wild night with a French woman, but in reality, it’s about physically needing someone so bad that you crumble because you can’t have her. It’s about not being able to breathe without her, desperately needing to hear her soft moans, her touch on your skin, her lips on yours. It’s about raw, passionate sex, and every word that comes out of my mouth when I first hit that stage comes from those lonely nights when I fantasize about having Raleigh in my bed.
Ha. The fact that it’s one of Axel’s favorites only makes it funnier. If only he knew he was singing backup vocals to a song about nailing his little sister. Not that we ever had the chance . . .
Rock moves in on my other side and glances over the lyrics before laughing at Axel. “Dude, that’s fucked up,” he says before crashing on the couch and kicking his feet up. “I don’t know how you do it, man. If this bastard was writing songs like that about my little sister . . .”
My grin widens as he lets his words trail off, and as I finish off the thoughts tumbling around inside my head, I do my best to zone out as the guys rave about how epic that show was. We’re all fucking exhausted, but that’s not going to stop us from heading out to the rooftop bar that looks out over the Sydney Harbour and making the most of our last night in this beautiful country. Just as soon as we get back to the hotel and have a chance to get out of our rain-soaked clothes, that is.
Content that I’ve gotten everything down, I grab my notebook and shove it into my bag, not trusting it with anyone. I take this notebook everywhere because I never know when the inspiration might hit, but having it everywhere often means leaving it everywhere. There have been multiple occasions when I’ve left it behind in a restaurant, a dressing room, a train, hell, even at a fucking urinal. But even those times when I’ve left it in another city, nothing has stopped me from going back and getting it. These words are liquid gold, and if it were just my career riding on it, I probably wouldn’t be so pedantic about it, but it’s all of ours. If I don’t write good shit, the boys will suffer for it, and we’re not even close to being done yet.