Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 87142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
“I don’t follow.” I shook my head.
“All artists who married their managers.” He shrugged. “You’re not the first to fall for a star. You won’t be the last. Now hold your head up and get back to work.”
“I still love him,” I admitted.
“I figured. Do you see that changing any time soon?” He tilted his head.
I shook mine. Getting over Nixon wasn’t something I saw on the horizon. I wasn’t saying never, but definitely not now.
“Then, again, hold your head up and get back to work. You’ve earned it. Take it.” He nodded toward the stage as a band walked on.
I dragged in a heavy breath. Ben was right. Nixon was gone. I could cry for a week, a month, or the rest of my life. It wouldn’t change anything. All I could do was put one foot in front of the other and wait for the pain to lessen. “I’m not sure where to start.”
Ben grinned as the first notes of a familiar song rang out, and my gaze jerked to the stage.
“You can start by telling them their bass player sucks.”
18
NIXON
I sat at my dining room table, staring down the barrel of a bottle of Crystal Skull, imagining the taste of the vodka on my lips, the slight burn as it would slide down my throat, the blissful stupor that would come next.
Buying it had been easy without Zoe at my side.
That was a lie. It would have been easy to buy it at any point in the last six months. I’d chosen not to. Chosen not to sneak away. Chosen to please her, to make her proud of me…to make me proud of myself.
But the pain of recovery was nothing compared to the utter agony shredding my chest, screaming with the constant reminder that Zoe wasn’t here. I wasn’t enough for her. Wasn’t healed. Didn’t fit into the lines she drew for her life.
My phone rang. Jonas.
Decline.
Quinn.
Decline.
I sat there for the next hour, my focus bouncing back and forth between my phone and the bottle. I could call her. I could fix this. I could beg her to fix me, to love me. But I couldn’t guarantee I’d actually, eventually, be fixed. This was simply who I was.
Facing a life without Zoe felt as impossible as that first day at rehab had been, starting down a path I couldn’t imagine reaching the end of. But the reasoning behind the two were so different I couldn’t compare them.
The alcohol had to go. It was killing my body, my mind, and my friends. It was slowly wiping away every ounce of my talent and led to the shittiest decisions of my life.
But Zoe… She was none of that. She was as clean as freshly fallen snow at our house in Colorado. As honest as a compass. As good for me as a full night’s sleep, even though the last thing I ever thought about was rest when I got into bed with her. Everything I’d written about in that damned song. The only reason I couldn’t have her was my own inability to let go of my past.
And even as pissed as I was that she couldn’t just love me as I was, that she felt like she needed to fix me, I wanted to be whole for her…even if I couldn’t have her.
Standing, I grabbed the bottle, pocketed my phone, then twisted the top of the Crystal Skull as I started to walk. I lifted the bottle to my nose and inhaled sharply, swinging the door open.
Then I poured the entire thing into the toilet, my chest clenching at the steady glug as it emptied. My phone rang as the last of the liquor left the bottle.
Unknown.
Maybe it’s her.
“Hello?” I answered it, tossing the bottle in the trash.
“Mr. Winters?”
“Yes?” My jaw ticked. Of course it wasn’t her.
“This is Richard Howell. I was hoping I might get you to change your mind about talking at your dad’s hearing.”
“My father murdered my little sister. If you want me to talk at his hearing, that’s all I’ll say.” I hit end and let go, the phone falling into the toilet with the vodka before I flushed.
* * *
A month. Thirty fucking days. Seven hundred and twenty hours.
That’s how long it had been since I’d left Zoe standing in the entry hall of the only place that had ever really felt like home.
Don’t leave me. Don’t do this. Those were the words that haunted my nightmares now. Instead of seeing Kaylee’s curls, it was Zoe’s auburn tresses wrapped in my father’s fists. Zoe’s fingers reaching for the banister. Her broken body at the bottom of the kitchen stairs.
On the worst nights—and there’d been a few—I’d woken from the dream gasping for air, my hands outstretched like I could catch them both. One of them I’d failed, and the other one I’d abandoned.